Title: Outlines of Universal History, Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading
Author: George Park Fisher
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8896]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Jim OConnor and Distributed Proofreaders
Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,
Jim OConnor and Distributed Proofreaders
Transcriber's Comment
In the original text, the author sought, "by the use of different sorts of type, … to introduced a considerable amount of detail without breaking the main current of the narrative, or making it too long". In the text below, paragraphs in the smallest type have been indented.
Designed as a Text-book and for Private Reading
By
George Park Fisher, D.D., LL.D.
Professor in Yale University
Inscribed by the author as a token of love and thankfulness to his daughter
In writing this work I have endeavored to provide a text-book suited to more advanced pupils. My idea of such a work was, that it should present the essential facts of history in due order, and in conformity to the best and latest researches; that it should point out clearly the connection of events and of successive eras with one another; that through the interest awakened by the natural, unforced view gained of this unity of history, and by such illustrative incidents as the brevity of the narrative would allow to be wrought into it, the dryness of a mere summary should be, as far as possible, relieved; and that, finally, being a book intended for pupils and readers of all classes, it should be free from sectarian partiality, and should limit itself to well-established judgments and conclusions on all matters subject to party contention. Respecting one of the points just referred to, I can say that, in composing this work, I have myself been more than ever impressed with the unity of history, and affected by this great and deeply moving drama that is still advancing into a future that is hidden from view. I can not but hope that this feeling, spontaneous and vivid in my own mind, may communicate itself to the reader in his progress through these pages.
The most interesting object in the study of history is, to quote Dr. Arnold's words, "that which most nearly touches the inner life of civilized man, namely, the vicissitudes of institutions, social, political, and religious." But, as the same scholar adds, "a knowledge of the external is needed before we arrive at that which is within. We want to get a sort of frame for our picture….And thus we want to know clearly the geographical boundaries of different countries, and their external revolutions. This leads us in the first instance to geography and military history, even if our ultimate object lies beyond." Something more is aimed at in the present work than the construction of this "frame," without which, to be sure, a student wanders about "vaguely, like an ignorant man in an ill-arranged museum." By the use of different sorts of type, it has been practicable to introduce a considerable amount of detail without breaking the main current of the narrative, or making it too long. By means of these additional passages, and by appending lists of books at the close of the several periods, the attempt has been made to aid younger students in carrying forward the study of history beyond the usual requirements of the class-room. I make no apology for the sketches presented of the history of science, literature, art, and of moral and material decline or improvement. Professor Seeley, in his interesting book on The Expansion of England, is disposed to confine history to the civil community, and to the part of human well-being which depends on that. "That a man in England," he tells us, "makes a scientific discovery or paints a picture, is not in itself an event in the history of England." But, of course, as this able writer himself remarks, "history may assume a larger or a narrower function;" and I am persuaded that to shut up history within so narrow bounds, is not expedient in a work designed in part to stimulate readers to wide and continued studies.
One who has long been engaged in historical study and teaching, if he undertakes to prepare such a work as the present, has occasion to traverse certain periods where previous investigations have made him feel more or less at home. Elsewhere at least his course must be to collate authorities, follow such as he deems best entitled to credit, and, on points of uncertainty, satisfy himself by recurrence to the original sources of evidence. Among the numerous works from which I have derived assistance, the largest debt is due, especially in the ancient and mediæval periods, to Weber's Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte, which (in its nineteenth edition, 1883) contains 2328 large octavo pages of well-digested matter. Duruy's Histoire du Moyen Age (eleventh edition, 1882), and also his Histoire des Temps Modernes (ninth edition), have yielded to me important aid. From the writings of Mr. E. A. Freeman I have constantly derived instruction. In particular, I have made use of his General Sketch of European History (which is published in this country, under the title, Outlines of History), and of his lucid, compact, and thorough History of European Geography. The other writings, however, of this able and learned historian, have been very helpful. Mr. Tillinghast's edition of Ploetz's Epitome I have found to be a highly valuable storehouse of historical facts, and have frequently consulted it with advantage. The superior accuracy of George's Genealogical Tables is the reason why I have freely availed myself of the aid afforded by them. Professor (now President) C. K. Adams's excellent Manual of Historical Literature, to which reference is repeatedly made in the following pages, has been of service in preparing the lists of works to be read or consulted. Those lists, it hardly need be said, aim at nothing like a complete bibliography. No doubt to each of them other valuable works might easily be added. As a rule, no mention is made of more technical or abstruse writings, collections of documents, and so forth. The titles of but few historical novels are given. Useful as the best of these are, works of this class are often inaccurate and misleading; so that a living master in historical authorship has said even of Walter Scott, who is so strong when he stands on Scottish soil, that in his Ivanhoe "there is a mistake in every line." With regard, however, to historical fiction, including poems, as well as novels and tales, the student will find in Mr. Justin Winsor's very learned and elaborate monograph (forming a distinct section of the catalogue of the Boston Public Library), the most full information up to the date of its publication. Most of the historical maps, to illustrate the text of the present work, have been engraved from drawings after Spruner, Putzger, Freeman, etc. Of the ancient maps, several have been adopted (in a revised form) from a General Atlas. That the maps contain more places than are referred to in the text, is not a disadvantage.
I wish to express my obligation to a number of friends who have kindly lent me aid in the revisal of particular portions of the proof-sheets of this volume. My special thanks are due, on account of this service, to Professor Francis Brown of the Union Theological School; to Professors W. D. Whitney, Tracy Peck, T. D. Seymour, W. H. Brewer, and T. R. Lounsbury, of Yale College; to Mr. A. Van Name, librarian of Yale College; and to Mr. W. L. Kingsley, to whose historical knowledge and unfailing kindness I have, on previous occasions, been indebted for like assistance. To other friends besides those just named, I am indebted for information on points made familiar to them by their special studies.
The characteristics of this work are stated in the Preface to the First Edition, which may be read on page v and the next following pages of the present volume.
The work has been subjected to a careful revision. The aim has been to make whatever amendments are called for by historical investigations in the interval since it was published. Besides corrections, brief statements have been woven here and there into the text. The revision has embraced the bibliography connected with the successive periods or chapters. Titles of books which are no longer of service have been erased. Titles of select recent publications, as well as of meritorious writings of a remoter past, have been inserted.
In preparing this edition for the press I have not been without the advantage of aid from friends versed in historical studies. Professor Henry E. Bourne, of Western Reserve University, besides particular annotations, has prolonged the history so far as to include in its compass, in Chapter VII, the last decade of the nineteenth century and events as recent as the close of the South African War and the accession of President Roosevelt. Professor Charles C. Torrey, Ph.D., of Yale University, has placed in my hands notes of his own on Oriental History, a portion of history with which, as well as with the Semitic languages, he is conversant. It will not be for lack of painstaking if any part of the new edition fails, within the limits of its plan, to correspond to the present state of historical knowledge.
G. P. F.
Yale University, January, 1904.
From the Beginning of Authentic History to the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes (A.D. 375)
To the Conquest of Carthage and of the Greek States (264-146 B.C.)
PERIOD IV. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION AND OF THE CIVIL WARS (146-3l B.C.).
To the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes (375 A.D.)
From the Migrations of the Teutonic Tribes to the Fall of Constantinople (A.D. 375-1453).
From the Fall of Constantinople (1453) to the Present Time
PERIOD I. FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE REFORMATION (1453-1517).
PERIOD III. FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1648-1789).
DEFINITION OF HISTORY.—The subject of history is man. History has for its object to record his doings and experiences. It may then be concisely defined as a narrative of past events in which men have been concerned. To describe the earth, the abode of man, to delineate the different kingdoms of nature, and to inquire into the origin of them, or to explain the physical or mental constitution of human beings, is no part of the office of history. All this belongs to the departments of natural and intellectual science.
But history, as we now understand the term, is more than a bare record of what men have done and suffered. It aims to point out the connection of events with one another. It seeks to explain the causes and the consequences of things that occur. It would trace the steps that mark the progress of the race, and of the different portions of it, through extended periods. It brings to light the thread which unites each particular stage in the career of a people, or of mankind as a whole, with what went before, and with what came after.
NATIONS.—History has been called "the biography of a society." Biography has to do with the career of an individual. History is concerned with the successive actions and fortunes of a community; in its broadest extent, with the experiences of the human family. It is only when men are connected by the social bond, and remain so united for a greater or less period, that there is room for history. It is, therefore, with nations, in their internal progress and in their mutual relations, that history especially deals. Of mere clans, or loosely organized tribes, it can have little to say. History can go no farther than to explore their genealogy, and state what were their journeyings and habits. The nation is a form of society that rests on the same basis—a basis at once natural and part of a divine system—as the family. By a nation is meant a people dwelling in a definite territory, living under the same government, and bound together by such ties as a common language, a common religion, the same institutions and customs. The elements that enter into that national spirit which is the bond of unity, are multiple. They vary to a degree in different peoples. As individuals are not alike, and as the history of any particular community is modified and molded by these individual differences, so the course of the history of mankind is shaped by the peculiar characteristics of the various nations, and by their interaction upon one another. In like manner, groups of nations, each characterized by distinctive traits derived from affinities of race or of religion, or from other sources, act on each other, and thus help to determine the course of the historic stream.
SCOPE OF HISTORY.—The rise and progress of culture and civilization in their various constituents is the theme of history. It does not limit its attention to a particular fraction of a people, to the exclusion of the rest. Governments and rulers, and the public doings of states,—such as foreign wars, and the struggles of rival dynasties,—naturally form a prominent topic in historical writings. But this is only one department in the records of the past. More and more history interests itself in the character of society at large, and in the phases through which it has passed. How men lived from day to day, what their occupations were, their comforts and discomforts, their ideas, sentiments, and modes of intercourse, their state as regards art, letters, invention, religious enlightenment,—these are points on which history, as at present studied and written, undertakes to shed light.
POINTS OF VIEW.—An eminent German philosopher of our day, Hermann Lotze, intimates that there are five phases of human development, and hence five points of view from which the course of history is to be surveyed. These are the intellectual (embracing the progress of truth and knowledge), the industrial, the aesthetic (including art in all its higher ramifications), the religious, and the political. An able English scholar, Goldwin Smith, resolves the elements of human progress, and thus the most general topics of history, into three, "the moral, the intellectual, and the productive; or, virtue, knowledge, and industry." "But these three elements," he adds, "though distinct, are not separate, but closely connected with each other."
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.—That there is, in some sense, a "reign of law" in the succession of human events, is a conviction warranted by observed facts, as well as inspired by religion. Events do not spring into being, disjoined from antecedents leading to them. Even turning-points in history, which seem, at the first glance, abrupt, are found to be dependent on previous conditions. They are perceived to be the natural issue of the times that have gone before. Preceding events have foreshadowed them. There are laws of historical progress which have their root in the characteristics of human nature. Ends are wrought out, which bear on them evident marks of design. History, as a whole, is the carrying out of a plan:
"… through the ages one increasing purpose runs."
Augustine long ago argued, that he who has not left "even the entrails of the smallest and most insignificant animal, or the feather of a bird, or the little flower of a plant, or the leaf of a tree, without a harmony, and, as it were, a mutual peace among all its parts,—that God can never be believed to have left the kingdoms of men, their dominations and servitudes, outside of the laws of his providence."
To discern the plan of history, and the causes or laws through which it is accomplished, as far as our limited capacity will allow, is the object of what is called the philosophy of history.
FREEDOM AND LAW.—It must not be forgotten, however, that man is a free agent. History, although it is not an aimless process, is, nevertheless, not subject to the forces and laws which govern in the realm of matter. Physical analogies are not a literal image of what takes place in the sphere of intelligence and freedom. Moral evil, wherever it is a factor in history, has its origin in the will of man. In respect to it, the agency of God is permissive and overruling. Through his providence, order is made to emerge, a worthy goal is at last reached, despite the elements of disorder introduced by human perversity.
Nor is progress continuous and unbroken. It is often, as one has said, a spiral rather than a straight line. It is not an unceasing advance: there are backward movements, or what appear to be such. Of particular nations it is frequently evident, that, intellectually and morally, as well as in power and thrift, they have sunk below a level once attained.
Of the inscrutable blending of human freedom with a pre-ordained design, GUIZOT says: "Man advances in the execution of a plan which he has not conceived, and of which he is not even aware. He is the free and intelligent artificer of a work which is not his own." "Conceive a great machine, the design of which is centered in a single mind, though its various parts are intrusted to different workmen, separated from, and strangers to, each other. No one of them understands the work as a whole, nor the general result which he concurs in producing; but every one executes with intelligence and freedom, by rational and voluntary acts, the particular task assigned to him." (Lectures on the History of Civilization, Lect. xi.)
PERSONAL POWER.—The progress of society has been inseparably connected with the agency of eminent persons. Signal changes, whether wholesome or mischievous, are linked to the names of individuals who have specially contributed to bring them to pass. The achievements of heroes stand out in as bold relief in authentic history as in the obscure era of myth and fable. Fruitful inventions, after the earlier steps in civilization are taken, are traceable to particular authors, exalted by their genius above the common level. So it is with the literary works which have exerted the deepest and most lasting influence. Nations have their pilots in war and in peace. Epochs in the progress of the fine arts are ushered in by individuals of surpassing mental power. Reforms and revolutions, which alter the direction of the historic stream, emanate from individuals in whose minds they are conceived, and by whose energy they are effected. The force thus exerted by the leaders in history is not accounted for by reference to general laws. Great men are not puppets moved by the spirit of the time. To be sure, there must be a preparation for them, and a groundwork of sympathy among their contemporaries: otherwise their activity would call forth no response. Independently of the age that gives them birth, their power would lose its distinctive form and hue: they would be incapable of influence.
Cromwell would not have been Cromwell had he been born in any other period of English history. Nor could he have played his part, being what he was, had not the religious and political struggles of England for generations framed a theater adapted to his talents and character. Michael Angelo could not have arisen in a half-civilized tribe. His creative power would have found no field in a society rude, and blind to the attractions of art. Nevertheless, his power was creative. Cromwell and Michael Angelo, and such as they, are not the passive organs, the mere outcome, of the communities in which they appear. Without the original thought and personal energy of leaders, momentous changes in the life of nations could never have taken place. A great man may be obliged to wait long for the answering sympathy which is required to give effect to his thoughts and purposes. Such a mind is said to be in advance of the age. Another generation may have to appear before the harvest springs from the seed that he has sown. Moreover, it is not true that great men, efficient leaders, come forward whenever there is an exigency calling for them, or an urgent need. Rather is it true that terrible disasters sometimes occur, at critical points in history, just for the lack of leaders fit for the emergency.
THE MEANING OF HISTORY.—A thoughtful student can hardly fail to propose to himself the question, "What is the meaning of history? Why is this long drama with all that is noble and joyous in it, and with its abysses of sin and misery, enacted at all?" It is only a partial answer that one can hope to give to this grave inquiry, for the designs of Providence can not be fully fathomed. But, among the ends in view, the moral training of mankind stands forth with a marked prominence. The deliverance of the race from moral evil and error, and the building-up of a purified society, enriched with all the good that belongs to the ideal of humanity, and exalted by fellowship with God, is not only an end worthy in itself, but it is the end towards which the onward movement of history is seen to be directed. Hence, a central place in the course of history belongs to the life and work of Jesus Christ.
No more satisfactory solution of this problem of the significance of history has ever been offered than that brought forward by the Apostle Paul in Acts xvii. 27, where he says that the nations of men were assigned to their places on the earth, and their duration as well as boundaries determined, "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him."
WORKS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.-(Professor C. K. ADAMS'S Manual of Historical Literature (1882) is an excellent guide in historical reading. Briefer lists of works in Methods of Teaching and Studying History, edited by G. Stanley Hall.) Books on the Philosophy of History: R. FLINT, The Philosophy of History, vol. i.,—Writers on the subject in France and Germany. Vol. ii. will treat of England and Italy. The work is a critical review of the literature on the subject. Schlegel, The Philosophy of History; Shedd's Lectures on the Philosophy of History; Bunsen's God in History (3 vols., 1870); LOTZE, Mikrokosmus, vol. iii, book vii.; Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws; Buckle, History of Civilization in England (2 vols.). This work is based on the denial of free-will, and the doctrine that physical influences,—climate, soil, food, etc.,—are the main causes of intellectual progress. Draper's History of the Intellectual Development of Europe(2 vols., 2d edition, 1876) is in the same vein. Opposed to this philosophy are GOLDWIN SMITH'S Lectures on the Study of History; C. Kingsley, in his Miscellanies, The Limits of Exact Science as applied to History; Froude, in Short Studies, vol. i., The Science of History; Lotze, as above; also, Flint, and Droysen, Grundriss der Historik. Hegel's Philosophy of History has profound observations, but connected with an a priori theory.
HISTORICAL WRITING.—The beginning of historical writing was in the form of lists of kings, or bare records of battles, or the simple registration of other occurrences of remarkable interest. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chinese, and other nations, furnish examples of this rudimental type of historical writing. More continuous annals followed; but these are meager in contents, and make no attempt to find links of connection between events. The ancient Hebrew historians are on a much higher plane, and, apart from their religious value, far surpass all other Asiatic histories. It was in Greece, the fountain-head of science, that history, as an art, first appeared. Herodotus, born early in the fifth century B.C., first undertook to satisfy curiosity respecting the past by a more elaborate and entertaining narrative. He begins his work thus: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, which he publishes, in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and marvelous actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were the grounds of their hostility." In Herodotus, history, owing to the inquiry made into the causes of events, begins to rise above the level of a mere chronicle, its primitive type. Thucydides, who died about 400 B.C., followed. He is far more accurate in his investigations, having a deep insight into the origin of the events which he relates, and is a model of candor. He, too, writes to minister to the inquisitive spirit of his countrymen, and of the generations that were to follow. He began to write his history of the war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians while it was still going on, in the belief, he says, "that it would turn out great, and worthier of being recorded than any that had preceded it." The attention of historical writers was still confined to a particular country, or to insulated groups of events. Before there could spring up the idea of universal history, it was necessary that there should be a broader view of mankind as a whole. The ancient Stoics had a glimpse of the race as a family, and of the nations as forming one complex unity. The conquests and extended dominion of Rome first suggested the idea of universal history. Polybius, a Greek in the second century B.C., had watched the progress of Rome, in its career of conquest, until "the affairs of Italy and Africa," as he says, "joined with those of Asia and Greece, and all moved together towards one fixed and single point." He tells us that particular histories can not give us a knowledge of the whole, more than the survey of the divided members of a body once endowed with life and beauty can yield a just conception of all the comeliness and vigor which it has received from Nature. To Polybius belongs the distinction of being the first to undertake a universal history. Christianity, with its doctrine of the unity of mankind, and with all the moral and religious teaching characteristic of the gospel, contributed effectively to the widening of the view of the office and scope of history. It is only in quite recent times that history has directed its attention predominantly to social progress, and to its causes and conditions.
History, in its etymological sense (from the Greek, historia), meant the ascertaining of facts by inquiry; then, the results of this inquiry, the knowledge thus obtained. The work of Herodotus was "history" in the strictest sense: he acquired his information by travel and personal interrogation.
The German philosopher, Hegel, has divided histories into three classes: 1. Original histories; i.e., works written by contemporaries of the events described, who share in the spirit of the times, and may have personally taken part in the transactions. Such are the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon's Anabasis, Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion in England, Caesar's Commentaries. 2. Reflective histories, where the author writes at a later point of time, on the basis of materials which he gathers up, but is not himself a partaker in the spirit of the age of which he treats. 3. Philosophical histories, which set forth the rational development of history in its inmost idea.
Another classification is the following: 1. Genealogies, like the records of Manetho, the Egyptian priest. 2. The chronicle, following the chronological order, and telling the story in a simple, popular way. 3. The "pragmatic" form of writing, which aims to explain by reference to the past some particular characteristic or phase of the present, and uses history to point a special moral lesson. 4. The form of history which traces the rise and progress of "ideas," tendencies, or ruling forces,—such as the idea of civil equality in early Rome or in modern France, the religious ideas of Mohammedanism, the idea of representative government, the idea of German unity, etc.
A broad line of distinction has been drawn between "the old or artistic type of history," and the new or sociological type which belongs to the present century. The ancient historians represented the former type. They prized literary form. They aimed to interweave moral and political reflections. Polybius often interrupts his narrative to introduce remarks of this sort. But they were not, as a rule, diligent and accurate in their researches. And, above all, they had no just conception of society as a whole, and of the complex forces out of which the visible scene springs. The Greeks were the masters in this first or artistic form of history. The French Revolution was one stimulus to a profounder and more comprehensive method of studying history. The methods and investigations of natural science have had a decided influence in the same direction.
THE SOURCES OF HISTORY.—History must depend for credence on credible evidence. In order to justify belief, one must either himself have seen or heard the facts related, or have the testimony, direct or indirect, of witnesses or of well-informed contemporaries. The sources of historic knowledge are mainly comprised in oral tradition, or in some form of written records.
Tradition is exposed to the infirmities of memory, and to the unconscious invention and distortion which grow out of imagination and feeling. Ordinarily, bare tradition, not verified by corroborative proofs, can not be trusted later than the second generation from the circumstances narrated. It ceases to be reliable when it has been transmitted through more than two hands. In the case of a great and startling event, like a destructive convulsion of nature or a protracted war, the authentic story, though unwritten, of the central facts, at least, is of much longer duration. There may be visible monuments that serve to perpetuate the recollection of the occurrences which they commemorate. Institutions may exist—popular festivals and the like—which keep alive the memory of past events, and, in certain circumstances, are sufficient to verify them to generations far removed in time. Events of a stirring character, when they are embodied in songs of an early date, may be transmitted orally, though in a poetic dress. Songs and legends, it may be added, even when they do not suffice to verify the incidents to which they refer, are valuable as disclosing the sentiments and habits of the times when they originated, or were cherished. The central fact, the nucleus of the tradition, may be historical when all the details belonging with it have been effaced, or have been superseded by other details, the product of imagination. The historical student is to distinguish between traditionary tales which are untrustworthy throughout, and traditions which have their roots in fact. Apart from oral tradition, the sources of historical knowledge are the following:—
1. Contemporary registers, chronicles, and other documents, either now, or known to have been originally, in a manuscript form.
2. Inscriptions on monuments and coins. Such, for example, are the inscriptions on the monuments of Egypt and on the buried ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Such are the ancient epitaphs, heathen and Christian, in the Roman catacombs. The study of ancient inscriptions of various sorts has thrown much light of late upon Grecian and Roman antiquity.
3. The entire literature of a people, in which its intellectual, moral, and social condition, at any particular era, is mirrored.
4. Material structures of every kind, as altars, tombs, private dwellings,—as those uncovered at Pompeii,—public edifices, civil and religious, paintings, weapons, household utensils. These all tell a story relative to the knowledge and taste, the occupations and domestic habits, and the religion, of a past generation or of an extinct people.
5 Language is a memorial of the past, of the more value since it is not the product of deliberate contrivance. Comparative philology, following languages back to their earlier stages and to the parent stocks, unveils the condition of society at remote epochs. It not only describes the origin of nations, but teaches something respecting their primitive state.
6. Histories written at former periods, but subsequently to the events described in them, are a secondary but valuable source of historical knowledge. This is especially true when their authors had access to traditions that were nearer their fountain, or to literary monuments which have perished.
HISTORICAL CRITICISM.—Historical scholars are much more exacting as regards evidence than was formerly the case. The criticism of what purports to be proof is more searching. At the same time, what is called "historical divination" can not be altogether excluded. Learned and sagacious scholars have conjectured the existence of facts, where a gap in recorded history—"the logic of events"—seemed to presuppose them; and later discoveries have verified the guess. This is analogous to the success of Leverrier and Adams in inferring the existence of an unknown planet, which the telescope afterwards discovered. An example of historical divination on a large scale is furnished by the theories of the great German historian, Niebuhr, in respect to early Roman history. He propounded opinions, however, which in many particulars fail to obtain general assent at present.
CREDIBILITY OF HISTORY.—At the opposite pole from credulity is an unwarrantable historical skepticism. The story is told of Sir Walter Raleigh, that when he was a prisoner in the Tower, and was engaged in writing his History of the World, he heard the sounds of a fracas in the prison-yard. On inquiry of those who were concerned in it, and were on the spot, he found so many contradictions in their statements that he could not get at the truth. Whereupon, it occurred to him as a vain thing to undertake to describe what had occurred on the vast theater of the world, when he could not ascertain the truth about an event occurring within a bow-shot. The anecdote simply illustrates, however, the difficulty of getting at the exact truth respecting details,—a difficulty constantly exemplified in courts of justice. The fact of the conflict in the court of the Tower, the general cause, the parties engaged, the consequences,—as, for example, what punishment was inflicted,—were undisputed. The great facts which influence the course of history, it is not difficult to ascertain. Moreover, as against an extravagant skepticism, it may be said that history provides us with a vast amount of authentic information which contemporaries, and even individual actors, were not possessed of. This is through the bringing to light of documents from a great variety of sources, many of which were secret, or not open to the view of all the leaders in the transactions to which they refer. The private correspondence of the Protestant leaders,—Luther, Melanchthon, Cranmer, etc.,—the letters of Erasmus, the official reports of the Venetian ambassadors, the letters of William the Silent and of Philip II., put us in possession of much information, which at the time was a secret to most of the prominent participants in the events of the sixteenth century. The correspondence of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, John Adams, Wolcott, Pickering, etc., introduces us into the secret counsels of the American political leaders of that day. Numerous facts conveyed from one to another under the seal of privacy, and not known to the others, are thus revealed to us.
On the nature and value of tradition, a very valuable discussion is that of EWALD, History of Israel, vol. i. pp. 13-38; Sir G. C. LEWIS, Essays on the Credibility of Early Roman History, in which Niebuhr's conclusions are criticised; A. Bisset, Essays on Historical Truth. On the sources of history, Art. by GAIRDNER in The Contemporary Review, vol. xxxviii.
HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY.—Political Geography, which describes the earth as inhabited, and as parceled out among nations, has a close relation to history. Without a distinct idea of the position of places and the boundaries of countries, historical narrations are enveloped in a sort of haze. France, for example, is a name with very different meanings at different dates in the past. Unless the varying uses of the word Burgundy are understood, important parts of European history are left in confusion.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Even more helpful is Physical Geography, which surveys the earth in its three great divisions,—land, sea, and air,—without reference to lines of political demarkation. The configuration of the different portions of the globe, with the varieties of climate, the relations of mountain and plain, of land and water, have strongly affected the character of nations and the currents of history. In regions extremely hot or extremely cold man can not thrive, or build up a rich and enduring civilization. The occupations of a people are largely dependent on its situation,—whether it be maritime or away from the sea,—and on peculiarities of soil and temperature. The character of the Nile valley, and its periodical inundation, is a striking illustration of the possible extent of geographical influences. The peninsular and mountainous character of Greece went far to shape the form of Greek political society. The high plateau which forms the greater portion of Spain, with the fertile belts of valley on the Atlantic and Mediterranean border, have helped to determine the employments and the character of the Spanish people. Had the physical characteristics of the Spanish peninsula been essentially different, the success of Wellington in expelling the French, with the forces at his disposal, would not have been possible. Were there a chain of mountains along our Atlantic coast as near as are the Andes to the Pacific, what different results would have arisen from the English settlements in North America! The Alpine barrier in the north of Italy was indispensable to the building-up and maintenance of the dominion of ancient Rome. Of the great basin or plain between the Alps and the Apennines, open to the sea only on the east, through which flows one great river, fed by streams from the mountains on either side, Dr. Arnold says: "Who can wonder that this large and richly watered plain should be filled with flourishing cities, or that it should have been contended for so often by successful invaders?" While the agency of climate, soil, and other physical circumstances may easily be exaggerated, that agency must be duly considered in accounting for historical phenomena.
The best historical Atlas is the copious German work of VON SPRUNER. FREEMAN'S Historical Geography of Europe is a work of great value. DROVSEN'S Allg. Hist. Atlas. Smaller atlases are those of PUTZGER, Rhode, Appleton's Hist. Atlas, the International, and the Collegiate. Smaller still, Keith Johnston's Crown Atlases and Half-Crown Atlases. On Mediæval History, Labberton's Atlas; also, Koeppen: in Ancient Geography, SMITH'S work, KIEPERT'S, Long's. On Physical Geography, GUYOT'S text-books; Vaughan's Connection between History and Physical Geography, in Contemp. Review, vol. v.; Hall's Methods of Studying History, etc., p. 201 seq., Encycl. Brit., Art. Geography.
CHRONOLOGY.—An exact method of establishing dates was slowly reached. The invention of eras was indispensable to this end. The earliest definite time for the dating of events was established at Babylon,—the era of Nabonassar, 747 B.C. The Greeks, from about 300 B.C., dated events from the first recorded victory at the Olympic games, 776 B.C. These games occurred every fourth year. Each Olympiad was thus a period of four years. The Romans, though not until some centuries after the founding of Rome, dated from that event; i.e., from 753 B.C. The Mohammedan era begins at the Hegira, or flight of Mohammed from Mecca, 622 A.D. The method of dating from the birth of Jesus was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman abbot, about the middle of the sixth century. This epoch was placed by him about four years too late. This requires us to fix the date of the birth of Christ at 4 B.C.
The day was the simplest and earliest division of time. The week has been in use for this purpose in the East from time immemorial. It was not introduced among the Romans until after the spread of Christianity in the Empire. The month was the earlier unit for periods of greater length. To make the lunar and the solar years correspond, and to determine the exact length of the solar year, was a work of difficulty, and was only gradually effected. Julius Cæsar reformed the calendar in 46 B.C., the date of the Julian era. This made the year eleven minutes too long. Pope Gregory XIII. corrected the reckoning, in 1582, by ordering Oct. 5th to be called the 15th, and instituted the "Gregorian calendar." The change, or the "New Style," was subsequently adopted by Great Britain (in 1752), and by the other Protestant nations. The difference for the present century between the Old and the New Style is twelve days: during the last century it was eleven. The Julian civil year began with Jan. 1. It was not until the eighteenth century that this became the uniform date for the commencement of the legal year among the Latin Christian nations.
On the general subjects of chronology: Encycl. Britt.,
Arts. Chronology and Calendar. Manuals of Reference:
ROSSE'S Index of Dates (1858); Haydn's Dictionary of
Dates (Vincent's edition, 1866); BLAIR'S Chronological
Tables; Woodward and Cates, Encycl. of Chronology (1872).
Ethnology is a new science. Its function is to ascertain the origin and filiation, the customs and institutions, of the various nations and tribes which make up, or have made up in the past, the human race. In tracing their relationship to one another, or their genealogy, the sources of information are mainly three,—physical characteristics, language, and written memorials of every sort.
Ethnology is a branch of Anthropology, as this is a subdivision of
Zoölogy, and this, again, of Biology. Ethnography differs from
Ethnology in dealing more with details of description, and less with
rational exposition.
RACES OF MANKIND.—Authorities differ widely from one another in their classification of races. Prichard made seven, which were reduced by Cuvier to three; viz., Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopic. Blumenbach made five, and Pickering eleven. It is the Caucasian variety which has been chiefly distinguished in history, and active in the building-up of civilization. None of the numerous schemes of division, from a zoölogical point of view, however, are satisfactory.
Huxley has proposed a fourfold classification: 1. The Australoid, represented by the Australians and the indigenous tribes of Southern India. 2. The Negroid. 3. The Mongoloid. 4. The Xanthochroi, or fair whites, among whom are comprised most of the inhabitants of Northern Europe. To these are added a fifth variety, the Melanochroi, to which belong a part of the Celts, the Spaniards, Greeks, Arabs, etc.
Of the various methods of race-division, A. van Humboldt says: "We fail to recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or any general or well-established principle, in the division of these groups. The extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but without regard to the races which can not be included in any of these classes." (Cosmos, i. 365.) For example, black skin, woolly hair, and a negro-like cast of countenance, are not necessarily connected together.
MONOGENISM.—Zoölogists, from the point of view of their own science, now more generally favor the monogenist doctrine, which traces mankind to a single pair, than the polygenist, which assumed different centers of origin. The present tendencies of natural science, especially since Darwin, are favorable to the monogenist view.
"The opinion of modern Zoölogists, whose study of the species and breeds of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view of the several origins of man, for two principal reasons. First, That all tribes of men, from the blackest to the whitest, the most savage to the most cultured, have such general likeness in the structure of their bodies and the working of their minds, as is easiest and best accounted for by their being descended from a common ancestry, however distant. Second, That all the human races, notwithstanding their form and color, appear capable of freely intermarrying, and forming crossed races of every combination, such as the millions of mulattoes and mestizoes sprung in the New World from the mixture of Europeans, Africans, and native Americans; this again points to a common ancestry of all the races of man. We may accept the theory of the unity of mankind as best agreeing with ordinary experience and scientific research." (Tylor's Anthropology, etc., pp. 5, 6.)
EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE.—Languages, through marked affinities, are grouped together into several great families, i. The Aryan, or Indo-European, of which the oldest known branch is the Sanskrit, the language in which the ancient books of the Hindus, the Vedas, were written. With the Sanskrit belong the Iranian or Persian, the Greek, the Latin or Italic, the Celtic, the Germanic or Teutonic (under which are included the Scandinavian tongues), the Slavonian or Slavo-Lettic. 2. The Semitic, embracing the communities described in Genesis as the descendants of Shem. Under this head are embraced, first, the Assyrian and Babylonian; secondly, the Hebrew and Phoenician, with the Syrian or Aramaic; and thirdly, the Arabic. The Phoenician was spread among numerous colonies, of which Carthage was the chief. The Arabic followed the course of Mohammedan conquest. It is the language of the northern border of Africa, and has strongly affected various other languages,—the Persian, Turkish, etc. 3. The Turanian or Scythian. This is an extensive family of languages. The Finno-Hungarian, which includes two cultivated peoples, the Fins and Hungarians; the Samoyed, stretching from the North Sea far eastward to the boundary between Russia and China; and the Turkish or Tartar, spreading from European Turkey over a great part of Central Asia, are connected together by family ties. They spring from one parent stock. Whether the Mongolian and the Tungusic—the last is the language of the Manchus—are also thus affiliated, is a point not absolutely settled.
Besides these three great divisions, there are other languages, as the Chinese, and the monosyllabic tongues of south-eastern Asia, which possibly are connected lineally with it; the Japanese; the Malay-Polynesian, a well-developed family; the Hamitic (of which the Egyptian or Coptic is the principal member); the Dravidian or South Indian; the South African; the Central African; the American Indian languages, etc.
On language and the divisions of language, W. D. WHITNEY, Language, and the Study of Language (1867), Oriental and Linguistic Studies (two series, 1872-74), Life and Growth of Language (1875); Art. Philology, in Encycl. Brit., vol. xviii.; Max Müller's Lectures on the Science of Language (two series), and other writings by the same author.
ETHNOLOGY AND HISTORY.—History is generally written from the political point of view. It is the history of nations considered separately and in relation to one another. There are, also, histories of culture. History, from a cultural point of view, without paying regard to national boundaries, seeks to unfold the rise and progress of arts and industry, of inventions, of customs, manners, and institutions. It is the history of culture and civilization. History, from the ethnological point of view, would describe the migrations and experiences of the different races of men, and the formation of the various nationalities by these races, through conquest and intermixture. Following the divisions of linguistic science, we should have, first, the Egyptian race and their history. Then we should have the Semitic race, in the three eras of their pre-eminence, and in their various branches. Then would come the Aryan, or Indo-European family, whose power, except when interrupted and partially broken by the Mohammedan conquests, has continued to dominate in history since the rise of the ancient Persian Empire.
There have been three periods of Semitic ascendency,—the era of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires; that of the Phoenician cities and of Carthage (a Tyrian settlement), with their colonies; and that of the Arabic-Mohammedan Conquests. This last epoch falls within the Christian era. In this course of Semitic history would be embraced the narrative of the Israelites, and of their dispersion in ancient and in modern times. The Indo-European, or Aryan family, follows next in order. In recording its history, we should consider, first, its oldest representative of which we have knowledge,—the Indian race, with its literature, its social organization, and its religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism. Then come the Persians, with their religion founded by Zoroaster, and the Armenians. With the fall of the Ancient Persian Empire, the center of power was transferred from Asia to Europe, where it has since continued, though still in the hands of the same Aryan race. The history of the Greeks and of the Romans succeeds; then the history of the three races,—the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonian,—as they present themselves at the threshold of authentic history. The forming of the several nationalities of Europe would have to be traced: the Slavonian, including Russia and Poland; the Teutonic, comprising England, Holland, Germany, and the Scandinavian peoples (viz., Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland); the Romanic or Italic nations (viz., Portugal, Spain, Provence, Italy, Wallachia, the Grisons of Switzerland), which are the nations the basis of whose languages is the rustic or people's Latin of the middle ages. Such, in brief outline, is the method which history, from the point of view of race affinities, as these are indicated by language, would adopt.
UNITY OF DESCENT.—Whether mankind are all descended from one pair—the Monogenist view, or spring from more than one center of origin—the Polygenist view, is a question which philological science can not answer. The facts of language are reconcilable with either doctrine. While cautious philologists are slow in admitting distinct affinities between the generic families of speech,—as the Semitic and Indo-European,—which would be indicative of a common origin, they agree in the judgment, that, on account of the mutability of language, especially when unwritten, and while in its earlier stages, no conclusion adverse to the monogenist doctrine can be drawn from the diversities of speech now existing, or that are known to have existed at any past time. As far as science is concerned, the decision of the question must be left to zoölogy. The tendencies of natural science at present, as we have said above, are strongly toward the monogenist view. The variety of physical characteristics not only affords no warrant for assuming diversity of species among men; they do not even imply diversity of parentage at the beginning.
"Nothing," says Max Müller, "necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements" [the vocabulary] "of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech." The same thing Müller affirms of "the formal elements" [the grammatical structure] "of these groups of languages." "We can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences or by the wear and tear of speech in its continuous working, the different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced." (Lectures on Language, 1st series, p. 340.) The same conclusions are reached by Professor W. D. Whitney, who, while disclaiming for linguistic science the power to prove that the human race in the beginning formed one society, says, that it is "even far more demonstrable" that it can "never prove the variety of human races and origins." (Life and Growth of Language, p. 269.)
We know that nations can learn and unlearn a language. The Irish, adopting the language of their English conquerors, is one of many examples of the same sort in history. What effects upon language took place, prior to recorded history, from the mingling of tribes and peoples, it is impossible to ascertain. The consequences to language, of mixture among different forms of speech, were like those which must have been produced upon the physical man from the mingling of diverse physical types in remote ages. Science, if it has no decided verdict to render, does not stand in conflict with the monogenist doctrine, which has generally been understood to be the teaching of the Scriptures.
The polytheistic religions are in themselves a highly interesting part of the history of mankind. In the multiform character that belongs to them we find reflected the peculiar traits of the several peoples among whom they have arisen. The history of religion stands in a close connection with the development of the fine arts,—architecture and sculpture, painting, music, and also poetry. The earliest rhythmical utterance was in hymns to the gods. To worship, all the arts are largely indebted for their birth and growth. This, however, is only one of the ways in which religion is interwoven with the rise and progress of civilization.
By mythology; we mean the collective beliefs of any tribe or nation respecting deities or semi-divine personages. Recent studies in language, or the science of comparative philology, have thrown light on the origin of mythology, and upon the affinities of different polytheistic religions with one another. Among various nations belonging to the same family (as, for example, the peoples of the Aryan race), names of gods, and, to some extent, qualities and deeds attributed to them, have been identified. Myths are found to have traveled in different guises from land to land. At the same time, these discoveries have given rise to much unverified theory and conjecture. Too much stress has been laid, by certain writers, on mistakes in language as a source of mythology. In the primitive stage of language, all nouns had a gender, either male or female; and verbs, even auxiliary verbs, it is alleged, expressed activity of some sort. On the basis of these facts it has been inferred, that, at a later day, figurative expressions, descriptive of natural changes, were taken as literal; as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn," as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of misunderstanding, it has been thought, a throng of mythological tales arose. By some it is held that the names of animals, which had been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain mountain or river caused these natural objects to be mistakenly regarded as actual progenitors. These suggestions are of very limited value in solving the problem of the origin of the ethnic religions. Much, however, has been learned from observing the rites and beliefs of existing savage nations. Not a few religious notions and ceremonies, once in vogue among cultivated heathen peoples, may be plausibly considered a survival from a more remote and barbarous condition of society.
That mythology is the product of a mere exaggeration of actual events, or is an allegorical picture, either of the operations of nature or of human traits, is an untenable and obsolete view.
We shall not err in defining the main sources of the religions to be, first, the sense of dependence, and the yearning for the fellowship and favor of powers "not ourselves," by which the lot of men is felt to be determined; secondly, the effort to explain the world of nature above and beneath, and the occurrences of life; and thirdly, the personifying instinct which belongs to the childhood of nations as of individuals. This tendency leads to the attributing of conscious life to things inanimate. A like tendency may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, where there is no sense of its unity and no capacity to rise in faith to a living God above nature, the result is a multitude of divinities of higher and lower rank. Myths respecting them are the spontaneous invention of unreflecting and uncritical, but imaginative, peoples. Thus they serve to indicate the range of ideas, and the moral spirit of those who originate and give credence to them.
This is not the place to consider the question, What was the primitive religion of man? The earliest deities that history brings to our notice were not fetiches, but heavenly beings of lofty attributes. Whether the religions of savage tribes, in common with their low grade of intelligence, are, or are not, the result of degeneracy, is a question which secular history affords no means of deciding with confidence,
It may be added, that, in historic eras, the mythopoeic fancy is not inactive. Stories of marvelous adventure clustered about the old Celtic King Arthur of England and the "knights of the Round-Table," and fill up the chronicles relating to Charlemagne. Wherever there is a person who kindles popular enthusiasm, myths accumulate. This is eminently true in an atmosphere like that which prevailed in the mediaeval period, when imagination and emotion were dominant.
PREHISTORIC RELICS.—Within the last half century, in various countries of Europe, and in other countries, also, which have been, earlier or later, seats of civilization, there have been found numerous relics of uncivilized races, which, at periods far remote, must have inhabited the same ground. Many of these antiquities are met with in connection with remains of fossil elephants, hyenas, bears, etc.,—with animals which no longer live in the regions referred to, and some of which have become wholly extinct. Dwelling-places of these far-distant peoples—such as caves and rock-shelters, and the remains of the lake-habitations that were built on piles, in Switzerland and elsewhere—sepulchers, camps, and forts, and an immense number of implements and ornaments of stone and metal, have been examined. The most ancient of these monuments carry us as far back as the era called by geologists the Quaternary or Drift period.
THE THREE STAGES.—But there are marked distinctions in the relative age of the various relics referred to. They indicate different degrees of knowledge and skill; and this proof of a succession of peoples, or of stages of development, is confirmed by geological evidence. The prehistoric time is divided into the Stone Age, the Age of Bronze, and the Age of Iron, according as the implements in use were of one or another of these materials. But the Stone Age includes an earlier and a later sub-division. In the first and most ancient section, the weapons and utensils, mostly of flint, were very rude in their manufacture. This was the Paleolithic Age, where there are no signs of habitations constructed by the hand, or of domesticated plants and animals. Men lived in caves, and their vestments were the skins of beasts. Yet, among their implements are found fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and stone, on which are carved in outline, often with much skill, representations of the reindeer, the bear, the ox, and of other animals. In the Neolithic period, there was a decided advance. Implements are better made and polished. There were domestic animals and cultivated plants. The lake-dwellings in Switzerland were well contrived for shelter and defense. Every hut had its hearth. It is probable that most of them were furnished with a loom for weaving. Fragments of pottery are found, and flax was grown and made into cord, nettings, etc. Stalls were constructed near the huts for the ox, the goat, the horse, sheep, and pigs. The lake-dwellers cultivated wheat and barley. The Bronze Age, when implements were made of copper or of a mixture of copper and tin, exhibits proof of decided improvement in various directions; and the Age of Iron, a still more marked advance. In the Swiss remains referred to are distinct traces of a transition from the Stone Age to the Age of Bronze, and then to the Age of Iron. The kitchen-middens, or shell-mounds, of Denmark belong exclusively to the Neolithic period. Where the transition was made from the Stone Age to the Age of Bronze, it apparently occurred in some cases by degrees, and peacefully; but sometimes by the incoming of an invading people more advanced. It should be observed that the lines of division between these periods are not sharply drawn: implements of stone continued to be used after the Bronze and even the Iron periods had been introduced. Nor were these several ages in one region contemporaneous with like conditions in every other. Moreover, it is not possible to find in all countries once civilized proofs of a passage through these successive eras. In Egypt, the evidences of a Stone Age are scanty. The most ancient human remains show that man in his physical characteristics was on a level with man at present.
Dr. Daniel Wilson, speaking of the age of the Flint-folk, says: "It is of no slight importance to perceive that the interval which has wrought such revolutions in the earth" [involving great geological changes and mutations of climate] "as are recorded in the mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute creation…. The oldest art-traces of the paleotechnic men of central France not only surpass those of many savage races, but they indicate an intellectual aptitude in no degree inferior to the average Frenchman of the nineteenth century." (Prehistoric Man, pp. 33, 34.)
Literature.—Wilson, Prehistoric Man, etc. (2 vols., 1876);
Joly, Man before the Metals (1883); Keary, The Dawn of
History. The writings of E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture
(2 vols.), Anthropology, Early History of Mankind; his
Art. Anthropology, Encycl. Britt.; Lubbock's Prehistoric
Times, and his Origin of Civilization; Argyll, The
Unity of Nature (1884); J. Geikie, Prehistoric Europe
(1881); Lyell, The Antiquity of Man; W. E. Hearn, The
Aryan Household; L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.—Science does not furnish us with the means of fixing the date of the first human inhabitants of the earth. But its various departments of investigation concur in pronouncing the interval between the creation of man and the present to be far longer than the traditional opinion has assumed. For the growth of language and its manifold ramifications; for the development of the different races of mankind, physically considered; for the geological changes since the beginning of the Stone Age in the regions where its relics are uncovered; for the rise of the most ancient civilization in Egypt as well as in Babylon and China,—it is thought that periods of very long duration are indispensable.
As to the date of the Neolithic man, or of the last section of the Stone Age, Professor J. Geikie writes: "Any term of years I might suggest would be a mere guess; but I have written to little purpose, however, if the phenomena described in the preceding chapters have failed to leave the impression upon the reader, that the advent of Neolithic man in Europe must date back far beyond fifty or seventy centuries." (Prehistoric Europe, p. 558.)
The chronology gathered from Genesis has been supposed to place the date of man's creation at a point far less remote. Usher's calculation, attached to the authorized English Version of the Bible, sets this date at 4004 B.C. The discussion of these questions of Scriptural chronology belongs to theology and biblical criticism. It may be observed here, however, that of the three forms in which Genesis is handed down to us,—the Hebrew text, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, or ancient Greek translation,—no two agree in the numbers on which the estimate is founded. Hence Hales and Jackson, following the larger numbers in the genealogies of the Septuagint, place the date of the creation at a point about fourteen hundred years prior to that fixed upon by Usher.
The periods of history are not divided from one another by merely chronological limits, according to intervals of time of a definite duration. Such a classification may be of use to the memory, but it is arbitrary in its character. The landmarks of history are properly placed at the turning-points where new eras take their start, whether the intervals between them are longer or shorter.
Of these natural divisions, the most general and the most marked is that between ancient and modern history. Ancient history not only precedes modern in time: it is distinguished from the latter as relating to a by-gone state of things. Modern history, on the contrary, deals with an order of things now existing. Between the two there is this line of demarkation.
History (with the exception of China and India, which require distinct consideration, as standing apart) begins with Egypt, and flows down in a continuous stream, until, in the fourth century A.D., the Roman Empire, into which the ancient civilized peoples were incorporated, was broken up. Then the new nations, especially the tribes of the Germanic race, took power into their hands; Christianity was established among them; out of the chaos of elements there emerged the European nations, with their offshoots,—the peoples at present on the stage of action. Ancient history had its center in the Mediterranean. It embraced the peoples who dwelt on the shores of that sea, in the three continents, and the nations that were brought into relations with them. The Roman Empire, the final outcome of ancient history, was "the monarchy of the Mediterranean." With the breaking-up of the Empire, new races, new centers of power, a universal religion in the room of national religions, and a new type of culture and civilization, were introduced. Invaluable legacies were handed over from the past, surviving the wreck of ancient civilization. There is, however, a unity in history: the transition from the ancient to the modern era was gradual.
Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has occurred no revolution to be compared with the circumstances and results of that event. An old world passed away, and a new world began to be. Yet the student, as he travels hitherward, arrives at another epoch of extraordinary change,—a period of ferment, when modern society in Europe takes on a form widely different from the character that had belonged to it previously. The long interval between ancient history and modern (in this more restricted sense of thes term) is styled the Middle Ages. Its termination may be found in the fifteenth century, and a convenient date to mark the boundary-line is the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453).
History thus divides itself into three parts:—
Works on General History.—Ranke, Universal History; Ploetz, Epitome of Ancient, Mediæval, and Modern History (Boston, 1884); Weber, Weitgeschichte (2 vols.); Assmann, Handbuch d. allgemeinen Geschichte (5 vols., 1853-1862); by the same, Abriss d. allgem. Gesch. (in 3 parts); Oncken, Allgem. Geschichte in Einzeidarstellungen (a series of full monographs of high merit). Copious works on Universal History, in German, by Weber, Schlosser, Becker, Leo. Laurent, Études sur l'Histoire de l'Humanitè (this is an extended series of historical dissertations),—The Orient and Greece (2 vols.); Rome (1 vol.); Christianity (1 vol.), etc. Prévost-Paradol, Essai sur l'Histoire Universelle (2 vols.: a suggestive critical survey of the course of history, with the omission of details). S. Willard, Synopsis of History.
DIVISIONS OF ANCIENT HISTORY.—Ancient history separates itself into two main divisions. In the first the Oriental nations form the subject; in the second, which follows in the order of time, the European peoples, especially Greece and Rome, have the central place. The first division terminates, and the second begins, with the rise of Grecian power and the great conflict of Greece with the Persian Empire, 492 B.C.
SECTIONS OF ORIENTAL HISTORY.—But Oriental history divides itself into two distinct sections. The first embraces China and India, nations apart, and disconnected from the Mediterranean and adjacent peoples. China and India have a certain bond of connection with one another through the spread in China of the Buddhistic religion. The second section includes the great empires which preceded, and paved the way for, European history; viz., Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria, and Persia. In this section, along the course of the historic stream, other nations which exercised a powerful influence, attract special attention, especially the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. All these Oriental peoples are so connected together that they stand in history as the Earliest Group of Nations. The historic narrative must be so shaped as to describe them in part singly, but, at the same time, in their mutual relations.
Ancient history, from an ethnographical point of view, would embrace two general divisions,—Eastern peoples and Western peoples. The first would comprise Egyptians (Hamitic); Jews, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Lydians (Semitic); Hindus, Bactrians, Medes, Persians (Aryan); Parthians, Chinese, Japanese. The second would include Celts, Britons, Greeks, Romans, Teutons (Aryan). (Ploetz, Universal History, p. 1.)
From a geographical point of view, ancient history would fall into three general divisions: I. Asia, including (1) India, (2) China (with Japan), (3) Babylonia and Assyria, (4) Phoenicia, (5) Palestine, (6) Media and Persia. II. Africa, including (1) Egypt, (2) Carthage. III. Europe including (1) Greece, with its states and colonies; (2) Italy.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Europe and Asia together form one vast continent, yet have a partial boundary between them in the Ural Mountains and River, and in the deep bed of the Caspian and Black seas. Asia, which extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific, and from the Arctic Sea to the Indian Ocean, embraces an immense plateau, stretching from the Black Sea to Corea. This plateau spreads like a fan as it advances eastward. It is traversed by chains of mountains, and bordered also by lofty mountains, of which the Himalayas is the principal range. From this girdle of mountains descend slopes which lead down into the lowlands. The great plateau is broken into two by the Hindu-Kush range. The eastern division, the extensive plateau of Central Asia, is bordered on the north by the barren plains of Siberia. In the lowlands on the east and south are included the fertile plains of Central China and of Hindustan. The plateau of eastern Asia has been the natural abode of nomad tribes, Tartars and Mongols, whose invading hosts have poured through the passes of the mountains into the inviting territories below. The plateau of western Asia, stretching westward from the Indus, is not so high as that of the east. It begins with the lofty tablelands of Iran, and extends, ordinarily at a less elevation, to the extremity of the continent. On the south lie the plains of Mesopotamia. Arabia is a low plateau of vast extent, connected by the plateau and mountains of Syria with the mountain region of Asia Minor. As might be expected, civilization sprang up in the alluvial valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus and the Ganges, and on the soil watered by the great rivers of China, the Hoang-Ho and the Yang-tse-Kiang. Egypt was looked on by the Ancients as a part of Asia. Its language was distinct from the languages of the African nations. The seat of its power and thrift was the valley of the Nile. The conflicts of the nations settled in the lowlands with the mountainous peoples, eager for spoil and conquest, are a characteristic feature of Oriental History.
CHARACTER OF THE ASIATIC NATIONS.—Generalizations covering so wide a field are, of necessity, inexact. As a rule, in the oriental mind, the intuitive powers eclipse the severely rational and logical. Civilization—as, for example, in Egypt and China—attains to a certain grade, and is there petrified. Immobility belongs to the Eastern nations. Revolutions bring a change of masters, but leave character and customs unchanged. The sense of individuality has been less vivid, and freedom less understood or valued. Governments have taken the despotic form. Law has had its seat in the ruler's sovereign will. The ruler has been regarded as clothed with divine authority. Before him the subject prostrates himself with groveling servility.
RELIGION IN ASIA.—Asia is the cradle of the principal religions of the world. Here monotheism appears, as in the faith of the Hebrews, and in the Mohammedan revival of it in a less pure form. Here have flourished polytheistic systems, each with its throng of divinities. In the east, pantheism, dropping out of the conception of the Deity the element of personality, has found a cherished home.
PRIESTHOODS.—Connected with the controlling influence of religion have arisen the priesthoods,—sometimes ruling as an aristocratic caste or class, sometimes dividing power with the reigning despot, to whom sacred attributes are ascribed.
LITERATURE AND ART.—The Oriental nature has been mirrored in the literature and art of the East. Its products lack the measure, the grace and symmetry, and the human interest, which characterize the creations of the European mind. In the mechanical arts, invention and discovery push on progress to a certain point, then languish and die out.
China proper comprises less than half of the present Chinese Empire. It was called the land of Sinae or Seres by the ancients, and in the middle ages bore the name of Cathay. In the north of China are the broad alluvial plains, and in the north-eastern portion of the empire, an immense delta. The rest of the country is hilly and mountainous.
The nucleus of the Chinese nation is thought to have been a band of immigrants, who are supposed by some to have started from the region south-east of the Caspian Sea, and to have crossed the head waters of the Oxus. They followed the course of the Hoang-Ho, or Yellow River, having entered the country of their adoption from the north-west; and they planted themselves in the present province of Shan-se. Although nomads, they had some knowledge of astronomy, brought from their earlier homes; and they quickly made for themselves settled abodes. The native tribes by degrees were extirpated or driven out. The new-comers cultivated grain. They raised flax, out of which they wove garments.
LEGENDARY ERA, TO THE CHOW DYNASTY (1123 B.C.).—The early annals of the Chinese, like those of other nations, are made up of myth and fable. The annalists placed the date of the creation at a point more than two millions of years prior to Confucius. The intervening period they sought to fill up with lines of dynasties. Preceding the Chow dynasty, the chroniclers give ten epochs. Prior to the eighth of these, there are no traces of authentic history. To Yew-Chaou She (the Nest-having) is given the credit of teaching the people to make huts of the boughs of trees. Fire was discovered by Suy-jin-She (the Fire-producer), his successor. Another ruler (Fuh-he), whose date is fixed at 2852 B.C., discovered iron. He also divided the people into classes. His successor invented the plow. These tales, perhaps, retain vague reminiscences of the methods in which useful inventions originated, or of the order in which they appeared.
With Yaou (2356 B.C.) we reach the period where the narratives which were compiled many centuries later by Confucius, begin their story. In the mass of fable, there is a larger infusion of historical fact, which, however, it is well-nigh hopeless to separate from the fiction that is mingled with it. In that golden age, few laws were required. We are told that the house-door could safely be left open. Yaou extended the empire: he established fairs and marts over the land. During the reign of Shun, who followed him, a tremendous inundation is said to have occurred; and Yu, called "the Great," was energetic in draining off the waters. He ascended the throne in 2205 B.C. His degenerate successors provoked a revolt and the introduction of a new dynasty, called the Shang dynasty, whose first Emperor, Tang (1760 B.C.), had a wise and beneficent reign. Tyranny and disaster followed under the later kings of this house; until finally Woo-Wang, the first sovereign of the Chow dynasty, acceded to the throne (1123 B.C.).
THE CHOW DYNASTY (1123-255 B.C.).—The traditions now become decidedly more trustworthy, although still largely mixed with fable. Woo-Wang was brave and upright. Under him a momentous change in government took place. By him the kingdom was divided into seventy-two feudal states. Internal divisions and struggles resulted from this new political system. The Tartars availed themselves of the weakened condition of the nation, to make predatory incursions. In this period of disorder and danger, Confucius, the great teacher of China, was born (551 B.C.). His father was a district magistrate, and died when the son was only three years old. He was trained and taught by his mother. When she died, he gave up all employments to mourn for her, during three years. His only occupation during this period was study. A grave and learned youth, he at length resolved to become an instructor of his countrymen in the ancient writings, to which he was devoted. He was regular in all his ways, and never ate or drank to excess. He gathered about him scholars; his fame increased; and, in 500 B.C., he was made magistrate of Chung-tu by the sovereign, Duke Ting, an office which he justly and discreetly administered for three years. Sometimes persecuted, he compared himself to a dog driven from his home. "I have the fidelity of that animal, and I am treated like it. But what matters the ingratitude of men? They can not hinder me from doing all the good that has been appointed me. If my precepts are disregarded, I have the consolation of knowing in my own breast that I have faithfully performed my duty." Both by his literary works and by the lessons taught to his disciples, he laid the foundation of a most powerful and lasting influence over his countrymen. He died in 478 B.C., at the age of seventy-three. Laou-tsze, another famous thinker, was a few years older than Confucius. "Three precious things," he said, "I prize, and hold fast,—humility, compassion, and economy." Mencius, a celebrated teacher and reformer, who followed in the path of Confucius, after a long life died in 289 B.C. One of his doctrines was, that the nature of man is good, and that evil is owing to education and circumstances. One of his maxims was, that the people can be led aright, but can not be taught the reasons for the guidance to which they are subjected.
DYNASTY OF TSIN (255-206 B.C.).—Reverting to the course of Chinese history, the next grand epoch is the enthronement of the Tsin dynasty, in the person of the ruler of one of the provinces, which, in the intestine strife among the feudal princes, gained the victory. This was in 255 B.C. In this line belongs the famous Emperor Che Hwang-te, who, in 246 B.C., at the age of thirteen years, succeeded to the crown. His palace in his capital, the modern Se-gan Foo, the edifices which he built elsewhere, the roads and canals constructed by him, excited wonder. He routed and drove out the Tartar invaders, and put down the rebellion of the feudal princes. He enlarged the kingdom nearly to the limits of modern China proper. For the protection of the northern frontier he began the "Great Wall," which he did not live to finish. It was finished 204 B.C., ten years after it was begun. When finished, it was not less than fifteen hundred miles in length. It would reach "from Philadelphia to Topeka, or from Portugal to Naples." The innovations and maxims of government of Che Hwang-te were offensive to the scholars and the conservative class, who pointed the people to the heroes of the feudal days and to the glories of the past. For this reason, the monarch commanded that all books having reference to the history of the empire should be destroyed. He would efface the recollection of the old times. He would not allow his system to be undermined by tradition. The decree was obeyed, although hidden copies of many of the ancient writings were undoubtedly preserved. Numerous scholars were buried alive. His death, in 210 B.C., was followed by disturbances, growing out of the disaffection of the higher classes. In the civil war that ensued, his dynasty was subverted. The throne was next held by
THE HAN RULERS (206 B.C.-22l A.D.).—Their sway, which lasted for four hundred years, covers a brilliant period in the Chinese annals. During the reign of Ming-te, 65 A.D., a deputation was sent to India, to obtain the sacred writings and authorized teachers of the Buddhistic religion, which had begun to spread among the Chinese. The power of the feudal lords was reduced. Northern Corea was conquered, and the bounds of the empire extended on the west as far as Russian Turkestan, In this period, there was a marked revival of learning and authorship. Then lived a famous public officer, Yang Chên, who, when asked to take a bribe, and assured that no one would know it, answered, "How so? Heaven would know, Earth would know, you would know, and I should know." Under this dynasty, a custom of burying slaves with the dead was abolished.
BEGINNING IN 221 A.D., there followed the "era of the three kingdoms." It was an age of martial prowess, civil war, and bloodshed. This long period of division was interrupted in 265 A.D. by a re-union of the greater part of the empire for a brief period. But discord soon sprang up; and it was not until 590 A.D. that unity and order were restored by Yang-Kian, who founded the dynasty, named from his local dominion, Suy.
RELIGION IN CHINA.—The ancient religion of China was polytheistic. The supreme divinity was called Tien or Shang-ti. Tien signifies Heaven. Was Heaven, or Shang-ti—or the Lord—the visible heaven, the expanse above, clothed with the attribute of personality? This has been, and still is, the prevailing opinion of missionaries and scholars. Dr. Legge, however, holds that Tien is the lord of the heavens, a power above the visible firmament; and thus finds monotheism as the basis of the Chinese religious creed.
The prevailing religions of China are three,—Buddhism (which in its original form was brought in from India in the first century of the Christian era), Confucianism, and Taouism. It may be observed, that, in all these systems, there is but a vague sense of personality as inhering in the heavenly powers, in comparison with the creeds in vogue among heathen nations generally. Another fact to be noted is, that, in Chinese worship, the veneration for ancestors, a feeling inbred in the Chinese mind, is a very prominent and pervading element.
Confucius did not profess to reveal things supernatural. His teaching is made up of moral and political maxims. He builds on the past, and always inculcates reverence for the fathers and for what has been. There is much wise counsel to parents and to rulers. His morality reaches its acme in the Golden Rule, which he gives, however, only in its negative relation: "Do not unto others what you would not that others should do unto you." Laou-tsze is a more speculative and mystical thinker. In his moral aphorisms, he approaches the theory of the ancient Stoics. TEH—i.e., virtue—is lauded. Teh proceeds from TAO. To explain what the Chinese sage means by Tao,—a word that signifies the "way,"—is a puzzle for commentators and inquirers. From Tao all things originate: they conform to Tao, and to Tao they return. There are noble maxims in Laou-tsze,—precepts enjoining compassion, and condemning the requital of evil with evil. Taouism is a type of religion which traces itself to the teaching of Laou-tsze. That teaching became mixed with wild speculations. Then certain Buddhistic rites and tenets were added to it. The result, finally, was a compound of knavery and superstition. Taouism is at once mystical and rationalistic in its tone.
LITERATURE IN CHINA.—The Chinese language was crystallized, in the written form, in the monosyllabic stage of its development. Beginning in hieroglyphs, literal pictures of objects, and having no alphabet, it has so multiplied its characters and combinations of characters as to put great hindrances in the way of the acquisition of it. The utter absence of inflection may have crippled the development of poetry and of the drama, for which the Chinese have a natural taste. In these departments, Chinese productions do not rise above mediocrity. For this, however, the lack of imagination and of creative power is largely accountable. It is in the province of pure prose—as in historical narrations, topographical writings, such as geographies, and in the making of encyclopedias—that the Chinese have excelled. But the yoke of tradition has everywhere weighed heavily. In one sense, the Chinese have been a literary people. The system of competitive examinations for public offices has diffused through the nation a certain degree of book-learning; yet the masses have been kept in a state of ignorance. At the foundation of all learning are the "nine classics," which consist of five works, edited or written by Confucius, of which the "Shoo King," or Book of History, stands at the head, together with the four books written by his disciples and the disciples of Mencius. Great as have been the services of Confucius, his own slavish reverence for the past, so stamped upon his writings, has had the effect to cramp the development of the Chinese mind, and to fasten upon it the fetters of tradition.
GOVERNMENT AND CIVILIZATION.—The government of China is "a patriarchal despotism." As father of his people, the king has absolute authority. The power of life and death is in his hand. Yet the right of revolution was taught by Confucius and Mencius, and the Chinese have not been slow to exercise it. The powers of the emperor are limited by ceremonial regulations, and by a body of precedents which are held sacred. He administers rule with the help of a privy council. Officers of every rank in the employ of the government constitute the aristocratic class of Mandarins, who are divided into different ranks.
INVENTION.—Printing by wooden blocks was known in China as early as the sixth century A.D. Printing did not come into general use until the thirteenth century. The use of movable types, although devised, it is said, many centuries earlier, did not come into vogue until the seventeenth century. Gunpowder was used as early as 250 A.D., in the making of fire-crackers; but it was certainly as late as the middle of the twelfth century that it was first employed in war. The Chinese were early acquainted with the polarity of the loadstone, and used the compass in journeys by land long before that instrument was known in Europe. In various branches of manufactures,—as silk, porcelain, carved work in ivory, wood, and horn,—the Chinese, at least until a recent period, have been pre-eminent. In the mechanical arts their progress has been slow. Their crude implements of husbandry are in contrast with their exhibitions of skill in other directions. Although imitation long ago supplanted the activity of inventive talent, to China belongs the distinction of being a civilized land before the Christian nations of Europe had emerged into being.
LITERATURE.—The Middle Kingdom, by S. WELLS WILLIAMS (2 vols.); Encycl. Brit., Art. China by Professor Douglas; Arts. Confucius and Mencius by Dr. Legge; Legge, The Religions of China; Richthofen, China(3 vols.); Giles, Historic China, and Other Sketches (1882); Legge, The Chinese Classics; BOULGER, History of China (1881-84); Thornton, History of China.
JAPAN.—The authentic history of Japan belongs mainly in the modern period, since the tenth century A.D. The most ancient religion of Japan, designated by a term which means "the way of the gods," included a variety of objects of worship,—gods, deified men, the mikados, or chief rulers, regarded as "the sons of heaven," animals, plants, etc. Unquestioning obedience to the mikado was the primary religious duty. It was a state-religion. Buddhism, brought into the country in 552 A.D., spread, and became prevalent.
The Japanese are a mixed race. Kiôto and the adjacent provinces are said to have been occupied by the conquerors. Prior to 660 B.C. we have no trustworthy history of the island. This is the date assigned by the Japanese to their hero, Jimmu Tenno, the first mikado, the founder of an unbroken line. For several centuries, however, the history is open to question. The tenth mikado, Sujin, is noted as a reformer, and promoter of civilization. An uncrowned princess, Jingu-Kogo (201-269 A.D.), is famous for her military prowess. She suppressed a rebellion, and subdued Corea. Ojin, a celebrated warrior, is still worshiped as a god of war. The introduction of Chinese literature and civilization at this period, makes a turning-point in Japanese history.
LITERATURE.—J. J. REIN, Japan: Travels and Researches, vol. I. (1881); E. J. Reed, Japan (2 vols., 1880); Siebold, Nippon (5 vols. 410, and plates); Kampfer, History of Japan (2 vols. fol., 1728); Encycl. Brit., Art. Japan.
India is the central one of the three great peninsulas of Southern Asia. On the north is the mountainous region of the Himalayas, below which are the vast and fertile river plains, watered by the Indus, the Ganges, and other streams. On the south, separated from the Ganges by the Vindhyá range, is the hilly and mountainous tract called the Deccan.
THE ARYAN INVADERS.—The history of India opens with glimpses of a struggle on the borders of the great rivers,—first of the Indus and then of the Ganges,—between an invading race, the Sanskrit-speaking Aryans from the north-west, and the dusky aborigines. These rude native tribes have left few relics but their tombs. Before they tenanted the soil, there dwelt upon it still earlier inhabitants, whose implements were of stone or bronze. The incoming people referred to above were of that Indo-European stock to which we belong. From their home, perhaps in central Asia, they moved in various directions. A part built up the Persian kingdom; another portion migrated farther, and were the progenitors of the Greek nation; and a third founded Rome. The Indian Aryans migrated southward from the headwaters of the Oxus at some time prior, doubtless, to 2000 B.C. Our knowledge of them is derived from their ancient sacred books, the Vedas; of these the oldest, the Rig-Veda, contains ten hundred and seventeen lyrics, chiefly addressed to the gods. Its contents were composed while the Aryans dwelt upon the Indus, and while they were on their way to the neighborhood of the Ganges. The Rig-Veda, therefore, exhibits this people in their earliest stage of religious and social development. They were herdsmen, but with a martial spirit, which enabled them by degrees to drive out the native tribes, and compel them to take refuge in the mountains on the north, or on the great southern plateau. Among them women were held in respect, and marriage was sacred. There are beautiful hymns written by ladies and queens. No such cruel custom as the burning of widows existed: it was of far later origin. They were acquainted with the metals. Among them were blacksmiths, coppersmiths, goldsmiths, carpenters, and other artisans. They fought from chariots, but had not come to employ elephants in war. They were settled in villages and in towns. Mention is made of ships, or river-boats, as in use among them. They ate beef, and drank a sort of fermented beer made from the soma plant.
THE VEDIC RELIGION.—The early religion of the Indian Aryans was quite different from the system that grew up later among them. We do not find in it the dreamy pantheism that appears afterwards. It is cheerful in its tone, quite in contrast with the gloomy asceticism which is stamped on it in after times. The head of each family is priest in his own household. It is only the great tribal sacrifice which is offered by priests set apart for the service. The worship is polytheistic, but not without tendencies to monotheism. The principal divinities are the powers of nature. The deities (deva) were the heavenly or the shining ones. "It was the beautiful phenomenon of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Aryan mind." The chief gods were the Father-heaven; Indra, the god of thunder and of rain, from whom the refreshing showers descended; Varuna, the encompassing sky; and Agni, the god of fire. Among these Indra, from his beneficence, more and more attracted worship. Soma, too, was worshiped; soma being originally the intoxicating juice of a plant. Brihaspati, the lord of prayer, personifying the omnipresent power of prayer, was adored. Thirty-three gods in all were invoked. The bodies of the dead were consumed on the funeral-pile. The soul survived the body, but the later doctrine of transmigration was unknown. All the attributes of sovereign power and majesty were collected in Varuna. No one can fathom him, but he sees and knows all. He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. Worship is made up of oblations and prayers. It must be sincere. The gods will not tolerate deceit. They require faith. Of the last things and the last times the Rig-Veda hardly speaks. The Vedic hymns have much to say of the origin of things, but little, except in the last book, of the final issues.
There are four Vedas,—the Rig-Veda, which has the body of hymns; the Yajur-Veda, in which the prescribed formulas to be used in acts of sacrifice are collected; the Sama-Veda, containing the chants; and the Atharva-Veda, a collection of hymns, in part of a later date. Besides, each Veda contains, as a second part, one or more Brâhmanas, or prose treatises on the ceremonial system. In addition, there are theological works supplementary, and of later origin,—the intermediate Aranyakas, and the Upanishads, which are of a speculative cast.
Not only is nature—mountains, rivers, trees, etc.—personified in the Vedas: the animals—as the cow, the horse, the dog, even the apparatus of worship, the war-chariot, the plow, and the furrow—are addressed in prayer. The sacrificial fire is deified in Agni, the sacrificial drink in Soma. Indra has for his body-guards the Maruts, gods of the storm and lightning. He is a warlike god, standing in his chariot, but also a beneficent giver of all good gifts. Varuna is the god of the vast luminous heavens, in their serene majesty. Indra, on the other hand, represents the atmosphere in its active and militant energy. The number of the gods is variously given. In passages, they are said to be many thousands.
RITES.—There is no hierarchy among the gods. But there is a tendency to confuse the attributes of the different divinities. Occasionally, for the time being, one eclipses all the rest, and is addressed as if all others were forgotten. There is sometimes a tendency to regard them as all one, under different names. But this tendency develops itself later. Offerings consisted of rice, cakes, soma, etc. Victims also were sacrificed, the horse especially; also the goat, the buffalo, and other animals. Sacrifice purchases the gifts and favor of the gods. It is an expression of gratitude and dependence. It has, moreover, a deep, mysterious energy of an almost magical character.
THE ARYANS ON THE GANGES.—Later, but earlier than 1000 B.C., we find that the Aryan invaders have moved onward in their career of conquest, and have planted themselves on the plains of the Ganges. A marvelous transformation has taken place in their social constitution, their religion, and in their general spirit. The caste system has sprung up, of which there are few traces in the Rig-Veda. In the first or lowest of these distinct classes are the Sudras, or despised serfs, who are the subjugated aborigines; the second, or next higher, class is composed of the tillers of the soil, who are of a lower rank than the third, the warrior caste. These, in turn, fall below the Brahmans, or priests, who, as rites of worship grew more complicated, and superstition increased, gained, though not without a struggle, a complete ascendency. This marks the beginning of the sacerdotal era. The tendency of the farmer caste was to decrease, until, in modern times, in various provinces they are hardly found. The supremacy of the Brahmans was largely owing to their eminence as the great literary caste. They arose out of the families by whom the hymns had been composed, and who managed the tribal sacrifices. They alone understood the language of the hymns and the ritual. Brahman, in the earliest Veda, signifies a worshiper.
BRAHMINICAL PANTHEISM.—The polytheism of the earlier type of religion was converted into pantheism. Brahma, the supreme being, is impersonal, the eternal source of all things, from which all finite beings—gods, nature, and men—emanate. It is by emanation,—an outflow analogous to that of a stream from its fountain, in distinction from creation, implying will and self-consciousness,—that all derived existences emerge into being. With this doctrine was connected the belief in the transmigration of souls. All animated beings, including plants as well as animals, partake of the universal life which has its origin and seat in Brahma. Alienation from Brahma, finite, individual being, is evil. To work the way back to Brahma is the great aim and hope. Absorption in Brahma, return to the primeval essence, is the supreme good. The sufferings of the present are the penalty of sins committed in a pre-existent state. If they are not purged away, the soul is condemned to be embodied again and again,—it may be, in some repulsive animal. This process of metempsychosis might be repeated far into the indefinite future. With the doctrine of Brahma and of transmigration was connected the feeling that all life is sacred. The Brahman spared even trees and plants from destruction. Pollution or defilement might be contracted in a great variety of ways. There grew out of these ideas of sin, rigorous penances, most painful forms of self-torment. It was only by practices of this sort that there was hope of avoiding the retribution so much dreaded.
THE BRAHMINICAL CODES.—The principal of these codes is the Laws of Manu. Manu was imagined to be the first human being, conceived of as a sage. This code is a digest compiled by the priests at a date unknown, but comprising in it materials of a very high antiquity. Hence, while exhibiting Brahmanism in its maturer form, it affords glimpses of society at a much earlier date. A second code was compiled not earlier than the second century A.D. These codes present Hindu law under three heads: (1) domestic and civil rights and duties, (2) the administration of justice, (3) purification and penance. In truth, the codes prescribe regulations for every department of life. The obligations of kings, of Brahmans, and of every other class, are defined in detail. One motive that is kept in view is to set forth and fortify the special privileges of the Brahminical order.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BRAHMINS.—In process of time, commentaries on the Vedas were multiplied. Discord arose in the interpretation of the sacred books. Out of this debate and confusion there emerged, in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., several philosophical systems. These aimed to give peace to the soul by emancipating it from the bondage of matter, and by imparting a sense of independence of the body and of the external world.
These old philosophies are preserved in the Upanishads, or Instructions. The main idea in these diverse systems—the Sankhya, the Vedanta, etc.—is, that the soul's notion of itself as separate from the supreme, impersonal being, is the fallen state. This duality must be overcome. Conscious of its identity with the Supreme, the soul enters into yoga, or the state of unison with the Infinite. He who is thus taken away from the illusions of sense, or the yogin, is free from the power of things perishable. Death brings a complete absorption into the source of all being. It is the bliss of personal extinction. This sort of philosophy attached great value to contemplation and self-renunciation. It led to a light esteem of ritual practices and ceremonies.
The Brahminical system has not ceased to maintain its supremacy in India since the time when it was presented to view in the law-codes. But it has not escaped alteration and attack. New movements, religious and political, have appeared to modify its character. Of these, Buddhism is by far the most memorable.
THE LIFE OF BUDDHA.—Of the life of Buddha we have only legendary information, where it is impossible to separate fact from romance. The date of his death was between 482 and 472 B.C. He was then old. He belonged to the family of Gautamas, who were said to be of the royal line of the Çâkyas, a clan having its seat about a hundred and thirty-seven miles north of Benares. The story is, that, brought up in luxury, and destined to reign, he was so struck with the miseries of mankind, that, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his parents, his young wife, and an only son, and retired to a solitary life to meditate upon the cause of human suffering. From Brahminical teachers he could obtain no solution of the problem. But after seven years of meditation and struggle, during which sore temptations to return to a life of sense and of ease were successfully resisted, he attained to truth and to peace. For forty-four years after this he is said to have promulgated his doctrine, gathering about him disciples, whom he charged with the duty of spreading it abroad.
THE BUDDHISTIC DOCTRINE.—Buddhism was not a distinct revolt against the reigning system of religion. Buddha left theology to the Brahmans. Indra, Agni, and the other divinities, and the services rendered to them, he left untouched. Being an anchorite, he was not required to concern himself with the rites and observances in which others took part. His aim was practical. His doctrine, though resting on a theoretical basis, was propounded simply as a way of salvation from the burdens that oppressed the souls of men. Nor did he undertake a warfare against caste. The blessing of deliverance from the woes of life he opened to all without distinction. This was the limit of his opposition to caste.
THE ROAD TO NIRVANA.—Buddha taught, (1) that existence is always attended with misery; (2) that all modes of misery result from passion, or desire unsatisfied; (3) that desire must be quenched; (4) that there are four steps in doing this, and thus of arriving at NIRVANA, which is the state in which self is lost and absorbed, and vanishes from being. These four ways are (1) the awakening to a perception of the nature and cause of evil, as thus defined; (2) the consequent quenching of impure and revengeful feelings; (3) the stifling of all other evil desires, also riddance from ignorance, doubt, heresy, unkindliness, and vexation; (4) the entrance into Nirvana, sooner or later, after death. The great boon which Buddha held out was escape from the horrors of transmigration. He attributed to the soul no substantial existence. It is the Karma, or another being, the successor of one who dies, the result and effect of all that he was, who re-appears in case of transmigration. Buddhism involved atheism, and the denial of personal immortality, or, where this last tenet was not explicitly denied, uncertainty and indifference respecting it. On the foundation of Buddha's teaching, there grew up a vast system of monasticism, with ascetic usages not less burdensome than the yoke of caste. The attractive feature of Buddhism was its moral precepts. These were chiefly an inculcation of chastity, patience, and compassion; the unresisting endurance of all ills; sympathy and efficient help for all men.
DEIFICATION OF BUDDHA.—By the pupils of Buddha he was glorified. He was placed among the Brahminical gods, by whom he was served. A multitude of cloisters were erected in his honor, in which his relics were believed to be preserved. On the basis of the simpler doctrine and precepts of the founder, there accumulated a mass of superstitious beliefs and observances.
THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM.—After the death of Buddha, it is said that his disciples, to the number of five hundred, assembled, and divided his teaching into three branches,—his own words, his rules of discipline, and his system of doctrine. During the next two centuries Buddhism spread over northern India. One of the most conspicuous agents in its diffusion was Asoka, the king of Behar, who was converted to the Buddhistic faith, and published its tenets throughout India. His edicts, in which they were set forth, were engraved on rocks and pillars and in caves. He organized missionary efforts among the aborigines, using only peaceful means, and combining the healing of disease, and other forms of philanthropy, with preaching. He carried the Buddhistic faith as far as Ceylon. It spread over Burmah (450 A.D.). Siam was converted (638 A.D.), and Java between the fifth and seventh centuries of our era. Through Central Asia the Buddhistic missionaries passed into China in the second century B.C., and Buddhism became an established system there as early as 65 A.D. At present, this religion numbers among its professed adherents more than a third of the human race.
THE BRAHMINICAL RE-ACTION.—In India Buddhism did not supplant the old religion. The Brahmans modified their system. They made their theology more plain to the popular apprehension. They took up Buddhistic speculations into their system. But they rendered their ceremonial practices more complex and more burdensome. Their ascetic rule grew to be more exacting and oppressive. In diffusing and making popular their system, customs, like the burning of widows, were introduced, which were not known in previous times. The divinities, Brahma, the author of all things, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer, were brought into a relation to one another, as a sort of triad. Successive incarnations of Vishnu became an article of the creed, Krishna being one of his incarnate names. For centuries Brahmanism and Buddhism existed together. Gradually Buddhism decayed, and melted into the older system; helping to modify its character, and thus to give rise to modern Hinduism. For ten centuries Buddhism, with multitudinous adherents abroad, has had no existence in the land of its birth.
THE GREEK-ROMAN PERIOD.—In 327 B.C., Alexander the Great advanced in his victorious career as far as India, entered the Punjab, which was then divided among petty kingdoms, and defeated one of the kings, Porus, who disputed the passage of the river Jhelum. The heat of the climate and the reluctance of his troops caused the Macedonian invader to turn back from his original design of penetrating to the Ganges. Near the confluence of the five rivers he built a town, Alexandria. He founded, also, other towns, established alliances, and left garrisons. On the death of Alexander (323 B.C.) and the division of his empire, Bactria and India fell to the lot of Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Syrian monarchy. About this time a new kingdom grew up in the valley of the Ganges, under the auspices of Chandra Gupti, a native. After various conflicts, Seleucus ceded the Greek settlements in the Punjab to this prince, to whom he gave his daughter in marriage. The successors of Seleucus sent Græco-Bactrian expeditions into India. Thus Greek science and Greek art exerted a perceptible influence in Hindustan. During the first six centuries of the Christian era, Scythian hordes poured down into northern India. They were stoutly resisted, but effected settlements, and made conquests. The events as well as the dates of the long struggle are obscure. The non-Aryan races of India, both on the north and on the south of the Ganges, many of whom received the Buddhistic faith, were not without a marked influence—the precise lines of which it is difficult to trace—upon the history and life of India during the period of Greek and Scythic occupation and warfare. The Dravidian people in southern India, made up of non-Aryans, number at present forty-six millions.
LITERATURE.—Mill's History of India (Wilson's edition, 9 vols.); MONIER WILLIAMS, Indian Wisdom; Max Müller's History of Sanskrit Literature; EARTH'S The Religions of India, 1882; Encycl. Brit., Arts. India, Brahmanism, Buddhism.
THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE.—When the curtain that hides the far distant past is lifted, we find in the valley of the Nile a people of a dark color, tinged with red, and a peculiar physiognomy, who had long existed there. Of their beginnings, there is no record. It is not likely that they came down the river from the south, as some have thought; more probably they were of Asiatic origin. Their language, though it certainly shows affinities with the Semitic tongues in its grammar, is utterly dissimilar in its vocabulary: its modern descendant is the Coptic, no longer a spoken dialect. The Egyptians were of the Caucasian variety, but not white like the Lybians on the west. On the east were tribes of a yellowish complexion and various lineage, belonging to the numerous people whom the Egyptians designated as Amu. On the south, in what was called Ethiopia, was a negro people; and, also beyond them and eastward, a dusky race, of totally different origin, a branch of the widely diffused Cushites.
THE NILE: DIVISIONS OF THE COUNTRY.—Egypt (styled by its ancient inhabitants, from the color of the soil deposited by the Nile, Kem or the Black Land, and by the Hebrews called Mizraim) is the creation of the great river. "Egypt," says Herodotus, "is the gift of the Nile;" and this is not only true, as the historian meant it, physically, because it is the Nile that rescued the land from the arid waste by which it is bordered; but the course of Egyptian history—the occupations, habits, and religion of the people—was largely determined by the characteristics of the river. The sources of the Nile have had in all ages the fascination of mystery, and have been a fruitful theme for conjecture. It was reserved for modern explorers to ascertain that it takes its rise in equatorial Africa, in the two great lakes, the Albert and Victoria Nyanzas. From that region, fed by few tributaries, it flows to the Mediterranean, a distance of two thousand miles, but breaks, as it nears the sea, into two main and several minor arms. These spread fruitfulness over the broad plain called, from its shape, the Delta. Above the Delta the fringe of productive land has a width of only a few miles on either side of the stream. Its fertility is due to the yearly inundation which, as the effect of the rainfall of Abyssinia, begins early in July, and terminates in November, when the river, having slowly risen in the interval to an average height of twenty-three or twenty-four feet, reaches in its gradual descent the ordinary level. This narrow belt of territory, annually enriched with a layer of fertile mud, is in striking contrast with the barren regions, parched by the sun, on either side, with the long chain of Arabian mountains that adjoin it on the east, and with the low hills of the Lybian desert on the west. By dikes, canals, and reservoirs, the beneficent river from the most ancient times has been made to irrigate the land above, where are the towns and dwellings of the people, and thus to extend and keep up its unrivaled fertility. The country of old was divided into two parts,—Upper Egypt, as it is now called, with Thebes for its principal city, extending from the first cataract, near Syene, to the Memphian district; and Lower Egypt, embracing the rest of the country on the north, including the Delta. The two divisions were marked by differences of dialect and of customs. The country was further divided into nomes, or districts, about forty in all, but varying in number at different times. They were parted from one another by boundary stones. Each had its own civil organization, a capital, and a center of worship.
EARLY CULTURE.—At a far remote day, there existed in Lower Egypt an advanced type of culture. Sepulchers, with their inscriptions and sculptures, were made of so solid material that they have remained to testify to this fact. When the pyramids were built, mechanical skill was highly developed, Egyptian art had reached a point beyond which it scarcely advanced, and the administration of government had attained substantially to the form in which it continued to exist. The use of writing, the division of the year, the beginnings of the sciences and of literature, are found in this earliest period. Egyptian culture, as far as we can determine, was not borrowed. It was a native product. The earliest period was the period of most growth. The prevailing tendency was to crystallize all arts and customs into definite, established forms, and to subject every thing to fixed rules. The desire to preserve what had been gained overmastered the impulses to progress: individuality and enterprise were blighted by an excessive spirit of conservatism. Moreover, the culture of the Egyptians never disengaged itself from its connection with every-day practical needs, or the material spirit that lay at its root. They did not, like the Greeks, soar into the atmosphere of theoretical science and speculation. They did not break loose from the fetters of tradition.
THE HIEROGLYPHICS.—We owe our knowledge of ancient Egypt chiefly to hieroglyphical writing. The hieroglyphs, except those denoting numbers, were pictures of objects. The writing is of three kinds. The first, the hieroglyphical, is composed of literal pictures, as a circle, O, for the sun, a curved line for the moon, a pointed oval for the mouth. The second sort of characters, the hieratic, and the third, the demotic, are curtailed pictures, which can thus be written more rapidly. They are seldom seen on the monuments, but are the writing generally found on the papyrus rolls or manuscripts. They are written from right to left. The hieroglyphs proper may be written either way, or in a perpendicular line. In the demotic, or people's writing, the characters are somewhat more curtailed, or abridged, than in the hieratic, or priestly, style. There were four methods of using the hieroglyphics in historical times. First, there were the primary, representational characters, the literal pictures. Secondly, the characters were used figuratively, as symbols. Thus a circle, O, meant not only the sun, but also "day"; the crescent denoted not only the moon, but also "a month;" a pen and inkstand signified "writing," etc. So one object was substituted for another analogous to it,—as the picture of a boot in a trap, which stood for "deceit." A conventional emblem, too, might represent the object. Thus, the hawk denoted the sun, two water-plants meant Upper and Lower Egypt. Thirdly, hieroglyphics were used as determinatives. That is, an object would be denoted by letters (in a way that we shall soon explain), and a picture be added to determine, or make clear, what was meant. After proper names, they designated the sex; after the names of other classes, as animals, they specified the particular genus. Fourthly, the bulk of the hieroglyphs are phonetic. They stand for sounds. The picture stood for the initial sound of the name of the object depicted. Thus the picture of an eagle, akhôm, represented "A." Unfortunately, numerous objects were employed for a like purpose, to indicate the same sound. Hence the number of characters was multiplied. The whole number of signs used in writing is not less than nine hundred or a thousand. The discovery of the Rosetta Stone—a large black slab of stone—with an identical inscription in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek, furnished to Champollion (1810) and to Young the clew to the deciphering of the Egyptian writing, and thus the key to the sense of the monumental inscriptions. The Egyptian manuscripts were made of the pith of the byblus plant, cut into strips. These were laid side by side horizontally, with another layer of strips across them; the two layers being united by paste, and subjected to a heavy pressure. The Egyptians wrote with a reed, using black and red ink.
SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY.—These are (1) the inscriptions on the monuments. These, it must be remembered, are commonly in praise of the departed, and of their achievements. (2) The list of kings in the Turin papyrus, a very important Egyptian manuscript, discovered by Champollion. (3) Manetho. An Egyptian priest, he wrote, about 250 B.C., a history. Only his lists of dynasties are preserved as given in an Armenian version of Eusebius, a writer of the fourth century, and in George Syncellus, a writer of the eighth century, who professed to embody the statements of Eusebius and of another author, Julius Africanus, probably of the second century, who had also quoted the lists of Manetho. Manetho is of great importance; but we do not know accurately what his original text was, it being so differently reported. His details frequently clash with the monuments. Moreover, the method adopted by him in making his lists is, in essential points, subject to doubt. (4) The Greek historians. Herodotus had visited Egypt (between 460 and 450 B.C.), and conferred with Egyptian priests. Diodorus, also, in the time of Julius Caesar, had visited Egypt. He is largely a copyist of Herodotus. (5) The Old Testament. Here we have many instructive references to Egypt. But, until Rehoboam, the kings of Egypt have in the Scriptures the general name of Pharaoh. Hence it is not always easy to identify them with corresponding kings on the Egyptian lists.
CHRONOLOGY.—The date of the beginning of the first dynasty of Egyptian rulers is a controverted point; there are advocates of a longer and of a shorter chronology. The data are not sufficient to settle accurately the questions in dispute. Some judicious scholars put the beginning of the first dynasty as early as 5000 B.C.; others have wished to bring it down even lower than 3000 B.C. Egyptian history, prior to the Persian conquest (525 B.C.), divides itself into three sections,—the Old Empire, having its seat at Memphis; the Middle Empire, following upon a period of strife and division, and embracing the rule of foreign invaders, the Hyksos; and the New Empire, the era of conquest, by foreign power, and of downfall.
The expedition of Shishak, king of Egypt, against Rehoboam, is ascertained, from both Egyptian and Hebrew sources, to have been not earlier than 971 B.C., and within twenty-five years of that date. The nineteenth Egyptian dynasty began about the year 1350 B.C. The Middle Empire is thought by some to have commenced as early as 2200 B.C.; by others as late as 1720 B.C. When we go backward into the Old Empire, the sources of uncertainty are multiplied. The main difficulty is to determine whether the lists of dynasties are consecutive throughout, or in part contemporary. One class of scholars place the date of the first historic king, Menes, two or three thousand years earlier than the point assigned by the other class! The date of Menes given by Böckh is 5702 B.C.; by Lenormant, 5004 B.C.; by Brugsch, 4455 B.C.; by Lepsius, 3852 B.C.; by Bunsen, 3623 or 3059 B.C.; E. Meyer makes 3180 B.C. the lowest possible date for Menes; 3233 B.C. is the date assigned by Duncker. On the contrary, R. S. Poole gives 2717 B.C.; Wilkinson, 2691 B.C.; and G. Rawlinson, between 2450 and 2250 B.C. There are no means of fully determining the controversy, as Rawlinson has shown (History of Ancient Egypt, vol. ii., p. 19). It appears to be well ascertained that Egyptian civilization was in being at least as far back as about 4000 B.C.
THE POLITICAL SYSTEM.—The bulk of the people were farmers and shepherds, indisposed to war. The land was owned in large estates by the nobles, who were possessed of multitudes of serfs and of cattle. They had in their service, also, artisans, oarsmen, and traffickers. The centers of industry were the numerous cities. Here the nobles had their mansions, and the gods their temples with retinues of priests. But the Nomes had each its particular jurisdiction. The traces of two original communities are preserved in the mythological legends and in the titles of the kings. The oldest inscriptions discover to us a systematic organization of the state. The king is supreme: under him are the rulers of the two halves of the kingdom. He creates the army, and appoints its generals. The whole strength of the kingdom is given to him for the erection of the temples which he raises to the gods, or of the stupendous pyramid which is to form his sepulcher. The nobility make up his court; from them he selects his chief officers of state,—his secretary, his treasurer, his inspector of quarries, etc. The princes and princesses are educated in connection with the children of the highest nobles. A body-guard protects the monarch: he shows himself to the people only in stately processions. All who approach him prostrate themselves at his feet. He is the descendant of the gods. The Pharaohs are even looked upon as gods incarnate. They are clothed with all power on earth. When they die, they go to the gods; and rites of worship are instituted for them. That there was a well-ordered and efficient civil administration admits of no doubt. Whether there existed a thrifty middle class or not we can not decide. The tendency was for the child to follow the vocation of the parent, but there were no rigid barriers of caste. Not until the New Empire, was there an attempt to build up such a wall even about the priesthood.
THE RELIGION.—With the Egyptians, religion was a matter of supreme and absorbing interest. There was a popular religion; and there arose early, in connection with it, an esoteric or secret doctrine relative to the gods and to the legends respecting them,—a lore that pertained especially to the priesthood. Moreover, while the religious system, from the earliest date, is polytheistic, we have proof that the educated class, sooner or later, put a monotheistic interpretation upon it, and believed in one supreme deity, of whom all the particular gods were so many forms and manifestations, or that one being under different names. Whether this more elevated faith preceded the reigning system, or was a later offspring of it, is a matter of dispute. For a long period the two co-existed, and without collision.
The great divinities of Egypt are pre-eminently gods of light. They are associated with the SUN. With the agency of that luminary, with his rising and setting, they stand in a close relation. All Egypt worships the sun under the names of Ra and Horus. Horus is the adversary of Seth (called Typhon by the Greeks), the god of darkness, and is born anew every morning to attack and conquer him. In honor of Ra, the lofty obelisks, or symbols of the sun's rays, are erected, each of which has its own name and priests. With the sun-gods are joined the goddesses of the heavens,—Nut, Hather, Isis, and others. But Osiris became the most famous sun-god. His worship was originally at Abydos and Busiris. At length his cult spread over the whole land. In the legend, he is murdered by Seth; but Horus is his avenger. Horus conquers the power of darkness. Henceforward Osiris reigns in the kingdom of the West, the home of the dead. He is the sun in the realm of the shades. He receives the dead, is their protector, and the judge whose final award is blessedness or perpetual misery. The departed, if their lives have not been wicked, become one with him. They are each of them called by his name. To Osiris, all sepulchral inscriptions are addressed. His career, with the victory of the power of darkness over him, and his glorious revival in the regions of the West, typifies human life and destiny. The principal god at Memphis is Ptah, the primal divinity, the former of heaven and earth; yet, perhaps, a god of light, since he is styled by the Greeks, Hephaestus. At Thebes, Ammon was revered as the king of the gods: he shared in the properties of the sun. Thoth is the chief moon-god, who presides over the reckoning of time. He is the god of letters and of the arts, the author of sacred books. The Nile is worshiped under the name of Hapi, being figured as a man with pendent breasts, an emblem of the fertility of the river. The gods were often connected in triads, there being in each a father, a mother, and a son. To bring to them the right offerings, and to repeat the right formulas, was a matter of momentous concern. Homage was directed to the material objects with which the activity of the god was thought to be connected, and in which he was believed to be present. All nature was full of deities. There were sacred trees, stones, utensils. Above all, animals, in their mysterious life, were identified with the divinities. Worship was offered to the crocodile, the cat, the bull, etc. In the temples these creatures were carefully tended and obsequiously served.
EMBALMING.—Believing that the soul survives death, the Egyptians linked its weal with the preservation of the body, from which they could not conceive its destiny to be wholly dissevered. Thus arose the universal practice of embalming, and of presenting, at intervals, offerings of food and drink to the departed. The tomb contains a room for sacred services to the dead. The most ancient structures are sepulchers. They were the germ of the pyramid, in which rested the sarcophagus of the king.
RELIGION AND MORALITY.—The leading gods were held to be the makers of the world and of men, the givers of good, the rulers and disposers of all things. Morality was not separated from religion. The gods punished unrighteousness and inhumanity. In the age of the pyramid-builders, family life was not wanting in purity; the wife and mother was held in respect: monogamy prevailed. Ma-t was the goddess of truth: in the myth of Osiris, it is in her hall that the dead are judged.
THE PRIESTS.—The priests are the guardians of religious rites. They are acquainted with the origin and import of them. Their knowledge is communicated only to select believers. It was a body of traditions, guarded as a mysterious treasure. But the priests, certainly until a late period, do not control the king. The civil authority is uppermost.
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.—The most important Egyptian book that has come down to us is the Book of the Dead. It relates, in a mystical strain, the adventures of the soul after death, and explains how, by reciting the names and titles of numberless gods, and by means of other theological knowledge, the soul can make its way to the hall of Osiris. It is a monument of the pedantic and punctilious formalism of the Egyptian ritual. Most of the papyri that have been preserved are of a religious character. There are songs not void of beauty. The moral writings are of a decidedly higher grade. Works of fiction are constructed with considerable skill, and are sometimes not wanting in humor. Some of the hymns are not destitute of merit. It can not be doubted that there were important mathematical writings. Astronomical observations were very early made. In medicine, we have writings which prove that considerable proficiency was attained in this department. But here, as in other branches, the spirit was empirical rather than scientific in the higher sense; and the result was to petrify knowledge in an unalterable form. At length rules of medical treatment, with specific remedies, were definitely settled, from which it was a crime against the state to deviate.
THE OLD EMPIRE (to about 2100 B.C.).—Senoferu, who belongs to the third dynasty, is the first king who has left behind him a monumental inscription. A rock-tablet in the peninsula of Sinai gives him the title of conqueror. By some, the pyramid of Meydoun, built in three distinct stages to a height of 125 feet, is ascribed to him, and is believed to be his sepulcher. At Saccarah is a pyramid of like form, 200 feet in height. Khufu, the Cheops of Herodotus, was the builder of the "Great Pyramid" of Ghizeh, the largest and loftiest building on earth. Its original perpendicular height was not less than 480 feet, the length of its side 764 feet, and the area covered by it more than thirteen acres. Near it are the small pyramids, which were the sepulchers of his wives and other relatives. The statues of Khafra remain, and the wooden mummy-case of Menkaura, with the myth of Osiris recorded on it. These were the builders of the two other most celebrated pyramids, the second and the third. With the long reign of Unas closes the first era in Egyptian history. His unfinished pyramid, built of huge blocks of limestone, indicates that he died too soon to complete it. From this date, back to the epoch of Senoferu, are included nearly three centuries. In this period of prevalent peace, art had the opportunity to develop. The spirit of progress in this department had not yet been cramped by the "hieratic canon," the fixed rules set for artistic labor. There is evidence of considerable knowledge in anatomy and medicine. The myth of Osiris expanded, and his worship spread.
With the sixth dynasty a new epoch begins. The most powerful monarch in this series is Pepi. He levied armies, conquered the negroes of Nubia, and waged war against the nomads of the eastern desert. The interval from the sixth to the tenth dynasty was marked by usurpations and insurrections. The district governors sought to make themselves independent. Monarchs rose and fell. Syrian invaders appear to have seized the occasion to attack the country. Heliopolis, with Tum for its sun-god, is the center of the new symbolical lore of the priesthood. Power is transferred to Thebes, and Ammon becomes the embodiment of the monotheistic conception, the supreme deity.
The Theban ruling-house gradually extended its supremacy over the land. The kings of the twelfth dynasty have left their inscriptions everywhere, and of several of them gigantic portrait-statues remain. Amenemhat I. and his successors are prosperous sovereigns. They carry on a lively intercourse of trade with the small states of Syria, reaching possibly to Babylon. Under the twelfth dynasty, the valley of the upper Nile was conquered. Usurtasen III., in after times, was revered as the subduer of the Nubian land. By monarchs of this epoch, vast structures, like the temple of Ammon at Thebes and the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, were erected. Amenemhat III. built the immense artificial reservoir, Lake Moeris, to receive and dispense the waters of the Nile. Under the twelfth dynasty is the blossoming period of literature. The carving of hieroglyphics and the execution of the details of art reach their perfection. It is the culminating point of Egyptian culture.
THE MIDDLE EMPIRE (FROM ABOUT 2100 TO 1600 B.C.).—The season of prosperity under the twelfth dynasty was followed by anarchy and the downfall of the Theban rule. According to Manetho, it was under a king named Timaos that a horde of invaders—the Hyksos, or "shepherds"—came in from the north, devastated the country, and made themselves its rulers. They were probably of Semitic descent, but nothing more is known as to their origin. In connection with them, Semitic, and in particular Canaanite, elements penetrated into Egypt, and left their traces in its language. The residence of their kings was Tanis, on the eastern Delta, a splendid city, which they still more adorned. They conquered Memphis, but their power was not permanently established in Lower Egypt. The duration of their control was a number of centuries,—how many can only be conjectured. It is believed by some scholars that either Apepi, or Nub, kings of the Hyksos line, was the sovereign who made Joseph his prime minister, and invited his family to settle in the land of Goshen. The elevation of a foreigner and a Semite to an exalted office is thought to be less improbable in connection with a Semitic dynasty.
The New Empire (from 1600 to 525 B.C.).—The expulsion of the Hyksos was effected by Aahmes I., first king of the eighteenth dynasty. It was accomplished, however, not all at once, but gradually. From this event Egypt enters on a new stage in its career. It becomes a military, an aggressive, and a conquering state. Notwithstanding the enormous sacrifice of life that must have been involved in the erection of pyramids and in other public works, the Egyptians had not been a cruel people: compared with most Semitic peoples, they had been disposed to peace. But now a martial spirit is evoked. A military class arises. Wars for plunder and conquest ensue. The use of horses in battle is a new and significant fact. The character of the people changes for the worse. The priestly class become more compact and domineering. Temples are the principal edifices, in the room of massive sepulchers.
Under Thothmes I. and his successors, especially Thothmes III., wars were successfully waged against the Syrians, and against the Ethiopians on the south. The palaces and temples of Thebes, including the gigantic structures at Karnak and Luxor, are witnesses to the grandeur of these monarchs. The Egyptian arms were carried through Syria, and as far even as Nineveh. During the reigns of Amenophis III. and Amenophis IV., that is, in the latter half of the fifteenth century B.C., the Amarna Letters (see p. 44) were written. Under the Ramessides, the conquests of Egypt reached their farthest limit.
RAMSES II.—Ramses II., or Ramses the Great (1340-1273 B.C.),—who was called by the Greeks Sesostris, a name with which they linked many fabulous narratives,—is the most brilliant personage in Egyptian history. He is the first of the renowned conquerors, the forerunner of the Alexanders and Napoleons. His monuments are scattered over all Egypt. In his childhood he was associated on the throne with his father, himself a magnificent monarch, Seti I. In the seventh year of the sole reign of the son he had to encounter a formidable confederacy under the lead of the Syrian Hittites—the "Khita"—in the north-east, a powerful nation. How he saved himself by his personal valor, on the field of Kadesh, is celebrated in the Egyptian Iliad, the heroic poem of Pentaur. A subsequent treaty with this people is one of the most precious memorials of his reign.
THE HITTITES.—Recent explorations have shown that the Hittites of Scripture were families, or smaller communities, in Palestine, of a people whose proper seat was in northern Syria, especially the country lying along the Orontes; their territory being bounded on the east by the Euphrates, and extending westward into the Taurus Mountains. In one place they are spoken of as distant (Judg. i. 26). The "Khita" of the Egyptians, called "Khatti" by the Assyrians, were a civilized and powerful nation, whose sway was so extended that their outposts were at times on the western coast of Asia Minor. They were a non-Semitic people. The great victory of Ramses (1320 B.C.) was with difficulty won. The Hittites were also rivals of the Assyrians from an early period. At length Sargon captured their capital, Carchemish (717 B.C.), and broke down their power. Numerous Hittite inscriptions have been discovered, written in a hieroglyphic script which has not yet (1903) been deciphered.
Subsequently we find Ramses in Galilee, as it was called later: we find him storming the city of Askalon in Philistia, and in various military expeditions, in which he brought home with him multitudes of captives. The mighty temples which he built at Abydos, Thebes, and Memphis, and the gorgeous palace, "the House of Ramses," south of Karnak, were in keeping with other displays of his energy and magnificence.
THE BONDAGE OF THE ISRAELITES.—Ramses II. has been generally believed to be "the Pharaoh of the oppression," under whom the Hebrews suffered; and his son Menephthah, to be the Pharaoh under whom the exodus took place. Recent discoveries have rendered these conclusions very doubtful, however. It is also quite uncertain how long the Egyptian bondage lasted. According to the Hebrew Old Testament, its duration was 430 years; according to the Septuagint, or Greek version, half that period (as implied in Gal. iii. 17).
To THE PERSIAN CONQUEST.—From about 1500 to 1300 B.C., Egypt was the foremost nation in culture, arts, and military prowess. Under the later kings bearing the name of Ramses, the empire began to decay. The Ethiopians in the south revolted, and set up an independent kingdom, Meroe, of which Napata was the capital. Shishak (961-940 B.C.) aspired to restore the Egyptian rule in the East. He marched into Judæa, and captured and plundered Jerusalem. He made Rehoboam, king of Judah, a tributary, and strengthened Jeroboam, the ally of Egypt. He even led his forces across the valley of the Jordan. At length (730 B.C.) the Ethiopians gained the upper hand in Egypt. Their three kings form the twenty-fifth dynasty. As the power of Egypt was on the wane, the power of Assyria was more and more in the ascendant. Shabak joined hands with Hoshea, king of Israel, but was defeated by the Assyrians, under Sargon II., in a pitched battle at Raphia, in which the superiority of the Asiatic kingdom was evinced. Later (701 B.C.) Sennacherib defeated an Egyptian army, sent for the relief of Ekron, and made Hezekiah a tributary. Tirhakah, the ally of Hezekiah, continued the struggle. His army was saved from overthrow by the disaster which happened to Sennacherib's host in the neighboring camp on the eve of battle. Twenty years later, he was vanquished by an invading army under the son and successor of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon. The rule of the Ethiopian dynasty was subverted. The Assyrians intrusted the government to twenty governors, of whom the most were natives. Of these governors, one, then king of Sais, Psammeticus I. (663-616 B.C.), in alliance with Gyges, king of Lydia, and with the aid of Carians, Phoenicians, and Lycians, cast off the Assyrian yoke, and became sole ruler of Egypt. This epoch is marked by the introduction of numerous foreigners into the country, and by the exertion of a powerful and lasting Greek influence. Neku II.—the Necho of Scripture—(610-594 B.C.), the son of Psammeticus I., defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at Megiddo (608 B.C.); and Josiah fell in the battle. But, advancing to Carchemish by the Euphrates, Neku, in turn, was vanquished by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, which had now become the formidable power. The defeat of Neku ended Egyptian rule in the East. Apries (588 B.C.), the Hophra of Scripture, was dethroned by a revolt of his own soldiers, in a war with the Greeks of Cyrene, and was succeeded by Aahmes, or Amasis (570-526), under whose auspices foreigners, and especially Greeks, acquired an augmented influence. Egypt had escaped from permanent subjection to Assyria or Babylon; but a new empire, the Persian Empire of Cyrus, was advancing on the path to universal dominion. Cyrus was too busy with other undertakings to attack Egypt; but Cambyses, his successor, led an army into that country; and, having defeated Psammeticus III., at the battle of Pelusium, he made it a Persian province (525 B.C.).
LITERATURE.—See the list on p. 16. 1. Works on Oriental History as a whole: DUNCKER'S History of Antiquity. It includes, also, Greece. Lenormant and Chevalier, Manual of the Ancient History of the East (2 vols.); G. Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies (3 vols.), The Sixth Great Monarchy (Parthia), The Seventh Great Monarchy (the Sassanidæ), The Origin of Nations (1 vol.), Manual of Ancient History (1 vol.), Egypt and Babylon (1 vol.). LENORMANT, The Beginnings of History (1 vol.); P. Smith, The Ancient History of the East (1 vol.), History of the World (Ancient History, 3 vols.); Maspero, History of the Ancient Orient (3 vols.); Doublier, Gesch. des Alterthums (from the cultural point of view, 1 vol.); E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alterthums.
2. Works on the History of Egypt. BRUGSCH-BEY, History of Egypt under the Pharaohs (2 vols.); G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt (2 vols.);, Aperçu de l'Histoire d'Egypte (1864), and numerous other writings; WILKINSON, Manners and Customs of Egypt (3 vols.); ERMAN, Egypt; Petrie, History of Egypt; Erman, Egyptian Life (1894); Birch, Records of the Past (translations of Egyptian and Assyrian Monuments, 11 vols.), Egypt from the Earliest Times; Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Ancient Egypt (1883); FERGUSSON'S History of Architecture; the great illustrative works of the French savans under Napoleon I.; the great illustrated works of Rossellini, and the works of Lepsius; the novels of Ebers, The Sisters; Uarda; The Egyptian Princess.
THE GEOGRAPHY.—Assyria and Babylonia were geographically connected. They were inhabited by the same race, and, for the greater part of their history, were under one government. Babylonia comprised the lower basin of the Euphrates and Tigris, while Assyria included the hilly region along the upper and middle Tigris; the boundary being where the two rivers, in their long progress from their sources in the mountains of Armenia, at length approach one another at a place about three hundred and fifty miles from their outlet in the Persian Gulf. Both streams, in particular the Euphrates, annually flooded the adjacent territory, and by canals and dams were made to add to its productiveness. The shores of the Euphrates, after its descent from the plateau to the plains, were fertile beyond measure. Here the date-palm, whose juice as well as fruit were so highly prized, flourished. Even now wheat grows wild near the river's mouth.
THE EARLY INHABITANTS.—The oldest inhabitants of this region of whom we have any knowledge were the Sumerians, whose territory included both Sumer ("Shinar"), or southern Babylonia, and Akkad, or northern Babylonia. On the east were the Elamites, with Susa for their capital; to the north of these were the warlike Kassites. The Sumerians, who preceded the Semites in the occupancy of Babylonia, were of an unknown stock. They were the founders of Babylonian culture. Even by them the soil was skillfully cultivated with the help of dikes and canals. They were the inventors of the cuneiform writing. The cuneiform characters were originally pictures; but these were resolved into wedge-shaped characters of uniform appearance, the significance of which was determined by their position and local relation to one another. It is not known how long the Sumerian period lasted, nor even when it closed; the chronology of the earliest Semitic period is also very uncertain. The south-Babylonian kings Urukagina, of Shirpurla (Lagash), and Enshagkushana, of a district which included Nippur, are dated by most Assyriologists as early as 4000 B.C., or even earlier. Whether they were Sumerians, or Semites, is not certain; their inscriptions do not settle the question. It was probably not far from this time, however, that the one race supplanted the other. A Semitic people—coming either directly from the ancestral home, Arabia, or from a previous settlement in Mesopotamia, north-west of Babylonia—invaded the land and conquered the Sumerians. They planted themselves first in northern Babylonia, and then gradually extended their power over the districts on the south. The conquerors adopted the civilization of the conquered. The earliest Semitic kings all used the Sumerian dialect in their inscriptions. It was only by slow degrees that the native language was superseded by that of the new rulers. Later,—before the time of Hammurabi; see below,—these Semites carried their settlements northward, and became the founders of Assyria.
SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE.—Berosus, a Babylonian priest, wrote a history of his country as early as 250 B.C. He was a trustworthy writer, as far as his means of knowledge went; but it is only fragments of his work that we possess, and these in inaccurate quotations, partly at second hand. Greek writers, as Ctesias, drew from Persian sources; and their narratives up to the later times of the Persian rule can not be relied on. The great source of knowledge is the rapidly increasing store of records in the cuneiform character. A vast number of inscriptions on stone and clay, representing nearly every department of literature, have been unearthed, and the material which they afford has already given us an extensive knowledge of Babylonian and Assyrian history. The site of Nineveh has been extensively excavated, and we have, therefore, especially full information as to the history and literature of Assyria. Babylonian monuments in considerable number have more recently come to light. Aside from Nineveh and Babylon, especially important excavations have been undertaken at Nifpur, Lagash (Telloh)—thus far the chief source of Sumerian material—and Susa.
EARLY HISTORY.—The history of ancient Babylonia is still very obscure, and the chronology only tentative. We see at first a number of independent cities, each ruled by a petty king, who was also a priest. Then appear groups of cities, one of which exercised sway over a more or less extended district. The center of power was now in Erech, now in Ur, or Babylon, or some other city, whose king ruled supreme over numerous vassal kings. Among the first important names known to us are those of Sargon I. (3800 B.C.), king of Agade, a great conqueror and builder, and his son, Naram-sin. Another great builder was Gudea, king of Shirpurla. Most conspicuous of all is Hammurabi (2250 B.C.), king of Babylon, who is probably the "Amraphel" of Gen. xiv. His kingdom included not only the whole of Babylonia proper, but also Assyria, and probably even the "West Land" as far as the Mediterranean. The records show him to have been a truly great ruler, both in war and in peace. He is known to us chiefly from a collection of his Letters to certain officials of his kingdom, and from his elaborate Code of civil laws, found at Susa in 1899, and first published in 1902; perhaps the most important single monument of early civilization which has thus far come to light. The laws, written in the Babylonian (Semitic) language, and engraved on a stele of hard black stone, were about two hundred and eighty in number, and bear an interesting general resemblance to the old Hebrew laws, especially those preserved in Exodus xxi. and xxii.
In the time of the kings Kadashman-bel and Burnaburiash II. (about 1400 B.C.) falls the Amarna Correspondence (see p. 40). At Tell el-Amarna, in upper Egypt, were unearthed, in 1887, more than three hundred clay tablets containing diplomatic dispatches, written in the cuneiform character, and nearly all in the Babylonian language. They were addressed to the Egyptian king, or to his ministers, and had been sent from various officials and royal personages in Babylonia, Assyria, Palestine (including a number of letters from Abdi-khiba of Jerusalem), and other districts. They furnish a large amount of important information as to conditions in western Asia at that early period.
An important Kassite dynasty occupied the throne of Babylon from the eighteenth century to the twelfth century B.C. Under these Kassite rulers, the kingdom at length declined, while the neighboring Assyrian state had increased in power. Later still, apparently not earlier than the ninth century B.C., the Chaldoeans (of Semitic stock?) pushed north-westward into Babylonia from their district about the mouth of the Euphrates, and eventually made themselves masters of the land.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE.—If the events connected with old Babylon are less known, more is ascertained respecting its civilization. The groundwork, as was stated, was laid by the earlier conquered people. The religion of the Babylonians rested on the basis of the old Sumerian worship. There was homage to demons, powerful for good or for evil, who were brought together into groups, and were figured now as human beings, now as lions or other wild animals, or as dragons and that sort of monsters. Of the great gods, Anu, the god of the sky, was the father and king of all. Sin, the moon-god, a Sumerian divinity, at the outset had the highest rank. Bel, or Baal, however, a Semitic divinity, was the god of the earth, and particularly of mankind. Ea was the god of the deep, and of the underworld. The early development of astrology and its great influence in old Babylon were closely connected with the supposed association of the luminaries above with the gods. The stars were thought to indicate at the birth of a child what his fortunes would be, and to afford the means of foretelling other remarkable events. Ishtar, a goddess of war and of love, was worshiped also under the name Beltis, the Greek Mylitta. This deity embodied the generative principle, the spring of fertility, whose beneficent agency was seen in the abundant harvest. She was clothed with sensual attributes, and propitiated with unchaste rites. It was in the worship of this divinity that the coarse and licentious side of the Semitic nature expressed itself. At the same time, there was an opposite ascetic side in the service of this deity. Her priests were eunuchs: they ministered at her altar in woman's attire. On the relation of the human soul to the gods, and its condition after death, there was little speculation. In general, the Babylonians were more interested in religion and worship, than the Assyrians. The former erected temples; the latter, palaces.
The attainments of the early Babylonians in mathematics and astronomy were far beyond those of the Egyptians. They divided the year into twelve months, and arrived at the signs of the ecliptic or zodiac. The week they fixed at seven days by the course of the moon. They divided the day into twelve hours, and the hour into sixty minutes. They invented weights and measures, the knowledge of which went from them to the other Asiatic nations. Architecture, as regards taste, was in a rude state. In pottery, they showed much skill and ingenuity, and invented the potter's wheel. In the engraving of gems, and in the manufacture of delicate fabrics,—linen, muslin, and silk,—they were expert. Trade and commerce, favored by the position of Babylon, began to flourish. As regards literature, the libraries of Nineveh and Babylon, at a later day, contained many books translated from the early Sumerian language. Among them are the "Gilgamesh legends," in which is contained a story of the flood that resembles in essential features the account in Genesis.
GROWTH OF ITS POWER.—Assyria was even greater, as a conquering power, than Babylon. In the legends current among the Greeks, the building-up of the monarchy, and of Nineveh its capital, as well as of Babylon, is referred to the legendary heroes, Ninus and his queen Semiramis. The name of Ninus is not recorded on the monuments, and is, perhaps, a kind of mythical personification of Assyrian conquests and grandeur; and the name of Semiramis does not appear until the ninth century B.C. She may have been a princess or even queen. Assyrian independence began before 2300 B.C. Between 1500 and 1400 B.C., Assyria was a weak state. It gained a brief mastery over Babylon through a conquest by Tukulti-Ninib (1300 B.C.). Tiglath-Pileser I. (1100 B.C.) spread his conquests to the Mediterranean and the Caspian on the west, and south to the Persian Gulf. But these early acquisitions of Assyria were transient. There ensued a long interval, until the middle of the tenth century, when the monarchy was mostly confined within its own proper borders. A new series of strong and aggressive princes arose. The conflicts of Damascus and of the nations of Palestine with one another left room for the growth of the Assyrian might and for the spread of Assyrian dominion. Asshur-nasir-pal (formerly called Sardanapalus I.) levied tribute upon Tyre, and the other rich cities of the Syrian coast, and founded the Assyrian rule in Cilicia. About the middle of the eighth century, the kingdom of Israel, having renounced its vassalage to Assyria, in league with Rezin of Damascus, the ruler of Syria, made war upon the kingdom of Judah. Ahaz, the Judaean king, against the protest of the prophet Isaiah, invoked the aid of the Assyrian monarch, Tiglath-Pileser II. The call was answered. The league was overthrown by him in a great battle fought near the Euphrates, and numerous captives, according to the Assyrian practice, were carried away from Samaria and Damascus. We are told that Ahaz, seeing the offerings made by Tiglath-Pileser at Damascus, commanded his priests at Jerusalem, despite the remonstrance of Isaiah, to make offerings to the Assyrian gods. Judah, as the result of these events, became tributary to Assyria. All Syria, together with Babylonia, which was then made up of several states, western Iran, and Armenia, were subdued by this Assyrian conqueror. He formally assumed the title of "King of Babylon." Shalmaneser IV. (727-722 B.C.), bent on completing the subjugation of Syria, subdued anew the revolted cities, and conquered, as it would seem, the island of Cyprus. Tyre alone, that is, the insular city of that name, withstood a siege of five years. Hoshea, the king of Israel (733-722 B.C.), in order to throw off the Assyrian yoke, sent an embassy to Shabak, the king of Egypt, to procure his assistance. Hearing of this, Shalmaneser attacked Israel. After a siege of three years, Samaria, the capital, fell into the hands of Sargon, who had succeeded him, the kingdom of Israel was subverted, and a great part of the people dragged off into captivity. In 720 B.C., Sargon encountered Shabak, in the great battle of Raphia, in southern Palestine, whom he defeated, and put to flight. He received tribute from Egypt, conquered a part of Arabia, and received the homage of the king of Meroe, who made a journey from Ethiopia to bow before him. The reign of Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.) was an eventful one, both for Assyria and for the neighboring countries. Hezekiah, king of Judah, hoped with the aid of Egypt to achieve his independence. Sennacherib was obliged to raise the siege of Jerusalem, after Hezekiah had vainly sought to propitiate him with large offerings of silver and gold; but the Assyrian was prevented from engaging in battle with Tirhaka of Egypt by a great calamity that befell his army. Against Babylon, which frequently revolted, he was more successful. "Berodach-baladan," as he is called in Scripture (2 Kings, chap. 20), who at an earlier day had sent an embassy from Babylon to Hezekiah, was overcome, and a new ruler enthroned in his place. Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.) not only restored the Assyrian sway over Syria, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Judah, and a part of Arabia, countries that lost no opportunity to shake off the cruel and hateful rule of Nineveh, but also conquered Egypt, and parceled it out among twenty governors. By Esarhaddon, or by his successor, Manasseh, king of Judah, was conquered, and carried off as a captive, but afterwards restored to his throne. Assyria was now at the summit of its power. Asshur-bani-pal V. (668-626 B.C.), called Sardanapalus, although he lost Egypt, confirmed the Assyrian power in the other subject states, and received tribute from Lydia, on the western border of Asia Minor. Under him, Assyrian art made its farthest advance. He was the builder of magnificent palaces. It is his library, dug up from the grave in which it had been buried for two and a half decades of centuries, that has yielded a vast amount of welcome information concerning Assyrian and Babylonian history far back into the Sumerian period.
RELIGION AND ART.—It has been stated that the Assyrian culture was transplanted from Babylon. The religion was substantially the same, except that Asshur, the tutelary deity of the country, was made supreme. The Assyrians from the start were devoted to war, pillage, and conquest. Their unsparing cruelty and brutal treatment of their enemies are abundantly witnessed by their own monuments. They lacked the productive power in literature and art which belonged to the Babylonians. Although they might have built their edifices of stone, they generally made use of brick. Their sculptures in relief were much better than the full figures. They laid color upon their works in sculpture. But their art was merely a pictorial record of events. The sense of beauty and creative power were wanting. The more religious character of the Babylonians created a difference in the architecture of the two peoples. In gem-cutting both were singularly expert. The Assyrians gave less attention to the burial of the dead. They showed an aptitude for trade; and Nineveh, in the eighth and seventh centuries, was a busy mart.
THE FALL OF ASSYRIA.—The first important blow at the Assyrian imperial rule was struck by the Medes. After nearly a century of resistance, they had been subdued (710 B.C.), and were subject to Assyria for a century after. In 640 B.C., they rose in revolt, under Phraortes, one of their native chiefs, who fell in battle. The struggle was continued by his son, Cyaxares. His plans were interrupted, however, by
THE IRRUPTION OF THE SCYTHIANS (623 B.C.).—More than a century before, these wandering Asiatic tribes had begun to make predatory incursions into Asia Minor. When Cyaxares was before Nineveh, they came down in greater force, and a horde of them, moving southward from the river Halys, invaded Syria. Jerusalem and the stronger cities held out against them, but the open country was devastated. They were met by Psammeticus I., king of Egypt, and bribed to turn back. They entered Babylonia; but Nabopolassar, the viceroy of Asshur-bani-pal (Sardanapalus), successfully defended the city of Babylon against their attacks. By Cyaxares, either these or another horde were defeated; but it was not until 605 B.C. that the region south of the Black Sea was cleared of them. The kingdom of Lydia had now come to play an important part in the affairs of western Asia.
Our first knowledge of the peoples of Asia Minor is from the Homeric poems (about 900 B.C.). The Chalybeans were in Pontus; west of them, the Amazonians and Paphlagonians; west of these, the Mysians; on the Hellespont, small tribes related to the Trojans; on the Ægean, the Dardanians and the Trojans (on the north), the Carians and the Lycians (on the south); on the north-east of these last, the Phrygians.
A large portion of the early inhabitants of Asia Minor were Semitic, and closely related to the Syrians. Semitic divinities were worshiped; a goddess, Mylitta, under other names, was adored in Pontus, at Ephesus, in Phrygia, and in Lydia.
The Lydians were of the Semitic race. Cybele, the female divinity whom they served, was the same deity whose altars were at Babylon, Nineveh, and Tyre. The rulers of the dynasty of the Mermnadæ, Gyges and his successors, spread the Lydian dominion until it extended to the Hellespont, and included Mysia and Phrygia. Alyattes was able to extirpate the Cimmerian hordes from the Sea of Azoff, who had overrun the western part of Asia Minor, and to make the Halys his eastern boundary. Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament Gomer. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence.
Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence. The Median ruler had subdued Armenia, and established his control as far as the Halys, making a treaty with Lydia. Now ensued the desperate conflict on which hung the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was taken (606 B.C.) by the Medes under Cyaxares, and the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The Grecian story of Sardanapalus burning himself on a lofty bier, is a myth. Assyria was divided by the Tigris between the Medes and Babylonians.
THE THREE POWERS: EGYPT.—On the fall of Nineveh, there were three principal powers left on the stage of action, which were bound together by treaty, Lydia, Media, and Babylon. Egypt proved itself unable to cope with Babylonian power. Necho, during the siege of Nineveh, had attacked Syria, and defeated the Jews on the plain of Esdraelon, where king Josiah was slain. He dethroned Jehoahaz, Josiah's son, and enthroned Jehoiakim in his stead. But when, in 605 B.C., he confronted Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, and was defeated, he was compelled to give up Syria, and to retire within the boundaries of Egypt.
TRIUMPS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR.—Syria was now at the mercy of Nebuchadnezzar. He captured Jerusalem (597 B.C.), despoiled the temple and palace, and led away Jehoiakim as a captive. He placed on the throne of Judah Jehoiakim's uncle, Zedekiah. But this king, having arranged an alliance between Egypt and the Phoenician cities, revolted (590 B.C.), refusing to pay his tribute. Again Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem, but raised the siege, in order to drive home Apries II. (Hophra), the Egyptian ally of Zedekiah. The city was taken, the king's sons were killed in his presence, his own eyes were put out; and, after the temple and palace had been burned and the city sacked, he, with all the families of the upper class who had not escaped to the desert, was carried away to Babylon (586 B.C.). Tyre (the old city) in like manner was taken by assault (585 B.C.).
By Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon was enlarged, and adorned on a scale of unequaled splendor. The new palace, with its "hanging gardens," the bridge over the Euphrates, the Median wall connecting the Euphrates and the Tigris on his northern boundary, and magnificent waterworks, are famous structures which belong to this reign. Wealth and luxury abounded. But vigor of administration fell away under his successors; and Babylon, after a dominion short when compared with the long sway of Nineveh, was conquered by Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, in 538 B.C. The last king was Nabonetus.
THE CITY OF BABYLON.—Babylon was a city of the highest antiquity. The name (Bab-ili, "Gate of God") is Semitic. The city is mentioned in the earliest cuneiform records, and from the time of Hammurabi was the chief city of the land. Destroyed by Sennacherib (690 B.C.), it was rebuilt by Esarhaddon, but not fully restored and adorned until the reigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar.
Babylon surpassed all ancient cities in size and magnificence. Its walls were forty miles in circumference. This extent of wall probably included Borsippa, or "Babylon the Second," on the right bank of the river. Babylon proper was mainly on the left. Within the walls were inclosed gardens, orchards, and fields: the space was only filled in part by buildings; but the whole area was laid out with straight streets intersecting one another at right angles, like the streets of Philadelphia. The wall was pierced by a hundred gates, probably twenty-five in each face. The Euphrates, lined with quays on both sides, and spanned with drawbridges, ran through the town, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The city was protected without by a deep and wide moat. The wall was at least seventy or eighty feet in height, and of vast and unusual thickness. On the summit were two hundred and fifty towers, placed along the outer and inner edges, opposite to one another, but so far apart, according to Herodotus, that there was room for a four-horse chariot to pass between. The temple of Bel was in a square inclosure, about a quarter of a mile both in length and breadth. The tower of the temple was ascended on the outside by an inclined plane carried around the four sides. An exaggerated statement of Strabo makes its height six hundred and six feet. Possibly, this represents the length of the inclined plane. In the shrine on the top were a golden table and a couch; according to Diodorus, before the Persian conquest there were colossal golden images of three divinities, with two golden lions, and two enormous serpents of silver. It is thought that Herodotus may have described the splendid temple of Nebo (now Birs Nimrûd), and have mistaken it, by reason of its enormous ruins, for the temple of Bel, which it rivaled in magnificence. The great palace is represented to have been larger than the temple of Bel, the outermost of its three inclosing walls being three miles in circumference. Its exterior was of baked brick. The "Hanging Gardens" was a structure built on a square, consisting of stages or stories, one above another, each supported by arches, and covered on the top, at the height of at least seventy-five feet, with a great mass of earth in which grew flowers and shrubs, and even large trees. The ascent to the top was by steps. On the way up were stately and elegant apartments. The smaller palace was on the other side of the river.
LITERATURE.—Works on Oriental History mentioned on p. 42. Tiele, Babylonisch-assyrische Geschichte (1888); Kaulen, Assyrien und Babylonien (5th ed., 1899); Rogers, History of Babylonia and Assyria (1901); Goodspeed, History of the Babylonians and Assyrians (1902); King, Articles Assyria and Babylonia in the Encyclopedia Biblica; Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians: Life and Customs (1899); Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament; Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria (1898); Perrot & Chipiez, Histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité, vol. ii., Chaldèe et Assyrie.
PHOENICIA.—A narrow strip of territory separates the mountains of Syria and Palestine from the Mediterranean. Of this belt the northern part, west of Lebanon, about one hundred and fifty miles long, varies in width from five to fourteen miles. In some places the cliffs approach close to the sea. This belt of land was occupied by the first of the great maritime and commercial peoples of antiquity, the Phoenicians. Their language was Semitic, closely akin to Hebrew.
COMMERCE AND PROSPERITY OF THE PHOENICIANS.—The most important of the Phoenician cities were Sidon—which was the first of them to rise to distinction and power—and Tyre, which became more famous as a mart, and comprised, besides the town on the coast, New Tyre, the city built on the neighboring rocky island. In New Tyre was the sanctuary of the tutelary god, Melkart. The spirit of trade stimulated ingenuity. The Phoenicians were noted for their glass, their purple dyes, their improved alphabet, and knowledge of the art of writing. In mining and in casting metals, in the manufacture of cloth, in architecture, and in other arts, they were not less proficient. From their situation they naturally became a seafaring race. Not only did they transport their cargoes of merchandise to the islands and shores of the Mediterranean, conveying thither not merely the fruits of their own industry and skill, but also the productions of the East: they ventured to steer their vessels beyond the Strait of Gibraltar; and, if they did not procure amber directly from the North Sea, they brought tin either directly from Cornwall or from the Scilly Islands. Through the hands of Phoenician merchants "passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves, ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa, frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine wares of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from England, and iron from Elba." These products were carried wherever a market could be found for them. At the instigation of Necho, king of Egypt (610-594 B.C.), they are said to have made a three years' voyage round the southern cape of Africa.
COLONIES: OPULENCE.-The Phoenicians were the first great colonizing nation of antiquity. It was the fashion of Assyrians and other conquerors to transport to their own lands multitudes of people, whom they carried away as captives from their homes. The Phoenicians—in this particular the forerunners of the Greeks and of the Dutch and the English—planted trading settlements in Cyprus and Crete, on the islands of the Ægean Sea, in southern Spain, and in North Africa. Cadiz, one of the oldest towns in Europe, was founded by these enterprising traders (about 1100 B.C.). Tarshish was another of their Spanish settlements. "Ships of Tarshish," like the modern "East Indiamen," came to signify vessels capable of making long voyages. The coast of modern Andalusia and Granada belonged to the Phoenicians. Through caravans their intercourse was not less lively with the states on the Euphrates, with Nineveh and Babylon, as well as with Egypt. Tyre was a link between the East and the West.
HIRAM: SETTLEMENT OF CARTHAGE.—The Tyrian power attained to its height under King Hiram I., the contemporary and ally of Solomon. Two Greek historians make his reign to extend from 969 to 936 B.C. The alliance with Solomon extended the traffic of Tyre, and increased its wealth. Hiram connected old and New Tyre by a bridge. The Tyrians adorned their city with stately palaces and temples, and built strong fortifications. Engrossed in manufactures and commerce, and delighting in the affluence thus engendered, the Phoenicians were not ambitious of conquest. Although conquerors upon the sea, they were not a martial people: like commercial states generally, they preferred peace. Of the people of Laish (Dan), it is said in the Book of Judges (xviii. 7), "They dwelt careless, after the manner of the Zidonians, quiet and secure." This pacific temper was coupled with a fervent attachment to their own land and to their countrymen wherever they went. But they lacked the political instinct. They did not appreciate liberty, and their love of traffic and of gain often made them prefer to pay tribute rather than to fight. Their colonies were factories, but were not centers of further conquest, or germs of political communities. When, the family of Hiram was exterminated (about 850 B.C.) by the high-priest of the goddess Astarte, who seized on power, civil strife and disorder ensued. Pygmalion, the great-grandson of the high-priest, as it is related by a Grecian authority, slew his uncle, who was to marry Pygmalion's sister, Elissa. On account of this internal conflict, and from dread of the Assyrian power, a large number of the old families emigrated to North Africa, and founded Carthage (about 814 B.C.).
The Phoenician cities were confederated together under hereditary kings, whose power was limited by the lay and priestly aristocracy. The common people, many of whom were skilled artisans, made themselves felt in some degree in public affairs. The mercantile class were influential. Thus there was developed a germinant municipal feeling and organization. The "strong city," Tyre, is mentioned in Joshua xix. 29. In Isaiah xxiii., Tyre is described as "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth." "He stretched out his hand over the sea, he shook the kingdoms." The fate of Babylon is pointed at by the Prophet, to show what Tyre had to expect from Assyria. Later, before the conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, Ezekiel thus speaks of Tyre (chap, xxvii.): "They have taken cedars from Lebanon to make masts for thee." "Of the oaks of Bashan have they made thine oars." "Tarshish was thy merchant."
RELIGION AND LETTERS.—A very prominent feature of the religion of the Phaenicians is the local character of their divinities. The word baal("lord" or "god") was not used in Phaenicia as the proper name of any one god. But such names as Baal-sidon, "Lord of Sidon," Baal-libanon, "God of Lebanon," etc., are common. Astarte was the most common name for the local female divinities. The gods were often thought of as dwelling in stones, trees, and other objects; the worship of stone-pillars and sacred poles (ashera; translated "grove" in the English Bible) was especially common in Phaenicia. On the other hand, a "god of heaven" and a "goddess of heaven" were worshiped. In the religion of the Phaenicians, the more elevated ingredients of the Semitic heathenism are in the background. The sensual features of it are more prominent, and savage elements are introduced. It was more adapted to foster than to check lust and cruelty. To Astarte, maidens sacrifice their chastity. There was the same double ritual, made up of gross sensuality on the one hand, and of ascetic practices by the priesthood on the other, that belonged to the service of Mylitta at Babylon. Human sacrifice by fire was another horrible feature. Children, especially, were offered to El ("god"; possibly also called Melek (Moloch), "the king," as among the Hebrews). To appease him at Tyre and Carthage, girls and boys, sometimes in large numbers, and of the highest families, were cast into the flames; while the wailing of their relatives, if it was not stifled by themselves at the supposed demand of piety, was drowned by the sound of musical instruments. As late as 310 B.C., when Agathocles was besieging Carthage, and had reduced the city to the direst straits, we are told that the people laid two hundred boys of their noblest families upon the arms of the brazen image of the god, whence they were allowed to fall into the fire beneath. On similar occasions, even the head of the state sometimes offered himself as a sacrifice. Hamilcar, the Carthaginian, son of Hanno, in Sicily, when the tide of battle was turning against him, threw himself into the fire (480 B.C.). Juba, king of Numidia, prepared to do the same after the battle of Thapsus. Large and costly temples were built, generally in the Egyptian style. Such were the temples of Melkart at Tyre and Cadiz, of Eshmun at Sidon, and of "the Lady of Byblos" at that city. Nature—as dying in the autumn, and again reviving in the spring—is figured as the god Adonisz, who is honored first by a protracted season of mourning, and then by a joyous festival.
The Phoenicians were not a literary people. Their alphabet (invented by them?) was the old Semitic alphabet. Every character represented a sound. From the Phaenicians it spread, and became the mother of most of the graphic systems now existing. Cadmus, however, by whom it was said to be carried to the Greeks, is a fabulous person. The alleged history of Sanchuniathon, which was published in Greek by Philo of Byblus, in the second century A.D., is now generally believed to be the work of Philo himself.
HISTORICAL EVENTS.—In the struggles against the Mesopotamian empires, the Phaenicians defended themselves with valor and perseverance. When Sargon (722-705 B.C.) had subjugated their cities on the mainland, insular Tyre for five years repelled his assaults, although the conduits bringing fresh water from the shore were cut off, and the besieged were obliged to content themselves with the scanty supply to be gained from wells dug with great labor. Soon the Tyrian fleets regained their mastery on the sea. When Nebuchadnezzar captured old Tyre, and a multitude of its inhabitants shared the lot of the Jews, and were dragged off by the conqueror to the Euphrates, the island city withstood his attack for thirteen years, and did not yield until it extorted from him a treaty. But the power of resistance was weakened by the repeated invasions and domination of Nineveh and Babylon. Tyre submitted to Persia after the downfall of the Babylonian monarchy, and added her fleet to the Persian forces; although to the Phoenician towns was left a degree of freedom and their local government. Sidon, Tyre, and Arados had a council of their own, which met with their respective kings and senators at Tripolis, for the regulation of matters of common interest. Manufactures and commerce continued to flourish. Under the Persian supremacy, Sidon once more became the chief city. In the middle of the fourth century B.C., it revolted against the tyranny of the foreign governors. The Persian king, Ochus, ordered that the noblest citizens should be put to death; whereupon the inhabitants set the city on fire, and destroyed themselves and their treasures in the flames. Tyre remained, but ventured to resist Alexander the Great, after his conquest of the Persians, and by him was captured and partly demolished (332 B.C.). After the death of Alexander, the Phoenicians fell under the sway of the Seleucidæ at Antioch, and, for a time, of the Egyptian Ptolemies. Both Tyre and Sidon were rebuilt, and flourished anew. It is probably to the third century B.C. that we should assign the native Sidonian dynasty which included the Kings Eshmunazar I., Sedek-yaton, Tabnit, Bodashtart, and Eshmunazar II., whose names are known to us from inscriptions. In the time of the last-named king, the cities Dor and Joppa, with the plain of Sharon, belonged to Sidon.
CARTHAGINIAN HISTORY.—The most prominent of all the Phoenician settlements was Carthage. It had remarkable advantages of situation. Its harbor was sufficient for the anchorage of the largest vessels, and it had a fertile territory around it. These circumstances, in conjunction with the energy of its inhabitants, placed it at the head of the Phoenician colonies. In Carthage, there was no middle class. There were the rich landholders and merchants, and the common people. The government was practically an oligarchy. There were two kings or judges (Shofetes), with little power, and a council or senate; possibly a second council also. But the senate and magistrates were subordinate to an aristocratic body, the hundred judges. The bulk of the citizens had little more than a nominal influence in public affairs.
ASCENDENCY OF CARTHAGE.-When the Greeks (about 600 B.C.) spread their colonies, the rivals of the Phoenician settlements, in the west of the Mediterranean, Carthage was moved to deviate from the policy of the parent cities, and to make herself the champion, protector, and mistress of the Phoenician dependencies in all that region. Thus she became the head of a North-African empire, which asserted its supremacy against its Greek adversaries in Sicily and Spain, as well as in Lybia. When Tyre was subjugated by Persia, Carthage was strengthened by the immigration of many of the best Tyrian families. As the Tyrian strength waned, the Carthaginian power increased. Syracuse, in Sicily, became the first Greek naval power, and the foremost antagonist of the Carthaginian dominion. In 480 B.C., Carthage made war upon the Greek cities in Sicily. The contest was renewed from time to time. In the conflicts between 439-409 B.C., she confirmed her sway over the western half of the island. In later conflicts (317-275 B.C.), in which Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, was a noted leader of the Greeks, and, after his death, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was their ally, Carthage alternately lost and regained her Sicilian cities. But the result of the war was to establish her maritime ascendency.
LITERATURE.—Works mentioned on pp. 16, 42: Pietschmann, Geschichte der Phönizier (1889); Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia (1889); E. Meycr, Art. Phoenicia in the Encycl. Bibl.; Perrot & Chipiez, History of Art in Phoenicia and Cyprus, 2 vols.; Renan, Mission de Phenicie (1874); Meltzer, Geschichte der Karthager; F. W. Newman's Defense of Carthage.
PECULIARITY OF THE HEBREWS.—While the rest of the nations worshiped "gods many and lords many," whom they confounded with the motions of the heavenly bodies, or with other aspects of nature, there was one people which attained to a faith in one God, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, who is exalted above nature, and whom it was deemed impious to represent by any material image. More than is true of any other people, religion was consciously the one end and aim of their being. To bring the true religion to its perfection, and to give it a world-wide diffusion and sway, was felt by them to be their heaven-appointed mission. The peculiarity of their faith made them stand alone, and rendered them exclusive, and intolerant of the surrounding idolatries. The mountainous character of their land, separated by Lebanon from Phoenicia, and by the desert from the nations on the East and South, was well adapted to the work which they had to fulfill in the course of history.
THE PATRIARCHAL AGE.—The Israelites traced their descent from Abraham, who, to escape the infection of idolatry, left his home, which was in Ur on the lower Euphrates, and came into the land of Canaan, where he led a wandering life, but became the father of a group of nations. According to the popular narrative, Isaac, his son by Sarah, was recognized as the next chief of the family; while Ishmael, Abraham's son by Hagar, became the progenitor of the Arabians. Of the two sons of Isaac, Esau, who was a huntsman, married a daughter of the native people: from him sprung the Edomites. Jacob kept up the occupation of a herdsman. Of his twelve sons, Joseph was an object of jealousy to the other eleven, by whom he was sold to a caravan of merchants on their way to Egypt. There, through his skill in interpreting dreams, he rose to high dignities and honors in the court of Pharaoh; and, by his agency, the entire family were allowed to settle oh the pasture-lands of Goshen in northern Egypt (p. 40). Here in the neighborhood of Heliopolis, for several centuries, they fed their flocks. From Israel, the name given to Jacob, they were commonly called Israelites. The name Hebrews was apparently derived from a word signifying "across the river" (Euphrates); but the original application is quite uncertain.
THE EXODUS (see p. 41).—The time came when the Israelites were no longer well treated. A new Egyptian dynasty was on the throne. Their numbers were an occasion of apprehension. An Egyptian princess saved Moses from being a victim of a barbarous edict issued against them. He grew to manhood in Pharaoh's court, but became the champion of his people. Compelled to flee, he received in the lonely region of Mount Sinai that sublime disclosure of the only living God which qualified him to be the leader and deliverer of his brethren. A "strong east wind," parting the Red Sea, opened a passage for the Israelites, whom a succession of calamities, inflicted upon their oppressors by the Almighty, had driven Pharaoh (Menephthah?) to permit to depart in a body; but the returning waves ingulfed the pursuing Egyptian army. "The sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters." For a long period Moses led the people about in the wilderness. They were trained by this experience to habits of order and military discipline. At Horeb, the Decalogue, the kernel, so to speak, of the Hebrew codes, the foundation of the religious and social life of the people, was given them under circumstances fitted to awaken the deepest awe. They placed themselves under Jehovah as the Ruler and Protector of the nation in a special sense. The worship of other divinities, every form of idolatry, was to be a treasonable offense. The laws of Jehovah were to be kept in the Ark of the Covenant, in the "Tabernacle," which was the sanctuary, and was transported from place to place. The priesthood was devolved on Aaron and his successors, at the side of whom were their assistants, the Levites. The civil authority in each tribe was placed in the hands of the patriarchal chief and the "elders," the right of approval or of veto being left to the whole tribe gathered in an assembly. The heads of the tribes, with seventy representative elders, together with Aaron and Moses, formed a supreme council or standing committee. On particular occasions a congregation of all the tribes might be summoned. The ritual was made up of sacrifices and solemn festivals. The Sabbath was the great weekly commemoration, a day of rest for the slave as well as for the master, for the toiling beast as well as for man. Every seventh year and every fiftieth year were sabbaths, when great inequalities of condition, which might spring up in the intervals, respecting the possession of land, servitude consequent on debts, etc., were removed.
Hebrew Laws.—The Israelites, in virtue of their covenant with Jehovah, were to be a holy people, a nation of priests. They were thus to maintain fraternal equality. There was to be no enslaving of one another, save that which was voluntary and for a limited time. Only prisoners not of their race, or purchased foreigners, could be held as slaves. Every fiftieth year, land was to revert to its original possessor. In the sabbatical years the land was not to be tilled. What then grew wild might be gathered by all. There were careful provisions for the benefit of the poor.
HEADS OF TRIBES.—The progenitors of the tribes, the sons of Jacob, as given in Exodus, were Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin.
THE HEBREW RELIGION—Such, in brief, were the beginnings of a religion as unique as it was elevated in its character,—a religion which stood from the outset in mortal antagonism to the Egyptian worship of sun-gods, and to the star-worship, the service of Baal, and of sensual or savage divinities joined with him,—to that service which was diffused through the Semitic nations of western Asia. A people was constituted to be the guardian of this light, kindled in the midst of the surrounding darkness, to carry it down to later ages, and to make it finally, in its perfected form, the heritage of mankind.
THE PROPHETS.—Moses was not only a military leader and a legislator: he stands at the head of the prophets, the class of men who at different times, especially in seasons of national peril and temptation, along the whole course of Israelitish history, were raised up to declare the will of Jehovah, to utter the lessons proper to the hour, to warn evil-doers, and to comfort the desponding.
CONQUEST OF CANAAN: THE ERA OF THE JUDGES.—Moses himself did not enter "the promised land," where the patriarchs were buried, and which the Israelites were to conquer. According to Deut. vii. 2, a war of extermination was commanded. The reason given for the command was that the people must avoid the contagion of idolatry, that it was the fit reward of the nation which they were bidden to dispossess.
The word "Canaanite" was used especially to designate the inhabitants of the coast region of Palestine. It was applied, however, to all the tribes, who were under thirty-one kings or chiefs, in the time of Joshua, There were six principal tribes,—the Hittites, Hivites, Amorites, Jebusites, Perizzites, and Girgashites. These, with the exception of the Hittites, and possibly the Amtorites, were Semitic in their language. The Canaanites had houses and vineyards. From them the Israelites learned agriculture. "They were in possession of fortified towns, treasures of brass, iron, gold, and foreign merchandise" Their religious rites were brutal and debasing,—"human sacrifice, licentious orgies, the worship of a host of divinities."
On the death of Moses, Joshua succeeded to the post of a leader. He defeated the Amontes and other tribes on the east of the Jordan. After the first victories of Joshua, each tribe carried on for itself the struggle with Canaanites, victory over them being often followed by indiscriminate slaughter. It is plain, however, especially from the account in the first chapter of the Book of Judges, that there was a process of assimilation as well as one of conquest. The actual settlement was effected by peaceful as well as by warlike methods. Resistance was stubborn, and the progress of occupation slow. It was not until David's time, centuries after the invasion, that Jebus, the site of Jerusalem, was captured. This delay was due largely to a lack of union, not to a lack of valor. The strength of the Israelites was in their infantry. Hence they preferred to fight upon the hills, rather than to cope with horsemen and chariots on the plains below.
THE PERIOD OF THE JUDGES.—The era of the Judges extends from about 1300 B.C. over at least two centuries. Powerful tribes—as Moabites, Midianites, Ammonites, Philistines—were unsubdued. The land was desolated by constant war. It was one sure sign of the prevailing disorder and anarchy, that "the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers walked through byways" (Judg. v. 6). Not unfrequently the people forgot Jehovah, and fell into idolatrous practices. In this period of degeneracy and confusion, men full of sacred enthusiasm and of heroic courage arose to smite the enemies of Israel, and to restore the observance of the law. Of these heroic leaders, Deborah, Gideon, Jepththa, and Samson were the most famous. There remains the song of Deborah on the defeat and death of Sisera (Judg. v.).
The Philistines, on the western coast, captured the sacred ark,—an act that spread dismay among the Israelites. Then they pushed on their conquests as far as the Jordan, took away from the Israelites their weapons, and grievously oppressed them. The Ammonites threatened the tribes on the east of the Jordan with a like fate. At this juncture, an effective leader and reformer appeared, in the person of Samuel, who had been consecrated from his youth up to the service of the sanctuary, and whose devotion to the law was mingled with an ardent patriotism. He roused the courage of the people, and recalled them to the service of Jehovah. In the "schools of the prophets" he taught the young the law, trained them in music and song, and thus prepared a class of inspiring teachers and guides to co-operate with the priesthood in upholding the cause of religion.
THE MONARCHY: SAMUEL AND SAUL.—In the distracted condition of the country, the people demanded a king, to unite them, and lead them to victory, and to administer justice. They felt that their lack of compact organization and defined leadership placed them at a disadvantage in comparison with the tribes about. This demand Samuel resisted, as springing out of a distrust of Jehovah, and as involving a rejection of Him. He depicted the burdens which regal government would bring upon them. Later history verified his prediction. A strong, centralized authority was not in harmony with the family and tribal government which was the peculiarity of their system. It brought in, by the side of the prophetic order, another authority less sacred in its claims to respect. Collisions between the two must inevitably result. But, whatever might be the ideal political system, the exigency was such that Samuel yielded to the persistent call of the people. He himself chose and anointed for the office a tall, brave, and experienced soldier, Saul. Successful in combat, the king soon fell into a conflict with the prophet, by failing to comply with the divine law, and by sparing, contrary to the injunction laid upon him, prisoners and cattle that he had captured. Thereupon Samuel secretly anointed David, a young shepherd of the tribe of Judah; thus designating him for the throne. The envy of Saul at the achievements of David, and at his growing popularity, coupled with secret suspicion of what higher honors might be in store for the valiant youth, embittered the king against him. David was befriended and shielded by Jonathan, Saul's son, who might naturally be looked upon as his suitable successor. The memorials of the friendship of these two youths, in the annals of that troublous time, are like a star in the darkest night. David was obliged to take refuge among the Philistines, where he led a band of free lances, whom the Philistines did not trust as auxiliaries, but who were inured by their daring combats for the struggles that came afterwards. Saul and Jonathan were slain, Saul by his own hand. For six years David was king in Hebron, over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The other tribes were ruled by Saul's son, Ishbaal ('Ishbosheth'). At length David was recognized as king by all the tribes. Saul's family were exterminated.
CHRONOLOGY.—There is much difficulty in settling the chronology in the early centuries of the regal period of Hebrew history. Apart from the questions which arise in comparing the biblical data, the information derived from Egyptian and especially from Assyrian sources has to be taken into account. Hence the dates given below must be regarded as open to revision as our knowledge increases.
Assyriologists find that Shalmaneser II. received tribute from Ahab, King of Israel, 854 B.C., and from Jehu, 842 B.C.; that Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 B.C.) received tribute from Menahem in 738 B.C. and that Samaria fell in 722 B.C. Assyriology, on the basis of its data, as at present ascertained, would make out a chronology something like the following: Era of the judges, 1300-1020; Saul, 1020-1000; David, 1000-960; Solomon, 960-930; Reho-boam, 930-914 (Jeroboam I., 930-910); Jehoshaphat, 870+-850 (Ahab, 875-853); Azanah (or Uzziah), 779-740 (Jehu, 842-815); (Jeroboam II., 783-743); (Menahem, 744-738).
DAVID AND SOLOMON.—David's reign (about 1000-970 B.C.) is the period of Israel's greatest power. He extended his sway as far as the Red Sea and the Euphrates; he overcame Damascus, and broke down the power of the Philistines; he subdued the Moabites, Ammonites, and Edomites; he conquered the Jebusites, and made Jerusalem his capital and the center of national worship. A poet himself, he enriched the religious service, which he organized, by lyrics—some of them composed by himself—of unrivaled devotional depth and poetic beauty. He organized his military force as well, and established an orderly civil administration. His favorite son, Absalom, led away by ambition, availed himself of disaffection among the people to head a revolt against his father, but perished in the attempt. David left his crown to Solomon at the close of a checkered life, marked by great victories, and by flagrant misdeeds done under the pressure of temptation.
CHARACTERS OF SOLOMON'S REIGN.—Solomon's reign (about 970-933 B.C.) was the era of luxury and splendor. He sought to emulate the other great monarchs of the time. With the help of Hiram, king of Tyre, who furnished materials and artisans, he erected a magnificent temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. He built costly palaces. He brought horses from Egypt, and organized a standing army, with its cavalry and chariots. He established a harem, bringing into it women from the heathen countries, whom he allowed in their idolatrous rites. He was even seduced to take part in them himself. Renowned for his knowledge and for his wisdom—which was admired by the Queen of Saba (Sheba), who came to visit him from the Arabian coast—famous as the author of wise aphorisms, he nevertheless entailed disasters on his country. He established a sort of Oriental despotism, which exhausted its resources, provoked discontent, and tended to undermine morality as well as religion.
THE DIVIDED KINGDOM.—The bad effect of Solomon's magnificence soon appeared. Before his death a revolt was made under the lead of Jeroboam, which was put down. Of Rehoboam, the successor of Solomon, the ten tribes north of Judah required pledges that their burdens should be lightened. In the room of the heads and elders of the tribes, the late king's officers had come in to oppress them with their hard exactions. The haughty young king spurned the demand for redress. The tribes cast off his rule, and made Jeroboam I. their king (about 933 B.C.). The temple was left in the hands of Judah and Benjamin. The division of the kingdom into two, insured the downfall of both. The rising power of the Mesopotamian Empire could not be met without union. On the other hand, the concentration of worship at Jerusalem, under the auspices of the two southern tribes, may have averted dangers that would have arisen from the wider diffusion, and consequent exposure to corruption, of the religious system. The development and promotion of the true religion—the one great historical part appointed for the Hebrews—may have been performed not less effectively, on the whole, for the separation.
HEATHEN RITES.—From this time the energetic and prolonged contest of the prophets with idolatry is a conspicuous feature, especially in the history of Israel, the northern kingdom. Jeroboam set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel, ancient seats of the worship of Jehovah. Wars with Judah and Damascus weakened the strength of Israel. The Egyptian king, Shishak, captured Jerusalem, and bore away the treasures collected by Solomon (p. 41). Under Jehoshaphat (about 873-849 B.C.) the heathen altars were demolished and prosperity returned.
STRUGGLE WITH IDOLATRY: ELIHAH AND ELISHA.—The contemporary of Jehoshaphat in the northern kingdom was Ahab (about 876-854 B.C.). He expended his power and wealth in the building up of Baal-worship, at the instigation of the Tyrian princess, Jezebel, whom he had married. At Samaria, his capital, he raised a temple to Baal, where four hundred and fifty of his priests ministered. The priests of Jehovah who withstood these measures were driven out of the land, or into hiding-places. The austere and intrepid prophet Elijah found refuge in Mount Carmel. The people, on the occasion of a famine, which he declared to be a divine judgment, rose in their wrath, and slew the priests of Baal. In a war—the third of a series—which Ahab waged against Syria, he still fought in his chariot, after he had received a mortal wound, until he fell dead. He had previously thrown the prophet Micaiah into prison for predicting this result. By the marriage of Athalia, a daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, with Jehoshaphat's son, Baal-worship was introduced into Jerusalem. Joram succeeded Ahab. The prophet Elisha, who followed in the steps of Elijah, anointed Jehu "captain of the host of Joram." He undertook, with fierce and unsparing energy, to destroy Baal-worship, and to extirpate the house of Ahab, root and branch. The two kings of Israel and of Judah he slew with his own hand. The priests and servants of Baal were put to the sword. These conflicts reduced the strength of Israel, which fell a prey to Syria, until its power was revived by Jeroboam II. (783-743 B.C.). The death of Athalia brought on the expulsion of the Phoenician idolatry from Jerusalem. The southern kingdom suffered from internal strife, and from wars with Israel, until Uzziah (779-740 B.C.) restored its military strength, and caused agriculture and trade once more to flourish.
THE ASSYRIAN CAPTIVITY.—The two kingdoms, in the ninth and eighth centuries, instead of standing together against the threatening might of Assyria, sought heathen alliances, and wasted their strength in mutual contention. Against these hopeless alliances, and against the idolatry and the formalism which debased the people, the prophets contended with intense earnestness and unflinching courage. Amos, called from feeding his flocks, inveighed against frivolity and vice, misgovernment and fraud, in Israel. Hosea warned Menahem (743-737 B.C.) against invoking the help of Assyria against Damascus, but in vain. He was terribly punished by what he suffered from the Assyrians; but Jotham (740-736 B.C.) and Ahaz (736-728 B.C.), the Judaean kings, successively followed his example. Tiglath-Pileser made Judaea tributary. The Assyrian rites were brought into the temple of Jehovah. The service of Canaanitish deities was introduced. The one incorruptible witness for the cause of Jehovah was the fearless and eloquent prophet, Isaiah. Hosea, king of Israel, by his alliance with Egypt against Sargon, so incensed this most warlike of the Assyrian monarchs, that, when he had subdued the Phoenician cities, he laid siege to Samaria; and, having captured it at the end of a siege of three years, he led away the king and the larger part of his subjects as captives, to the Euphrates and the Tigris, and replaced them by subjects of his own (722 B.C.). The later Samaritans were the descendants of this mixed population.
The Babylonian Captivity.—When Sargon, the object of general dread, died, Hezekiah, king of Judah (727-699 B.C.), flattered himself that it was safe to disregard the warnings of Isaiah, and, in the hope of throwing off the Assyrian yoke, made a treaty of alliance with the king of Egypt, and fortified Jerusalem. He abolished, however, the heathen worship in "the high places." Sennacherib, Sargon's successor, was compelled to raise the siege (p. 46). Manasseh (698-643 B.C.), in defiance of the prophets, fostered the idolatrous and sensual worship, against which they never ceased to lift their voices. Josiah (640-609 B.C.) was a reformer. As a tributary of Babylon, he sought to prevent Necho, king of Egypt, from crossing his territory, but was vanquished and slain at Megiddo, on the plain of Esdraelon. Nebuchadnezzar's victory over Necho, at Carchemish, enabled the Babylonian king to tread in the footsteps of the Assyrian conquerors. The revolt of Zedekiah, which the prophet Jeremiah was unable to prevent, and his alliance with Egypt, led to the Babylonian captivity of the Jews. In this period of national ruin, the prophetic spirit found a voice through Jeremiah and Ezekiel. It was during the era of Assyrian and Babylonian invasion that the predictions of a MESSIAH, a great Deliverer and righteous Ruler who was to come, assumed a more definite expression. The spiritual character of Isaiah's teaching has given him the name of "the evangelical prophet."
Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, opened the way (538 B.C.) for the return of the exiles. A small part first came back under Zerubbabel, head of the tribe of Judah, who was made Persian governor. They began to rebuild the temple, which was finished in 516 B.C. Later (458 B.C.) Ezra "the scribe" and Nehemiah led home a larger body. The newly returned Jews were fired with a zeal for the observance of the Mosaic ritual,—a zeal which had been sharpened in the persecutions and sorrows of exile. The era of the "hagiocracy," of the supreme influence of the priesthood and the rigid adherence to the law, with an inflexible hostility to heathen customs, ensued. The spirit of which prophecy had been the stimulant, and partially the fruit, declined. The political independence of the land was gone for ever. The day of freedom under the Maccabees, after the insurrection (168 B.C.) led by that family against the Syrian successors of Alexander, was short. But Israel "had been thrown into the stream of nations." Its religious influence was to expand as its political strength dwindled. Its subjugation and all its terrible misfortunes were to serve as a means of spreading the leavening influence of its monotheistic faith.
In the year 63 B.C., Pompeius made the Jews tributary to the Romans. In the year 40 B.C., Herod began to reign as a dependent king under Rome.
Hebrew Literature.—The literature of the Hebrews is essentially religious in its whole motive and spirit. This is true even of their historical writings. The marks of the one defining characteristic of their national life—faith in Jehovah and in his sovereign and righteous control—are everywhere seen. Hebrew poetry is mainly lyrical. Relics of old songs are scattered through the historical books. In the Psalms, an anthology of sacred lyrics, the spirit of Hebrew poesy attains to its highest flight. Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of Job, and books like the Proverbs, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes. Nowhere, save in the Psalms, does the spirit of the Hebrew religion and the genius of the people find an expression so grand and moving as in the Prophets, of whom Isaiah is the chief.
ART.—In art the Hebrews did not excel. The plastic arts were generally developed in connection with religion. But the religion of the Hebrews excluded all visible representations of deity. Nor were they proficients in science. "Israel was the vessel in which the water of life was inclosed, in which it was kept cool and pure, that it might thereafter refresh the world."
The HISTORICAL BOOKS of the Old Testament comprise, first, the Pentateuch, which describes the origin of the Hebrew people, the exodus from Egypt, and the Sinaitic legislation. Questions pertaining to the date and authorship of these five books, and of the materials at the basis of them, are still debated among historical critics. It may be regarded as certain, however, that materials belonging to nearly every period of Hebrew literature, from the earliest times, are here combined. The early part of Genesis is designed to explain the genealogy of the Hebrews, and to show how, step by step, they were sundered from other peoples. The narratives in the first ten chapters—as the story of the creation, the flood, etc.—so strikingly resemble legends of other Semitic nations, especially the _Babylonians_and Phoenicians, as to make it plain that all these groups of accounts are historically connected with one another. But the Genesis narratives are distinguished by their freedom from the polytheistic ingredients which disfigure the corresponding narratives elsewhere. They are on the elevated plane of that pure theism which is the kernel of the Hebrew faith. This whole subject is elucidated by Lenormant, in The Beginnings of History (1882). The Book of Joshua relates the history of the conquest of Canaan; Judges, the tale of the heroic age of Israel prior to the monarchy; the Books of Samuel and of Kings, of the monarchy in its glory and its decline; the Books of Chronicles treat of parts of the same era, more from the point of view of the priesthood; Ruth is an idyl of the narrative type; Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther have to do with the return of the Jews from exile, and the events next following.
The POETIC WRITINGS include the Psalter, by many authors; the Proverbs of Solomon and others; Ecclesiastes, which gives the sombre reflections of one who had tasted to the full the pleasures and honors of life; the Canticles, or Song of Solomon, which depicts a young woman's love in its constancy, and victory over temptation.
The PROPHETS are divided into four classes: i. Those of the early period from the twelfth to the ninth century, including Samuel, Elijah, Eliska, etc, who have left no prophetical writings. 2. The prophets of the Assyrian age (800-700 B.C.), where belong Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Nahum. 3. The prophets of the Babylonian age, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel. Here some scholars would place a part of Isaiah. 4. The post-exilian prophets, Haggai, Zachariah, Malackt, Jonah., Daniel, Joel, Obadiah, and considerable portions of Isaiah and Jeremiah.
The APOCRYPHAL BOOKS belong between the closing of the Old-Testament canon and the New Testament. They are instructive as to that intermediate period. The first Book of Maccabees is specially important for its historical matter; the Books of Wisdom and the Son of Sirach for their moral reflections and precepts.
WORKS RELATING TO HEBREW HISTORY.—EWALD, History of the Israelitish People (Eng. trans., 5 vols.); Milman, History of the Jews (3 vols.); Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (2 vols., 1889); Renan, History of the People of Israel (Eng. trans., 1896); Wellhausen. Israelitische und judische Geschichte (3d ed., 1897); Kent, History of the Hebrew People (1898); Guthe, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1899); the Art. Israel by Wellhausen, in the Encycl. Brit., and the one by Guthe in the Encycl. Bibl. The historical works of Jewish scholars, Herzfeld, Jost, Zunz, Graetz, DERENBOURG, etc., are valuable.
In the western part of the plateau of Iran, which extends from the
Suleiman Mountains to the plains of Mesopotamia, were the
Medes. On the southern border of the same plateau, along the
Persian Gulf, were the Persians. Both were offshoots of the
Aryan family, and had migrated westward from the region of the upper
Oxus, from Bactria, the original seat of their religion.
RELIGION.—The ancient religion of the Iranians, including the Medes and Persians, was reduced to a system by the Bactrian sage, Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), who, in the absence of authentic knowledge respecting him, may be conjecturally placed at about 1000 B.C. The Zendavesta, the sacred book of the Parsees, the adherents of this religion, is composed of parts belonging to very different dates. It is the fragment of a more extensive literature no longer extant. The Bactrian religion differed from that of their Sanskrit-speaking kindred on the Indus, in being a form of dualism. It grew out of a belief in good demons or spirits, and in evil spirits, making up two hosts perpetually in conflict with each other. At the head of the host of good spirits, in the Zoroastrian creed, was Ormuzd, the creator, and the god of light; at the head of the evil host, was Ahriman, the god of darkness. The one made the world good, the other laid in it all that is evil. The one is disposed to bless man, the other to do him harm. The conflict of virtue and vice in man is a contest for control on the part of these antagonistic powers. In order to keep off the spirits of evil, one must avoid what is morally or ceremonially unclean. He who lived pure, went up at death to the spirits of light. The evil soul departed to consort with evil spirits in the region of darkness. Mithra, the sun-god in the Zoroastrian system, is the equal, though the creature, of Ormuzd. Mithra is the conqueror of darkness, and so the enemy of falsehood. The Medes and Persians were fire-worshipers. To the good spirits, they ascribed life, the fruitful earth, the refreshing waters, fountains and rivers, the tilled ground, pastures and trees, the lustrous metals, also truth and the pure deed. To the evil spirits belonged darkness, disease, death, the desert, cold, filth, sin, and falsehood. The animals were divided between the two realms. All that live in holes, all that hurt the trees and the crops, rats and mice, reptiles of all sorts, turtles, lizards, vermin, and noxious insects, were hateful creatures of Ahriman. To kill any of these was a merit. The dog was held sacred; as was also the cock, who announces the break of day. In the system of worship, sacrifices were less prominent than in India. Prayers, and the iteration of prayers, were of great moment.
THE MAGI.—The Zoroastrian religion was not the same at all times and in every place. The primitive Iranian emigrants were monotheistic in their tendencies. In their western abodes, they came into contact with worshipers of the elements,—fire, air, earth, and water. It is thought by many scholars, that the Magian system, with its more defined dualism and sacerdotal sway, was ingrafted on the native religion of the Iranians through the influence of tribes with whom they mingled in Media. The Magi, according to one account, were charged by Darius with corrupting the Zoroastrian faith and worship. Whatever may have been their origin, they became the leaders in worship, and privy-counselors to the sovereign. They were likewise astrologers, and interpreters of dreams. They were not so distinct a class as the priests in India. A hereditary order, they might still bring new members into their ranks. From the Medes, they were introduced among the Persians.
PERSIAN RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS.—Peculiar customs existed among the Medes in disposing of the dead. They were not to be cast into the fire or the water, or buried in the earth, for this would bring pollution to what was sacred; but their bodies were to be exposed in the high rocks, where the beasts and birds could devour them. Sacrifices were offered on hill-tops. Salutations of homage were made to the rising sun. On some occasions, boys were buried alive, as an offering to the divinities. In early times, there were no images of the gods. As far as they were introduced in later times, it was through the influence of surrounding nations. In the supremacy and the final victory, which, in the later form of Zoroastrianism, were accorded to Ormuzd, there was again an approach to monotheism. Hostility to deception of all sorts, and thus to stealing, was a Persian trait. Herodotus says that the Persians taught their children to ride, to shoot the bow, and to speak the truth. To prize the pursuits of agriculture and horticulture, was a part of their religion. They allowed a plurality of wives, and concubines with them; but there was one wife to whom precedence belonged. Voluntary celibacy in man or woman was counted a flagrant sin.
HISTORY.—The first authentic notice that we have of the MEDES shows them under Assyrian power. This is in the time of Shalmaneser II., 840 B.C. Their rise is coincident with the fall of Assyria. Phraortes (647-625 B.C.) began the Median struggle for independence; although the name of Deioces is given by Herodotus as a previous king, and the builder of Ecbatana the capital. It was reserved for Cyaxares (625-585 B.C.), having delivered his land from the Scythian marauders (p. 47), to complete, in conjunction with the Babylonian king, Nabopolassar, the work of breaking down the Assyrian empire (p. 48). He brought under his rule the Bactrians, and the Persians about Pasargadæ and Persepolis, and made the Halys, dividing Asia Minor, the limit of his kingdom. His effeminate son, Astyages, lost what his father had won. The Persian branch of the Iranians gained the supremacy. Cyrus, the leader of the Persian revolt, by whom Astyages was defeated, is described as related to him; but this story, as well as the account of his being rescued from death and brought up among shepherds, is probably a fiction.
CYRUS.—In the sixth century B.C., this famous ruler and conqueror became the founder of an empire which comprised nearly all the civilized nations of Asia. During his reign of thirty years (559-530 B.C.), he annexed to his kingdom the two principal states, LYDIA and BABYLON. The king of Lydia was Croesus, whose story, embellished with romantic details, was long familiar as a signal example of the mutations of fortune. Doomed to be burned after the capture of Sardis, his capital, he was heard, just when the fire was to be kindled, to say something about Solon. In answer to the inquiry of Cyrus, whose curiosity was excited, he related how that Grecian sage, after beholding his treasures, had refused to call him the most fortunate of men, on the ground that "no man can be called happy before his death," because none can tell what disasters may befall him. Cyrus, according to the narrative, touched by the tale, delivered Croesus from death, and thereafter bestowed on him honor and confidence.
There is another form of the tradition, which is deemed by some more probable. Croesus is said to have stood on a pyre, intending to offer himself in the flames, to propitiate the god Sandon, that his people might be saved from destruction; but he was prevented, it is said, by unfavorable auguries.
The subjection of the Greek colonies on the Asia-Minor coast followed upon the subjugation of Lydia. From these colonies, the Phocoeans went forth, and founded Elea in Lower Italy, and Massilia (Marseilles) in Gaul. The Asian Greek cities were each allowed its own municipal rulers, but paid tribute to the Persian master. The conquest of Babylon (538 B.C.), as it opened the way for the return to Jerusalem of the Jewish exiles, enabled Cyrus to establish a friendly people in Judaea, as a help in fortifying his sway in Syria, and in opening a path to Egypt. But in 529 he lost his life in a war which he was waging against the Massagetae, a tribe on the Caspian, allied in blood to the Scythians.
There was a tradition that the barbarian queen, Tomyris, enraged that Cyrus had overcome her son by deceit, dipped the slain king's head in a skin-bag of blood, exclaiming, "Drink thy fill of blood, of which thou couldst not have enough in thy lifetime!"
CAMBYSES.—The successor of Cyrus, a man not less warlike than he, but more violent in his passions, reigned but seven years (529-522 B.C.). His most conspicuous achievement was the conquest of EGYPT. One ground or pretext of his hostility, according to the tale of Herodotus, was the fact that Amasis, the predecessor of Psammeticus III., not daring to refuse the demand of his daughter as a wife, to be second in rank to the Persian queen, had fraudulently sent, either to Cambyses, or, before his time, to Cyrus, Nitetis, the daughter of the king who preceded him, Apries. Defeated at Pelusium, and compelled to yield up Memphis after a siege, it is said that Psammeticus, the Psammenitus of Herodotus, the unfortunate successor of the powerful Pharaohs, was obliged to look on the spectacle of his daughters in the garb of working-women, bearing water, and to see his sons, with the principal young nobles, ordered to execution. But this tale lacks confirmation. His cruelties were probably of a later date, and were provoked by the chagrin he felt, and the satisfaction manifested by the people, at the failure of great expeditions which he sent southward for the conquest of Meroe, and westward against the Oasis of Ammon. His armies perished in the Lybian deserts. Even the story of his stabbing the sacred steer (Apis), after these events, although it may be true, is not sanctioned by the Egyptian inscriptions. His attack upon Ammon probably arose, in part at least, from a desire to possess himself of whatever lay between Egypt and the Carthaginian territory. But the Phoenician sailors who manned his fleet refused to sail against their brethren in Carthage. Cambyses assumed the title and character of an Egyptian sovereign. The story of his madness is an invention of the Egyptian priests.
DARIUS (521-485 B.C.).—For a short time, a pretender, a Magian, who called himself Smerdis, and professed to be the brother of Cambyses, usurped the throne. Cambyses is said to have put an end to his own life. After a reign of seven months, during which he kept himself for the most part hidden from view, Smerdis was destroyed by a rising of the leading Persian families. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, of the royal race of the Achaemenidae, succeeded. He married Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus. The countries which composed an Oriental empire were so loosely held together that the death of a despot or the change of a dynasty was very likely to call forth a general insurrection. Darius showed his military prowess in conquering anew various countries, including Babylon, which had revolted. He made Arabia tributary, and spread the bounds of his vast empire as far as India and in North Africa. A mighty expedition which he organized against the Scythians on the Lower Danube failed of the results that were hoped from it. The barbarians wasted their own fields, filled up their wells, drove off their cattle, and fled as the army of Darius advanced. He returned, however, with the bulk of his army intact, although with a loss of prestige, and enrolled "the Scyths beyond the sea" among the subjects of his empire. His armies conquered the tribes of Thrace, so that he pushed his boundaries to the frontiers of Macedonia. The rebellion of the Greek cities on the Asia-Minor coast he suppressed, and harshly avenged. Of his further conflicts with the Greeks on the mainland, more is to be said hereafter. He had built Persepolis, but his principal seat of government appears to have been Susa. He did a great work in organizing his imperial system. The division into satrapies—large districts, each under a satrap, or viceroy—was a part of this work. He thus introduced a more efficient and methodical administration into his empire,—an empire four times as large as the empire of Assyria, which it had swallowed up.
GOVERNMENT.—Persia proper corresponded nearly to the modern province of Farsistan or Fars. The Persian Empire stretched from east to west for a distance of about three thousand miles, and was from five hundred to fifteen hundred miles in width. It was more than half as large as modern Europe. It comprised not less than two millions of square miles. Its population under Darius may have been seventy or eighty millions. He brought in uniformity of administration. In each satrapy, besides the satrap himself, who was a despot within his own dominion, there was at first a commander of the troops, and a secretary, whose business it was to make reports to the GREAT KING. These three officers were really watchmen over one another. It was through spies ("eyes" and "ears") of the king that he was kept informed of what was taking place in every part of the empire. At length it was found necessary to give the satraps the command of the troops, which took away one important check upon their power. There was a regular system of taxation, but to this were added extraordinary and oppressive levies. Darius introduced a uniform coinage. The name of the coin, "daric," is probably not derived from his name, however. Notwithstanding the government by satraps, local laws and usages were left, to a large extent, undisturbed. Great roads, and postal communication for the exclusive use of the government, connected the capital with the distant provinces. In this point the Persians set an example which was followed by the Romans. From Susa to Sardis, a distance of about seventeen hundred English miles, stretched a road, along which, at proper intervals, were caravansaries, and over which the fleet couriers of the king rode in six or seven days. The king was an absolute lord and master, who disposed of the lives and property of his subjects without restraint. To him the most servile homage was paid. He lived mostly in seclusion in his palace. On great occasions he sat at banquet with his nobles. His throne was made of gold, silver, and ivory. All who approached him kissed the earth. His ordinary dress was probably of the richest silk. He took his meals mostly by himself. His fare was made up of the choicest delicacies. His seraglio, guarded by eunuchs, contained a multitude of inmates, brought together by his arbitrary command, over whom, in a certain way, the queen-mother presided. His chief diversions were playing at dice within doors, and hunting without. Paradises, or parks, walled in, planted with trees and shrubbery, and furnished with refreshing fountains and streams, were his hunting-ground. Such inclosures were the delight of all Persians. In war he was attended with various officers in close attendance on his person,—the stool-bearer, the bow-bearer, etc. In peace, there was another set, among whom was "the parasol-bearer,"—for to be sheltered by the parasol was an exclusive privilege of the king,—the fan-bearer, etc. There were certain privileged families,—six besides the royal clan of the Achæmenidæ, the chiefs of all of which were his counselors, and from whom he was bound to choose his legitimate wives. When the monarch traveled, even on military expeditions, he was accompanied by the whole varied apparatus of luxury which ministered to his pleasures in the court,—costly furniture, a vast retinue of attendants, of inmates of the harem, etc.
ARMY AND NAVY.—The arms of the footman were a sword, a spear, and a bow. Persian bowmen were skillful. Persian cavalry, both heavy and light, were their most effective arm. The military leaders depended on the celerity of their horsemen and the weight of their numbers. It is doubtful whether they employed military engines. They were not wholly ignorant of strategy. Their troops were marshaled by nations, each in its own costume, the commander of the whole being in the center of the line of battle. The body-guard of the king was "the Immortals," a body of ten thousand picked footmen, the number being always kept intact. The enemies of the Persians, except in the case of rebels, were not treated with inhumanity. In this regard the Persians are in marked contrast with the Semitic ferocity of the Assyrians. Their navies were drawn from the subject-peoples. The trireme, with its projecting prow shod with iron, and its crew of two hundred men, was the principal, but not the only vessel used in sea-fights.
LITERATURE AND ART.—A Persian youth was ordinarily taught to read, but there was little intellectual culture. Boys were trained in athletic exercises. It was a discipline in hardy and temperate habits. Etiquette, in all ranks of the people, was highly esteemed. The Persians, as a nation, were bright-minded, and not deficient in fancy and imagination. But they contributed little to science. Their religious ideas were an heirloom from remote ancestors. The celebrated Persian poet, Firdousí, lived in the tenth century of our era. His great poem, the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, is a storehouse of ancient traditions. It is probable that the ancient poetry of the Persians, like this production, was of moderate merit. Of the Persian architecture and sculpture, we derive our knowledge from the massive ruins of Persepolis, which was burned by Alexander the Great, and from the remains of other cities. They had learned from Assyria and Babylon, but they display no high degree of artistic talent. They were not an intellectual people: they were soldiers and rulers.
LITERATURE—Works mentioned on pp 16, 42; Encycl. Brit., Art. Persia; Vaux, Persia from the Monuments (1876); Nöldeke, Aufsdtze zur persischen Geschichte (1887); Justi, Geschichte trans (1900); Markham, General Sketch of the History of Persia (1874).
In Eastern Asia the Chinese nation was built up, the principal achievement of the Mongolian race. Its influence was restricted to neighboring peoples of kindred blood. Its civilization, having once attained to a certain stage of progress, remained for the most part stationary. China, in its isolation, exerted no power upon the general course of history. Not until a late age, when the civilization of the Caucasian race should be developed, was the culture of China to produce, in the mingling of the European and Asiatic peoples, its full fruits, even for China herself. India—although the home of a Caucasian immigrant people, a people of the Aryan family too—was cut off by special causes from playing an effective part, either actively or passively, in the general historic movement.
Egypt, from 1500 to 1300 B.C., was the leading community of the ancient world. But civilization in Egypt, at an early date, crystallized in an unchanging form. The aim was to preserve unaltered what the past had brought out. The bandaged mummy, the result of the effort to preserve even the material body of man for all future time, is a type of the leaden conservatism which pervaded Egyptian life. The pre-eminence of Egypt was lost by the rise of the Semitic states to increasing power. Semitic arms and culture were in the ascendant for six centuries (1300 to 700 B.C.). Babylonia shares with Egypt the distinction of being one of the two chief fountains of culture. From Babylonia, astronomy, writing, and other useful arts were disseminated among the other Semitic peoples. It was a strong state even before 2000 B.C. Babylon was a hive of industry, and was active in trade, a link of intercourse between the East and the West. But this function of an intermediate was discharged still more effectively by the Phoenicians, the first great commercial and naval power of antiquity. Tyre reached the acme of its prosperity under Hiram, the contemporary of Solomon, about 1000 B.C. Meantime, among the Hebrew people, the foundations of the true religion had been laid,—that religion of monotheism which in future ages was to leaven the nations. Contemporaneously, the Assyrian Monarchy was rising to importance on the banks of the Tigris. The appearance, "in the first half of the ninth century B.C., of a power advancing from the heart of Asia towards the West, is an event of immeasurable importance in the history of the world." The Israelites were divided. About the middle of the eighth century B.C., both of their kingdoms lost their independence. Assyria was vigorous in war, but had no deep foundation of national life. "Its religion was not rooted in the soil, like that of Egypt, nor based on the observation of the sky and stars, like that of Babylon." "Its gods were gods of war, manifesting themselves in the prowess of ruling princes." The main instrument in effecting the downfall of Assyria was the Medo-Persian power. Through the Medes and Persians, the Aryan race comes forward into conspicuity and control. One branch of the Iranians of Bactria, entering India, through the agency of climate and other physical influences converted their religion into a mystical and speculative pantheism, and their social organization into a caste-system under the rule of a priesthood. The Medes and Persians, under other circumstances, in contact with tribes about them, turned their religion into a dualism, yet with a monotheistic drift that was not wholly extinguished. The conquest of Babylon by Cyrus annihilated Semitic power. The fall of Lydia, the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, and the victories of Darius, brought the world into subjection to Persian rule.
The dates of some of the most important historical events in this
Section are as follow
Menes, the first historic king of Egypt……. about 4000 B.C.
Accession of Ramses II. to the Egyptian throne…… 1340 B.C.
Rise of the Babylonian kingdom……………. about 4000 B.C.
Reign of Hiram at Tyre, and of Solomon…….. about 950 B.C.
Assyrian captivity: downfall of Israel…………… 722 B.C.
Fall of Nineveh……………………………….. 606 B.C.
Babylonian captivity: downfall of Judah………….. 586 B.C.
Reign of Cyrus begins………………………….. 559 B.C.
Fall of Lydia: capture of Sardis………………… 546 B.C.
Fall of Babylon……………………………….. 538 B.C.
Reign of Darius begins…………………………. 521 B.C.
BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION.—In the history of Western Asia we discern the beginnings of civilization and of the true religion. In the room of useless and destructive tribal warfare, great numbers are banded together under despotic rule. CITIES were built, where property and life could be protected, and within whose massive walls of vast circumference the useful arts and the rudiments of science could spring up. Trade and commerce, by land and sea, naturally followed. Thus nations came to know one another. Aggressive war and subjugation had a part in the same result. The power of the peoples of western Asia, the guardians of infant civilization, availed to keep back the hordes of barbarians on the north, or, as in the case of the great Scythian invasion (p. 47), to drive them back to their own abodes.
DEFECTS OF ASIATIC CIVILIZATION.—But the civilization of the Asiatic empires had radical and fatal defects. The development of human nature was in some one direction, to the exclusion of other forms of human activity. As to knowledge, it was confined within a limit beyond which progress was slow. The geometry of Egypt and the astronomy of Babylon remained where the necessity of the pyramid-builders and the superstition of the astrologers had carried them. Even the art of war was in a rudimental stage. In battle, huge multitudes were precipitated upon one another. There are some evidences of strategy, when we reach the campaigns of Cyrus. But war was full of barbarities,—the destruction of cities, the expatriation of masses of people, the pitiless treatment of captives. Architecture exhibits magnitude without elegance. Temples, palaces, and tombs are monuments of labor rather than creations of art. They impress oftener by their size than by their beauty. Statuary is inert and massive, and appears inseparable from the buildings to which it is attached. Literature, with the exception of the Hebrew, is hardly less monotonous than art. The religion of the Semitic nations, the Hebrews excepted, so far from containing in it a purifying element, tended to degrade its votaries by feeding the flame of sensual and revengeful passion. What but debasement could come from the worship of Astarte and the Phoenician El?
The great empires did not assimilate the nations which they comprised. They were bound, but not in the least fused, together. Persia went farther than any other empire in creating a uniform administration, but even the Persian Empire remained a conglomerate of distinct peoples.
ORIENTAL GOVERNMENT.—The government of the Oriental nations was a despotism. It was not a government of laws, but the will of the one master was omnipotent. The counterpart of tyranny in the ruler was cringing, abject servility in the subject. Humanity could not thrive, man could not grow to his full stature, under such a system. It was on the soil of Europe and among the Greeks that a better type of manhood and a true idea of liberty were to spring up.
PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.—The Alps, continued on the west by the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountains, and carried eastward to the Black Sea by the Balkan range, form an irregular line, that separates the three peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and Greece from the great plain of central Europe. On the north of this plain, there is a corresponding system of peninsulas and islands, where the Baltic answers in a measure to the Mediterranean. This midland sea, which at once unites and separates the three continents, is connected with the Atlantic by the narrow Strait of Gibraltar, and on the east is continued in the Aegean Sea, or the Archipelago, which leads into the Hellespont, or the Strait of the Dardanelles, thence onward into the Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, and through the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, and the Sea of Azoff beyond. From the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean the Mediterranean is parted by a space which is now traversed by a canal. The irregularity of the coast-line is one of the characteristic features of the European continent. Especially are the northern shores of the Mediterranean indented by arms of the sea; and this, along with the numerous islands, marks out the whole region as remarkably adapted to maritime life and commercial intercourse.
ITS INHABITANTS.—Europe was early inhabited by branches of the Aryan race. The cradle or primitive seat of the Aryan family —from which its two main divisions, the European and the Asiatic, went forth—is not known. It is a matter of theory and debate. We find the Graeco-Latin peoples on the south, the more central nations of Celtic speech, the more northern Teutons, and in the north-east the Slavonians. But how all these Aryan branches are mutually related, and of the order and path of their prehistoric migrations, little is definitely known. The Celts were evidently preceded by non-Aryan inhabitants, of whom the Basques in Spain and France are a relic. The Celtiberians in Spain, as the name implies, were a mixture of the Celts with the native non-Aryan Iberians. The Greeks and the Italians had a common ancestry, as we know by their languages; but of that common ancestry neither Greeks nor Latins in the historic period retained any recollection; nor can we safely affirm, that, of that earlier stock, they alone were the offspring.
"All the known Indo-European languages," writes Professor Whitney, "are descended from a single dialect, which must have been spoken at some time in the past by a single limited community, by the spread and emigration of which—not, certainly, without incorporating also bodies of other races than that to which itself belonged by origin—it has reached its present wide distribution." "Of course, it would be a matter of the highest interest to determine the place and period of this important community, were there any means of doing so; but that is not the case, at least at present." "The condition of these languages is reconcilable with any possible theory as to the original site of the family." "One point is established, that 'the separation of the five European branches must have been later than their common separation from the two Asiatic branches,' the Iranians and Indians." (Whitney's The Life and Growth of Language, pp. 191, 193.)
THE LAND.—"Greeks" is not a name which the people who bore it applied to themselves. It was a name given them by their kinsfolk, the Romans. They called themselves Hellenes, and their land they called Hellas. Hellas, or Greece proper, included the southern portion of the peninsula of which it is a part, the portion bounded on the north by Olympus and the Cambunian Mountains, and extending south to the Mediterranean. Its shores were washed on the east by the Aegean, on the west by the Adriatic, or Ionian Gulf. The length of Hellas was about two hundred and fifty English miles: its greatest width, measured on the northern frontier, or from Attica on a line westward, was about a hundred and eighty miles. It is somewhat smaller than Portugal.
Along its coast are many deep bays. Long and narrow promontories run out into the sea. Thus a great length is given to the sea-coast, which abounds in commodious harbors. The tideless waters are safe for navigators. Scattered within easy distance of the shore are numerous islands of great fertility and beauty. So high and rugged are the mountains that communication between different places is commonly easier by water than by land. A branch of the Alps at the forty-second parallel of latitude turns to the south-east, and descends to Toenarum, the southern promontory. On either side, lateral branches are sent off, at short intervals, to the east and the west. From these in turn, branches, especially on the east, are thrown out in the same direction as the main ridge; that is, from north to south. Little room is left for plains of much extent. Thessaly, with its single river, the Peneus, was such a plain. There were no navigable rivers. Most of the streams were nothing more than winter-torrents, whose beds were nearly or quite dry in the summer. They often groped their way to the sea through underground channels, either beneath lakes or in passages which the streams themselves bored through limestone. The physical features of the country fitted it for the development of small states, distinct from one another, yet, owing especially to the relations of the land to the sea, full of life and movement.
THE GRECIAN STATES.—The territory of Greece included (1) Northern Greece, comprising all north of the Malian (Zeitoum) and Ambracian (Arta) gulfs; (2) Central Greece, extending thence to the Gulf of Corinth; (3) the peninsula of Peloponnesus (Morea) to the south of the isthmus. The country was occupied, in the flourishing days of Greece, by not less than seventeen states.
Northern Greece contained two principal countries, Thessaly and Epirus, separated from one another by the Pindus. Thessaly was the largest and most fertile of the Grecian states. The Peneus, into which poured the mountain streams, passed to the sea through a narrow gorge, the famous Vale of Tempe. In the mountainous region of Epirus were numerous streams flowing through the valleys. Within it was the ancient Dodona, the seat of the oracle. Magnesia, east of Thessaly, on the coast, comprised within it the two ranges of Ossa and Pelion. Central Greece contained eleven states. Malis had on its eastern edge the pass of Thermopylae. In Phocis, on the southern slope of Mount Parnassus, was Delphi. Boeotia was distinguished for the number and size of its cities, the chief of which was Thebes. Attica projected from Boeotia to the south-east, its length being seventy miles, and its greatest width thirty miles. Its area was only about seven hundred and twenty square miles. It was thus only a little more than half as large as the State of Rhode Island, which has an area of thirteen hundred and six square miles. Its only important town was Athens. Its rivers, the Ilissus and the two Cephissusses, were nothing more than torrent courses. In Southern Greece were eleven countries. The territory of Corinth embraced most of the isthmus, and a large tract in Peloponnesus. It had but one considerable city, Corinth, which had two ports,—one on the Corinthian Gulf, Lechoeum, and the other on the Saronic Gulf, Cenchreae. Arcadia, the central mountain country, has been called the Switzerland of Peloponnesus. It comprised numerous important towns, as Mantinea, Orchomenus, and, in later times, Megalopolis. In the south-east was Laconia, with an area of about nineteen hundred square miles. It consisted mainly of the valley of the Eurotas, which lay between the lofty mountain ranges of Parnon and Taygetus. "Hollow Lacedaemon" was a phrase descriptive of its situation. Sparta, the capital, was on the Eurotas, twenty miles from the sea. It had no other important city. Argolis, projecting into the sea, eastward of Arcadia, had within it the ancient towns of Mycenae and Argos.
THE ISLANDS.—It must be remembered that the waters between Europe and Asia were not a separating barrier, but a close bond of connection. There is scarcely a single point "where, in clear weather, a mariner would feel himself left in a solitude between sky and water; the eye reaches from island to island, and easy voyages of a day lead from bay to bay." Greek towns, including very ancient places, were scattered along the western coast of Asia Minor, between the mountains and the shore. The Aegean was studded with Greek islands. These, together with the islands in the Ionian Sea, on the west, formed a part of Greek territory.
The principal island near Greece was Euboea, stretching for a hundred miles along the east coast of Attica, Boeotia, and Locris. On the opposite side of the peninsula, west of Epirus, was the smaller but yet large island of Corcyra (Corfu). On the west, besides, were Ithaca, Cephallenia, and Zacynthus (Zante); on the south, the Oenussae Islands and Cythera; on the east, Aegina, Salamis, etc. From the south-eastern shores of Euboea and Attica, the Cyclades and Sporades extended in a continuous series, "like a set of stepping-stones," across the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor. From Corcyra and the Acroceraunian promontory, one could descry, in clear weather, the Italian coast. These were all littoral islands. Besides these, there were other islands in the northern and central Aegean, such as Lemnos, Samothrace, Delos, Naxos, etc.; and in the southern Aegean, Crete, an island mountainous but fertile, a hundred and fifty miles in length from east to west, and about fifteen in breadth, and containing more than two thousand square miles. The Greek race was still more widely diffused through the settlements in and about the western Mediterranean.
THE BOND OF RACE.—The Greeks, or Hellenes, were not so much a nation as a united race. Politically divided, they were conscious of a fraternal bond that connected them, wherever they might be found, and parted them from the rest of mankind. Their sense of brotherhood is implied in the fabulous belief in a common ancestor named Hellen. Together with a fellowship in blood, there was a community in language, notwithstanding minor differences in dialect. Moreover, there was a common religion. They worshiped the same gods. They had the same ritual, and cherished in common the same beliefs respecting things supernatural. In connection with these ties of blood, of language, and of religion, they celebrated together great national festivals, like the Olympic games, in which Greeks from all parts of the world might take part, and into which they entered with a peculiar enthusiasm. As the Jews, following the impulses of a holier faith, went up to Jerusalem to celebrate as one family their sacred rites; so the Greeks repaired to hallowed shrines of Zeus or Apollo, assembling from afar on the plain of Olympia and at the foot of Parnassus.
Greek history embraces three general periods. The first is the formative period, and extends to the Persian wars, 500 B.C. The second period covers the flourishing era of Greece, from 500 B.C. to 359 B.C. The third is the Macedonian period, when the freedom of Greece was lost,—the era of Philip and Alexander, and of Alexander's successors.
PERIOD I. is divided into (1) the mythical or prehistoric age, extending to 776 B.C.; (2) the age of the formation of the principal states. PERIOD II. includes (1) the Persian wars, 502-479 B.C.; (2) the period of Athenian supremacy, 478-431 B.C.; (3) the Peloponnesian war, 431-404 B.C., with the Spartan, followed by the Theban ascendency, 404-362 B.C. PERIOD III. includes (1) the reigns of Philip and Alexander, 359-323 B.C.; (2) the kingdoms into which the empire of Alexander was divided.
ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS—Before the Hellenes parted from their Aryan ancestry, they had words for "father," "mother," "brother," "son," and "daughter," as well as for certain connections by marriage. They lived in houses, pastured flocks and herds, possessed dogs and horses. They had for weapons, the sword and the bow. "They knew how to work gold, silver, and copper; they could count up to a hundred; they reckoned time by the lunar month; they spoke of the sky as the 'heaven-father.'" The differences between the Greek and the Latin languages prove, also, that the Greeks and Italians, after their common progenitors broke off from the primitive Aryan stock, had long dwelt apart. The Greeks, when they first become known to us in historical times, consist of two great branches, the Dorians and Ionians, together with a less distinct branch, the Aeolians, which differs less, perhaps, from the parent Hellenes than do the two divisions just named.
It is a probable opinion of scholars, that the halting-place of the Hellenes, whence, in successive waves, they passed over into Greece, was Phrygia, in the north-west of Asia Minor. Preceding the Greeks both in northern Greece and in Peloponnesus, and spread over the coasts and islands of the Archipelago, was a people of whom they had an indistinct knowledge, whom they called Pelasgians. They were husbandmen or herdsmen. Their national sanctuary was at Dodona, in Epirus. The "Cyclopean" ruins, composed of huge polygonal blocks of stone, which they left behind in various places, are the remnant of their walls and fortifications. The Greeks looked back on these Pelasgian predecessors as different from themselves. Yet no reminiscences existed of any hostility towards them. It is plausibly conjectured that this prehistoric people were emigrants from the region of Phrygia at a more ancient date, and that the Hellenes, a more energetic and gifted branch of the same stock, followed them, and, without force or conflict, became the founders and leaders of a new historic movement, in which the Pelasgians disappeared from view. In this second migration, the ancestors of the Ionians went down from Phrygia to the coast of Asia Minor, and began the career which made them a maritime and commercial people. The Dorians crossed over to the highlands of northern Greece, where they became hardy mountaineers, not addicted to the sea. The one tribe were to be eventually the founders of Athens; the other, of Sparta. Besides these two main tribes, the Aeolians occupied Thessaly, Boeotia, Aetolia, and other districts. To them the Achaeans, who were supreme in Peloponnesus in the days of Homer, were allied.
FOREIGN INFLUENCES.—Besides Phrygia, the legends of the Greeks bear traces of a foreign influence from Phoenicia and Egypt. The Phoenicians were unquestionably early connected with the Greeks, first by commercial visits to Greek ports, to which they brought foreign merchandise. The story of Cadmus, who is said to have founded Thebes, and to have brought in the Phoenician alphabet, is fabulous. But it is probable, that, as early as the close of the ninth century B.C., the alphabet was introduced by Phoenicians, and diffused over Greece. Another legend is that of Cecrops, conceived of later as an Egyptian, who is said to have built a citadel at Athens, and to have imported the seeds of civilization and religion. Danaus, another emigrant from Egypt, coming with his fifty daughters, is said to have built the citadel of Argos. In the later times, the Greeks were fond of tracing their knowledge of the arts to Egyptian sources. It is remarkable that the agents by whom germs of civilization were said to have been imported from abroad, though foreign, are nevertheless depicted as thoroughly Greek in their character. Whatever the Greeks may have owed to Egypt, it is probable was mainly derived from Ionians who had previously planted themselves in that country.
THE DORIAN EMIGRATION.—It was in the prehistoric time that the Dorians left their homes in northern Greece, and migrated into Peloponnesus, where they proved themselves stronger than the Ionians and the Achaeans dwelling there. They left the Achaeans on the south coast of the Corinthian Gulf, in the district called Achaia. Nor did they conquer Arcadia. But of most of Peloponnesus they became masters. This is the portion of historic truth contained in the myth of the Return of the Heraclidae, the descendants of Hercules, to the old kingdom of their ancestor.
MIGRATIONS TO ASIA MINOR.—The Dorian conquest is said to have been the cause of three distinct migrations to Asia Minor. The Achaeans, with their Aeolic kinsmen on the north, established themselves on the north-west coast of Asia Minor, Lesbos and Cyme being their strongholds, and by degrees got control in Mysia and the Troad. Ionic emigrants from Attica joined their brethren on the same coast. The Dorians settled on the south-west coast; they also settled Cos and Rhodes, and at length subdued Crete. The Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, and the migrations just spoken of, were slow in their progress, and possibly stretched over centuries.
CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.—Originality is a distinguishing trait of the Greeks. Whatever they borrowed from others they made their own, and reproduced in a form peculiar to themselves. They were never servile copyists. All the products of the Greek mind, whether in government, art, literature, or in whatever province of human activity, wear a peculiar stamp. When we leave Asiatic ground, and come into contact with the Greeks, we find ourselves in another atmosphere. A spirit of humanity, in the broad sense of the term, pervades their life. A regard for reason, a sense of order, a disposition to keep every thing within measure, is a marked characteristic. Their sense of form—including a perception of beauty, and of harmony and proportion—made them in politics and letters the leaders of mankind. "Do nothing in excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all is power and life." The great variety of the spiritual gifts of this people, the severest formulas of science, the loftiest flights of imagination, the keenest play of wit and humor, were capable of precise and effective expression in this language "as in ductile play." The use of the language, so lucid and so nice in its discriminations, was itself an education for the young who grew up to hear it and to speak it. In a genial yet invigorating climate, in a land where breezes from the mountain and the sea were mingled, the versatile Greeks produced by physical training that vigor and grace of body which they so much admired; and they developed the civil polity, the artistic discernment, and the complex social life, which made them the principal source of modern culture. Their moral traits are not so admirable. As a race they were less truthful, and less marked for their courage and loyalty, than some other peoples below them in intellect.
RELIGION.—In the early days, when Greece was open to foreign influences, the simple religion of the Aryan fathers was enlarged by new elements from abroad. The Tyrian deity, Melkart, appears at Corinth as Melicertes. Astarte becomes Aphrodite (Venus), who springs from the sea. The myth of Dionysus and the worship of Demeter (Ceres) may be of foreign origin. Poseidon (Neptune), the god of the sea, and Apollo, the god of light and of healing, whose worship carried in it cheer and comfort, though they were brought into Greece, were previously known to the lonians. By Homer and Hesiod, the great poets of the prehistoric age, the gods in these successive dynasties, their offices and mutual relations, were depicted. In Hesiod they stand in a connected scheme or theogony.
1. There are the twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, who were named by the Greeks,—Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Arês, Hêphaestos, Hermês, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hestia, Dêmêtêr. 2. Numerous other divinities, not included among the Olympic, but some not less important than the twelve. Such are Hadês, Hêlíos, Dionysus, the Charites, the Muses, the Nereids, the Nymphs, etc. 3. Deities who perform special service to the greater gods,—Iris, Hêbe, the Horae;, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is less distinct,—Atê, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, etc. 5. Monsters, progeny of the gods,—the Harpies, the Gorgons, Pegasus, Chimaera, Cerberus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx. Below the gods are the demigods or heroes.
LEGENDS OF HEROES.—The space which precedes the beginning of authentic records, the Greeks filled up with mythical tales, in which gods and heroes are the central figures. The heroes are partly of divine parentage. They are in near intercourse with the deities. Their deeds are superhuman, and embody those ideals of character and of achievement which the early Greeks cherished. The production of a lively imagination, before the dawn of the critical faculty or the growth of reflection, these tales may yet include a nucleus of historical incident or vague reminiscences of historical relations and changes. To attempt to extract these from the fictitious form in which they are embodied, is for the most part hopeless.
The exploits of Heracles (Hercules) have a prominent place in the legends. This hero of Argos submitted to serve a cruel tyrant, but, by prodigious labors (twelve in number), delivered men from dangerous beasts,—the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, etc.,—and performed other miraculous services. Theseus, the national hero of Attica, cleared the roads of savage robbers, and delivered his country from bondage. Minos, the mythical legislator of Crete, cleared the sea of pirates, and founded a maritime state. Of the legendary stories, three of the most famous are The Seven against Thebes The Argonautic Expedition, and The Trojan War. I. Laius, king of Thebes, was told by an oracle that he should be killed by his son. He exposed him, therefore, as soon as he was born, on Mount Cithaeron. Saved by a herdsman, Oedipus was brought up by Polybus, king of Corinth, as his own son. Warned by the oracle that he should kill his father, and marry his mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pass, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen Jocaste had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and daughters had grown up, a pestilence broke out; and the oracle demanded that the murderer of Laius should be banished. Oedipus, in spite of the warnings of the blind priest, Tiresias, finds out the truth. He puts out his eyes, and is driven into exile by his sons, whom he curses. Under the guidance of his daughter Antigone, he finds a resting-place at Colonus, a suburb of Athens, in a grove of the Eumenides, whose function it was to avenge such crimes as his. He received expiation at the hands of Theseus, and died in a calm and peaceful way. This legend was the basis of some of the finest of the Greek dramas, "Oedipus Tyrannus," and the "Oedipus at Colonus" of Sophocles, and "The Seven against Thebes" of Aeschylus. The curse of Oedipus still rested on his sons. The story of Antigone, defying the tyrant Creon, and burying her slain brother, Polynices, is the foundation of the drama of Sophocles, bearing her name. Finally, the Epigoni, descendants of the Seven who had fought Thebes, captured and destroyed that city.
2. Argonauts were described as a band of heroes, who, through perilous and unknown seas, sailed from Iolcos in Thessaly, in the ship "Argo," to Colchis, whence they brought away the golden fleece which had been stolen, and which they found nailed to an oak, and guarded by a sleepless dragon. Jason, the leader, was accompanied on his return by the enchantress, Medea, who had aided him. She, in order to delay their pursuers, killed her brother Absyrtus, and threw his body, piece by piece, into the sea. Her subsequent story involves various other tragic events.
3. The most noted of the legends is the story of the Trojan war. The deeds of the heroes of this war are the subject of the Iliad. Paris, son of Priam, king of Ilios (Troy), in Asia Minor, carried off Helen, the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta. To recover her, the Greeks united in an expedition against Troy, which they took after a siege of ten years. Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses), Ajax son of Telamon, and Ajax son of Oileus, Diomedes, and Nestor were among the chiefs on the Greek side. Troy had its allies. The "Odyssey" relates to the long journey of Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, his home. That there was an ancient city, Troy, is certain. A conflict between the Greeks and a kindred people there, is probable. Not unlikely, there was a military expedition of Grecian tribes. Every thing beyond this is either plainly myth, or incapable of verification.
UNIONS OF TRIBES.—During the period when the Greek population was dispersing itself in the districts which its different fractions occupied in the historic ages, there arose unions among tribes near one another, for religious purposes. They preceded treaties and alliances of the ordinary kind. Such tribes agreed to celebrate, in common, certain solemn festivals. Deputies of these tribes met at stated intervals to look after the temple and the lands pertaining to it. Out of these unions, there grew stipulations relative to the mode of conducting war and other matters of common interest. Treaties of peace and of mutual defense might follow. Thus arose combinations of states, in which one state, the strongest, would have the hegemony, or lead. This became an established characteristic of Greek political life. It was a system of federal unions under the headship of the most powerful member of the confederacy. When such a union was formed, it established a common worship or festival.
THE DELPHIC AMPHICTYONY.—In the north of Greece, there was formed, in early times, a great religious union. It was composed of twelve tribes banded together for the worship of Apollo at Delphi, and to guard his temple. It was called the Delphic Amphictyony, or "League of Neighbors." The members of this body agreed not to destroy one another's towns in war, and not to cut off running water from a town which they were besieging.
THE DELPHIC ORACLE.—The sanctuary at Delphi, where the Amphictyonic Council met, became the most famous temple in Greece. Here the oracle of Apollo gave answers to those who came to consult that divinity. The priests who managed the temple kept themselves well informed in regard to occurrences in distant places. Their answers were often discreet and wholesome, but not unfrequently obscure and ambiguous, and thus misleading. In early times their moral influence in the nation promoted justice and fraternal feeling. In later times they lost their reputation for honesty and impartiality. In civil wars the priests were sometimes bribed to support one of the contending parties.
THE HOMERIC POEMS.—Within the last century, there has been much discussion about the authorship of the two poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. The place where they were composed, whether among the Ionians in Greece proper or in Asia Minor, is still a matter of debate. It was probably Asia Minor. Seven places contended for the honor of having given birth to the blind bard. But nothing is known of Homer's birthplace or history. It is doubtful whether the art of writing was much, if at all, in use among the Greeks at the time of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey. We know that the custom existed of repeating poems orally by minstrels or rhapsodists at popular festivals. This may have been the mode in which for a time the Homeric poems were preserved and transmitted. The Odyssey has more unity than the Iliad, and seems to be of a somewhat later date. The nucleus of the Iliad is thought by some scholars to be embedded in the group of poems which, it is supposed, constitute the work at present; but there is no evidence making it possible to identify any portion as the work of Homer. Whatever may be the truth on these questions, the Iliad and Odyssey present an invaluable picture of Greek life in the period when they were composed, which was probably as early as 900 B.C.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE HOMERIC AGE.—(1) Government. In the Homeric portraiture of Greek life, there are towns; but the tribe is predominant over the town. The tribe is ruled by a king, who is not like an Eastern despot, but has about him a council of chiefs, and is bound by the themistes, the traditional customs. There is, besides, the agora, or popular assembly, where debates take place among the chiefs, and to which their decisions, or rather the decision of the king, on whom it devolves finally to determine every thing, are communicated. Public speaking, it is seen, is practiced in the infancy of Greek society. (2) Customs. People live in hill-villages, surrounded by walls. Life is patriarchal, and, as regards the domestic circle, humane. Polygamy, the plague of Oriental society, does not exist. Women are held in high regard. Slavery is everywhere established. Side by side with piracy and constant war, and the supreme honor given to military prowess, there is a fine and bountiful hospitality which is held to be a religious duty. In the Homeric poems, there is often exhibited a noble refinement of thought and sentiment, and a gentle courtesy. (3) Arts and Industry. In war, the chariot is the engine: cavalry are unknown. The useful arts are in a rudimental stage. Spinning and weaving are the constant occupation of women. All garments are made at home: noble women join with their slaves in washing them in the river. The condition of the common freeman who took one temporary job after another, was miserable. Of the condition of those who pursued special occupations,—as the carpenter, the leather-dresser, the fisherman, etc.,—we have no adequate information. The principal metals were in use, and the art of forging them. There was no coined money: payment was made in oxen. But there is hereditary individual property in land, cultivated vineyards, temples of the gods, and splendid palaces of the chiefs. (4) Geographical Knowledge. In Homer, there is a knowledge of Greece, of the neighboring islands, and western Asia Minor. References to other lands are vague. The earth is a sort of flat oval, with the River Oceanus flowing round it. Hesiod is better informed about places: he knows something of the Nile and of the Scythians, and of some places as far west as Syracuse.
RELIGION IN THE HOMERIC AGE.—The Homeric poems give us a full idea of the early religious ideas and practices, (I) The Nature of the Gods.—The gods in Homer are human beings with greatly magnified powers. Their dwelling is in the sky above us: their special abode is Mount Olympus. They experience hunger, but feed on ambrosia and nectar. They travel with miraculous speed. Their prime blessing is exemption from mortality. Among themselves they are often discordant and deceitful. (2) Relation of the Gods to Men. They are the rulers and guides of nations. Though they act often from mere caprice or favoritism, their sway is, on the whole, promotive of justice. Zeus is supreme: none can contend with him successfully. The gods hold communication with men. They also make known their will and intentions by signs and portents,—such as thunder and lightning, or the sudden passing of a great bird of prey. They teach men through dreams. (3) Service of the Gods. Sacrifice and supplication are the chief forms of devotion. There is no dominant hierarchy. The temple has its priest, but the father is priest in his own household. (4) Morals and Religion. Morality is interwoven with religion. Above all, oaths are sacred, and oath-breakers abhorred by gods as well as by men. In the conduct of the divinities, there are found abundant examples of unbridled anger and savage retaliation. Yet gentle sentiments, counsels to forbearance and mercy, are not wanting. The wrath of the gods is most provoked by lawless self-assertion and insolence. (5) Propitiation: the Dead. The sense of sin leads to the appeasing of the deities by offerings, attended with prayer. The offerings are gifts to the god, tokens of the honor due to him. The dead live as flitting shadows in Hades. Achilles is made to say that he would rather be a miserable laborer on earth than to reign over all the dead in the abodes below.
GREEK LITERATURE.—The chief types, both of poetry and of prose, originated with the Greeks. Their writings are the fountainhead of the literature of Europe. They prized simplicity: they always had an intense disrelish for obscurity and bombast. The earliest poetry of the Greeks consisted of hymns to the gods. It was lyrical, an outpouring of personal feeling. The lyrical type was followed by the epic, where heroic deeds, or other events of thrilling interest, are the theme of song, and the personal emotion of the bard is out of sight through his absorption in the subject. Description flows on, the narrator himself being in the background. This epic poetry culminates in the Iliad and Odyssey (900-700 B.C.). Their verse is the hexameter. These poems move on in a swift current, yet without abruptness or monotony. They are marked by a simplicity and a nobleness, a refinement and a pathos, which have charmed all subsequent ages. Homer, far more than any other author, was the educator of the Greeks. There was a class called Homeridae, in Chios; but whether they were themselves poets, or reciters of Homer, or what else may have been their peculiar work, is not ascertained. There was, however, a class of Cyclic poets, who took up the legends of Troy, and carried out farther the Homeric tales. Hesiod was the founder of a more didactic sort of poetry. He is about a century later than the Iliad. Besides the Theogony, which treats of the origin of the gods and of nature, his Works and Days relates to the works which a farmer has to do, and the lucky or unlucky days for doing them. It contains doctrines and precepts relative to agriculture, navigation, civil and family life. Hesiod was the first of a Boeotian school of poets. He lacks the poetic genius of Homer, and the vivacity and cheerfulness which pervade the Iliad and the Odyssey.
ARISTOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.—The early kings were obeyed as much for their personal qualities, such as valor and strength of body, as for their hereditary title. By degrees the noble families about the king took control, and the kingship thus gave way to the rule of an aristocracy. The priestly office, which required special knowledge, remained in particular families, as the _Eumolpidae_e at Athens,—families to whom was ascribed the gift of the seer, and to whom were known the Eleusinian mysteries. The nobles were landholders, with dependent farmers who paid rent. The nobles held sway over tillers of the soil, artisans and seamen, who constituted the people (the "demos"), and who had no share in political power. This state of things continued until the lower class gained more property and more knowledge; and the example of the colonial settlements, where there was greater equality, re-acted on the parent state. The struggle of the lower ranks for freedom was of long continuance. In all Greek cities, there were Metoeci, or resident foreigners without political rights, and also slaves from abroad. Free-born Greeks busied themselves with occupations connected with the fine arts, or with trade and commerce on an extended scale. They commonly eschewed all other employments, and especially menial labor.
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE LYCURGUS.—According to the legend, disorders in Sparta following the Dorian conquest, and strife between the victors and the conquered, moved Lycurgus, a man of regal descent, to retire to Crete, where the old Dorian customs were still observed. On his return he gave to the citizens a constitution, which was held in reverence by the generations after him. To him, also, laws and customs which were really of later date, came to be ascribed. The Spartan population consisted (1) of the Spartiatæ, who had full rights, and those of less means,—both comprising the Dorian conquerors. They were divided into three Phylæ, or tribes, each composed of ten divisions (Obæ); (2) the Periæci, Achaeans who paid tribute on the land which they held, were bound to military service, but had no political rights; (3) the Helots, serfs of the State, who were divided among the Spartiatæ by lot, and cultivated their lands, paying to them a certain fraction of the harvest. The form of government established by Lycurgus was an aristocratic republic. The Council of Elders, twenty-eight in number, chosen for life by the Phylæ, were presided over by two hereditary kings, who had little power in time of peace, but unlimited command of the forces in war. The popular assembly, composed of all Spartiatæ of thirty years of age or upwards, could only decide questions without debate. Five Ephors, chosen yearly by the Phylæ, acquired more and more authority. Lycurgus is said to have divided the land into nine thousand equal lots for the families of the Spartiatæ, and thirty thousand for the Periceci. To keep down the helots required constant vigilance, and often occasioned measures of extreme cruelty. The Crypteia was an organized guard of young Spartans, whose business it was to prevent insurrection.
LAWS AND CUSTOMS.—The Spartan state was thus aristocratic and military. It took into its own hands the education of the young. Weak and deformed children were left to perish in a ravine of Taygetus, or thrust down among the Periceci. Healthy children at the age of seven were taken from their homes, to be reared under the supervision of the State. They had some literary instruction, but their chief training was in gymnastics. They were exercised in hunting and in drills; took their meals together in the syssitia (the public mess), where the fare was rough and scanty; slept in dormitories together; and by every means were disciplined for a soldier's life. The Spartan men likewise fed at public tables, and slept in barracks, only making occasional visits to their own houses. No money was in circulation except iron: no one was permitted to possess gold or silver. Girls were separately drilled in gymnastic exercises and made to be as hardy as boys. Marriage was regulated by the State. There was more purity, and women had a higher standing, in Sparta than in other parts of Greece. The strength of the Spartan army was in the hoplites, or heavy-armed infantry. In battle, messmates stood together. Cowardice was treated with the utmost contempt. The rigorous subordination of the young to their elders was maintained in war as in peace. The legend held, that after this constitution of Lycurgus had been approved by the Delphian oracle, he made the citizens swear to observe it until he should return from a projected journey. He then went to Crete, and stayed there until his death.
HEGEMONY OF SPARTA.—Having thus organized the body politic, Sparta took the steps which gave it the hegemony in Peloponnesus and over all Greece. First, it conquered the neighboring state of Messenia in two great wars, the first ending about 725 B.C., and the second about 650 B.C. In the first of these wars, the Messenians submitted to become tributary to Sparta, after their citadel, Ithome, had been captured, and their defeated hero, Aristodemus, had slain himself. Many of the vanquished Messenians escaped from their country to Arcadia and Argolis. Some of them fled farther, and founded Rhegium in Lower Italy. In the second war, the Messenians revolted against the tyrannical rule of Sparta, and at first, under Aristomenes, were successful, but were afterwards defeated by the Spartans, who were inspirited for the conflict by the war-songs of the Athenian poet, Tyrtaeus. Aristomenes fled to Rhodes. Most of his people were made helots. The Arcadians, after long resistance, succumbed, and came under the Spartan hegemony (about 600 B.C.). Argos, too, was obliged to renounce its claim to this position in favor of its Spartan antagonist, after its defeat by Cleomenes, the Lacedaemonian king, at Thyrea (549 B.C.). The Argive League was dissolved, and Sparta gained the right to command in every war that should be waged in common by the Peloponnesian states, the right, also, to determine the contingent of troops which each should furnish, and to preside in the council of the confederacy. She now began to spread her power beyond Peloponnesus, entered into negotiations with Lydia (555 B.C.), and actually sent an expedition to the coast of Asia (525 B.C.). Moreover as early as 510 B.C., by interfering in the affairs of the states north of the Corinthian isthmus, and with Attica in particular, she sowed among the Athenians the seeds of a lasting enmity.
GOVERNMENT IN ATHENS: DRACO.—According to the legend, Codrus, who died about 1068 B.C., was the last of the Athenian kings. The Eupatrids, the noble families, abolished monarchy, and substituted for the king an Archon, chosen for life by them out of the family of Codrus. The Eupatrids stood in a sort of patriarchal relation to the common people. The inhabitants were divided into four tribes. These were subdivided, first into Brotherhoods and Clans, and secondly, into classes based on consanguinity, and classes arranged for taxation, military service, etc. The entire community comprised the Nobles,—in whose hands the political power was lodged,—the Farmers, and the Artisans. The farmers and the artisans might gather in the Agora, and express assent to public measures, or dissent. In process of time the archons came to be chosen not from the family of Codrus exclusively, but from the Eupatrids generally. From 682 B.C. they were nine in number, and they served but for one year. The administration of justice was in the hands of the nobles, who were not restrained by a body of written laws. The archon Draco, about 621 B.C., in order to check this evil, framed a code which seemed harsh, though milder than the laws previously enforced. Later it was said of his laws that they were written in blood. This legislation was a concession to which the nobles were driven by an uprising. Their hard treatment of debtors, many of whom were deprived of their liberty, had stirred up a serious conflict between the people and their masters. A rebellion, led by Cylon, one of the Eupatrids, was put down, and punished by means involving treachery and sacrilege. The insurgents were slain clinging to the altars of the gods, where they had taken refuge. Not long after it became necessary to introduce other reforms at the advice of Solon, one of "the seven wise men of Greece." He had acquired popularity by recovering Salamis from the Megarians, and in a sacred war against towns which had robbed the temple of Apollo at Delphi.
LEGISLATION OF SOLON—The design of Solon was to substitute a better system for the tyrannical oligarchy, but, at the same time, to keep power mainly in the hands of the upper class. He divided the people into four classes, according to the amount of their income. To the richest of these the archonship, and admission into the Areopagus, were confined. A new council was established, which had the right to initiate legislation, composed of one hundred from each of the four old tribes, and annually elected by the body of the citizens. The Ecclesia, or assembly of the whole people, having the right to choose the archons and councilors, was revived. Courts of Appeal, with jury trials, were instituted. The old council of the Areopagus was clothed with high judicial and executive powers. There were laws to relieve a portion of the debtors from their burdens, and to abolish servitude for debt. Every father was required to teach his son a handicraft.
PARTIES IN ATHENS.—The legislation of Solon was a measure of compromise. It satisfied neither party. After journeys abroad, he passed his old age in Athens, and was a spectator of the rising contests between the discordant factions, which his constitution was only able for a time to curb. There were three parties,—a re-actionary party under Lycurgus, a progressive party led by Pisistratus, and a moderate or middle party under Megacles.
THE TYRANTS.—At this time, in almost all of the Grecian states, monarchy had given place to aristocracy. The reign of an oligarchy, the unbridled sway of a few, was commonly the next step. Against this the people in different states,—the demos,—rose in revolt. The popular leader, or "demagogue," was some conspicuous and wealthy noble, who thus acquired supreme authority. In this way, in the seventh and sixth centuries, most of the states were ruled by "tyrants,"—a term signifying absolute rulers, whether their administration was unjust and cruel, or fair and mild. They endeavored to fortify their rule by collecting poets, artists, and musicians about them, for their own pleasure and for the diversion of the populace. Occasionally they gave the people employment in the erection of costly buildings. They formed alliances with one another and with foreign kings. Not unfrequently they practiced violence and extortion. The oligarchies sought to dethrone them. Their overthrow often had for its result the introduction of popular sovereignty. Among the most noted tyrants were Periander of Corinth (625-585 B.C.), Pittacus in Lesbos (589-579 B.C.), and Polycrates in Samos (535-522 B.C.).
The PISISTRATIDS.—The government of Athens, framed by Solon, was in effect a "timocracy," or rule of the rich. At the head of the popular party stood Pisistratus, a rich nobleman of high descent. He succeeded, by means of his armed guard, in making himself master of the citadel. Twice driven out of the city, he at length returned (538 B.C.), and gained permanent control by force of arms. He managed his government with shrewdness and energy. Industry and trade flourished. He decorated Athens with buildings and statues. Religious festivals he caused to be celebrated with splendor. He ruled under the legal forms by having archons chosen to suit him. He died 527 B.C. Hippias, his son, governed with mildness until his younger brother and colleague in power, Hipparchus, was slain by the two friends, Harmodius and Aristogiton. Then he gave the rein to revengeful passion, and laid upon the people burdensome taxes. Hippias was driven out of the city by the Alcmaeonidae and other exiled nobles, assisted by the Spartan king, Cleomenes (510 B.C.). He fled to Asia Minor in order to secure Persian help.
THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY.—Clisthenes, a brilliant man, the head of the Alcmaeonid family, connected himself with the popular party, and introduced such changes in the constitution as to render him the founder of the Athenian Democracy. The power of the archons was reduced. All of the free inhabitants of Attica were admitted to citizenship. New tribes, ten in number, each comprising ten denes, or hamlets, with their adjacent districts, superseded the old tribes. A council of five hundred, fifty from each tribe, supplanted Solon's council of four hundred. The courts of law were newly organized. The Ostracism was introduced; that is, the prerogative of the popular assembly to decree by secret ballot, without trial, the banishment of a person who should be deemed to be dangerous to the public weal. Certain officers were designated by lot. Ten Strategi, one from each tribe, by turns, took the place of the archon polemarchus in command of the army.
EFFECT OF DEMOCRACY.—Under this system of free government, the energy of the Athenian people was developed with amazing rapidity. The spirit of patriotism, of zeal for the honor and welfare of Athens, rose to a high pitch. The power and resources of the city increased in a proportionate degree. Culture kept pace with prosperity.
LYRICAL POETRY.—In the eighth century, when monarchy was declining, and the tendency to democracy began to manifest itself, a new style of poetry, different from the epic, arose. The narrative poems of minstrels were heard at the great religious festivals. But there was a craving for the expression of individual feeling. Hence, lyrical poetry re-appeared, not in the shape of religious songs, as in the old time, but in a form to touch all the chords of sentiment. Two new types of verse appeared,—the Elegiac and the Iambic. At first the elegy was probably a lament for the dead. It was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute. The instruments which the Greeks had used were string-instruments. The early Greek elegies related to a variety of themes,—as war, love, preceptive wisdom. The iambic meter was first used in satire. Its earliest master of distinction was Arckilochus of Paros (670 B.C.). It was employed, however, in fables, and elsewhere when pointed or intense expression was craved. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtaus, composed war-songs. Mimnermus, Solon, Theognis, Simonides of Ceos, are among the most famous elegists. Music developed in connection with lyric poetry. The Greeks at first used the four-stringed lyre. Terpander made an epoch (660 B.C.) by adding three strings. Olympus and Thaletas made further improvements. Greek lyric poetry flourished, especially from 670 to 440 B.C. The Aeolian lyrists of Lesbos founded a school of their own. The two great representatives are Alcaus, who sang of war and of love, and Sappho, who sang of love. "Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound." Anacreon, an Ionian, resembled in his style the Aeolian lyrists. He was most often referred to by the ancients as the poet of sensuous feeling of every sort. The Dorian lyric poetry was mostly choral and historic in its topics. Greek lyric poetry reaches the climax in Simonides and Pindar. The latter was a Boeotian, but of Dorian descent. Simonides was tender and polished; Pindar, fervid and sublime The extant works of Pindar are the Epinicia, or odes of victory.
HISTORICAL WRITING.—This age witnesses the beginnings of historical writing. But the logographers, as they were called, only wrote prose epics. They told the story of the foundation of families and cities, reconciling as best they could the myths, so far as they clashed with one another.
PHILOSOPHY: THE IONIAN SCHOOL.—The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. Homer and Hesiod had accounted for the operations of nature by referring them to the direct personal action of different divinities. The earliest philosophers brought in the conception of some kind of matter as the foundation and source of all things. The Ionian School led the way in this direction. Thales of Miletus (about 600 B.C.) made this primary substance to be water. Anaximander (611-? B.C.) made all things spring out of a primitive stuff, without definite qualities, and without bounds. He taught that the earth is round, invented the sun-dial, engraved a map on a brass tablet, and made some astronomical calculations. Anaximenes (first half, 6th C.) derived all things from air, which he made to be eternal and infinite.
THE ELEATIC SCHOOL.—The Eleatic School conceived of the world as one in substance, and held that the natural phenomena which we behold, in all their variety and change, are unreal. Xenophanes (who flourished from 572 to 478 B.C.) asserted this. Parmenides (504-460 B.C.) taught that succession, change, the manifold forms of things, are only relative; that is, are only our way of regarding the one universal essence. Zeno sought to vindicate this theory logically by disproving the possibility of motion.
OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.—Another set of philosophers attempted definitely to explain the appearances of things, the changing phenomena, which had been called unreal. Heraclitus made the world to be nothing but these: There is no substratum of things: there is only an endless flux, a cycle. All things begin and end in fire, the symbol of what is real. Empedocles ascribed all things to fire, air, earth, and water, which are wrought into different bodies by "love" and "hate;" or, as we should say, attraction and repulsion. Democritus was the founder of the Atomists, who made all things spring out of the motions and combinations of primitive atoms. Anaxagoras brought in intelligence, or reason, as giving the start to the development of matter,—this principle doing nothing more, however, and being inherent in matter itself.
PYTHAGORAS.—A different spirit in philosophy belonged to Pythagoras (580-500 B.C.), who was born in Samos, traveled extensively, and settled in Croton, in southern Italy. His theory was, that the inner substance of all things is number. Discipline of character was a prime object. Pythagoras was sparing in his diet, promoted an earnest culture, in which music was prominent, and gave rise to a mystical school, in which moral reform and religious fueling were connected with an ascetic method of living.
COLONIES.—It was during the era of the oligarchies and tyrannies that the colonizing spirit was most active among the Greeks. Most of the colonies were established between 800 and 550 B.C. Their names alone would make a very long catalogue. They were of two classes: first, independent communities, connected, however, with the parent city by close ties of friendship; and secondly, kleruchies, which were of the nature of garrisons, where the settlers retained their former rights as citizens, and the mother city its full authority over them. In Sicily, on the eastern side, were the Ionian communities,—Naxos, Catana, etc. Syracuse (founded by Corinth 734 B.C.), Gela, and Agrigentum, which were among the chief Dorian settlements, lay on the south-eastern and south-western coasts. The oldest Greek town in Italy was Cumae (not far from Naples), said to have been founded in 1050 B.C. Tarentum (Dorian), Sybaris, and Croton (Aeolic) were settled in the latter part of the eighth century. Locri (Aeolic) and Rhegium (Ionic) were on the south. The south-western portion of Italy was termed Magna Graecia. Massilia (Marseilles) was founded by the Phocaean Ionians (about 600 B.C.). In the western Mediterranean the Greeks were hindered from making their settlements as numerous as they would have done, by the fact that Carthage and her colonies stood in the way. Cyrene, on the coast of Africa, was a Dorian colony (630 B.C.), planted from Thera, an earlier Spartan settlement. Cyrene founded Barca. Corcyra was colonized by Corinth (about 700 B.C.). Along the coast of Epirus were other Corinthian and Corcyrasan settlements. Chalcis planted towns in the peninsula of Chalcidice, and from thence to Selymbria (or Byzantium), which was founded by Megara (657 B.C.). The northern shores of the Ægean and the Propontis, and the whole coast of the Euxine were strewn with Greek settlements. The Greek towns, especially Miletus, on the western coast of Asia Minor, themselves sent out colonies,—as Cyzicus and Sinope, south of the Propontis and the Euxine. The foregoing statements give only a general idea of the wide extent of Greek colonization.
An exhaustive statement of the Greek colonies is given in Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History, p. 148 seq. See also Abbott, A History of Greece, I. 333 seq.
THE IONIAN REVOLT.—Hardly were the Greeks in possession of liberty when they were compelled to measure their strength with the mighty Persian Empire. The cities of Asia Minor groaned under the tyranny of their Persian rulers, and sighed for freedom. At length, under propitious circumstances, Miletus rose in revolt under the lead of Aristagoras. Alone of the Grecian cities, Athens, and Eretria on the island of Euboea, sent help. The insurrection was extinguished in blood: its leaders perished. Miletus was destroyed by the enemy 495 B.C.; and the Ionian towns were again brought under the Persian yoke, which was made heavier than before. The Persian monarch, Darius, swore vengeance upon those who had aided the rebellion.
THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.—Mardonius, the son-in-law of Darius, moved with a fleet and an army along the Ægean coast. A storm shattered the fleet upon the rocky promontory of Athos, and the land force was partly destroyed by the Thracians. Mardonius retreated homeward. The heralds who came to demand, according to the Persian custom, "water and earth" of Athens and Sparta, were put to death. Enraged at these events, Darius sent a stronger fleet under Datis and Artaphernes. They forced Naxos and the other Cyclades to submission, captured and destroyed Eretria, and sent off its inhabitants as slaves to the interior of Asia. Guided on their path of destruction by the Athenian refugee, Hippias, the Persians landed on the coast of Attica, and encamped on the shore adjacent to the plain of Marathon. The Athenians sent Philippides, one of the swiftest of couriers, to Sparta for assistance, who reached that city, a hundred and thirty-five or a hundred and forty miles distant, the next day after he started. He brought back for answer that the Spartans were deterred by religious scruples from marching to war before the full moon, which would be ten days later. There was a Greek, as well as a Judaic, Pharisaism. Left to themselves, the Athenians were fortunate in having for their leader Miltiades, an able and experienced soldier, who had been with the Persians in the Scythian campaign. At the head of the Athenian infantry, ten thousand in number, whose hearts were cheered before the onset by the arrival of a re-inforcement of one thousand men, comprising the whole fighting population of the little town of Platæa, Miltiades attacked the Persian army, ten times as large as his own. The Athenians ran down the gentle slope at Marathon, shouting their war-cry, or pæan, and, after a fierce conflict, drove the Persians back to their ships, capturing their camp with all its treasures (Sept. 12, 490 B.C.). This brilliant victory was not the end of danger. The Greek watchmen saw a treacherous signal, a glistening shield, on Mount Pentelicus, put there to signify to the Persians that Athens was open to their attack. In that direction, round Cape Sunium, the Persian fleet sailed. But Miltiades, by a rapid march of twenty-three miles, reached the city in season to prevent the landing. Datis and Artaphernes sailed away. The traitor, Hippias, died on the return voyage. The patriotic exultation of the Athenians was well warranted. Never did they look back upon that victory without a thrill of joyful pride. It proved what a united free people were capable of achieving. More than that, MARATHON was one of the decisive battles which form turning-points in the world's history. It was a mortal conflict between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe,—the coarse despotism under which individual energy is stifled, and the dawning liberty which was to furnish the atmosphere required for the full development and culture of the human mind.
ARISTIDES AND THEMISTOCLES.—Miltiades subsequently failed in an attempt against Paros, one of the Ægean islands which had submitted to the Persians, and which he sought to conquer. Accused of making false promises to the people, he was fined fifty talents, but died before the sum could be collected (489 B.C.). His son Cimon paid the fine. The two leading men in Athens at that time were Aristides and Themistocles. The former, from his uprightness, was styled "the just." Themistocles was a man of genius, of an ambitious spirit, whom the laurels of Miltiades robbed of sleep. Devoted to Athens, he was not scrupulous in regard to the means of advancing her prosperity and glory. Duplicity and intrigue were weapons in the use of which he was not less willing than expert. He aspired to make Athens a great naval and maritime power. Aristides believed that the strength of the country lay in the landholders and in the land forces. In the attainment of public ends, he would not deviate from a straightforward course. Themistocles was by far the more captivating of the two men; and, in 484 B.C., Aristides was ostracised. Themistocles was thus left free to build up a powerful fleet.
THE WAR WITH XERXES: THERMOPYLÆ.—Darius died while he was preparing another grand expedition against Greece. He left his successor, Xerxes (485 B.C.), to complete and carry out the plan. This proud monarch drew together from his immense dominions an army which tradition, as given in Herodotus, made to number one million seven hundred thousand men and a fleet of twelve hundred large vessels. He had for a counselor, Demaratus, a fugitive king of Sparta. The vast array of troops was assembled near Sardes, and thence marched to the Hellespont. Seven days were spent by this mighty gathering of nations in passing over the two bridges of boats. They marched through Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, the Persian fleet proceeding along the coast. Bæotia and several smaller states yielded without resistance. The most of the other Greek states, inspired by Themistocles, joined hands for defense under the hegemony of Sparta. In July, 480, the Persian army arrived at the narrow pass of Thermopylæ. There the Lacedæemonian king, Leonidas, with his three hundred Spartans and some thousands of allies, had taken his stand, to stem the vast current that was pouring down to overwhelm Greece. To the Persian command to give up their weapons, the "laconic" reply was given by Leonidas, "Come and get them." For several days the band of Spartans defended the pass, beating back the Persians, thousands of whom were slain, and repulsing, even, the ten thousand "immortals," who constituted the royal guard. At length a treacherous Greek showed the enemy a by-path, which enabled them to fall on the rear of the gallant troops, every one of whom fell, bravely fighting, with his weapon in his hand. A lion made of iron was afterwards placed on the spot where the heroes had died, "obedient to the commands of Sparta." The Persians pushed forward to Athens, and burned the city. All citizens capable of bearing arms were on board the fleet: the women, children, and movable property had been conveyed to Salamis, Ægina, and Træzcne.
SALAMIS.—The Greek fleet, under the Spartan Eurybiades, had come from victory at Artemisium into the Gulf of Salamis. By means of a device of Themistocles, the Spartans were prevented from withdrawing their forces to the Corinthian isthmus, where they had built a wall for their own protection; and a sea-fight was brought on, of which the Athenians in Salamis, and Xerxes himself from a hill on the mainland, were anxious spectators (Sept. 27, 480). Once more the cause of civilization was staked on the issue of a conflict. The Greeks were completely victorious, and their land was saved. Xerxes hastily marched towards home, thousands of his army perishing on the way from hunger, cold, and fatigue. The Spartiatæ gave to Eurybiades the prize of valor, to Themistocles an olive crown for his wisdom and sagacity.
PLATÆA: MYCALE: EURYMEDON.—Xerxes left three hundred thousand men behind in Thessaly, under the command of Mardonius. In the spring, incensed at the proud rejection of his overtures, he marched to Athens, whose people again took refuge in Salamis. In the great battle of Platæa (479 B.C.), the Greeks, led by the Spartan Pausanias, inflicted on him such a defeat that only forty thousand Persians escaped to the Hellespont. On the same day at Mycale, the Persian fleet was vanquished in a sharp encounter where a Spartan commanded, but where the Athenians were the most efficient combatants. Sestos, Lemnos, Imbros, and Byzantium were taken by the Greeks; and a double victory of Cimon, the son of Miltiades, at the Pamphylian river, Eurymedon, over both the land and naval forces of the Persians, brought the war to an end (467 B.C.).
PAUSANIAS AND THEMISTOCLES.—Both of the generals by whom the Persians had been overcome, fell under the displeasure of the states to which they belonged. Pausanias was so far misled by ambition as to engage in a negotiation with the Persians for the elevation of himself, by their aid, to supreme power in Greece. His plots were discovered, and he was compelled by his countrymen to starve to death in a temple to which he had fled for refuge. Themistocles caused Athens to be surrounded by a wall, and built long walls from the city to the Piræus. This provoked the hatred of the Spartans, so jealous were they of the power of Athens. In conjunction with his Athenian enemies, they contrived to procure his banishment for ten years (471 B.C.). Themistocles fled to Persia, where he was treated with honor and favor. Artaxerxes I. gave him a princely domain in Asia Minor where he died (458 B.C.). Grave as his faults were, Themistocles was the founder of the historical greatness of Athens.
CONFEDERACY OF DELOS.—It was through the influence of Aristides that the confederacy of Delos was formed, in which the Grecian islands and seaports combined with Athens, and under her leadership, for the further prosecution of the war. By this means, the Athenians, already so efficient on the sea, were enabled still more to strengthen their fleet, and gradually to bring the Ægean islands and smaller maritime states under their sway. Cimon rendered great service as a naval commander. He drove the Persians out of Thrace altogether, and he conquered Scyros. He wrested the Chersonese from the Persians, and freed the Greek cities on the coast. In the single battle on the Eurymedon, he sunk or captured two hundred galleys (467 B.C.).
TO THE PEACE OF PERICLES.—Under the leadership of such men, the Athenian Republic became more and more powerful. Ægina, a rich and prosperous island, was conquered, and planted with Athenian colonists. Megara became a dependency of Athens. Sparta, partly in consequence of a struggle with Argos, a state friendly to the Persians, and still more on account of an earthquake which laid the most of the city in ruins (465 B.C.), was so crippled as not to be able to check the progress of the rival community. She was even obliged to invoke Athenian help against the revolting Messenians and helots; but after the troops of Athens had joined them, the Spartans, jealous and afraid of what they might do, sent them back. This indignity led to the banishment of Cimon, who had favored the sending of the force, and to the granting of aid to the Spartans. The Spartans now did their best to reduce the strength and dominion of Athens by raising Thebes to the hegemony over the Boeotian cities. Everywhere, in all the conflicts, Sparta was the champion of the aristocratic form of government; Athens, of the democratic. The Athenians were defeated at Tanagra (457 B.C.). This induced them to recall Cimon, a great general and a worthy citizen. Two months after her victory, Sparta was defeated by Myronides; and the Athenians became masters of Phocis, Locris, and Boeotia. Cimon brought about a truce between Athens and Sparta. He left his country on a high pinnacle of power and dominion. Nearly all the allies in the confederacy of Delos had fallen into the position of tributaries, whose heavy contributions were carried no longer to the sanctuary at Delos, but to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis, and who had no power to decide on questions of peace and war. The nobles, however, who were driven into exile in all conquered places, were the mortal enemies of Athens. At Coronea (447 B.C.), the Boeotian refugees and aristocrats were so strong that the Athenians experienced a disastrous defeat. The peril of the situation moved Pericles to secure, by astute management, a peace with Sparta, the terms of which were that each of the two cities was to maintain its hegemony within its own circle, and the several states were to attach themselves at their option to either confederacy. In market and harbor, there was to be a free intercourse of trade (445 B.C.).
THE AGE OF PERICLES.—Pericles belonged to one of the principal Athenian families, but was democratic in his politics, and made himself a popular leader. By his influence the Areopagus was stripped of high prerogatives that had belonged to it. He caused it to be enacted, that every citizen, when engaged in the public service, even in attending the popular assembly, should receive a stipend. For fifteen years, as the first citizen of Athens, with none of the trappings of power, he virtually ruled the commonwealth. One of his works was the building the third of the long walls which protected the Piræus and the neighboring ports on the land side, and connected them with Athens. His patriotism was as sincere as his talents were versatile and brilliant. He was at once a soldier, an orator, a statesman of consummate ability, and a man imbued with the best appreciation of letters and of art. In his hospitable house, where Aspasia from Miletus, a beautiful and cultured woman, was his companion, men of genius found a welcome. Under him, Athens became the metropolis of literature, philosophy, and art for the whole Hellenic race, and, considering the influence of Athens, it might almost be said for mankind in all ages. Magnificent buildings—of which the Parthenon, the temple of Athena that crowned the Acropolis, whose ruins are the model of architectural perfection, was one—gave to the city an unrivaled beauty. Sculpture vied with architecture in this work of adornment. Phidias, who wrought the frieze of the Parthenon, counted among his wonderful creations the colossal sitting statue of Zeus at Olympia. It was the blossoming season of the Greek intellect, as regards literature and the fine arts. The drama reached its perfection in the masterly tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and in the comedies of Aristophanes. The Athenian community, through its political eminence, its intellectual character, so original and diversified, its culture,—such that almost every citizen was qualified for civil office,—has no parallel in history. It is the elevation, not of a select class of the citizens, but of the whole society, which gives to Athens its unique distinction. Public spirit and enterprise, which made her navy dominant in the Aegean and over the sea-coast of Asia Minor, went hand in hand with delight in eloquence and in the creations of genius. There was not, however, as some have affirmed, in the prevalent absorption in the affairs of state, a neglect of the labors of agriculture and of mechanical industry.
THE ACROPOLIS—It was customary for a Greek town to be built about an acropolis,—an eminence by which it was commanded, and on which stood the citadel. On the acropolis at Athens were the buildings and statues in which the glory of Athenian art was impressively displayed. There were three edifices which excelled all the rest in splendor. On the south side of the elevated area was the Parthenon, built of Pentelic marble, two hundred and twenty-eight feet in length, and of faultless proportions. On the northern edge was the Erechtheum, an Ionic temple of extraordinary beauty. The Propylcea, approached by sixty marble steps, was a noble gateway: it stood on the western end of the acropolis, which it magnificently adorned.
ATHENS—No other description of Athens, in the age of Pericles, equals
his own in the Funeral Oration (431 B.C.), as given by
Thucydides, for those who had fallen in the war. It shows how an
Athenian looked upon his city.
"It is true that we are called a democracy; for the administration is in the hands of the many, and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar; but a man may benefit his country, whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life; and in our private intercourse we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes: we do not put on sour looks at him, which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts: we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for authority and the laws, having an especial regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured, as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
"And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits many relaxations from toil. We have regular games and sacrifices throughout the year. At home the style of our life is refined, and the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city, the fruits of the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of other countries as freely as of our own.
"Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world; and we never expel a foreigner, or prevent him from seeing or learning any thing of which the secret, if revealed to an enemy, might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. And here is the proof,—the Lacedaemonians come into Attica, not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbor's country; and, although our opponents are fighting for their homes, and we are on a foreign soil, we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength. The care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all; and, when defeated, they pretend to have been vanquished by us all.
"If, then, we prefer to meet danger with a light heart, but without laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by habit, and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers? since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves to rest. And thus, too, our city is equally admirable in peace and war; for we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is real use for it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace: the true disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect the State because he takes care of his own household, and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as harmless, but as a useless character; and, if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of policy. The great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting too; whereas other men are courageous from ignorance, but hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed the bravest spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from danger. In doing good, again, we are unlike others: we make our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favors. Now, he who confers a favor is the firmer friend, because he would fain by kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipient is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting another's generosity he will not be winning gratitude, but only paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbors, not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom, and in a frank and fearless spirit. To sum up, I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by the position to which these qualities have raised the State. For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her contemporaries is superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands of such a city: no subject complains that his masters are unworthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses; there are mighty monuments of our power, which will make us the wonder of this and of succeeding ages. We shall not need the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose poetry may please for the moment, although his representation of the facts will not bear the light of day; for we have compelled every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and of our enmity. Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly fought and died: they could not bear the thought that she might be taken from them, and every one of us who survive should gladly toil on her behalf."
RELIGION.—We find in Sophocles a much purer tone of moral and religious feeling than in Homer. Greek thought upon divine things is expanded and purified, (i) Higher Conception of the Gods. The gods are still conceived of as in bodily form. Their images abide in their temples. Take them away, and the god leaves his abode. The divinities need not be present, as in Homer, in order to exert their power. The monotheistic tendency is manifest. The "gods" are referred to as if a single agency were in the writer's mind. The regal sway of Zeus is emphasized. He is less subject to Fate. (2) Divine Government. The gods, especially Zeus, are the fountain of law. The righteousness of the divine government is especially evinced in the punishment of evil-doers. Transgressors generally, and not those of the worst class alone, as in Homer, are punished in Hades. Pride and insolence call down the vengeance of the gods. Unsleeping justice pursues the criminal. The theory of Nemesis, which pursues the prosperous, if they are proud, to their hurt and ruin, is held. (3) Number of the Gods. The number of divinities is multiplied as time advances. The worship of the heroes, children of the gods or goddesses, grows in importance. (4) Revelation. There was direct revelation, it was believed, by prophecy, uttered now in an ecstatic, and now in a tranquil, mood. Oracles acquired a new and vast importance. (5) Rites. Visible objects of devotion were multiplied; religious ceremonies ramified in all directions; sacred processions, festivals, amusements involving religious observances, abounded. (6) Morality. Moral excellence centered in moderation and self-government, through which the individual keeps both his own nature as to its parts, and himself in relation to others, within due limits. This spirit includes temperance and justice. The stern spirit of law prevails: the requital of injuries is approved. Yet feelings of compassion find a beautiful expression. At Athens, there was public provision for orphans and for the help of the poor. (7) Domestic Life: Patriotism. The wife lived in retirement, and in submission to her husband. When he entertained friends at his table, she was absent; yet domestic affection was evidently strong. Every other duty merged in patriotism. The Greek placed a great gulf between himself and the "barbarian." He was conscious of higher intellectual gifts, superior culture, better customs. (8) Sin. The Future Life. There was a deeper sense of sin than in the Homeric era. There was a pathetic consciousness of the trouble and sorrow that beset human life. Hades was regarded as a scene of trial and judgment, and of rewards as well as sufferings. The soul was not so closely identified with the body. Death was an object of gloomy anticipation. Pericles, in his funeral oration for the fallen patriots, is silent as to a future life. In the tragic poets, it is only the select few whose lot is blessed. As concerns the mass of the people, it is probable that the Homeric notions respecting the state of the dead still prevailed. Generally speaking, we are not warranted in ascribing the more elevated views of religion entertained by the best minds to the mass of the people.
THE TRAGIC DRAMA.—The songs which were sung in the worship of Dionysus (dithyrambs) were accompanied with dance and pantomime. The custom followed of mingling speeches and dramatic action with these lyrics. The change is ascribed to Thespis (about 536 B.C.), a little later than Solon. Thespis is said to have brought in the stage for the performers. The Greek theaters were large, open to the sky, and sometimes on sites which commanded fine views. There was the amphitheater, with graded seats for spectators, and the stage, together with the orchestra where the choir in song or musical recitation reflected the sympathies and views of the spectators of the play. At first there was only one actor, and, of course, a monologue. Aeschylus is said to have brought in a second actor, and Sophocles a third. These, with Euripides, were the three great dramatists of Greece. The choral song, which had been the chief thing, was made secondary to the dialogue. Aeschylus, at the age of forty-five, fought in the battle of Salamis; Sophocles, then fifteen years old, took part in the festival in honor of the victory; and Euripides was born, it was supposed, on the very day of the battle. These three brought the tragic drama to perfection. Of the productions of Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), seven remain. They are inspired with the heroic and elevated mood which was engendered by the great struggle against the Persians. Of the numerous plays of Sophocles (495-406 B.C.), the number of those extant is also seven. They so combine vigor and force with refinement of thought and style that they are surpassed, if indeed they are equaled, by the literary products of no age or country. In Euripides (480-406 B.C.), while there is an insight into the workings of the heart, and the antique nobleness of sentiment, there is less simplicity, and there is manifest the less earnest and believing tone of the later day. In the dramas, the "unities" of time, place, and action are observed. The acts together seldom stretch over a single day.
COMEDY—Comedy, in which Aristophanes (452-388 B.C.), a great poet as well as a great wit, was the principal author, dealt largely in satire. Conspicuous men, and those active in public affairs, were represented on the stage in satirical pieces, so that they were at once identified. The spirit of the "old comedy" was patriotic, although it might be unjust, as in the case of Socrates, who was a target for the wit of Aristophanes. The "middle comedy" was nothing really distinct from the "new comedy." The "new comedy," in which Menander (342-290 B.C.) was an eminent author, ceased to present actual persons, and dealt with imaginary characters alone. Among the Greeks in Lower Italy and Sicily, mimes were much in vogue.
GREEK ART: ARCHITECTURE—The Greeks more and more broke away in a free and joyous spirit from the stiff and conventional styles of Egyptian and Oriental art. In the room of the somber, massive edifices of Egypt, they combined symmetry and beauty with grandeur in the temples which they erected. The temples were originally colored within and without. Three styles were developed,—the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian. In the Doric, the column and entablature have the most solid and simple form. The column has no other base than the common platform on which the pillars rest, and the capital that surmounts it is a plain slab.
In the Ionic style, the column has a distinct base, is more tall and slender, and its capital has two volutes, or spiral moldings. The capital of the Corinthian column is peculiar, representing flower calices and leaves, "pointing upwards, and curving like natural plants." The acanthus, on account of its graceful form, was generally copied. The most ancient Doric temples, of a date prior to the Persian war, of which the ruined temple of Neptune at Paestum is one, are, in comparison with later edifices, of a severe and massive style. In the period extending from the Persian war to the Macedonian rule, the stern simplicity of the Doric is modified by the softer and more graceful character of the Ionic. The temple of Theseus at Athens is an example. The Parthenon was the most beautiful specimen of the Doric, which has appropriated the grace of the Ionic column without losing its own distinctive character. In the later period, after freedom was lost, there was much more ornamentation. It was then that the more decorated Corinthian style flourished.
SCULPTURE.—Before the Persian wars, in the earliest sculpture the restraint of Egyptian and Oriental styles is perceptible in the sculptors, of whom Daedalus is the mythical representative. The oldest statues were of wood, which was subsequently covered with gold and ivory, or painted. The lofty style of Phidias (488-432 B.C.), and of Polycletus of Argos, became prevalent in the flourishing period of Greek liberty. Myron, to whom we owe the Discobolus (Disk-Thrower), belongs to the school of Aegina. Statues were now made in brass and marble. They were everywhere to be seen. The pediments and friezes of the temples were covered with exquisitely wrought sculptures. The most beautiful sculptures that have come down from antiquity are the marbles of the Parthenon. The Greeks appreciated to the full the beauty of nature. They gave to their gods ideal human forms, in which were blended every attribute of majesty and grace which are conceived to belong to perfected humanity. Sculpture in Greece, as elsewhere, was ally to religion; "but whilst the religion of the Egyptians was a religion of the tomb, and their ideal world a gloomy spot peopled by sleeping lions, dreamy sphinxes, or weird unearthly monsters, the mythology of the Greeks, rightly understood, is an exquisite poem, the joint creation of the master-minds of infant Greece; and their art is a translation of that poem into visible forms of beauty." In the third period, which may be made to terminate with the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.), there were masters in sculpture, among whom Praxiteles and Scopas are at the head. More and more, as we come down to the Roman period, while extraordinary technical perfection is still manifested, the loftier qualities of art tend to disappear.
PAINTING.—In Greece, painting first ceased to be subordinate to architecture, and became independent. In early days, there was skill in the ornamentation of vases and in mural painting. Yet, with much spirit and feeling, there was a conventional treatment. The earliest artist of whom we know much is Polygnotus (about 420 B.C.), whose groups of profile figures were described as remarkable for their life-like character and fine coloring. Apollodorus of Athens was distinguished, but Zeuxis of Heraclea is said to have been the first to paint movable pictures. He is famed for his marvelous power of imitation: the birds pecked at a bunch of grapes which he painted. But even he was outdone by Parrhasius. Zeuxis, however, had far higher qualities than those of a literal copyist. The most successful of the Greek painters was Apelles. Among his masterpieces was a painting of Venus rising from the waves, and a portrait of Alexander the Great. We have not in painting, as in sculpture, a store of monuments of Greek art; but the skill of the Greeks in painting fell behind their unequaled genius in molding the human form in bronze and marble.
TO THE DEATH OF PERICLES.—Wonderful as was the growth of Athens under Pericles, it is obvious that she stood exposed to two principal sources of danger. Her allies and dependants, the stay of that naval power in which her strength lay, were discontented with her spirit of domination and of extortion. The Peloponnesian Alliance, which was led by Sparta, the bulwark of the aristocratic interest, comprised, with the Dorian, most of the Aeolian states,—as Boeotia, Phocis, Locris, etc. Its military strength lay mainly in its heavy-armed infantry. Thus Sparta had the advantage of strong allies. The motive at the bottom of this alliance was what Thucydides tells was the real cause of the Peloponnesian war,—the jealousy which the growth of Athens excited in other states. This feeling really involved a conviction of the need of maintaining in Greece that which in modern times is called a "balance of power." When Greece was no longer one, as in the best days of the wars with Persia, but was divided into two opposite camps, watchful and jealous of one another, an occasion of conflict could not fail to arise. It was complained that Athens gave help to Corcyra in a war with Corinth, its mother city, made war upon Potidaea in Macedonia, a Corinthian colony, and also shut out Megara from the harbors of Attica.
The demands made by Sparta, which included the granting of independence to Aegina, were rejected. Attica was ravaged by Spartan troops, and the coast of Peloponnesus by the Athenian fleet (431 B.C.). This desolating warfare was kept up until a frightful pestilence broke out at Athens,—a plague having its origin in Egypt, and passing thence over Asia and the Greek islands. Two of the sons of Pericles died, and an accumulation of public burdens and private sorrows brought on his own death (Sept., 429).
THE PESTILENCE.—The horrors of the pestilence are thus described in a celebrated passage of the best of the Greek historians, Thucydides: "The crowding of the people out of the country into the city aggravated the misery, and the newly arrived suffered most. For, haying no houses of their own, but inhabiting, in the height of summer, stifling huts, the mortality among them was dreadful, and they perished in wild disorder. The dead lay as they had died, one upon another; while others, hardly alive, wallowed in the streets, and crawled about every fountain, craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. The customs which had hitherto been observed at funerals were universally violated, and they buried their dead, each one as best he could. Many, having no proper appliances, because the deaths in their household had been so frequent, made no scruple of using the burial-place of others. When one man had raised a funeral-pile, others would come, and, throwing on their dead first, set fire to it; or, when some other corpse was already burning, before they could be stopped, would throw their own dead upon it, and depart.
"There were other and worse forms of lawlessness which the plague introduced at Athens. Men who had hitherto concealed their indulgence in pleasure, now grew bolder. For, seeing the sudden change,—how the rich died in a moment, and those who had nothing, immediately inherited their property,—they reflected that life and riches were alike transitory, and they resolved to enjoy themselves while they could, and to think only of pleasure. Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law of honor when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honor? The pleasure of the moment, and any sort of thing which conduced to it, took the place both of honor and of expediency: no fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal. Those who saw all perishing alike, thought that the worship or neglect of the gods made no difference. For offenses against human law, no punishment was to be feared: no one would live long enough to be called to account. Already a far heavier sentence had been passed, and was hanging over a man's head: before that fell, why should he not take a little pleasure?"
TO THE TRUCE WITH SPARTA.—The loss of Pericles, coupled with the terrible calamities which had befallen Athens, let loose the winds of party passion. New leaders of the democracy, of whom Cleon was the most noted, who lacked the refinement and self-restraint of Pericles, took his place. The Athenians were not able to save Plataea, to which they owed so much, from destruction at the hands of the Spartans and Boeotians (427 B.C.); but Lesbos they recovered, and captured Mytilene, the bulk of whose citizens, against the will of Cleon, they spared. To the cruelties of war, which the revengeful temper of the Spartans promoted, there was added another plague at Athens, besides an earthquake, and tremendous rain-storms, alternating with drought.
Demosthenes, a brave and enterprising Athenian general, took possession of Pylos in Messenia. The Spartans, under Brasidas, were on the island of Sphacteria opposite; and their retreat was cut off by the fleet under Nicias, who was the leader of the more aristocratic faction at Athens. Cleon, made strategus in the room of Nicias, took Sphacteria by storm, contrary to general expectation, and brought home nearly three hundred Spartan prisoners. Athens had other successes; but when her forces had been defeated by the Boeotians at Delium, and Brasidas had captured Amphipolis, and when in a battle there (422 B.C.) Brasidas was victorious over Cleon, who fell during the flight, the aristocratic party, which was desirous of peace, gained the upper hand. Nicias concluded a truce with Sparta for fifty years. Each party was to restore its conquests and prisoners.
THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.—From this time, Alcibiades, a relative of Pericles, but lacking his sobriety and disinterested spirit, plays an active part. Beautiful in person, rich, a graceful and effective orator, but restless and ambitious, he quickly acquired great influence. Three years after the peace of Nicias, he persuaded Athens to join a league of disaffected Peloponnesian allies of Sparta; but in the battle of Mantinea (418 B.C.) the Spartans regained their supremacy. It was at the suggestion of Alcibiades that the Athenians undertook the great Sicilian Expedition, which resulted in the worst disasters they ever suffered. This expedition was aimed at the Dorian city of Syracuse, and the hope was that all Sicily might be conquered. It consisted of about forty thousand men, besides the sailors. The commanders were Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus. Alcibiades was recalled to answer a charge of sacrilege. At Thurii he managed to escape and went over to the side of Sparta. Gylippus went with a small Spartan fleet to aid Syracuse. The Athenians were repulsed in their attack on the city. Although re-inforced by land and naval forces under a gallant and worthy general, Demosthenes, they fought under great disadvantages, so that their fleet was destroyed in the Syracusan harbor. Their retreating forces on land were cut to pieces or captured. Nicias and Demosthenes died either at the hands of the executioner or by a self-inflicted death.
NAVAL CONTESTS.—No such calamity had ever overtaken a Grecian army. The news of it brought anguish into almost every family in Athens. The Spartans had fortified the village of Decelea in Attica, and sought on the sea, with Persian help, to annihilate the Athenian navy. The allies of Athens, Chios, Miletus, etc., revolted. The oligarchs at Athens overthrew the democratic constitution, and placed the Government in the hands of a Council of Four Hundred. The popular assembly was limited to five thousand members, and was never called together. The object was to make peace with Sparta. But the army before Samos, of which Thrasybulus, a patriotic man, was the leader, refused to accept this change of government. Alcibiades, who had left the Spartans out of anger on account of their treatment of him, was recalled, and assumed command. The oligarchical rule was overturned in four months after its establishment, and the democracy restored,—the assembly being still limited, however, to five thousand citizens. Three brilliant naval victories, the last at Cyzicus (410 B.C.), were won over the Spartans by Alcibiades who came back to Athens in triumph (408 B.C.). Lysander was the commander of the Spartan fleet on the coast of Asia Minor, and (407 B.C.) gained a victory over the Athenian ships during a temporary absence of Alcibiades. Alcibiades was not reëlected general. He now withdrew, and, three years later, died. The new Spartan admiral, Callicratidas, surrounded the Athenian fleet under Conon at Mitylene. By very strenuous exertions of the Athenians, a new fleet was dispatched to the help of Conon; and in the battle of Arginusæ (406 B.C.), the Peloponnesians were completely vanquished. The public spirit of Athens and the resources of a free people were never more impressively shown than in the prodigious efforts made by the Athenians to rise from the effect of the crushing disaster which befell the Sicilian expedition on which their hopes were centered. But these exertions only availed to furnish to coming generations an example of the heroic energy and love of country which are possible under free government.
Lysander once more took command of the Spartan fleet. Shrewd in diplomacy, as well as skillful in battle, he strengthened his naval force by the aid of Cyrus the Younger, the Persian governor in Asia Minor. Watching his opportunity, he attacked the Athenians at Ægospotami, opposite Lampsacus, when soldiers and sailors were off their guard (405 B.C.). Three thousand of them, who had not been slain in the assault, were slaughtered after they had been taken captive. Conon escaped to Cyprus with only eight ships. One fast-sailing trireme carried the news of the overwhelming defeat to Athens. Lysander followed up his success cautiously, but with energy. Islands and seaports surrendered to him, and in them he established the aristocratic rule. The Athenians were shut in by land and by sea. A treacherous aristocratic faction within the walls was working in the interest of the Spartans. Famine conspired with other agencies to destroy the multitude of homeless and destitute people who had crowded into the city. Starvation compelled a surrender to the Spartan general. The long walls and fortifications were demolished by the ruthless conqueror, the work of destruction being carried on to the sound of the flute. All but twelve vessels were given up to the captors. The democratic system was subverted, and thirty men—the "Thirty Tyrants"—of the oligarchical party were established in power, with Critias, a depraved and passionate, though able, man, at their head (404-403 B.C.). They put a Spartan garrison in the citadel, and sought to confirm their authority by murdering or banishing all whom they suspected of opposition. Thrasybulus, a patriot, collected the democratic fugitives at Phyle, defeated the Thirty, and seized the Piraeus. Critias was slain. Ten oligarchs of a more moderate temper were installed in power. In co-operation with the Spartan king, Pausanias, the two parties at Athens were reconciled. An amnesty was proclaimed, and democracy in a moderate form was restored, with a revision of the laws, under the archonship of Euclides (403 B.C.). It was shortly after this change that the trial and death of Socrates occurred, the wisest and most virtuous man of ancient times (399 B.C.).
PHILOSOPHY: SOCRATES.—At the head of the Greek philosophers is the illustrious name of Socrates. He was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and was born 469 B.C., just as Pericles was assuming the leadership at Athens. Socrates was the founder of moral philosophy. He was original, being indebted for his ideas to no previous school. He was as sound in body as in mind. His appearance was unique. His forehead was massive, but his flat nose gave to his countenance an aspect quite at variance with the Greek ideal of beauty. He looked, it was said, like a satyr. He taught, in opposition to the Sophists, a class of men (including Gorgias, Protagoras, and others) who instructed young men in logic and grammar, taking fees,—which was contrary to the custom of the Greek philosophers,—and cultivating intellectual keenness and dexterity, often at the expense of depth and sincerity. Their work as thinkers was negative, being confined mainly to pointing out fallacies in existing systems, but providing nothing positive in the room of them. Socrates had been called by the oracle at Delphi the wisest of men. He could only account for this by the fact, that, in contrast with others, he did not erroneously deem himself to be knowing. "Know thyself" was his maxim. His daily occupation was to converse with different classes, especially young men, on subjects of highest moment to the individual and to the state. By a method of quiet cross-examination, the "Socratic irony," he made them aware of their lack of clear ideas and tenable, consistent opinions, and endeavored to guide them aright. The soul and its moral improvement was his principal subject. He asserted Theism and the spiritual nature and obligations of religion, without calling in question the existence of the various divinities. He taught the doctrine of a universal Providence. Absolute loyalty to conscience, the preference of virtue to any possible advantage without it, he solemnly inculcated. He believed, perhaps not without a mingling of doubt, in the immortality of the soul. Taking no part in public affairs, he devoted his time to this kind of familiar instruction,—to teaching by dialogue, in compliance with what he believed to be an inward call of God. An impulse within him, which he called a divine "voice," checked him when he was about to take a wrong step. He was charged with corrupting the youth by his teaching, and with heresy in religion. His rebukes of the shallow and the self-seeking had stung them, and had made him many enemies. Such men as Alcibiades and Critias, who had been among his hearers, but for whose misconduct he was really not in the least responsible, added to his unpopularity. The Apology, as given by Plato, contains the substance of his most impressive defense before his judges. He took no pains to placate them or his accusers, or to escape after he was convicted. Conversing with his disciples in the same genial, tranquil tone which he had always maintained, he drank the cup of hemlock, and expired (May, 399 B.C.). An account of his teaching and of his method of life is given by his loving scholar, Xenophon, in the Memorabilia. The dialogues of Plato, in which Socrates is the principal interlocutor, mingle with the master's doctrine the pupil's own thoughts and speculations.
PLATO.—Plato (427-347 B.C.), the foremost of the disciples of Socrates, founded the philosophical school known as the Academy from the place where his pupils were wont to meet him. One of his prominent tenets was the doctrine of ideas which he regarded as spiritual realities, intermediate between God and the world, of which all visible things are the manifestation. They are the shadow, so to speak, of which ideas are the substance. He defined virtue in man to be resemblance to God according to the measure of our ability. In the Republic, he sets forth his political views, and sketches the ideal state. More speculative than Socrates, Plato, from the wide range of his discussions, from their poetic spirit as well as their depth of thought, not less than their beauty of style, is one of the most inspiring and instructive of all authors. No other heathen writer presents so many points of affinity with Christian teaching.
ARISTOTLE.—Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) studied under Plato, but elaborated a system of his own, which was on some points dissonant from that of his instructor. His investigations extended over the field of material nature, as well as over the field of mind and morals. With less of poetry and of lofty sentiment than Plato, he has never been excelled in intellectual clearness and grasp. He was possessed of a wonderful power to observe facts, and an equally wonderful talent for systemizing them, and reasoning upon them. He is the founder of the science of Logic. His treatises on Rhetoric and on Ethics have been hardly less important in their influence. His Politics is a masterly discussion of political science, based on a diligent examination of the various systems of government. In truth, in all departments of research he exhibits the same capacity for scientific observation and discussion. In religion he was a theist; but he is less spiritual in his vein of thought, and more reserved in his utterances on this theme, than Plato. The names of these two philosophers have been very frequently coupled. Their influence, like their fame, is imperishable.
LATER SCHOOLS: THE CYNICS.—The impulse given by Socrates gave rise to still other schools of philosophers. Aristippus of Cyrene (about 380 B.C.) founded a sect which held that happiness is the chief end, the goal of rational effort. Antisthenes, who was born 422 B.C., and especially Diogenes, went to the opposite extreme, and founded the school of Cynics, who looked with disdain, not only on luxuries, but on the ordinary comforts of life, and inured themselves to do without them. Their manners were often as savage as their mode of living.
HISTORICAL WRITINGS.—The three principal historical writers were Herodotus (c. 484-0.425 B.C.), the charming but uncritical chronicler of what he heard and saw, by whom the interference of the gods in human affairs is devoutly credited; Thucydides, who himself took part in the Peloponnesian war, the history of which he wrote with a candor, a profound perception of character, an insight into the causes of events, a skill in arrangement, and a condensation and eloquence of style, which are truly admirable; and Xenophon, an author characterized by naturalness, simplicity, and a religious spirit.
GREEK LIFE.—It will be convenient to bring together here some features of Greek life, (1) Public Buildings and Dwellings. The Greeks almost always preferred to live in cities. These grew up about an Acropolis, which was a fort on a hill, generally a steep crag. This was a place of refuge, and the site of the oldest temple. It became often, therefore, a sacred place from which private dwellings were excluded. At the nearest harbor, there would be a seaport town. The Piraeus was more than four miles from Athens,—a mile farther than the nearest shore, but was chosen as being an excellent harbor. Sparta, alone, had no citadel,—the access from the plain being easily defended,—and no walls. The attractive buildings in a Greek town were the public edifices. Private houses, as to the exterior, were very plain, with flat roofs, with few stories, and low. Towards the street "the house looked like a dead wall with a strong door in it," It was built round an open court: in the case of the best houses, round two courts,—one bordered by apartments for the men, the other with the rooms for women. Bedrooms and sitting-rooms were small, admitting but little light. Fresco-painting on the walls and ceilings came to be common. The furniture of the house was plain and simple, but graceful and elegant in form. The poorer classes slept on skins; the richer, on woolen mattresses laid on girths. The Greeks lived so much in the open air that they took less pains with their dwellings. The public buildings were costly and substantially built. (2) Meals, Gymnastics, etc. The Greeks rose early. There are no notices of a morning bath. The first meal was light. It was succeeded, as was the custom at Rome, by calls on friends. Business might follow until noon, the hour of the dèjeuner, or breakfast, which, in the case of the rich, was a substantial meal. Later in the day, males went to the practice of gymnastics, which were followed, in later times, by a warm bath. Towards sunset came the principal meal of the day. Conversation and music, or the attending of a feast with friends, took up the evening; if there was a festal company, often the whole night. At the dinner-table, the Greeks reclined on couches. Ladies, if allowed to be present, and children, were required to sit. Spoons, sometimes knives, but never forks, were used. (3) Costume: Use of Wine. The dress of the Greeks, both of men and women, was simple and graceful. The men were generally bareheaded in the streets. In bad weather they wore close-fitting caps, and, in traveling, broad-brimmed hats. In Athens and Sparta they always carried walking-sticks. The use of wine was universal. It was always mixed with water. (4) Slaves. Slaves were regarded as chattels. No one objected to slavery as wrong. Slaves were better treated at Athens than elsewhere, but even at Athens they were tortured when their testimony was required. They were let out, sometimes by thousands, to work in pestiferous mines. (5) Women and Children. In Athens, the wife had seldom learned any thing but to spin and to cook. She lived in seclusion in her dwelling, and was not present with her husband at social entertainments, either at home or elsewhere. She had few if any legal rights, although at Athens she might bring a suit against her husband for ill-treatment. Concubinage was not condemned by public opinion. There was no law against exposing infants whom the parents did not wish to bring up,—that is, leaving them where they would perish. When found and brought up, they were the slaves of the person finding them. This cruelty was frequent in the case of daughters, or of offspring weak or deformed. There were toys and games for children. Archytas, a philosopher, was said to have invented the child's rattle. Dolls, hoops, balls, etc., were common playthings. Boys and girls played hide and seek, blind man's buff, hunt the slipper, etc. Older people played ball, and gambled with dice. (6) Education. The education of boys was careful; that of girls was neglected. The boy went to or from school under the care of a slave, called pedagogue, or leader. Teachers were of different social grades, from the low class which taught small children, to the professors of rhetoric and philosophy. It is needless to say how much stress was laid on gymnastic and aesthetic training. Boys read Homer and other authors at an early age, committing much of them to memory. They were taught to play on the harp or the flute, and to sing. Lyric poems they learned by heart. Music held a very high place in the esteem of the Greeks for its general influence on the mind. Running, wrestling, throwing the dart, etc., the games practiced at the public contests, were early taught. Boys at sixteen or eighteen came of age, and were enrolled as citizens. (7) Musical Instruments: the Dance. Instrumental music was common among the Greeks at games and meals, and in battle. They used no bows on the stringed instruments, but either the fingers or the plectrum,—a stick of wood, ivory, or metal. There were three sorts of stringed instruments, the lyre, the cithara (or zithern), and the harp. The wind-instruments were the pipe, the clarionet, and the trumpet. Besides these, there were clanging instruments which were used chiefly in religious ceremonies: such were castanets, the cymbal, and the tambourine. Dancing was originally connected with religious worship. Mimetic dances were a favorite diversion at feasts. There were warlike dances by men in armor, who went through the movements of attack and defense. In mimetic dances the hands and arms played a part. There were peaceful dances or choral dances, marked by rhythmic grace. Sometimes these were slow and measured, and sometimes more lively. Specially brisk were the dances at the festivals of Dionysus (Bacchus). Symbolic dances of a religious character, these Bacchic dances were the germ of the drama. Recitations were first introduced between hymns that attended the choric dances. Then, later, followed the dialogue. (8) Weddings and Funerals. Marriage was attended by a religious ceremonial. There was a solemn sacrifice and a wedding-feast. The bride was conveyed to her husband's house, accompanied on the way with music and song. When a person died, his body was laid out for one day, during which the relatives and hired mourners uttered laments round the bier. Burial was at the dawn of day. In later times, a coin was put into the mouth of the corpse, with which to pay his passage to the world below. There was a funeral procession, and at the tomb a solemn farewell was addressed to the deceased by name. There was then a funeral-feast. Mourning garments were worn for a short period. The dead were buried in the suburbs of the cities, generally on both sides of a highway. In the tomb many little presents, as trinkets and vases, were deposited. (9) Courts of Law. At law men pleaded their own causes, but might take advice or have their speeches composed for them by others. In some cases, friends were allowed to speak in behalf of a litigant. Men like Demosthenes received large fees for services of this kind. There being no public prosecutor, informers were more numerous. They became odious under the name of sycophants, which is supposed to have been first applied to those who informed against breakers of an old law forbidding the exportation of figs from Athens.
THE RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND.—The Anabasis, the principal work of Xenophon, describes the retreat from the Tigris to the coast of Asia Minor, of a body of ten thousand mercenary Greek troops,—a retreat effected under his own masterly leadership. The Persian Empire, now in a process of decay, was torn with civil strife. Xerxes and his eldest son had been murdered (465 B.C.). The story of several reigns which follow is full of tales of treason and fratricide. On the death of Darius II. (Darius Nothus) (423-404 B.C.), the younger Cyrus undertook to dethrone his brother Artaxerxes II., and for that purpose organized, in Asia Minor, a military expedition, made up largely of hired Greek troops. At Cunaxa, not far from Babylon, Cyrus fell in the combat with his brother. The Persians enticed the Greek generals to come into their camp, and slew them. Xenophon, an Athenian volunteer who had accompanied the army, conducted the retreat of his countrymen, with whom he encountered incredible hardships in the slow and toilsome journey through Armenia to Trapezus (Trebizond), and thence to Byzantium. The story of this march, through snow, over rugged mountains, and across rapid currents, is told in the Anabasis. A very striking passage is the description of the joy of the Greeks when from a hilltop they first descried the Black Sea. The soldiers shouted, "The sea! the sea!" and embraced one another and their officers.
THE CORINTHIAN WAR AND THE PEACE OF ANTALCIDAS.—Tissaphernes, the antagonist and successor of the younger Cyrus, was Persian governor in Asia Minor, and set out to bring under the yoke the Ionic cities which had espoused the cause of Cyrus. Sparta came to their aid, and King Agesilaus defeated the Persians near the Pactolus (395 B.C.). The Persians stirred up an enemy nearer home, by the use of gold, and the Boeotians, Corinthians, and Argives, jealous of Sparta, and resentful at the tyranny of her governors (harmosts), and joined by Athens, took up arms against the Lacedaemonians. Lysander fell in battle with the allies (395 B.C.). The course of the war in which Conon, the Athenian commander, destroyed the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, made it necessary to recall Agesilaus. His victory at Coronea (394 B.C.) did not avail to turn the tide in favor of Sparta. Conon rebuilt the long walls at Athens with the assistance of Persian money. The issue of the conflict was the Peace of Antalcidas with Persia (387 B.C.). The Grecian cities of Asia Minor were given up to the Persians, as were the islands of Clazomenae and Cyprus. With the exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which the Athenians were to control, all of the other states and islands were to be free and independent. This was a great concession to Persia. Greek union was broken up: each state was left to take care of itself as it best could. Antalcidas cared little for his country: his treaty was the natural result of Spartan aggressiveness and selfishness.
CONTEST OF THEBES AND SPARTA.—The Spartans had fallen away from the old rules of life ascribed to Lycurgus. They were possessed by a greed for gold. There were extremes of wealth and poverty among them. After the treaty of Antalcidas, they still lorded it over other states, and were bent on governing in Peloponnesus. At length they were involved in a contest with Thebes. This was caused by the seizure of the Cadmeia, the Theban citadel, by the Spartan Phoebidas acting in conjunction with an aristocratic party in Thebes (383 B.C.). The Theban democrats, who, under Pelopidas, made Athens their place of rendezvous, liberated Thebes, and expelled the Spartans from the Cadmeia. Hostile attempts of Sparta against Athens induced the Athenians to form a new confederacy (or symmachy) composed of seventy communities (378 B.C.); and, after they had gained repeated successes on the sea, the two states concluded peace. Athens had become alarmed at the increased power of Thebes, and was ready to go over to the side of Sparta, her old enemy. It was a feeling in favor of a balance of power like that which had prompted Sparta at the close of the Peloponnesian war, to refuse to consent to the destruction of Athens, which Thebes and Corinth had desired. Cleombrotus, king of Sparta, again invaded Boeotia. The principal Boeotian leader was Epaminondas, one of the noblest patriots in all Grecian history,—in his disinterested spirit and self-government resembling Washington. The Spartan king was defeated by him in the great battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.), and was there slain. At this time the rage of party knew no bounds. The wholesale massacre of political antagonists in a city was no uncommon occurrence.
THEBAN HEGEMONY.—The victory of Leuctra gave the hegemony to Thebes. Three times the Boeotians invaded the Spartan territory. They founded Megalopolis in Arcadia, to strengthen the Arcadians against their Lacedæmonian assailants (370 B.C.). They also revived the Messenian power, recalled the Messenians who had long been in exile, and founded the city of Messene. In the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.), Epaminondas, though victorious against the Spartans and their allies, was slain. Peace followed among the Grecian states, Sparta alone refusing to be a party to it. In the course of this intestine war, the Thebans had broken up the new maritime sway gained by them.
THE MACEDONIANS.—The Greeks, exhausted by long-continued war with one another, were just in a condition to fall under the dominion of Macedonia, the kingdom on the north which had been ambitious to extend its power. The Macedonians were a mixed race, partly Greek and partly Illyrian. Although they were not acknowledged to be Greeks, their kings claimed to be of Greek descent, and were allowed to take part in the Olympian games. At first an inland community, living in the country, rough and uncultivated, made up mostly of farmers and hunters, they had been growing more civilized by the efforts of their kings to introduce Greek customs. Archelaus (413-399 B.C.) had even attracted Greek artists and poets to his court. At the same time they were exerting themselves to extend their power to the sea. The people were hardy and brave. When Epaminondas died, Philip (359-336 B.C.) was on the Macedonian throne. He had lived three years at Thebes, and had learned much from Epaminondas, the best strategist and tactician of his day. The decline of public spirit in Greece had led the states to rely very much on mercenary troops, whose trade was war. Philip had a well-drilled standing army. Every thing was favorable to the gratification of his wish to make himself master of Greece. First he aimed to get possession of Greek cities in Chalcidice, of which Olynthus was the chief. The Athenians had towns in that region, besides Amphipolis, which was formerly theirs. Philip contrived to make the Olynthians his allies; and then, crossing the river Strymon, he conquered the western part of Thrace, where there were rich gold mines. There, for purposes of defense, he founded the city of Philippi.
THE SACRED WAR.—A pretext for interfering in the affairs of Greece, Philip found in the Sacred War in behalf of the temple of Delphi, which had been forced to loan money to the Phocians during a war waged by them against Thebes, to throw off the Theban supremacy. Athens and Sparta joined the Phocians. The Thessalian nobles sided with Philip. He gained the victory in his character of champion of the Amphictyonic Council, and took his place in that body, in the room of the Phocians (346 B.C.). But this was not accomplished until he had made peace with the Athenians, so that there was no Athenian force at the pass of Thermopylae to resist his progress.
DEMOSTHENES.—The Athenians had placed themselves at the head of an Aegean League, and, had they managed with more spirit and prudence, they might have checked Philip. There was one man, worthy of the best days of Greece, who penetrated the designs of Philip, and exerted his great powers to stimulate his countrymen to a timely resistance. This was Demosthenes (385-322 B.C.). He was the prince of the school of orators who had sprung up in these troublous times. Overcoming natural obstacles, he had trained himself with such assiduity that a place at the head of all orators, ancient and modern, is generally conceded to him. He was a great statesman, moved by a patriotic spirit: his speeches were for the welfare and salvation of the state. In 358 B.C., a war broke out between Athens and its maritime allies, in which Athens was unsuccessful. It was on the conquest of Thessaly by Philip, that Demosthenes made against him the first of that series of famous speeches known as Philippics (351 B.C.). In vain he urged the Athenians to rescue Olynthus. The inefficiency of the aid rendered, enabled Philip to conquer and destroy that city, and to sell its inhabitants as slaves (348 B.C.). Thirty cities he destroyed, and annexed all Chalcidice to Macedon. A Macedonian party was formed at Athens, the foremost leader of which was Aeschines, not a good citizen, but an orator only second in rank to Demosthenes. They contended that it was futile to resist the advance of the Macedonian power. Demosthenes went at the head of an embassy to the Peloponnesian states which had taken sides with Philip, but his efforts to dissuade them from this suicidal policy were unavailing. What he wanted was a union of all Greeks against the common enemy, who was bent on robbing them of their liberty. He gathered, at length, a strong party about him at Athens. The overtures of peace from Philip, who was prosecuting his conquests in Thrace, were rejected. Athenian forces obliged the king to give up the siege of Byzantium (341 B.C.). The consequent enlarged influence of Demosthenes was used by him to secure an increase of the fund for carrying on the war. But Philip had his paid supporters in all the Greek states. Aeschines at Athens proved an efficient helper. A deputy at the Amphictyonic Council, in 338 B.C., he contrived to bring about another "holy war" against Amphissa in Locris, the end being to give Philip the command. Philip seized Elatea, in the east of Phocis, which commanded the entrance to Boeotia and Attica. Dismay spread through Greece. Demosthenes roused the Athenian assembly, where all were silent through fear, to confront Philip boldly, and himself went to Thebes, which he induced to form an alliance with Athens. But the allies were defeated at the fatal battle of Chaeronea (August, 338 B.C.), where Alexander, Philip's youthful son, decided the fortune of the day by vanquishing the Theban "sacred band." Philip treated the Thebans with great severity. He placed a garrison in the Cadmeia. To Athens he granted favorable terms. Marching into Peloponnesus, he took from Sparta a large part of its territory, and apportioned it to the Messenians, Argives, and Arcadians. At a national assembly at Corinth, from which the Spartans were absent, Philip caused himself to be created leader of the Grecian forces against Persia, with the powers of a dictator. Each of the Greek states was to retain its autonomy; and a congress, to meet at Corinth, was to settle differences among them. Two years after the battle of Chaeronea, at the marriage festival of his daughter with the king of Epirus, Philip was assassinated by means of a conspiracy, in which his queen is thought to have been a partner.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT.—Alexander was twenty years old when his father died. His bodily health and vigor qualified him for combats and toils which few soldiers in his army could endure. His energy, rapidity, and military skill lift him to a level with Hannibal and the foremost commanders of any age. He was not without a generous appreciation of art and literature. The great philosopher, Aristotle, was one of his tutors. For the eminent authors and artists of Greece he cherished a warm admiration. But his temper was passionate and imperious. Homer was his delight, and in Homer he took Agamemnon for his model; but the direst act of cruelty done by Achilles—that of dragging Hector after his chariot—he exceeded when he dragged Batis, a general who had opposed him, at the tail of his chariot through the streets of Gaza. Especially when his passions were inflamed by strong drink,—as at banquets, occasions where Macedonian princes before him had been wont to drink to excess,—he was capable of savage deeds.
ALEXANDER IN GREECE: HIS ARMY.—At a congress in Corinth, Alexander was recognized as the leader and general of Greece. In the spring of 335 B.C., he made a campaign against the barbarous peoples north of Macedonia,—the Thracians, the Getae, and the Illyrians. A false report of his death led to an uprising of the Greeks. Quickly returning, he took vengeance on the Thebans by razing their city to the ground, sparing only the temples and Pindar's house, and by selling its thirty thousand inhabitants into slavery. Athens prayed for pardon, which was granted, even the demand for the surrender of Demosthenes and other leaders being revoked. All resistance in Greece was over. Alexander's hands were free to complete his preparations for the task of conquering the Persian Empire. His army was strong through its valor and discipline rather than its numbers. The Macedonian phalanx was the most effective force which had hitherto been used in war. It was made up of foot soldiers drawn up in ranks, three feet apart, with spears twenty-one feet in length, held fifteen feet from the point. The length of the spears and the projection of so many in front of the first rank, gave to the phalanx a great advantage, although such a body of troops could be turned around with difficulty. Alexander began his battles with other troops, and used the phalanx for the decisive charge. Only native Macedonians served in the phalanx. This was the case, also, with the Guard, a body of infantry, and with two divisions of cavalry, one clad in heavy armor, and one in light. With these troops were Greek and barbarian soldiers, infantry and cavalry, and a division for hurling stones, which was used not only in sieges, but also in battles. There was a band of young Macedonian soldiers called pages, also a body-guard selected from these by promotion; and out of this the king chose his generals. The army consisted of not more than forty thousand men, but it was so organized as to be completely under the control of Alexander; and he was a military genius of the first order.
THE CAMPAIGN OF ALEXANDER: TO THE BATTLE OF ISSUS.—In the spring of 334 B.C., Alexander crossed the Hellespont at Abydos. At Ilium (Troy) he performed various rites in honor of the heroes of the Trojan war, his romantic sympathy with whom was the principal tie between him and the Greeks. A Persian army disputed the passage of the Granicus. He was the first to enter the river, and in the battle displayed the utmost personal valor. His decisive victory caused nearly the whole of Asia Minor to submit to him. Halicarnassus, and the few other towns that held out, were taken by storm. At Tarsus he was cured by his physician, Philip, of a dangerous fever, brought on by a bath in the chilly waters of the river Cydnus. Darius III., the king of Persia, with a large army, approaching from the Euphrates, encountered him in a valley near Issus, in Cilicia. There (333 B.C.) was fought the memorable battle which settled the fate of the Persian Empire. The host of Darius was defeated with great slaughter; and his camp, with his treasures and his family, fell into the hands of the victor.
TO THE BATTLE OF ARBELA.—After the victory of Issus, Syria and Phoenicia submitted, except Tyre, which was captured after a siege of seven months. Two thousand of the inhabitants were hung on the walls, and thirty thousand were sold into slavery. Gaza resisted, and there Alexander was severely wounded. After it was taken, he entered Egypt, and founded the city of ALEXANDRIA, in its consequences one of the most memorable acts of his life. He marched through Lybia to the temple of Jupiter Ammon (331 B.C.). Having thus subdued the lands on the west, he passed through Palestine and Syria by way of Damascus, crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris, and met the Persian army in the plains of Gaugamela, near Arbela,—an army more than twenty times as large as his own (October, 331 B.C.). After a hotly contested battle, the Persians were routed, and their empire destroyed.
TO THE INVASION OF INDIA.—Babylon and Susa with all their treasures, and, afterwards, Persepolis and Pasargadae, fell into the conqueror's hands. He set fire to Persepolis, and sold its male inhabitants into slavery. He pursued Darius into Media, Hyrcania, and Parthia, where the flying king was murdered by Bessus, one of his own nobles, that he might not give himself up to Alexander. He then marched east and south through Persia and the modern Afghanistan. He tarried at Prophthasia (Furrah) for two months. Here it was that he charged Philotas, one of his best officers, with a conspiracy against his life, and put him to death; and after this he ordered the murder of Parmenio, his best general, who had been a companion in arms of King Philip. Founding cities in different places as he advanced, he crossed the Oxus, marched through Sogdiana, and crossed the Jaxartes (Sir-Daria). While at Samarcand, in a drunken revel, he slew Clitus, the friend who had saved his life in the battle of the Granicus. In a fit of remorse he went without food or drink for three days. In Bactra, the capital of Bactria, he married Roxana, a princess of the country. By this time his head was turned by his unexampled victories, conquests and power. He began to demand of his followers the cringing adulation that was paid to Oriental monarchs, and when it was denied was ready to inflict summary vengeance.
TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER.—Crossing the eastern Caucasus (the Hindu-Kush), Alexander moved down the right bank of the Indus, subduing the tribes whom he met in his path. On the further side of the Hydaspes, he met the Indian prince Porus, whom he defeated and captured, and converted into an ally. He continued his marches and his line of victories as far as the river Hyphasis. Here the Macedonian troops would go no farther. Alexander turned back (327 B.C.), and with his army and fleet moved down the Hydaspes to the Indus, and down the Indus to the sea. Nearchus, his admiral, sailed along the shore to the west, while Alexander conducted the rest of the army amid infinite hardships through the desert, and finally met him on the coast. In the beginning of the year 325, he reached Susa. Here he plainly manifested his purpose of combining Macedonia and Greece with the East in one great empire. He adopted the Persian costume and ceremonial, and married both the daughter of Darius III. and the sister of Artaxerxes III. He prevailed on eighty of his Macedonian officers and ten thousand Macedonian soldiers to take Persian wives. For himself he exacted the homage paid to a divinity. These measures, looking to the amalgamation of Macedon and Greece with the East on terms of equality, were most offensive to the old comrades and subjects of Alexander. He was obliged to quell a mutiny, which he accomplished with consummate address and courage (July, 324 B.C.). In the marshes about Babylon, a place which he intended to make his capital, he contracted a fever, which was aggravated by daily revels, and which terminated his life (323 B.C.), after a reign of twelve years and eight months.
INFLUENCE OF ALEXANDER.—The Persian Empire, when it was attacked by Alexander, was a gigantic body without much vitality. Yet to overcome it, there was requisite not only the wonderful military talents of the conqueror, but the vigilance and painstaking which equally characterized him. He has been called "an adventurer." To fight and to conquer, and to spread his dominion wherever there were countries to subdue, seems to have been his absorbing purpose. The most substantial result of his exploits, which read more like fable than authentic history, was to spread Hellenism,—to diffuse at least a tincture of Greek civilization, together with some acquaintance with the Greek language, over the lands of the East. This was a most important work in its bearing on the subsequent history of antiquity, and more remotely on the history of all subsequent times.
DIVISIONS OF THE EMPIRE.—Alexander left no legitimate children. The child of Roxana, Alexander the Younger, was born after his father's death. The empire naturally fell to his principal generals, of whom Perdiccas, having command of the great army of Asia, had the chief power. He was obliged to content his military colleagues, which he did by giving to them provinces. The principal regents, or guardians, were soon reduced to three,—Antipater and Craterus in Europe, and Perdiccas. The government was carried on in the name of Roxana's son, and of Arrhidaeus, the half-brother of Alexander. But Perdiccas soon found that each general was disposed to be in fact a king in his own dominion. He formed the plan of seizing the empire for himself. This combined the satraps against him. Perdiccas was supported by his friend Eumenes, but had against him Antipater and Craterus, the other regents, and the powerful governors, Ptolemy Lagi in Egypt, and Antigonus in Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphilia (322 B.C.). There followed a series of wars lasting for twenty-two years, involving numerous changes of sovereignty, and fresh partitions of territory. The rebellious satraps triumphed over the royalists, whose aim was to keep the empire intact for the family of Alexander. The ambition of Antigonus to make himself the sole ruler, led to a league against him (315 B.C.). In a treaty of peace, Cassander, the son of Antipater, was to retain the government of Macedonia. By him Roxana and the young Alexander were put to death. In a second war against Antigonus, in which, as before, he was supported by his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes, they were completely defeated in the battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia (301 B.C.). Antigonus was slain: Demetrius fled to Greece. The result of this protracted contest was, that the Macedonian empire was broken into three principal states,—Macedonia under the Antigonidae, the descendants of Antigonus; Egypt under the Ptolemies; Syria under the Seleucidae. Besides these, there were the smaller kingdoms of Pergamon and of Bithynia. Other states broke off from the Syrian realm of the Seleucidae.
PTOLEMY LAGI (323-285 B.C.).—When Alexander transferred the seat of power in Egypt from Memphis to Alexandria, he accomplished results which he could not at all foresee. The Greek element became predominant in Egyptian affairs. A great stimulus was given to commerce and to foreign intercourse. The Egyptians themselves entered zealously into industrial pursuits. Ptolemy Lagi (Soter), the first of the new sovereigns, was wise enough to guard his own territory, and even to establish his rule in Palestine, Phoenicia, and Coele-Syria, but to avoid extensive schemes of conquest. Cyrenaica, on the west of Egypt, and the intermediate Lybian tribes, he subdued. Ptolemy was an absolute monarch, but he retained prominent features in the old Egyptian administrative system, gave offices to Egyptians, and protected their religion. The most important civil stations and all military offices were reserved for Graeco-Macedonians: Alexandria was a Greek city. From the beginning he fostered learning and science. He set to work to collect a great library in a building connected with his palace. He founded the Museum, which was a college of professors. It attracted a great body of students, and became the university of the eastern world. Under the patronage of Ptolemy, mathematicians, poets, and critics of high repute flourished. Among the structures raised by him were the lighthouse of vast height on the island of Pharos, which was connected with the shore by a mole, or causeway, a mile in length; the Soma, or mausoleum, containing the body of Alexander; the Temple of Serapis, completed by his son; and the Hippodrome.
PTOLEMY PHILADELPHIA.—Ptolemy II., surnamed Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.), with less talent for war than his father, did much to encourage commerce, and was especially active in his patronage of learning. In this last province he did a greater work than his father. He greatly enlarged the library. He drew learned men to his court from all directions. In his time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, in the version called the Septuagint. Under his auspices Manetho composed his History of Egypt.
PTOLEMY EUERGETES.—Ptolemy III. (247-222 B.C.), surnamed Euergetes (the benefactor), was the most enterprising and aggressive of this line of monarchs. Most of his conquests were not permanent, but some of them were. He was a patron of art and of literature. He raised Egypt to the highest pitch of prosperity that she ever enjoyed. The first three Ptolemies whose reigns had covered a century, were followed by a series of incompetent and depraved kings, nine in number.
Ptolemy IV. (Philopator) (222-205 B.C.) was a weak and dissolute prince. In war with Antiochus III. (the Great) of Syria, he saved his kingdom; but his own subjects were rebellious and disaffected. Ptolemy VI. (Philometor) (181-148 B.C.) was a boy at his accession. His guardians engaged in war with Syria, which would have conquered Egypt but for the interposition of the Romans in his behalf (170 B.C.).
When Alexander was in the far East, the Spartan king, Agis III. (330 B.C.), headed a revolt against Antipater; but Agis was vanquished and slain. The death of Alexander kindled the hope of regaining liberty among patriotic Greeks. Athens, under Demosthenes and Hyperides, led the way. A large confederacy was formed. Leosthenes, the Greek commander, defeated Antipater, and shut him up within the walls of Lamia (in Thessaly). But the Greeks were finally beaten at Crannon. Favorable terms were granted to their cities, except Athens and Aetolia. Twenty-one thousand citizens were deported from Athens to Thrace, Italy, and other places. The nine thousand richest citizens, with Phocion at their head, the anti-democratic party, had all power left in their hands. Demosthenes, Hyperides, and other democratic leaders, were proscribed. Demosthenes took refuge in the temple of Neptune, on the little island of Calaurea. Finding himself pursued by Archias, the officer of Antipater, he took poison, which he had kept by him in a quill, and died. Thus closed the life of an intrepid statesman who had served the cause of liberty and of his country through the direst perils and trials with unfaltering constancy. The democracy again acquired power temporarily, and Phocion was condemned to death.
Cassander, excluded from the Macedonian throne by his father, Antipater, supplanted Polysperchon, the regent (316 B.C.). He placed Demetrius of Phaleron in power at Athens over a democracy with restricted prerogatives. He was driven out by Demetrius Poliorcetes, who was helped by Athens to possess himself of Macedonia and of the most of Greece, but was compelled (287 B.C.) to give up his throne, which, however, was gained by his son, Antigonus Gonatas (277 B.C.).
THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE.—In 279 B.C., there occurred an irruption of the Gauls into Greece, "one of those vast waves of migration which from time to time sweep over the world." The Macedonian king, Ptolemy Ceraunus, was defeated by them in a great battle, captured, and put to death. It was two years before these marauders were driven out, and Macedonia acquired a settled government. This episode in history favored the growth of two leagues—the Achaean League and the Aetolian League. In these leagues the several cities gave up to the central council much more power than Greek cities had been in the habit of granting in former unions. The Achaean League was at first made up of ten Achaean cities. About 240 B.C. Aratus of Sicyon, who had brought Sicyon into the league, delivered Corinth from the Macedonians. To free Greek cities from subjection to them, was long a great object of the league. Peloponnesus, except Sparta, with Athens and Aegina, joined it.
THE AETOLIAN LEAGUE: WAR OF THE LEAGUES.—The rough Aetolians north of the Corinthian Gulf, semi-barbarous in their mode of life, formed another league, and got command of Phocis, Locris, and Boeotia. A praiseworthy attempt at reform was made in Sparta by the king, Agis IV. (240 B.C.), who was opposed by the rich, and put to death. Cleomenes, his successor, who had the same spirit as Agis, engaged in conflict with the Achaean League, which then called in Macedonian help (223 B.C.). It had to give up to Macedon the Corinthian citadel. Sparta was overthrown. Soon a war between the two leagues broke out, when the Achaeans again called on the Macedonians for aid. These conflicts were followed by the interference of the Romans.
THE EVIL OF FACTION.—The bane of Greece, from the beginning to the end of its history, was the suicidal spirit of disunion. Her power was splintered at many crises, when, if united, it might have saved the land from foreign tyranny. Her resources were drained, generation after generation, by needless local contests. She owed her downfall to the desolating influence of faction.
Seleucus I. (Nicator) (312-280 B.C.) was the founder of the Syrian kingdom. From Babylon he extended his dominion to the Black Sea, to the Jaxartes, and even to the Ganges, so far as to make the Indian prince, Sandracottus, acknowledge him as suzerain. From Babylon he removed his capital to Antioch on the Orontes, which he founded,—a city destined to be the rival of Alexandria among the cities of the East. The effect of this removal, however, was to loosen his hold upon the Eastern provinces of his empire. Seleucia, on the west bank of the Tigris, he likewise founded, which became a great commercial city, but was outstripped later by the Parthian city opposite, Ctesiphon. The provinces beyond the Euphrates he committed to his son, Antiochus. With him (Antiochus I.) begins the decline of the empire through the influence of Oriental luxury and vice. Under him Syria lost the eastern part of Asia Minor through the invading Gauls, who converted northern Phrygia into Galatia, while north-western Lydia became the kingdom of Pergamon. Antiochus II. (261-246 B.C.) could not hold the provinces in subjection. The Parthian and Bactrian kingdoms began under his reign. Antiochus III. (the Great) (223-1876.0.) checked the Parthians and Bactrians, and expelled the Egyptians from Asia, but prepared for the downfall of the Syrian Empire by provoking the hostility of the Romans.
BACTRIA, PARTHIA, PERGAMON, GALATIA.—Bactria, after it broke off from Syria, was under Greek princes until, having been weakened by the Parthians, it was conquered by the Scythians (134 B.C.). The Parthians issued, as marauders, from the north border of Iran (256 B.C.), under the Arsacidae. They gradually acquired civilization from contact with Greek culture, especially after they established the trading-city of Ctesiphon. About 200 B.C. the rulers of Pontus made the Greek city of Sinope their residence, and attained to a high degree of strength under Mithridates VI. (the Great). Pergamon became a flourishing state under the Greek rule of Attalus I. (241 B.C.). It was famed for its wealth and its trade. Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.) founded the library at Pergamon. For him parchment was improved, if not invented, the Egyptians having forbidden the exportation of papyrus. Galatia was so named from the swarm of Gallic invaders (about 279 B.C.), who, after incursions in the East, which were continued for forty years, settled there, and by degrees yielded to the influences of Greek culture.
PALESTINE: THE MACCABEES: THE IDUMAEAN PRINCES.—Palestine fared comparatively well in the times when the Ptolemies had control. Not so after it fell under the permanent sway of Syria. The Jews were surrounded and invaded by Gentilism. On three sides, there were Greek cities. The perils to which their religion was exposed by the heathen without, and by a lukewarm party within, made earnest Jews, the bulk of the people, more inflexible in their adherence to their law and customs. The party of the Pharisees grew out of the intensity of the loyal and patriotic feeling which was engendered in the periods following the exile. The synagogues, centers of worship and of instruction scattered over the land, acted as a bulwark against the intrusion of heathen doctrine and heathen practices. The resistance to these dreaded evils came to a head when the Syrian ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, embittered by his failures in conflict with Egypt, resolved to break down religious barriers among his subjects, and, for this end, to exterminate Jewish worship. In 168 B.C. he set up an altar to Jupiter in the temple at Jerusalem, and even compelled Jewish priests to immolate swine. Then the revolt broke out in which the family of Maccabees were the heroic leaders. Judas Maccabees recovered the temple, but fell in battle (160. B.C.). Under his brother Simon, victory was achieved, and the independence of the nation secured. The chief power remained in the hands of this family, the Asmonaean princes, until their degeneracy paved the way for Roman intervention under Pompeius. His adviser was the Idumeaean, Antipater, a Jewish proselyte, whose son Herod was made king (39 B.C.).
PHILOSOPHY: THE STOICS AND THE EPICUREANS.—In the Greek world the progress of investigation and reflection tended to produce disbelief in the old mythological system. Social confusion and degeneracy tended to undermine all religious faith. Pyrrho (about 330 B.C.) brought forward the skeptical doctrine, that the highest wisdom is to doubt every thing. Euhemrus (315 B.C.) interpreted the whole mythology as an exaggeration, by imagination and invention, of historical events which form its slender nucleus. With the loss of liberty and the downfall of the Greek states, philosophy became, so to speak, more cosmopolitan. It no longer exalted, in the same narrow spirit, the Greek above the barbarian. It looked at mankind more as one community. This was a feature of the first of the two principal sects, the Stoics, of whom Zeno (about 330 B.C.), and Chrysippus (280-207 B.C.) were the founders. They taught that virtue is the only good; that is consists in living according to nature; that reason should be dominant, and tranquillity of spirit be maintained by the complete subjugation of feeling. The emotions are to be kept down by the force of and iron will. This is the Stoic apathy. The world is wisely ordered: whatever is, is right; yet the cause of all things is not personal. Mankind form on great community, "one city." The Epicureans, the second of the prominent sects,—so called from Epicurus, their founder (342-370 B.C.),—made pleasure the chief good, which is to be secured by prudence, or such a regulation of our desires as will yield, on the whole, the largest fruit of happiness. They believed that the gods exist, but denied Providence.
CULTURE.—In the Greek cities which were founded by the Macedonians, the political life and independence which Greece had enjoued did not exist. The "Hellenistic" literature and culture, as it is called, which followed, lacked the spontaneous energy and original spirit of the old time. The civilization was that of people not exclusively Greek in blood. Alexandria was its chief seat. Poetry languished. It was prose—and prose in the form of learned inquiries, criticism, and science—that flourished. The path was the same as that marked out by Aristotle. Theocritus, born in Syracuse, or Cos, under Ptolemy I. (about 320 B.C.), had distinction as a pastoral or bucolic poet. Euclid, under Ptolemy Soter, systemized geometry. Archimedes, who died in 212 B.C., is said to have invented the screw, and was skillful in mechanics. Eratosthenes founded descriptive astronomy and scientific chronology. "The Alexandrian age busied itself with literary or scientific research, and with setting in order what the Greek mind had done in its creative time." After Greece became subject to Rome (146 B.C.) the Graeco Roman period in Greek literature begins. The Greek historian Polybius stands on the border between the Alexandrian age and this next era. He was born about 210 B.C., and died about 128 B.C.
LITERATURE.—Works mentioned on p. 16: Histories of Greece by GROTE (12 vols.) (democratic in his sympathies), E. CURTIUS (5 vols.), THIRLWALL (8 vols.), W. Smith (1 vol.), G. W. Cox. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte; Fyffe, History of Greece (primer); Duncker, History of Greece [separately published]; Abbott (2 vols.); Holm (4 vols.); Bury; Oman.
On special periods: The writings of the ancient authors,—Herodotus (Rawlinson's translation, 4 vols.), Xenophon, THUCYDIDES (Jowett's translation, 2 vols.), Polybius, Plutarch's Lives. Schäfer, Demosthenes und seine Zeit (3 vols.); DROYSEN, Geschichte des Hellenismus (3 vols.); E. A. FREEMAN, History of Federal Government (vol. i.); FINLAY, History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans (7 vols.); G. W. Cox, History of Greece from the Earliest Period to the End of the Persian War (2 vols.), and Lives of Greek Statesmen (1 vol.); Freeman, History of Sicily (4 vols.).
On special topics: BOECKH, The Public Economy of Athens; Coulanges, The Ancient City, etc.: Gõll, Kulturbilder aus Hellas und Rom (3 vols.); Guhl and Koner, The Life of the Greeks and Romans, etc.; Green, Greece and Greek Antiquities (primer); J. P. Mahaffy, Social Life in Greece, also Rambles in Greece, Old Greek Education, and History of Greek Literature (2 vols.); Becker, Charicles (a story illustrative of Greek life); F. A. Paley, Greek Wit (2 vols.); Church, Stories from Homer; Black, The Wise Men of Greece; Neares, Greek Anthology [in Ancient Classics for English Readers], Chief Ancient Philosophies [Stoicism, etc.] (1 vol., 1880); Müller and Donaldson, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (3 vols.); Mure, A Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (5 vols.); Jebb, Attic Orators (2 vols.); Symonds, The Greek Poets (2 vols.); G. F. Schömann, The Antiquities of Greece; Gladstone, Studies on the Homeric Age and Homer; Lübke, Outlines of the History of Art; FERGUSSON, History of Architecture; D'Anvers, Elementary History of Art; Botsford, Development of the Athenian Constitution; W. W. Fowler, The City-State of the Greeks and Romans; Gilbert, Constitutional Antiquities of Sparta and Athens; Greenidge, Handbook of Greek Constitutional History; H. N. Fowler, History of Greek Literature; Marshall, Short History of Greek Philosophy; Gardner, Handbook of Greek Sculpture; Tarbell, History of Greek Art_; Tozer, Primer of Classical Geography; Kiepert, Atlas Antiquus; Cunningham, Western Civilization (vol. 1); Smith (Wayte & Marindin), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (2 vols., 1890); Seyffert (Nettleship and Sandys), Dictionary of Classical Antiquities.
A.—House of Alexander the Great.
(1) AMYNTAS II. | +—(4) PHILIP, m. | 1, Olympias; | | | +—ALEXANDER THE GREAT, m. | 1, Roxana; | | | +—(7) ALEXANDER. | | 2, Concubines. | | | +—Hercules. | | 2, Cleopatra; | | 3, Concubines. | | | +—(6) PHILIP ARRHIDAEUS, m. Eurydicé. | | | +—Thessalonica, m. Cassander. | | | +—Cynané m. Amyntas. | +—(2) ALEXANDER II. | +—(3) PERDICCAS III. | +—Amyntas, m. Cynané | +—Eurydicé, m. Philip Arrhidaeus.
B.—House of Antipater.
ANTIPATER. | +—(8) CASSANDER, m. Thessalonica. | | | +—(9) PHILIP II. | | | +—(10) ANTIPATER II. | | | +—(11) ALEXANDER. | | +—Philip. | +—Eurydicé, m. Ptolemy Lagi, | +—Phila, m. | 1, Craterus; | 2, Demetrius Poliorcetes. | +—Nicaea, m. Perdiccas.
C.—House of Antigonus.
Antigonus I. | | +—(12) DEMETRIUS I (Poliorcetes), m. | Phila, daughter of Antipater. | | | +—(13) Antigonus II (Gonatas), m. | | Phila, daughter of Seleucus Nicator. | | | | | +—(14) Demetrius II, m. | | 1, Stratonice; | | | | | +—(16) PHILIP III. | | | | | | | +—(17) PERSEUS, m. | | | | Laodicé, daughter of Seleucus Philopator. | | | | | | | +—Demetrius | | | | | +—Apama. | | | | 2, Phthia. | | | +—Craterus. | | | | | +—Alexander | | | +—Demetrius the Handsome. | | | | | +—Antigonus III (Doson), m. | | | Phthia, widow of Demetrius II | | | | | +—Echecrates, | | | | | +—Antigonus. | | | +—Stratonice, m. | | 1, Seleucus Nicator; | | 2, Antiochus Theus. | | | +—Phila. | +—Philip.
[From Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History.]
PLACE OF ROME IN HISTORY.—Rome is the bridge which unites, while it separates, the ancient and the modern world. The history of Rome is the narrative of the building up of a single City, whose dominion gradually spread until it comprised all the countries about the Mediterranean, or what were then the civilized nations. "In this great empire was gathered up the sum total that remained of the religions, laws, customs, languages, letters, arts, and sciences of all the nations of antiquity which had successively held sway or predominance." Under the system of Roman government and Roman law they were combined in one ordered community. It was out of the wreck of the ancient Roman Empire that the modern European nations were formed. Their likeness to one another, their bond of fellowship, is due to the heritage of laws, customs, letters, religion, which they have received in common from Rome.
THE INHABITANTS OF ANCIENT ITALY.—Until a late period in Roman history, the Apennines, and not the Alps, were the northern boundary of Italy. The most of the region between the Alpine range and the Apennines, on both sides of the Po, was inhabited by Gauls, akin to the Celts of the same name north of the Alps. On the west of Gallia were the Ligurians, a rough people of unknown extraction. People thought to be of the same race as the Ligurians dwelt in Sardinia and in Corsica, and in a part of Sicily. On the east of Gallia were the Venetians, whose lineage is not ascertained. The Apennines branch off from the Alps in a southeasterly direction until they near the Adriatic, when they turn to the south, and descend to the extreme point of the peninsula, thus forming the backbone of Italy. On the west, in the central portion of the peninsula, is the hilly district called by the ancients, Etruria (now Tuscany), and the plains of Latium and Campania. What is now termed Campania, the district about Rome, is a part of ancient Latium. The Etrurians differed widely, both in appearance and in language, from the Romans. They were not improbably Aryans, but nothing more is known of their descent. In the east, in what is now Calabria, and in Apulia, there was another people, the Iapygians, whose origin is not certain, but who were not so far removed from the Greeks as from the Latins. The southern and south-eastern portions of the peninsula were the seat of the Greek settlements, and the country was early designated Great Greece. Leaving out the Etrurians, Iapygians, and Greeks, Italy, south of Gallia, was inhabited by nations allied to one another, and more remotely akin to the Greeks. These Italian nations were divided into an eastern and a western stock. The western stock, the Latins, whose home was in Latium, were much nearer of kin to the Greeks than were the eastern. The eastern stock comprised the Umbrians and the Oscans. It included the Sabines, Samnites, and Lucanians.
We are certain, that, "from the common cradle of peoples and languages, there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period, the Italians branched off; and that these divided again into the western and eastern stocks, while, at a still later date, the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans." (Mommsen's History of Rome, vol. i., p. 36.)
ITALY AND GREECE.—In two important points, Italy is geographically distinguished from Greece. The sea-coast of Italy is more uniform, not being broken by bays and harbors; and it is not cut up, like Greece, by chains of mountains, into small cantons. The Romans had not the same inducement to become a sea-faring people; there were fewer cities; there was an opportunity for closer and more extended leagues. It is remarkable that the outlets of Greece were towards the east; those of Italy towards the west. The two nations were thus averted from one another: they were, so to speak, back to back.
THE GREEKS AND ROMANS.—The Greeks and Romans, although sprung from a common ancestry, and preserving common features in their language, and to some extent in their religion, were very diverse in their natural traits. The Greeks had more genius: the Romans more stability. In art and letters the Romans had little originality. In these provinces they were copyists of the Greeks: they lacked ideality. They had, also, far less delicacy of perception, flexibility, and native refinement of manners. But they had more sobriety of character and more endurance. They were a disciplined people; and in their capacity for discipline lay the secret of their supremacy in arms and of their ability to give law to the world. If they produced a much less number of great men than the Greeks, there was more widely diffused among Roman citizens a conscious dignity and strength. The Roman was naturally grave: the fault of the Greek was levity. Versatility belonged to the Greek: virility to the Roman. Above all, the sense of right and of justice was stronger among the Romans. They had, in an eminent degree, the political instinct, the capacity for governing, and for building up a political system on a firm basis. This trait was connected with their innate reverence for authority, and their habit of obedience. The noblest product of the Latin mind is the Roman law, which is the foundation of almost all modern codes. With all their discernment of justice and love of order, the Romans, however, were too often hard and cruel. Their history is stained here and there with acts of unexampled atrocity. In private life, too, when the rigor of self-control gave way, they sunk into extremes of vulgar sensuality. If, compared with the Greeks, they stood morally at a greater height, they might fall to a lower depth.
THE ROMAN RELIGION.—The difference between the Greek and Roman mind was manifest in the sphere of religion. Before their separation from one another they had brought from the common hearthstone elements of worship which both retained. Jupiter, like Zeus, was the old Aryan god of the shining sky. But the Greek conception, even of the chief deity, differed from the Roman. When the Romans came into intercourse with the Greeks, they identified the Greek divinities with their own, and more and more appropriated the tales of the Greek mythology, linking them to their own deities. Of the early worship peculiar to the Romans, we know but little. But certain traits always belonged to the Roman religion. Their mood was too prosaic to invent a theogony, to originate stories of the births, loves, and romantic adventures of the gods, such as the Greek fancy devised. The Roman myths were heroic, not religious: they related to the deeds of valiant men. Their deities were, in the first place, much more abstract, less vividly conceived, less endowed with distinct personal characteristics. And, secondly, their service to the gods was more punctilious and methodical. It was regulated, down to the minutiæ, by fixed rules. Worship was according to law, was something due to the gods, and was discharged, like any other debt, exactly, and at the proper time. The Roman took advantage of technicalities in dealing with his gods: he was legal to the core. The word religion had the same root as obligation. It denoted the bondage or service owed by man to the gods in return for their protection and favor; and hence the anxiety, or scrupulous watchfulness against the omission of what is required to avert the displeasure of the powers above.
ORIGIN OF THE ROMANS.—The Romans attributed their origin to the mythical Æneas, who fled, with a band of fugitives, from the flames of Troy, and whose son, Ascanius, or Iulus, settled in Alba Longa, in Latium. What is known of the foundation of Rome is, that it was a settlement of Latin farmers and traders on the group of hills, seven in number, near the border of Latium, on the Tiber. It was the head of navigation for small vessels, and Rome was at first, it would seem, the trading-village for the exchange of the products of the farming-district in which it was placed. Such an outpost would be useful to guard Latium against the Etrurians across the river. Of the three townships, or clans, which united to form Rome,—the Ramnes, the Tities, and the Luceres,—the first and third were Latin. The second, which was Sabine, blended with the Roman element, as the language proves. The clans, or tribes, in Latium together formed a league, the central meeting-place of which was at first Alba Longa. There is some reason to think that the Sabines were from Cures near Rome. Certain it is that Rome, even at the outset, derived its strength from a combination of tribes.
CHARACTER OF THE LEGENDS.—There is no doubt that the Romans lived for a time under the rule of kings. These were not like the Greek kings, hereditary rulers, nor were they chosen from a single family. But the stories told in later times respecting the kings, their names and doings, are quite unworthy of credit. They rest upon no contemporary evidence or sure tradition. To say nothing of the miraculous elements that enter into the narratives, they are laden with other improbabilities, which prove them to be the fruit of imagination. They contain impossibilities in chronology. They ascribe laws, institutions, and religion, which were of slow growth, to particular individuals, apportioning to each his own part in an artificial way. Many of the stories are borrowed from the Greeks, and were originally told by them about other matters. In short, the Roman legends, including dates, such as are recorded in this chapter, are fabrications to fill up a void in regard to which there was no authentic information, and to account for beliefs and customs the origin of which no one knew. They are of service, however, in helping us to ascertain the character of the Roman constitution, and something about its growth, in the prehistoric age.
THE LEGENDARY TALES.—Romulus and Remus, so the legend runs, were sons of the god Mars by Rhea Silvia, a priestess of Vesta, whose father, Numitor, had been slain by his wicked brother, Amulius, who thereby made himself king of Alba Longa. The twins, by his command, were put into a basket, and thrown into the Tiber. The cradle was caught by the roots of a fig-tree: a she-wolf came out, and suckled them, and Faustulus, a shepherd, brought them up as his own children. Romulus grew up, and slew the usurper, Amulius. The two brothers founded a city on the banks of the Tiber where they had been rescued (753 B.C.). In a quarrel, the elder killed the younger, and called the city after himself, Roma. Romulus, to increase the number of the people, founded an asylum on the Capitoline Hill, which gave welcome to robbers and fugitives of all kinds. There was a lack of women; but, by a cunning trick, the Romans seized on a large number of Sabine women, who had been decoyed to Rome, with their fathers and brothers, to see the games. The angry Sabines invaded Rome. Tarpeia, the daughter of the Roman captain, left open for them a gate into the Capitoline citadel, and so they won the Capitol. In the war that followed, by the intervention of the Sabine women, the Romans and Sabines agreed to live peaceably together as citizens of one town, under Romulus and the Sabine, Tatius. After the death of Tatius, Romulus reigned alone, and framed laws for the two peoples. During a thunder-storm he was translated to the skies, and worshiped as the god Quirinus (716 B.C.). After a year Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, was elected king (715-673 B.C.). He stood in close intercourse with the gods, was full of wisdom and of the spirit of peace. He framed the religious system, with its various offices and rites. The gates of the temple of Janus, closed only in peace, were shut during his mild reign. He died of old age, without illness or pain. The peaceful king was followed by the warlike king, Tullus Hostilius (673-641 B.C.). War breaks out with Alba. The two armies face each other, and the contest is decided by the single combat of the three Horatii, champions of the Romans, and the three Curiatii, champions of Alba. One Roman, the victor and sole survivor, is led to Rome in triumph. Thus Alba became subject to Rome. Afterwards Alba was destroyed, but the Albans became Roman citizens. The fourth king, Ancus Marcius (641-616 B.C.), loved peace, but could not avoid war. He fought against four Latin towns, brought their inhabitants to Rome, and planted them on the Aventine hill. He fortified the hill Janiculum, on the right bank of the Tiber, and connected it by a wooden bridge with the town. The next king was by birth an Etruscan. Lucumo and his wife, Tanaquil, emigrated to Rome. Lucumo took the name of Lucius Tarquinius, was stout, valiant, and wise, a counselor of Ancus, and chosen after him, instead of one of the sons of Ancus, whose guardian he was. Tarquinius Priscus (616-578 B.C.)—for so he was called—waged successful wars with the Sabines, Latins, and Etruscans. The Etruscans owned him for their king, and sent a crown of gold, a scepter, an ivory chair, an embroidered tunic, a purple toga, and twelve axes in as many bundles of rods. He made a reform of the laws. He built the temple of Jupiter, or the Capitol, laid out the forum for a market-place, made a great sewer to drain the lower valleys of the city, leveled a race-course between the Aventine and Palatine hills, and introduced games like those of the Etruscans. Tarquinius was killed by the sons of Ancus; and Servius Tullius (578-534 B.C.), the son of Ocrisia, a slave-woman, and of a god, was made king through the devices of Tanaquil. He united the seven hills, and built the wall of Rome. He remodeled the constitution by the census and the division of the centuries. Under him Rome joined the Latin league. He was murdered by his flagitious son-in-law, Tarquinius Superbus (534-510 B.C.)—Tarquin the Proud. He ruled as a despot, surrounding himself with a bodyguard, and, upon false accusation, inflicting death on citizens whose property he coveted. By a treacherous scheme, he got possession of the town of Gabii. He waged war against the Volscians, a powerful people on the south of Latium. He adorned Rome with many buildings, and lived in pomp and extravagance, while the people were impoverished and helpless. The inspired Sibyl of Cumae offered him, through a messenger, nine books of prophecies. The price required excited his scorn, whereupon the woman who brought them destroyed three. She came back with the remaining six, which she offered at the same price. On being refused in the same manner, she destroyed another three. This led Tarquin to pay the price when she appeared the third time with the books that were left. They were carefully preserved to the end, that in times of danger the will of the gods might be learned. Another story told of the haughty king was, that, when he had grown old, and was frightened by dreams and omens, he sent his two sons to consult the oracle at Delphi. With them went his sister's son, Junius, who was called Brutus on account of his supposed silliness, which was really feigned to deceive the tyrant. The offering which he brought to the Delphian god was a simple staff. His cousins, who laughed at him, did not know that it was stuffed with gold. The god, in answer to a question, said that he would reign at Rome who should first kiss his mother. Brutus divined the sense of the oracle, pretended to stumble, and kissed the mother earth. The cruel outrage of Sextus Tarquinius, the king's son, of which Lucretia, the wife of their cousin, was the pure and innocent victim, caused the expulsion of the house of Tarquin, and the abolishing of regal government. Her father and husband, with Brutus and the noble Publius Valerius Poplicola, to whom she related "the deed of shame" wrought by Sextus, swore, at her request, to avenge her wrong. She herself plunged a dagger into her heart, and expired. Brutus roused the people, and drove out the Tarquins. Two consuls were appointed in the room of the king, who should rule for one year. Brutus was one. When it was ascertained that his own sons had taken part in a conspiracy of the higher class to restore Tarquinius, the stern Roman gave orders to the lictors to scourge them, and to cut off their heads with the ax. Now the senate and people decreed that the whole race of Tarquinius should be banished for ever. Tarquinius went among the Etruscans, and secured the aid of the people of Tarquinii, and of Veii. In a battle, Aruns, the son of Tarquinius, and Brutus, both mounted, ran upon one another, and were slain. Each army marched to its home. Tarquinius then obtained the help of Porsena, king of the Etruscans, with a strong army. They took Janiculum; but Horatius Cocles, with two companions, posted himself at the entrance of the bridge, and kept the place, Horatius remaining until the bridge had been torn away behind him. He then, with his armor on, leaped into the river, and swam back to the shore. The town was hard pressed by the enemy and by famine. Mucius Scaevola went into Porsena's camp, resolved to kill him. But he slew another whom he mistook for the king. When threatened with death, he thrust his right hand into the fire, to show that he had no fear. Porsena, admiring his courage, gave him his freedom; and, on being informed that three hundred young Romans were sworn to undertake the same deed which Mucius had come to perform, Porsena made peace without requiring the restoration of Tarquinius. Tarquinius, not despairing, persuaded the Tusculans and other Latins to begin war against Rome. The Romans appointed a dictator to meet the exigency, Marcus Valerius. In a battle near Lake Regillus, when the Romans began to give way, the dictator invoked Castor and Pollux, vowing to dedicate a temple to them in case he was victorious. Two young men on white chargers appeared at the head of the Roman troops, and led them to victory. Tarquinius now gave up his effort, and went to Cumae to the tyrant Aristodemus, where he lived until his death.
TRUTH IN THE LEGENDS.—There are certain facts which are embedded in the legends. Alba was at one time the head of the Latin confederacy. The Sabines invaded Latium, settled on some of the hills of Rome, allied themselves with the Romans, and the two peoples were resolved into one federal state. This last change was a very important step. The tradition of a doubling of the senate and of two kings, Romulus and Taiius, although not in literal form historical, is believed to be a reminiscence of this union. It is thought that the earliest royalty was priestly in its character, and that this was superseded by a military kingship. It is probable that the Etruscans who had made much progress in civilization, in the arts and in manufactures, gained the upper hand in Latium. The insignia of the Roman kings were Etruscan. The Etruscan kings were driven out. There were advances in civilization under them, the division of the people into classes took place, and at that period structures like the "Servian" wall were built.
PATRICIANS AND PLEBEIANS.—The Romans from the beginning were divided into the upper class, the Patricians, and the common people, or Plebeians, who were free, but, like the perioeci and metoeci in Greece, had no political rights. The plebeians, as they included the conquered class, were not all poor. A part of them, who were under the special protection of citizens, their Patrons, were called Clients. The patricians were the descendants of the first settlers and proprietors. Under the old constitution, ascribed in the legends to Romulus, the patricians alone formed the military force, and were styled the Populus. They were divided into curiae (districts or wards), at first ten in number, and, after the union of the Romans with the Tities and Luceres, thirty. Each curia was divided into ten families, or gentes. The assembly of the citizens was called the Comitia Curiata. The Comitia chose the King. The Senate was a council of elders representing in some way the gentes.
The clan, or gens, was always of great consequence among the Romans. Its name was a part of the proper name of every citizen. The particular or individual names in vogue were not numerous. The name of the gens was placed between the personal name, or the praenomen, and the designation of the special family (included in the gens). Thus in the case of Caius Julius Caesar, "Julius" was the designation of the gens, "Caesar," of the family, while "Caius" was the personal name.
THE EARLY CONSTITUTION.—The "Servian constitution" made all land-owners, whether patrician or plebeian, subject to taxation, and obliged to do military service. The cavalry—the Equites, or knights,—was made up, by adding to the six patrician companies already existing, double the number from both classes. The infantry were organized without reference to rank, but were graded according to their property. The whole people were divided thus into five classes, and, when assembled, formed the Comitia Centuriata,—as being made up of the companies called "centuries," or "hundreds." At first this body was only consulted by the king in regard to offensive wars. Gradually it drew away more and more power from the Comitia Curiata, which consisted solely of patricians. Those who had no land were now distinguished from the land-owning plebeians. For the purposes of conscription, the city was divided into four Tribes, or wards. Every four years a census was to be taken.
MAGISTRATES.—When the kingship was abolished, and under the system that followed, the two Consuls were to be patricians. They exercised regal power during their term of office. They appointed the senators and the two Quaestors, who came to have charge of the treasury, under consular supervision. The consuls were attended by twelve Lictors, who carried the fasces—bundles of rods fastened around an ax,—which symbolized the power of the magistrate to flog or to behead offenders. The Comitia Centuriata acquired the right to elect the consuls, to hear appeals in capital cases from their verdicts, and to accept or reject bills laid before it. This was a great gain for the plebeians. Yet the patricians were strong enough in this assembly to control its action. On occasions of extraordinary peril, a Dictator might be selected by one of the consuls, who was to have absolute authority for the time. The Senate commonly had an important part, however, in the selection of this officer. There was a Master of Horse to command the knights under him. He was appointed by the dictator.
RELIGION.—Worship in families was conducted by the head of the household, the paterfamilias, who offered the regular sacrifices. But, as regards the whole people, worship was under the direction of the pontiffs, with the chief pontiff, the Pontifex Maximus, at their head, and in the hands of the priests. These were all officers of the state, elected to their places, and entirely subordinate to the civil magistrates. The pontiffs were not so much priests as they were guardians and interpreters of divine law. They were masters of sacred lore. They looked out that the numberless and complex rules in respect to religious observances should be strictly complied with. At the same time they had enough knowledge of astronomy to enable them to fix the days suitable for the transaction of business, public or private. They had the control of the calendar. The Augurs consulted the will of the gods as disclosed in omens. The augur, his eyes raised to the sky, with his staff marked off the heavens into four quarters, and then watched for the passage of birds, from which he took the auspices. In early times, there was an implicit faith in these supposed indications of the will of the divinities; but this credulity passed away, and the auguries became a political instrument for helping forward the schemes of some person or party. Besides the college of pontiffs and the college of augurs, there was the college of Fetiales, who were the guardians of the public faith in relation to other peoples, and performed the rites attending the declaration of war or the conclusion of peace. The Soothsayers (haruspices) were of Etruscan origin. They ascertained the will of the gods by inspecting the entrails of the slaughtered victims. The Flamens were the priests having charge of the worship of particular divinities. The Vestals were virgin priestesses of Vesta, who ministered in her temple, and kept the sacred fire from being extinguished.
The chief gods worshiped by the Romans were Jupiter, god of the sky; his wife, Juno, the goddess of maternity; Minerva, the goddess of wisdom; Apollo, the god of augury and the arts; Diana, the goddess of the chase and archery; Mars, the god of war; Bellona, the goddess of war; Vesta, patron of the Roman state and of the national hearthstone; Ceres, the goddess of agriculture; Saturnus, the patron of husbandry; Hercules, the Greek god, early naturalized in Italy as the god of gain and of mercantile contracts; Mercury, the god of trade; Neptune god of the sea. Venus was an old Roman goddess, who presided over gardens, but gradually was identified with the Grecian Aphrodite. Lares and Penates were household divinities, guardians of the family.
The Romans assigned a spirit to almost every thing. Each individual had his own protecting genius. Janus was the god of beginnings, Terminus was the god of the boundary, Silvanus of the forest, Vertumnus of the circling year. The farmer, in each part of his labor,—in harrowing, plowing, sowing, etc.,—invoked a spirit. So marriage, birth, and every natural event had each a sacred life of its own. Not less than forty-three distinct divinities are spoken of by name as having to do with the actions of a child. Thus the number of divinities was countless. Gods were great or small, according to the department of nature or of life where they severally were present and active.
RIVALRY OF CLASSES.—The abolishing of royalty left Rome as "a house divided against itself." The power granted to the Comitia Centuriata did not suffice to produce contentment. The patricians still decided every thing, and used their strength in an oppressive way. Besides the standing contest between the patricians and plebeians, there was great suffering on the side of the poorer class of plebeians. Many were obliged to incur debts; and their creditors enforced the rigorous law against them, loading them with chains, and driving their families from their homes. A great and constant grievance was the taking by the patricians of the public lands which had been obtained by conquest, for a moderate rent, which might not be paid at all. If they granted a share in this privilege to some rich plebeian houses, this afforded no help to the mass of the people, who were more and more deprived of the opportunity to till the smaller holdings in consequence of the employment of slaves. Yet the plebeians had to bear the burden of military service. At length they rose in a body, probably in returning from some victory, and encamped on a hill, the Sacred Mount, three miles from Rome, where they threatened to stay, and found another town. This bold movement led to an agreement. It was stipulated that they should elect magistrates from their own class, to be called Tribunes of the People, who should have the right to interpose an absolute veto upon any legal or administrative measure. This right each consul already had in relation to his colleague. To secure the commons in this new right, the tribunes were declared to be inviolable. Whoever used violence against them was to be an outlaw. The power of the tribunes at first was merely protective. But their power grew until it became controlling. One point where their authority was apt to be exerted was in the conscription, or military enrollment. This, if it were undertaken in an unfair way, they could stop altogether, and thus compel a change.
THE PLEBEIAN ASSEMBLY.—Not far from this time, there was instituted a new assembly, the Comitia of Tribes, or Comitia Tributa. There was a new division of the people into tribes or wards,—first twenty, then twenty-one, and, later, thirty-five. In this comitia, the plebeians were at the outset, if not always, the exclusive voters. The patricians had their assembly, the Comitia Curiata. The Comitia of the Tribes, which was then controlled by the plebeians, chose the tribunes. By degrees, both the other assemblies lost their importance. The plebeian body more and more extended its prerogatives. Besides the tribunes, the Aediles, two in number, who were assistants of the tribunes, and superintended the business of the markets, were chosen by the Comitia Tributa.
THE LAW OF CASSIUS.—The anxiety of the plebeians to be rid of the restrictions upon the holding and enjoyment of land, led to the proposal of a law for their relief by the consul Spurius Cassius (486 B.C.). Of the terms of the law, we have no precise knowledge. We only know, that, when he retired from office, he was condemned and put to death by the ruling class.
WAR WITH THE AEQUIANS AND THE VOLSCIANS.—About this time Rome concluded a league with the Latins, and soon after with another people, the Hernicans, who lived farther eastward, between the, Aequians and Volscians. It was a defensive alliance, in which Rome had the leading place. Then follow the wars with the Aequians and Volscians, where the traditional accounts are mingled with many fictitious occurrences. There are two stories of special note,—the story of Coriolanus, and the story of Cincinnatus. It is related that a brave patrician, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, at a time when grain was scarce, and was procured with difficulty from Etruria and Sicily for the relief of the famishing, proposed that it should be withheld from the plebeians unless they would give up the tribunate. The anger of this class, and the contempt which he showed for it, caused him to be banished. Thereupon he went to the Volscians, and led an army against Rome,—an army too strong to be resisted. One deputation after another went out of the city to placate him, but in vain. At length Veturia, his mother, and Volumnia, his wife, at the head of a company of matrons, went to his camp, and entreated him. Their prayer he could not deny, but exclaimed, "O my mother! Rome thou hast saved, but thou hast lost thy son." He died among the Volscians (491 B.C.). The tale, certainly in most of its parts, is fictitious. For example, he is said to have been called Coriolanus, from having previously conquered Corioli; but such designations were not given among the Romans until centuries later. The story of Cincinnatus in essential particulars is probably true. At a time when the Romans were hard pressed by the Æquians, the messengers of the Senate waited on Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, formerly a senator and a consul of renown in peace and war, and asked him to become dictator. They found him plowing in his field. He accepted the post, by his prudence and vigor delivered the state, and on the sixteenth day laid down his office, and went back to his farm. The time required by the hero for his task was doubtless much longer than the legend allows.
There is an authentic tradition of a war with the Etruscans, who had retained certain towns on the Roman side of the Tiber. The Romans established a fort on the Cremera, not far from Veii, which was one of them. In the course of this struggle, it is said that all the Fabii,—a distinguished Roman family,—except one boy, were perfidiously slain. This is an exaggerated tale. A truce was concluded with Veii-in 474 B.C. for forty years, which left Rome free to fight her enemies on the east and south.
THE DECEMVIRS.—The internal conflict of the patricians against the commons in Rome went on. In 471 B.C. the Publilian Law was passed to establish fully the right of the plebeians alone to elect their tribunes, or to exclude the upper class from their comitia. The claims of the plebeians, who formed the greater part of the fighting men, rose. They demanded first, however, that they should have the same private rights as the patricians, and that the laws should be made more efficient for their protection by being reduced to a code. This was the object of the Terentilian Law, proposed in 462. The result was a great dispute. Some concessions failed to satisfy the plebeians. Finally it was agreed that ten men, Decemvirs, should be chosen indiscriminately from both classes to frame a code, they, meantime, to supersede the consuls and tribunes in the exercise of the government (451 B.C.). They were to equalize the laws, and to write them down. The story of the mission to Athens for the study of the laws of Solon, is not worthy of credit. There is no doubt, however, that many obstacles were put in the way of the project by the conservative patricians, and that one of their order, Appius Claudius, took a prominent part, probably on the side of the people.
VIRGINIUS.—Here comes in the story of Virginia. It is related that Appius Claudius was an ambitious and bad man, who, being one of the decemvirs, wished to hold on to power. He conceived a base passion for the daughter of Virginius, a brave plebeian centurion, and claimed her on the pretense that she was the daughter of one of his slaves. Standing at his judgment-seat, Virginius, seeing that he could do nothing to save his child from the clutch of the villainous judge, plunged his dagger in her heart. This was the signal for another revolt of the people, which extorted the consent of the upper class to the sacred laws and the restoration of the tribuneship. It is a plausible theory that Appius Claudius favored the plebeian claims, and that the tale told above is a later invention to his discredit.
POLITICAL EQUALITY.—The laws of the twelve tables lay at the basis of all subsequent legislation in Rome, and were always held in reverence. The plebeians soon gained further advantages. In 449 B.C., it was ordained, under the consuls Horatius and Valerius, that the plebeian assembly of tribes should be a sovereign assembly, whose enactments should be binding on the whole Roman people. In 445 B.C., the law of Canuleius legalized marriage between the plebeians and patricians. This was an important step towards the closer union of the two classes. The executive power was still in the hands of the patricians. But in 444 a new office, that of military tribunes with consular power, to be chosen from the plebeians, was established. By way of offset to this great concession, a new patrician office, that of Censor, was created. The function of the two censors, who were to be chosen by the Comitia Centuriata, was to take the census at short intervals, to make out the tax-lists, to appoint senators and knights, to manage the collection of taxes, to superintend public buildings, and, finally, to exercise an indefinite supervision over public manners and morals. These were very great powers. We find that considerable time elapsed before the plebeians actually realized the advantage which they had legally won in this compromise. About the year 400, they succeeded in electing several military tribunes. As early as 410 B.C. three out of the four treasurers, or paymasters (quæstors), were plebeians. About forty years after (367 B.C.), they obtained, by the Licinian Laws, the political equality for which they had so long contended.
WAR WITH THE ETRUSCANS.—But before this result should be reached, other events of much consequence were to occur. The Etruscans, who were not only proficients in the arts, but were also active in trade and commerce, had been defeated at sea by the Greeks, in 474 B.C. But on the north they had a more formidable foe in the Gauls, by whom their power was weakened. The Romans took advantage of the situation to lay siege to Veii, which, after ten years, was captured by their general, Marcus Furius Camillus. The capture of other towns followed.
It was told of Camillus that Falerii surrendered to him of its own accord, for his magnanimity in sending back a treacherous schoolmaster who had taken out to his camp the sons of the chief citizens. Camillas tied his hands behind him, and ordered the boys to flog him back into the city. Camillus was sent into exile, it was related, on a charge of injustice in dividing the booty obtained at Veii.
INVASION OF THE GAULS.—But the Romans joined with the Etruscans in the attempt to drive back a dreaded enemy of both, the Gauls. In the battle of the Allia, a brook eleven miles north of Rome, on the 18th of July, 390 B.C., the Roman army was routed by them, and Rome left without the means of defense. All the people fled, except a few brave men, who shut themselves up in the Capitol, and, according to the tradition, some aged patricians, who, in their robes of state, waited for the enemy. The Gauls, under Brennus, rushed in, and plundered and burned the city. In later times the story was told, that, when the Gauls were climbing up to the Capitol secretly by night, the cackling of the geese awoke Marcus Manlius, and so the enemy was repulsed. There was another story, that, when the Romans were paying the ransom required by Brennus, and complained of false weight, the insolent Gaul threw his sword into the scale, exclaiming, "Woe to the conquered!" and that just then Camillus appeared, and drove the Gauls out of the city. This is certain, that the Gauls retired of their own free will from their occupation of the city. The destruction of the temples involved the loss of early chronicles, which would have given us better information as to the times preceding. The city was rebuilt without much delay.
THE LICINIAN LAWS.—The agitation for political reform soon commenced again. The Licinian Laws, which make an epoch in the controversy of parties, were proposed in 376, but were not passed until 367. Besides provisions for the relief of debtors and for limiting the number of acres of public lands to be held by an individual, it was enacted that the military tribuneship should be given up, and that at least one of the two consuls must be chosen from the plebeians. A new patrician office, the praetorship, was founded, the holders of which were to govern in the absence of the consuls. The patricians did not at once cease from the effort to keep the reins in their hands. Several times they broke the law, and put in two patrician consuls. They yielded at last, however; and, as early as the year 300, all Roman offices were open to all Roman citizens. The patrician order became a social, not a legal, distinction. A new sort of nobility, made up of both patricians and plebeians, whose families had longest held public offices, gradually arose. These were the optimates. The Senate became the principal executive body. It was recruited by the censors, principally from those who had held high stations and were upwards of thirty years old. One censor was required to be a plebeian. The condition of the people was improved by other enactments, one of which (in 326 or 313) secured to the debtor his personal freedom in case he should transfer his property to the creditor. At about this time, there was a change in the constitution of the army. The sort of arms assigned was no longer to depend on property qualifications. There were to be three lines in battle,—the first two to carry a short spear (pilum), and the third the long lance (hasta).
INFULENCE OF PARTY CONFLICTS.—The long contest of parties in Rome was an invaluable political education. It was attended with little bloodshed. It involved discussion on questions of justice and right, and on the best civil constitution. It was not unlike party conflicts in English history. It trained the Romans in a habit of judicious compromise, of perseverance in asserting just claims, and of yielding to just demands.
WARS WITH THE GAULS.—The increased vigor produced by the adjustment of the conflict of classes manifested itself in a series of minor wars. The Romans were now able to face the Gauls, who had permanently planted themselves in Northern Italy. Against them they waged four wars in succession, the last of which ended in a signal victory for the Roman side (367-349). Wars with the Etruscan cities brought the whole of Southern Etruria under Roman rule (358-351).
FIRST SAMNITE WAR.—The neighbor that was the hardest for the Romans to conquer was the nation of Samnites, who lived among the Apennines of Central Italy, east of Latium. The conflict with this tough tribe lasted, with intermissions, for fifty years.
The immediate occasion of the struggle was the appeal of Capua—a Greek city in Campania in which Samnites had before settled—for help against their kinsmen in the mountains (343). This prayer the Romans granted when Capua had placed itself under their sway. In the first battle, the Romans under Valerius Corvus won the day. A second Roman army was rescued from imminent danger by the heroism of the elder Decius Mus, and a Roman victory followed. After a third victory at Suessula, the Romans, on account of the threatening attitude of their Latin confederates, made peace. The Samnites, too, were involved in a war with Tarentum, a Greek city on the eastern coast.
WAR WITH THE LATINS.—The Latins were not disposed to recognize Rome any longer as the head of the league. They demanded perfect equality and an equal share of the Roman public offices (340). In a battle near Vesuvius, the plebeian consul, Decius Mus, having devoted himself to death for his country, rode into the thickest ranks of the enemy, and perished, having secured victory for the Roman army. Before the battle, the patrician consul, Titus Manlius, punished his son with death for presuming to undertake, without orders, a military exploit, in which, however, he had succeeded. After a second victory of Manlius at Trifanum, the Latins were subdued (340), the league was broken up, and most of the cities were made subject to Rome, acquiring citizenship without the right of suffrage; but they were forbidden to trade or to intermarry with one another. Some became Roman colonies.
Several had to cede lands, which were apportioned among Roman citizens. The beaks (rostra) of the old ships of Antium ornamented the Roman forum. Colonies of Roman citizens were settled in the district of the Volscii and in Campania. This was an example of the Roman method of separating vanquished places from one another, and of inclosing as in a net conquered territories.
SECOND SAMNITE WAR.—The establishment by the Romans of the military colony of Fregellae, in connection with other encroachments, brought on the second Samnite war, which lasted for twenty-two years. The prize of the contest was really the dominion over Italy. A great misfortune befell the Roman arms in 321. The incautious consuls, Veturinus and Postumius, allowed themselves to be surrounded in the Caudine Pass, where they were compelled to capitulate, swear to a treaty of peace, and give up six hundred Roman knights as hostages. The whole Roman army was compelled to pass under the yoke. The Roman Senate refused to sanction the treaty, and gave up the consuls, at their own request, in fetters to the Samnites. The Samnites refused to receive them, spared the hostages, and began the war anew. The Roman consuls, Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus, gained a victory at Capua, drove the Samnites out of Campania, and reconquered Fregellae. A great military road, the Appian Way, the remains of which may still be seen, was built from Rome to Capua (312).
The Etruscan cities joined in the war against Rome. All Etruria was in arms to overcome the advancing power of the Romans. The coalition was broken by the great defeat of the Etrurians at the Vadimonian Lake, in 310. The Samnites had their numerous allies; but the obstinate valor of the Romans, who were discouraged by no reverses, triumphed. The capture of Bovianum, the capital of the Samnite league (305), ended the war. The Samnites sued for peace. The old treaties were renewed. In the course of this protracted struggle, various Roman colonies were established, and military roads were constructed.
THIRD SAMNITE WAR.—Peace was not of long continuance. The Samnites once more armed themselves for a desperate conflict, having on their side the Etruscans, the Umbrians, and the Gauls (300). The Italian peoples, which had been at war with one another, joined hands in this contest against the common enemy. A decisive battle was fought at Sentinum,—where Decius Mus the younger, following his father's example, devoted himself to death,—resulting in the defeat of the Samnites, and of their allies (295). Soon after, the Samnite general, Pontius, fell into the hands of the Romans. The Samnites kept up the contest for several years. But in 290 they found that they could hold out no longer. The Romans secured themselves by fortresses and by colonies, the most important of which was that of Venusia, at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, where they placed twenty thousand colonists.
TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS.—The Samnites were overcome. The Greeks and Romans were now to come into closer intercourse with one another,—an intercourse destined to be so momentous in its effect on each of the two kindred races, and, through their joint influence, on the whole subsequent course of European history. Alexander the Great had died too soon to permit him to engage in any plan of conquest in the West. In the wars of his successors the Romans had stood aloof. Now they were brought into conflict with a Greek monarch, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, who was a relative of Alexander, and had married into the royal family of Egypt. He was a man of fascinating person and address, a brilliant and famous soldier, but adventurous, and lacking the coolness and prudence requisite to carry out his project of building up an Hellenic Empire in the western Mediterranean. In the war against the Samnite coalition, the Lucanians had rendered decisive support to the Romans. This was one reason why Tarentum, the rich and prosperous Dorian city on the Tarentine Gulf, had been a spectator of the contest in which it had abundant occasion to feel a deep interest. Rome had given up to the Lucanians the non-Dorian Greek cities in that region. But when they sought to subdue Thurii, and the Thurines besought the help of Rome, offering to submit themselves to her, the Romans warned the Lucanians to desist. This led to another combination against Rome, in which they took part. A Roman army was destroyed by the Senonian Gauls. In consequence of this, the Romans slaughtered, or drove out of Umbria, this people, and, gaining other decisive victories, put their garrisons into Locri, Crotona, and Thurii. The Romans were already masters of Central Italy. Only the Greek cities on the south remained for them to conquer. It was high time for Tarentum to bestir itself. It was from the side of Tarentum that the immediate provocation came. The Tarentines were listening to a play in the theater as ten Roman ships came into the harbor. Under a sudden impulse of wrath, a mob attacked them, and destroyed five of them. Even then the Romans were in no haste to engage in hostilities. The Tarentines themselves were divided as to the policy best to be pursued. But the war-party had the more voices. An embassy was dispatched to solicit the help of Pyrrhus. At Tarentum an embassy from Rome was treated with contempt. Pyrrhus came over with a large army. He obliged the Tarentines themselves to arm, and to join his forces.
EVENTS OF THE WAR.—The Romans were fully alive to the peril, and prepared to meet it. Even the proletarians, who were not liable to military service, were enrolled. The first great battle took place at Heraclea, near the little river Siris (280 B.C.). Then the Roman cohort and the Macedonian phalanx met for the first time. It was a collision of trained mercenary troops with the citizen soldiery of Rome. It was a struggle between the Greek and the Roman for the ascendency. The confusion caused by the elephants of Pyrrhus, an encounter with which was something new and strange to the Romans, turned the tide in his favor. "A few more such victories," said Pyrrhus, "and I am ruined." He desired peace, and sent Cineas as a messenger to the Senate. But Appius Claudius, who had been consul and censor, and was now old and blind, begged them not to make peace as long as there was an enemy in Italy. Cineas reported that he found the Senate "an assembly of kings." In the next year, the two armies, each with its allies numbering seventy thousand men, met at Asculum (279). After a bloody conflict, Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field, but with an enormous loss of men. The Syracusans in Sicily, who had been hard pressed by the Carthaginians, now called upon him to aid them. He was not reluctant to leave Italy. The Romans captured all the cities on the south coast, except Tarentum and Rhegium. After two years' absence, Pyrrhus returned to Italy. His fleet, on the passage from Sicily, was defeated by the Carthaginians. At Beneventum, he was completely vanquished by the Romans, who captured thirteen hundred prisoners and four elephants. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus; and, after his death (272), Milon, who commanded the garrison left by him in Tarentum, surrendered the city and fortress. The Tarentines agreed to deliver up their ships and arms, and to demolish their walls. One after another of the resisting tribes yielded to the Romans, ceding portions of their territory, and receiving Roman colonies. In 266, the Roman sway was established over the whole peninsula proper, from the Rubicon and the Macra to the southern extremity of Calabria.
CITIZENSHIP.—In order to understand Roman history, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the Roman system in respect to citizenship. All burgesses of Rome enjoyed the same rights. These were both Public and Private. The private rights of a Roman citizen were (1) the power of legal marriage with the families of all other citizens; (2) the power of making legal purchases and sales, and of holding property; and (3) the right to bequeath and inherit property. The public rights were, (1) the power of voting wherever a citizen was permitted to vote; (2) the power of being elected to all offices.
CONQUERED TOWNS.—"The Roman dominion in Italy was a dominion of a city over cities." With regard to conquered towns, there were, (i) Municipal cities (municipia) the inhabitants of which, when they visited Rome, could exercise all the rights of citizens. (2) Municipal cities which had the private, but not the public, rights of citizenship. Some of them chose their own municipal officers, and some did not. (3) Latin Colonies, as they were called. Lands ceded by conquered places were divided among poor Roman citizens, who constituted the ruling class in the communities to which they were transplanted. In the Latin colonies, the citizens had given up their public rights as citizens. (4) Towns of a lower class, called Praefectures. In these, the principal magistrate was the Prefect, who was appointed by the Praetor (Praeter Urbanus) at Rome.
THE ALLIES (Socii).—These were a more favored class of cities. They had their relation to Rome defined by treaty. Generally they appointed their own magistrates, but were bound, as were all subject cities, to furnish auxiliary troops for Rome.
THE LATIN FRANCHISE.—This was the privilege which was first given to the cities of Latium and then to inhabitants of other places. It was the power, on complying with certain conditions, of gaining full citizenship, and thus of taking part in elections at Rome.
ROMAN COLONIES.—The Roman Colony (which is not to be confounded with the Latin Colony referred to above) was a small body of Roman citizens, transplanted, with their families, to a spot selected by the government. They formed a military station. To them lands taken from the native inhabitants were given. They constituted the ruling class in the community where they were established. Their government was modeled after the government at Rome. They retained their rights as Roman burgesses, which they could exercise whenever they were in that city. By means of these colonies, planted in places wisely chosen, Italy was kept in subjection. The colonies were connected together by roads. The Appian Way, from Rome to Capua, was built in the midst of the conflict with Samnium. It was made of large, square stones, laid on a platform of sand and mortar. In later times the Roman Empire was traversed in all directions by similar roads.
THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.—By dint of obstinacy, and hard fighting through long centuries, the Romans had united under them all Italy, or all of what was then known as Italy. It was natural that they should look abroad. The rival power in the West was the great commercial city of Carthage. The jealousy between Rome and Carthage had slumbered so long as they were threatened by the invasion of Pyrrhus, which was dangerous to both. Sicily, from its situation, could hardly fail to furnish the occasion of a conflict. The Mamertines, a set of Campanian pirates, had captured Messana. They were attacked by Hiero II., king of Syracuse. A part of them besought help of the Romans, and a part applied to the Carthaginians. The gravity of the question, whether Rome should enter on an untried path, the end of which no man could foresee, caused hesitation. The assemblies voted to grant the request. The Romans had begun as early as 311 to create a fleet. The ships which they now used, however, were mostly furnished by their South Italian allies. They crossed the channel, and drove out the Carthaginian garrison from Messana. The Carthaginians declared war (264). Hiero was gained over to the side of the Romans; and after a bloody conflict, with heavy losses to both armies, the city of Agrigentum was captured by the Romans. The Romans were novices on the sea, where the Carthaginians were supreme. Successful on the land, the former were beaten in naval encounters. One of the most characteristic proofs of the energy of the Romans is their creation of a fleet, at this epoch, to match that of their sea-faring enemies. Using, it is said, for a model, a Carthaginian vessel wrecked on the shore of Italy, they constructed quinqueremes, vessels with five banks of oars, furnished with bridges to drop on the decks of the hostile ships,—thus giving to a sea-fight a resemblance to a combat on land. At first, as might be expected, the Romans were defeated; but in 260, under the consul Caius Duilius, they won their first naval victory at Mylae, west of Messana. The Roman Senate decided to invade Africa. A fleet of three hundred and thirty vessels sailed under the command of the consul M. Atilius Regulus, which was met by a Carthaginian fleet at Ecnomus, on the south coast of Sicily. The Carthaginians were completely vanquished. The Romans landed at Clupea, to the east of Carthage, and ravaged the adjacent district. There Regulus remained with half the army, fifteen thousand men. The Carthaginians sued for peace; but when he required them to surrender all their ships of war except one, and to come into a dependent relation to Rome, they spurned the proposal. Re-enforcing themselves with mercenaries from Greece under the command of the Spartan, Xanthippus, they overpowered and captured Regulus in a battle at Tunis (255). A Roman fleet, sent to Clupea for the rescue of the troops, on the return voyage lost three-fourths of its ships in a storm. The Carthaginians, under Hasdrubal, resumed hostilities in Sicily. He was defeated by the consul Caecilius Metellus, at Panormus, who included among his captures one hundred elephants (251). The story of the embassy of Regulus to Rome with the Carthaginian offer of peace, of his advising the Senate not to accept it, of his voluntary return according to a promise, and of his cruel death at the hands of his captors, is probably an invention of a later time. The hopes of the Romans, in consequence of their success at Panormus, revived; but two years later, under Appius Claudius at Drepanum, they were defeated on sea and on land. Once more their naval force was prostrated. Warfare was now carried forward on land, where, in the south of Sicily, the Carthaginian leader, Hamilcar Barca, maintained himself against Roman attacks for six years, and sent out privateers to harass the coasts of Italy. Finally, at Rome, there was an outburst of patriotic enthusiasm. Rich men gave liberally, and treasures of the temples were devoted to the building of a new fleet. This fleet, under command of C. Lutatius Catulus, gained a decisive victory over the Carthaginian Hanno, at the Aegatian Islands, opposite Lilybaeum (241). The Carthaginians were forced to conclude peace, and to make large concessions. They gave up all claim to Italy and to the neighboring small islands. They were to pay an indemnity, equal to four million dollars, in ten years. The western part of Sicily was now constituted a province, the first of the Roman provinces.
CONQUEST OF CISALPINE GUAL.—The Carthaginians were for some time busy at home in putting down a revolt of mercenary troops, whose wages they refused to pay in full. The Romans snatched the occasion to extort a cession of the island of Sardinia (238), which they subsequently united with Corsica in one province. They entered, about ten years later (229-228), upon an important and successful war against the Illyrian pirates, whose depredations on the coasts of the Adriatic and Ionian seas were very daring and destructive. The Greek cities which the pirates held were surrendered. The sway of the Romans in the Adriatic was secured, and their supremacy in Corcyra, Epidamnus, and other important places. The next contest was a terrific one with the Cisalpine Gauls, who were stirred up by the founding of Roman military colonies on the Adriatic, and by other proceedings of Rome. They called in the help of transalpine Gauls, and entered Etruria, on their way to Rome, with an army of seventy thousand men. They met the Roman armies near Telamon, south of the mouth of the Umbro, but were routed, with a loss of forty thousand men slain, and ten thousand men prisoners (225). The Romans marched northward, crossed the Po, and subdued the most powerful of the Gallic tribes, the Insubrians (223). Other victories in the following year reduced the whole of upper Italy, with Mediolanum (Milan) the capital of the Insubrians, under Roman rule. Fortresses were founded as usual, and the great Flaminian and Aemilian roads connected that region with the capital. Later, Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province.
CARTHAGINIANS IN SPAIN.—Meantime Carthage endeavored in Southern Spain to make up for its losses. The old tribes, the Celtiberians and Lusitanians in the central and western districts, and the Cantabrians and Basques in the north, brave as they were, were too much divided by tribal feuds to make an effectual resistance. The national party at Carthage, which wished for war, had able leaders in Hamilcar and his three sons. By the military skill of Hamilcar, and of Hasdrubal his son-in-law, the Carthaginians built up a flourishing dominion on the south and east coasts. The Romans watched the growth of the Carthaginian power there with discontent, and compelled Hasdrubal to declare in a treaty that the Ebro should be the limit of Carthaginian conquests (226). At the same time Rome made a protective alliance with Saguntum, a rich and powerful trading-city on the south of that river. Hasdrubal was murdered in 221; and the son of Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal, who was then only twenty-eight years old, was chosen by the army to be their general. He laid hold of a pretext for beginning an attack upon Saguntum, which he took after a stout resistance, prolonged for eight months (219). The demand of a Roman embassy at Carthage—that Hannibal should be delivered up—being refused, Rome declared war.
When the Carthaginian Council hesitated at the proposal of the Roman embassy, their spokesman, Quintus Fabius, said that he carried in his bosom peace or war: they might chose either. They answered, "We take what you give us;" whereupon the Roman opened his toga, saying, "I give you war!" The Carthaginians shouted, "So let it be!"
THE SECOND PUNIC WAR.—When the treaty of Catulus was made (241), all patriots at Carthage felt that it was only a truce. They must have seen that Rome would never be satisfied with any thing short of the abject submission of so detested and dangerous a rival. There was a peace party, an oligarchy, at Carthage; and it was their selfishness which ultimately brought ruin upon the state. But the party which saw that the only safety was in aggressive action found a military leader in Hannibal,—a leader not surpassed, and perhaps not equaled, by any other general of ancient or modern times. He combined skill with daring, and had such a command over men, that under the heaviest reverses his influence was not broken. If he was cruel, it is doubtful whether he went beyond the practices sanctioned by the international law of the time and by Roman example. When a boy nine years old, at his father's request he had sworn upon the altar never to be the friend of the Roman people. That father he saw fall in battle at his side. The oath he kept, for Rome never had a more unyielding or a more powerful enemy.
HANNIBAL IN ITALY.—In the summer of 218, Hannibal crossed the Ebro, conquered the peoples between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and, leaving his brother Hasdrubal in Spain, pushed into Gaul with an army of fifty thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants. He crossed the swift Rhone in the face of the Gauls who disputed the passage, and then made his memorable march over the Alps, probably by the way now known as the Little St. Bernard pass. Through ice and snow, climbing over crags and circling abysses, amid perpetual conflicts with the rough mountaineers who rolled stones down on the toiling soldiers, the army made its terrible journey into Northern Italy. Fifteen days were occupied in the passage. Half the troops, with all the draught-animals and beasts of burden, perished on the way. The Cisalpine Gauls welcomed Hannibal as a deliverer. No sooner had the valiant consul, Cornelius Scipio, been defeated in a cavalry battle on the Ticinus, a northern branch of the Po (218), and, severely wounded, retreated to Placentia, and his rash colleague, Sempronius, been defeated with great loss in a second battle on the Trebia, than the Gauls joined Hannibal, and reinforced him with sixty thousand troops inured to war. Hannibal, by marching through the swampy district of the Arno, where he himself lost an eye, flanked the defensive position of the Romans. The consul Flaminius was decoyed into a narrow pass; and, in the battle of Lake Trasumenus (217), his army of thirty thousand men was slaughtered or made prisoners. The consul himself was killed. All Etruria was lost. The way seemed open to Rome; but, supported by the Latins and Italians, the Romans did not quail, or lower their mien of stern defiance. They appointed a leading patrician, Quintus Fabius Maximus, dictator. Hannibal, not being able to surprise and capture the fortress of Spoletium, preferred to march towards the sea-coast, and thence south into Apulia. His purpose was to open communication with Carthage, and to gain over to his support the eastern tribes of Italy. Fabius, the Delayer (Cunctator), as he was called, followed and watched his enemy, inflicting what injuries he could, but avoiding a pitched battle. The Roman populace were impatient of the cautious, but wise and effective, policy of Fabius. In the following year (216) the consulship was given to L. Aemilius Paulus—who was chosen by the upper class, the Optimates—and C. Terentius Varro, who was elected by the popular party for the purpose of taking the offensive. Varro precipitated a battle at Cannae, in Apulia, where the Romans suffered the most terrible defeat they had ever experienced. At the lowest computation, they lost forty thousand foot and three thousand horse, with the consul Aemilius Paulus, and eighty men of senatorial rank. No such calamity since the capture of Rome by the Gauls had ever occurred. The Roman Senate did not lose heart. They limited the time of mourning for the dead to thirty days. They refused to admit to the city the ambassadors of Hannibal, who came for the exchange of prisoners. With lofty resolve they ordered a levy of all who could bear arms, including boys and even slaves. They put into their hands weapons from the temples, spoils of former victories. They thanked Varro that he had not despaired of the Republic. Some of the Italian allies went over to Hannibal. But all the Latin cities and all the Roman colonies remained loyal. The allies of Rome did not fall away as did the allies of Athens after the Syracusan disaster. It has been thought, that, if Hannibal had followed up the victory at Cannae by marching at once on the capital, the Roman power might have been overthrown. What might then have been the subsequent course of European history? Even the Roman school-boys, according to Juvenal, discussed the question whether he did not make a mistake in not attacking Rome. But it is quite doubtful whether he could have taken the city, or, even if he had taken it, whether his success would then have been complete. He took the wiser step of getting into his hands Capua, the second city in Italy. He may have hoped to seize a Campanian port, where he could disembark reinforcements "which his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home." Hannibal judged it best to go into winter-quarters at Capua, where his army was in a measure enervated by pleasure and vice. Carthage made an alliance with Philip V. of Macedonia, and with Hiero of Syracuse. But fortune turned in favor of the Romans. At Nola, Hannibal was repulsed by Marcellus (215); and, since he could obtain no substantial help from home, he was obliged to act on the defensive. Marcellus crossed into Sicily, and, after a siege of three years, captured Syracuse, which had been aided in its defense by the philosopher Archimedes. Capua, in 211, surrendered to the Romans, and was visited with a fearful chastisement. Hannibal's Italian allies forsook him, and his only reliance was on his brother in Spain. For a long time, the two brothers, Publius and Cnaeus Scipio, maintained there the Roman cause successfully; but they were defeated and slain (212).
SCIPIO: ZAMA.—Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of one and nephew of the other Scipio just named, a young man twenty-five years old, and a popular favorite, took the command, and gained important successes; but he could not keep Hasdrubal from going to his brother's assistance in Italy. The Romans, however, were able to prevent a junction of his force with that of Hannibal; and Hasdrubal was vanquished and slain by them in the battle of Sena Gallica, near the little river Metaurus (207). Scipio expelled the Carthaginians from Spain, and, having returned to Rome, was made consul (205). His plan was to invade Africa. He landed on the coast, and was joined by Masinissa, the king of Numidia, who had been driven from his throne by Syphax, the ally of Carthage. The defeat of the Carthaginians, and the danger of Carthage itself, led to the recall of Hannibal, who was defeated, in 202, by Scipio in the decisive battle of Zama. Carthage made peace, giving up all her Spanish possessions and islands in the Mediterranean, handing over the kingdom of Syphax to Masinissa, and agreeing to pay a yearly tribute equal to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for fifty years, to destroy all their ships of war but ten, and to make no war without the consent of the Romans (201). Scipio Africanus, as he was termed, came back in triumph to Rome. The complete subjugation of Upper Italy followed (200-191).
PHILIP V.: ANTIOCHUS III.—The Romans were now dominant in the West. They were strong on the sea, as on the land. Within fifty years Rome likewise became the dominant power in the East. Philip V. of Macedon had made an alliance with Hannibal, but had furnished him no valuable aid. The Senate maintained that a body of Macedonian mercenaries had fought against the Romans at Zama. Rhodes and Athens, together with King Attalus of Pergamon, sought for help against Philip. The Romans were joined by the Ætolians, and afterwards by the Achaians. In 197, the consul T. Quintius Flamininus defeated him at the battle of Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly, and imposed upon him such conditions of peace as left him powerless against the interests of Rome. At the Isthmian games, amid great rejoicing, Flamininus declared the Greek states independent. When they found that their freedom was more nominal than real, and involved a virtual subjection to Rome, the Ætolians took up arms, and obtained the support of Antiochus III., king of Syria. Another grievance laid at the door of this king was the reception by him of Hannibal, a fugitive from Carthage, whose advice, however, as to the conduct of the war, Antiochus had not the wisdom to follow. In 190 he was vanquished by a Roman army at Magnesia, under L. Cornelius Scipio, with whom was present, as an adviser, Scipio Africanus. He was forced to give up all his Asiatic possessions as far as the Taurus mountains. The territory thus obtained, the Romans divided among their allies, Pergamon and Rhodes. About seven years later (183), Hannibal, who had taken refuge at the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, finding that he was to be betrayed, took poison and died. The ingratitude of his country, or of the ruling party in it, did not move him to relax his exertions against Rome. He continued until his death to be her most formidable antagonist, exerting in exile an effective influence in the East to create combinations against her.
PERSEUS.—Philip V. laid a plan to avenge himself on the Romans, and regain his lost Macedonian territory. Perseus, his son, followed in the same path, having slain his brother Demetrius, who was a friend of Rome. The war broke out in 171. For several campaigns the management of the Roman generals was ill-judged; but at last L. Æmilius Paulus, son of the consul who fell at Cannæ, routed the Macedonians at the battle of Pydna. Immense spoils were brought to Rome by the conqueror. Perseus himself, who had sat on the throne of Alexander, adorned the consul's triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. The cantons of Greece, where there was nothing but continual strife and endless confusion, were subjected to Roman influence. One thousand Achaians of distinction, among them the historian Polybius, were carried to Italy, and kept under surveillance for many years. The imperious spirit of Rome, and the deference accorded to her, is illustrated in the interview of C. Popilius Lænas, who delivered to Antiochus IV. of Syria a letter of the Senate, directing him to retire from before Alexandria. When that monarch replied that he would confer with his counselors on the matter, the haughty Roman drew a circle round him on the ground, and bade him decide before he should cross that line. Antiochus said that he would do as the Senate ordered.
THE THIRD PUNIC WAR.—The treaty with Carthage had bound that city hand and foot. Against the encroachments of Masinissa, the Carthaginians could do nothing; but at length they were driven to take up arms to repel them. This act the Romans pronounced a breach of the treaty (149). That stern old Roman, who in his youth had served against Hannibal, M. Porcius Cato, had been unceasing in his exhortation to destroy Carthage. He was in the habit of ending his speeches with the saying, "But I am of opinion that Carthage should be destroyed." The Roman armies landed at Utica. Their hard demands, which included the surrender of war-ships and weapons, were complied with. But when the Carthaginians were required to abandon their city, and to make a new settlement ten miles distant, they rose in a fury of patriotic wrath. The women cut off their hair to make bowstrings. Day and night the people worked, in forging weapons and in building a new fleet in the inner harbor. The Romans were repulsed; but P. Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son of the first Scipio Africanus, shut in the city by land and by sea, and, in 146, captured and destroyed it. Its defenders fought from street to street, and from house to house. Only a tenth part of the inhabitants were left alive. These were sold into slavery. Carthage was set on fire, and almost entirely consumed. The fire burned for seventeen days. The remains of the Carthaginian wall, when excavated in recent times, "were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles." Scipio would have preserved the city, but the Senate was inexorable. With the historian Polybius at his side, the Roman commander, as he looked down on the horrors of the conflagration, sorrowfully repeated the lines of Homer,—
"The day shall come when sacred Troy shall be leveled with the plain, And Priam and the people of that good warrior slain."
"Assyria," he is said to have exclaimed, "had fallen, and Persia and Macedon. Carthage was burning: Rome's day might come next." Carthage was converted into a Roman province under the name of Africa.
DESTRUCTION OF CORINTH.—The atrocious crime of the destruction of Carthage was more than matched by the contemporaneous destruction of Corinth. Another rising in Macedonia resulted, in 146, in the conversion of that ancient kingdom into a Roman province. The return to Greece of three hundred Achaian exiles who had been detained in Italy for sixteen years, strengthened the anti-Roman party in Greece, and helped to bring on war with the Achaian league. In 146, after the battle of Leucopetra, Corinth was occupied by the consul L. Mummius. The men were put to the sword; the women and children were sold at auction into slavery; all treasures, all pictures, and other works of art, were carried off to Rome, and the city was consigned to the flames. The other Greek cities were mildly treated, but placed under the governor of Macedonia, and obliged to pay tribute to Rome. At a later date Greece became a Roman province under the name of Achaia.
THE PROVINCES.—At this epoch, there were eight provinces,—Sicily (241), Sardinia (238) and Corsica, two provinces in Spain (205), Cisalpine Gaul, Illyricum (168), Africa (146), Macedonia (146), and Achaia. The first four were governed by Prætors. Later, however, the judicial functions of the praetors kept them in Rome. At the end of the year, the prætor, on laying down his office at home, went as proprætor to rule a province. But where there was war or other grave disturbances, the province was assigned to a consul in office, or to a proconsul, who was either the consul of the preceding year, or an ex-consul, or an ex-prætor who was appointed proconsul. The provinces were generally organized by the conquering general and a senatorial commission. Some cities retained their municipal government. These were the "free cities." The taxes were farmed out to collectors called publicans, who were commonly of the equestrian order. The last military dictator was appointed in 216. In times of great danger, dictatorial power was given to a consul.
LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY.—The intercourse of the Romans with the Greeks opened to the former a new world of art, literature, and philosophy, and a knowledge of other habits and modes of life. There were those who regarded the Greek authors and artists with sympathy, and showed an intelligent enthusiasm for the products of Greek genius. Under the patronage of the Scipios, Roman poets wrote in imitation of Greek models. Such were Plautus (who died in 184), and the less original, but more refined, Terence (185-159), who had been the slave of a senator. Ennius (239-169), a Calabrian Greek, wrote epics, and also tragedies and comedies. Him the later Romans regarded as the father of their literature. The beginnings of historical writing—which go beyond mere chronicles and family histories—appear, as in the lost work on Roman history by M. Portias Cato (Cato the Censor, 234-149). The great historian of this period, however, was the Greek Polybius. The Greek philosophy was introduced, in spite of the vigorous opposition of such austere conservatives as Cato. Panaetius (185-112), the Stoic from Rhodes, had a cordial reception at Rome. The Stoic teaching was adapted to the Roman mind. The Platonic philosophy was brought in by Carneades. This was frequently more acceptable to orators and statesmen. Along with the Stoic, the Epicurean school found adherents. Cato—who, although a historian and an orator, was, in theory and practice, a rigid man, with the simple ways of the old time—procured the banishment of_ Carneades_, together with Critolaus the Peripatetic, and the Stoic Diogenes. The schools of oratory he caused to be shut up. He did what he could to prevent the introduction of the healing art, as it was practiced by the Greeks. He preferred the old-fashioned domestic remedies.
THE STATE OF MORALS.—If the opposition of the Conservatives to Greek letters and philosophy was unreasonable, as it certainly proved futile, there was abundant ground for alarm and regret at the changes that were going on in morals and in ways of living. The conquest of Greece and of the East brought an amazing increase of wealth. Rome plundered the countries which she conquered. The optimates, the leading families, who held the chief offices in the state and in the army, grew very rich from the booty which they gained. They left their small dwellings for stately palaces, which they decorated with works of art, gained by the pillage of nations. They built villas in the country, with extensive grounds and beautiful gardens. Even women, released from the former strict subordination of the wife to her husband, indulged lavishly in finery, and plunged into gaieties inconsistent with the household virtues. The optimates, in order to enrich themselves further, often resorted to extortion of various sorts. In order to curry favor with the people, and thereby to get their votes, they stooped to flattery, and to demagogical arts which the earlier Romans would have despised. They provided games, at great expense, for the entertainment of the populace. In the room of the invigorating and of the intellectual contests, which had been in vogue among the Greeks, the Romans acquired an increasing relish for bloody gladiatorial fights of men with wild beasts, and of men against one another. Slaves multiplied to an enormous extent: "as cheap as a Sardinian" was a proverb. The race of plain farmers dwindled away. The trade in slaves became a flourishing branch of business. Field-hands toiled in fetters, and were often branded to prevent escape. If slaves ran away, and were caught, they might be crucified. If a householder were killed by a slave, all the slaves in his house might be put to death. As at Athens, the testimony of slaves was given under torture. Hatred to the master on the part of the slave was a thing of course. "As many enemies as slaves," was a common saying.
NUMANTIAN WAR.—The intolerable oppression of the provinces occasionally provoked resistance. It was in Spain that the Romans found it most difficult to quell the spirit of freedom. The Lusitanians in the territory now called Portugal, under a gallant chieftain, Viriathus, maintained for nine years a war in which they were mostly successful, and were finally worsted only in consequence of the perfidious assassination of their leader (149-140). The Celtiberians, whose principal city, Numantia, was on the upper Douro, kept up their resistance with equal valor for ten years (143-133). On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by Scipio Africanus Æmilianus. It was hunger that compelled the surrender; and the noblest inhabitants set fire to the town, and slew themselves, to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy.
PERGAMON.—More subservience the Romans found in the East. In the same year that the desperate resistance of the Numantians was overcome, Attalus III., king of Pergamon, an ally of Rome, whose sovereignty extended over the greater part of Asia Minor, left his kingdom and all his treasures, by will, to the Roman people. There was a feeble struggle on the part of the expectant heir, but the Romans formed the larger part of the kingdom into a province. Phrygia Major they detached, and gave to Mithridates IV., king of Pontus, who had helped them in this last brief contest.
CONDITION OF ROME.—We come now to an era of internal strife. The Romans were to turn their arms against one another: Yet it is remarkable that the march of foreign conquest still went on. It was by conquests abroad that the foremost leaders in the civil wars rose to the position which enabled them to get control in the government at home. The power of the Senate had been more and more exalted. Foreign affairs were mainly at its disposal. The increase in the number of voters in the comitia, and their motley character, made it more easy for the aristocracy to manage them. Elections were carried by the influence of largesses and by the exhibition of games. Practically the chief officers were limited to a clique, composed of rich families of both patrician and plebeian origin, which was diminishing in number, while the numbers of the lower class were rapidly growing larger. The gulf between the poor and the rich was constantly widening. The last Italian colony was sent out in 177 B.C., and the lands of Italy were all taken up. Slaves furnished labor at the cost of their bare subsistence. It was hard for a poor man to gain a living. Had the Licinian Laws (p. 137) been carried out, the situation would have been different. The public lands were occupied by the members of some forty or fifty aristocratic families, and by a certain number of wealthy Italians. A great proletariate—a needy and disaffected lower class—was growing up, which boded no good to the state.
TIBERIUS GRACCHUS.—This condition of things moved Tiberius Gracchus, the son of Cornelia, who was the daughter of the great Scipio Africanus, to bring forward his Agrarian Laws. The effect of them would have been to limit the amount of the public domain which any one man could hold, and to divide portions of it among poor citizens. In spite of the bitter opposition of the nobility, these laws were passed (133). But Gracchus had been obliged to persuade the people to turn a tribune, who resisted their passage, out of office, which was an unconstitutional act. In order to carry out the laws, he would have to be re-elected tribune. But the optimates, led by the consul Scipio Nasica, had been still more infuriated by other proposals of Gracchus. They raised a mob, and slew him, with three hundred of his followers. This gave the democratic leaders a temporary advantage; but violent measures on their own side turned the current again the other way, and proceedings under the laws were quashed.
CAIUS GRACCHUS.—The laws of Caius Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, were of a more sweeping character. He caused measures to be passed, and colonies to be sent out, by decrees of the people, without any action of the Senate. He renewed the agrarian law. He caused a law to be passed for selling corn for less than the cost, to all citizens who should apply for it. He also caused it to be ordained, that juries should be taken from the knights, the equites, instead of the Senate. These were composed of rich men. The tendency of the law would be to make the equestrian order distinct, and thus to divide the aristocracy. The proposal (122), which was not passed, to extend the franchise to the Latins, and perhaps to the Italians, cost him his popularity, although the measure was just. The Senate gave its support to a rival tribune, M. Livius Drusus, who outbid Gracchus in the contest for popular favor. In 121 Gracchus was not made tribune. In the disorder that followed, he, with several hundred of his followers, was killed by the optimates. Before long most of his enactments were reversed. The law for the cheap sale of corn, the most unwise of his measures, continued.
THE JUGURTHINE WAR.—An interval of tranquility followed. But the corruption of the ruling class was illustrated in connection with the Jugurthine war. Jugurtha, the adopted son of the king of Numidia, the ally of Rome, wishing the whole kingdom for himself, killed one of the sons of the late king, and made war upon the other, who applied to the Romans for help. The commission sent out by the Senate was bribed by Jugurtha. Not until he took the city of Cirta, and put to death the remaining brother, with all his army, was he summoned to Rome. There, too, his money availed to secure him impunity, although he caused a Numidian prince to be murdered in Rome itself. When the Romans finally entered on the war with Jugurtha, he bribed the generals, so that little was effected. The indignation of the people was raised to such a pitch that they would not leave the direction of the war in the hands of Quintus Metellus, whom the Senate had sent out, and who defeated Jugurtha (108), but insisted on giving the chief command to one of his subordinate officers, Caius Marius (107), the son of a peasant, wild and rough in his manners, but of extraordinary talents as a soldier. He brought the war to an end. Jugurtha was delivered up by the prince with whom he had taken refuge to L. Cornelius Sulla, one of the generals under Marius, and in 105, with his two sons, marched in chains before the triumphal car of Marius through the streets of Rome. Marius was now the leader of the popular party, and the most influential man in Rome.
THE CIMBRI AND TEUTONES.—The power of Marius was augmented by his victories over the Cimbri and the Teutones. These were hordes of barbarians who appeared in the Alpine regions, the Cimbri being either Celts, or, like the Teutones, Germans. The Cimbri crossed the Alps in 113, and defeated a Roman consul. They turned westward towards the Rhine, traversed Gaul in different directions, defeating through a series of years the Roman armies that were sent against them. These defeats the democratic leaders ascribed, not without reason, to the corrupt management of the aristocratic party. In 103 the Cimbri and the Teutones arranged for a combined attack on Italy. Marius was made consul; and in order to meet this threatened invasion, which justly excited the greatest anxiety, he was chosen to this office five times in succession (104-100). Having repulsed the attack of the barbarians on his camp, he defeated them in two great battles, the first at Aquce Sextice (Aix in Provence) in 102, and the second at Vercellce, in Upper Italy, in 101. These successes, which really saved Rome, made Marius for the time the idol of the popular party.
THE ARMY.—At about this time a great change took place in the constitution of the army. The occupation of a soldier had become a trade. Besides the levy of citizens, there was established a recruiting system, which drew into the ranks the idle and lazy, and a system of re-inforcements, by which cavalry and light-armed troops were taken from subject and vassal states. Thus there arose a military class, distinct, as it had not been of old, from the civil orders, and ready to act separately when its own interest or the ambition of favorite leaders might prompt.
SATURNINUS.—Marius lacked the judgment and the firmness required by a statesman, especially in troublous times. When Saturninus and Glaucia brought forward a series of measures of a radical character in behalf of the democratic cause, and the consul Metellus, who opposed them, was obliged to go into voluntary exile, Marius, growing ashamed of the factious and violent proceedings of the popular party, was partially won over to the support of the Senate. When C. Memmius, candidate for consul, was killed with bludgeons by the mob of Saturninus and Glaucia, and there was fighting in the forum and the streets, he helped to put down these reckless innovators (99). But his want of hearty cooperation with either party made him hated by both. Metellus was recalled from banishment. Marius went to Asia, and visited the court of Mithridates.
THE MURDER OF DRUSUS.—Nearly ten years of comparative quiet ensued. The long continued complaints of the Italians found at last a voice in the measures of M. Livius Drusus, a tribune, who, in 91, proposed that they should have the right of citizenship. Two other propositions, one referring to the relations of the Equites and the Senate, and the other for a new division of lands, had been accepted by the people, but were by the Senate declared null. Before Drusus could bring forward the law respecting Italian citizenship, he was assassinated. Neither Senate nor people was favorable to this righteous measure.
THE ITALIAN OR SOCIAL WAR (90-88 B.C.).—The murder of Drusus was the signal for an insurrection of the Italian communities. They organized for themselves a federal republic. The peril occasioned by this great revolt reconciled for the moment the contending parties at Rome. In the North, where Marius fought, the Romans were generally successful: in the South, the allies were at first superior; but in 89, in spite of Sulla's bold forays, they were worsted. But it was by policy, more than by arms, that the Romans subdued this dangerous revolt. They promised full citizenship to those who had not taken part in the war, and to those who would at once cease to take part in it (90). Finally, when it was plain that Rome was too strong to be overcome, the conflict was ended by granting to the allies all that they had ever claimed (89). Rome had now made ALL ITALY (south of Cisalpine Gaul), except the Samnites and Lucanians, EQUAL WITH HERSELF. But Italy had been ravaged by desolating war: the number of small proprietors was more than ever diminished, and the army and the generals were becoming the predominant force in the affairs of the state.
WAR WITH MITHRIDATES.—Mithridates, king of Pontus, in the north-east of Asia Minor, was as ardent an enemy of the Romans as Hannibal had been. With the help of his son-in-law Tigranes, king of Armenia, he had subdued the neighboring kings in alliance with Rome. The Asiatic states, who were ruled by the Romans, were impatient of the oppression under which they groaned. When checked by the Romans, Mithridates had paused for a while, and then had resumed again his enterprise of conquest. In 88 the Grecian cities of Asia joined him; and, in obedience to his brutal order, all the Italians within their walls, not lelss than eighty thousand in number, but possibly almost double that number, were put to death in one day. The whole dominion of the Romans in the East was in jeopardy.
MARIUS AND SULLA.—Sulla was elected consul in 88, and was on the point of departing for Asia. He was a soldier of marked talents, a representative of the aristocratic party, and was more cool and consistent in his public conduct than Marius. Marius desired the command against Mithridates for himself. P. Sulpicius, one of his adherents, brought forward a revolutionary law for incorporating the Italians and freedmen among the thirty-five tribes. The populace, under the guidance of the leaders of the Marian faction, voted to take away the command from Sulla, and to give it to Marius. Sulla refused to submit, and marched his army to Rome. It was impossible to resist him. Sulpicius was killed in his flight. Marius escaped from Italy, and, intending to go to Africa, was landed at Minturnae. To escape pursuit, he had to stand up to the chin in a marsh. He was put in prison, and a Gaulish slave was sent to kill him. But when he saw the flashing eyes of the old general, and heard him cry, "Fellow, darest thou kill Caius Marius?" he dropped his sword, and ran. Marius crossed to Africa. Messengers who were sent to warn him to go away, found him sitting among the ruins of Carthage.
THE MARIANS IN ROME.—Sulla restored the authority of the Senate. During Sulla's absence, Cinna, the consul of the popular party, sought to revive the laws of Sulpicius by violent means (87). Driven out of the city, he came back with an army which he had gathered in Campania, and with old Marius, who had returned from Africa. He now took vengeance on the leaders of the Optimates. For five days the gates were closed, and every noble who was specially obnoxious, and had not escaped, was killed by Marius, who marched through the streets at the head of a body of soldiers. In 86 Marius and Cinna were made consuls. Sulla was declared to be deposed. Marius, who was now more than seventy years old, died (86). The fever of revenge, and the apprehension of what might follow on Sulla's return, drove sleep from his eyelids. A brave soldier, he was incompetent to play the part of a statesman. He went to his grave with the curse of all parties resting upon him.
RETURN OF SULLA.—Sulla refused to do any thing against his adversaries at home, or for the help of the fugitive nobles who appealed to him, until the cause of the country was secure abroad. He captured Athens in 86, defeated Archelaus, the general of Mithridates, in a great battle at Chaeronea; and, by this and subsequent victories, he forced Mithridates to conclude peace, who agreed to evacuate the Roman province of Asia, to restore all his conquests, surrender eighty ships of war, and pay three thousand talents (84). Sulla's hands were now free. In 83 he landed at Brundisium. He was joined by Cneius Pompeius, then twenty-three years old, with a troop of volunteers. Sulla did not wish to fight the Italians. He issued a proclamation, therefore, giving them the assurance that their rights would not be impaired. This pledge had the desired effect. The army of the Consuls largely outnumbered his own. Sulla lingered in South Italy to make good his position there. The Samnites joined the Marians, and moved upon Rome with the intent to destroy it. They were defeated before they could enter the city. The Marians in Spain were defeated afterwards, as were the same party in Sicily and Africa by Pompeius.
CRUELTY OF SULLA.—The cruelty of Sulla, after his victory, was more direful than Rome had ever witnessed. It appeared to spring from no heat of passion, but was cold and shameless. After a few days, there was a massacre of four thousand prisoners in the Circus. Their shrieks and groans were heard in the neighboring Temple of Bellona, where Sulla was in consultation with the Senate. Many thousands—not far from three thousand in Rome alone—were proscribed and murdered, and the property of all on these lists of the condemned was confiscated.
THE LAWS OF SULLA.—In his character as Dictator, Sulla remade the constitution, striking out the popular elements to a great extent, and concentrating authority in the Senate. The Tribunes were stripped of most of their power. The Senate alone could propose laws. In the Senate, the places in the juries were given back (p. 154). Besides these and other like changes, the right of suffrage was bestowed on ten thousand emancipated slaves; while Italians and others, who had been on the Marian side, were deprived of it. In the year 80 B.C., Sulla caused himself to be elected Consul. The next year he retired from office to his country estate, and gave himself up to amusements and sensual pleasure. A part of his time—for he was not without a taste for literature—he devoted to the writing of his memoirs, which, however, have not come down to us. He died in 78.
WAR WITH SERTORIUS.—Not many years after _Sulla's _death, his reforms were annulled. This was largely through the agency of Cneius Pompeius, who had supported Sulla, but was not a uniform or consistent adherent of the aristocratic party. He did not belong to an old family, but had so distinguished himself that Sulla gave him a triumph. Later he rose to still higher distinction by his conduct of the war against Sertorius in Spain, a brave and able man of the Marian party, who was supported there for a long time by a union of Spaniards and Romans. Not until jealousy arose among his officers, and Sertorius was assassinated, was the formidable rebellion put down (72).
THE GLADIATORIAL WAR.—Pompeius had the opportunity still further to distinguish himself on his way back from Spain. A gladiator, Spartacus, started a revolt among his companions. He called about him slaves and outlaws until with an army of one hundred thousand men he defeated the Roman generals, and threatened Rome itself. For two years they ravaged Italy at their will. They were vanquished by Marcus Crassus in 71, in two battles, in the last of which Spartacus fell. The remnant of them, a body of five thousand men, who had nearly reached the Alps, were annihilated by Pompeius.
POMPEIUS: CRASSUS: CICERO.—Crassus was a man of great wealth and of much shrewdness. Pompeius was bland and dignified in his ways, a valiant, though sometimes over-cautious, general. These two men, in 70 B.C., became consuls. They had resolved to throw themselves for support on the middle class at Rome. Pompeius, sustained by his colleague, secured the abrogation of some of the essential changes made by Sulla. The Tribunes received back their powers, and the independence of the Assembly of the Tribes was restored. The absolute power of the Senate over the law-courts was taken away. These measures were carried in spite of the resistance of that body. Pompeius was aided by the great advocate, Marcus Tullius Cicero. He was born at Arpinum in 106 B.C., of an equestrian family. He had been a diligent student of law and politics, and also of the Greek philosophy, and aspired to distinction in civil life. He studied rhetoric under Molo, first at Rome and then at Rhodes, during a period of absence from Italy, which continued about two years. On his return (in 77 B.C.), he resumed legal practice. Cicero was a man of extraordinary and various talents, and a patriot, sincerely attached to the republican constitution. He was humane and sensitive, and much more a man of peace than his eminent contemporaries. His foibles, the chief of which was the love of praise, were on the surface; and, if he lacked some of the robust qualities of the great Roman leaders of that day, he was likewise free from some of their sins. The captivating oratory of Cicero found a field for its exercise in the impeachment of Verres, whose rapacity, as Roman governor of Sicily, had fairly desolated that wealthy province. Cicero showed such vigor in the prosecution that Verres was driven into exile. This event weakened the senatorial oligarchy, and helped Pompeius in his contest with it.
WAR WITH THE PIRATES.—In 69 B.C., Pompeius retired from office; but, two years later, he assumed command in the war against the pirates. These had taken possession of creeks and valleys in Western Cilicia and Pamphylia, and had numerous fleets. Not confining their depredations to the sea, they plundered the coasts of Italy, and stopped the grain-ships on which Rome depended for food. Pompeius undertook to exterminate this piratical community. By the Gabinian Law, he was clothed with more power than had ever been committed to an individual. He was to have absolute command over the Mediterranean and its coasts for fifty miles inland. He used this unlimited authority for war purposes alone, and, in three months, completely accomplished the work assigned him. He captured three thousand vessels, and put to death ten thousand men. Twenty thousand captives he settled in the interior of Cilicia.
POMPEIUS IN THE EAST.—The success of Pompeius was the prelude to a wider extension of his power and his popularity. After the return of Sulla from the East, another Mithridatic War (83-81), the second in the series, had ended in the same terms of peace that had been agreed upon before (p. 157). In 74 the contest began anew against Mithridates, and Tigranes of Armenia, his son-in-law. For a number of years Lucullus, the Roman commander, was successful; but finally Mithridates regained what he had lost, and kept up his aggressive course. In 66 B.C., on a motion that was supported by Cicero, but opposed by the aristocratic party in the Senate, Pompeius was made commander in the East for an indefinite term. So extensive powers had never before been committed to a Roman. He drove Mithridates out of Pontus into Armenia. Tigranes laid his crown at the feet of the Roman general, and was permitted to retain Armenia. Mithridates fled beyond the Caucasus, and, in 63 B.C., committed suicide. Pompeius overthrew the Syrian kingdom of the Seleucidae. He entered Judaea, captured Jerusalem from Aristobulus the reigning prince, and placed his brother Hyrcanus on the throne, who became tributary to Rome. Pompeius with his officers entered the sanctuary of the temple, and was surprised to find there neither image nor statue. He established in the Roman territories in Asia the two provinces, Pontus and Syria, and re-organized the province of Cilicia. Several kingdoms he allowed to remain under Roman protection. After this unexampled exercise of power and responsibility as the disposer of kingdoms, he slowly returned to Italy, dismissed his army at Brundisium, and entered the capital as a private citizen, where, in 61 B.C., he enjoyed a magnificent triumph that lasted for two days.
THE ROMAN TRIUMPH.—The most coveted reward of a victorious general was a triumph. It was granted by a vote of the Senate and according to certain rules, some of which, however, were often relaxed. The general must have held the office of dictator, consul, or praetor; at least five thousand of the enemy must have been slain in a single battle; the war must have been against public foes, etc. The general, with his army, remained without the city until the triumph had been decreed by the Senate, which also assembled without the walls to deliberate on the question. The pageant itself, in later times, was of the most splendid character. It consisted of a procession which entered the "Triumphal Gate," and passed through the Via Sacra, up the Capitoline Hill to the Temple of Jupiter, where sacrifices were offered. In front were the Senate, headed by the magistrates. Then came a body of trumpeters, who immediately preceded the long trains of carriages and frames which displayed the spoils of conquest, including statues, pictures, gorgeous apparel, gold and silver, and whatever else had been borne away from the conquered people. Pictures of the country traversed or conquered, and models of cities and forts, were exhibited. Behind the spoils came flute-players, and these were followed by elephants and other strange animals. Next were the arms and insignia of the hostile leaders; and after them marched the leaders themselves and their kindred, and all the captives of less rank, in fetters. The crowns and other tributes voluntarily given to the general by Roman allies next appeared, and then the central figure of the procession, the imperator himself, standing in a chariot drawn by four horses, clad in a robe embroidered with gold, and a flowered tunic, in his right hand a bough of laurel and in his left a scepter, with a wreath of laurel on his brow, and a slave standing behind, and holding a crown over his head. Behind him in the procession were his family, then the mounted equites and the whole body of the infantry, their spears adorned with laurels, making the air ring with their shouts and songs. Meantime the temples were open, and incense was burned to the gods; buildings were decorated with festal garlands; the population, in holiday dress, thronged the steps of the public buildings and stages erected to command a view, and in every place where a sight of the pageant could be obtained. As the procession climbed the Capitoline Hill, some of the captives of rank were taken into the adjoining Mamertine prison, and barbarously put to death. In the lower chamber of that ancient dungeon, which the traveler still visits, Jugurtha and many other conquered enemies perished. After the sacrifices had been offered, the imperator sat down to a public feast with his friends in the temple, and was then escorted home by a crowd of citizens.
The ovation was a lesser triumph. The general entered the city on foot, and the ceremonies were of a much inferior cast.
CONSPIRACY OF CATILINE.—Meanwhile at Rome, the state had been endangered by the combination of democrats and anarchists in the conspiracy of Catiline. The well-contrived plot of this audacious and profligate man was detected and crushed by the vigilance and energy of the consul Cicero, whose four speeches on the subject, two to the Senate and two to the people, are among the most celebrated of all his orations. Catiline was forced to fly from Rome; and several of his prominent accomplices were put to death by the advice of Cato (the younger), the leader of the Senatorial party, and by the vote of the Senate. This was done without asking for the verdict of the people, and for this reason was not warranted by the law; but it was declared to be needful for the salvation of the state. The next year Catiline was killed in battle, and his force dispersed by the army of the Senate. A turn of party feeling afterwards exiled Cicero for departing from the law in the execution of the conspirators.
JULIUS CAESAR.—Another person strong enough to be the rival of Pompeius was now on the stage of action. This was Caius Julius Caesar, who proved himself to be, on the whole, the foremost man of the ancient Roman world. Caesar's talents were versatile, but in nothing was he weak or superficial. He was great as a general, a statesman, an orator, and an author. With as much power of personal command over men as Hannibal had possessed, he was likewise an agreeable companion of men of letters and in general society. Every thing he did he appeared to do with ease. By his family connections he was naturally designated as the leader of the popular, Marian party. He was the nephew of Marius and the son-in-law of Cinna. Sulla had spared his life, although he had courageously refused to obey the dictator's command to put away his wife; but he had been obliged to quit Rome. At the funeral of Julia, the widow of Marius, he had been bold enough to exhibit the bust of that hero,—an act that involved risk, but pleased the multitude. He was suspected of being privy to Catiline's plot, and in the Senate spoke against the execution of his confederates. In 65 he was elected Aedile, but his profuse expenditures in providing games plunged him heavily in debt; so that it was only by advances made to him by Crassus that he was able, after being praetor, to go to Spain (in 61), where, as propraetor, he first acquired military distinction. Prior to his sojourn in Spain, by his bold political conduct, in opposition to the Senate, and on the democratic side, he had made himself a favorite of the people.
THE FIRST TRIUMVIRATE.—Pompeius was distrusted and feared by the Senate; but, on seeing that he took no measures to seize on power at Rome, they proceeded to thwart his wishes, and denied the expected allotments of land to his troops. The circumstances led to the formation of the first Triumvirate, which was an informal alliance between Pompeius, Caesar, and Crassus, against the Senatorial oligarchy, and for the protection and furtherance of their own interests. Caesar became consul in 59 B.C. He gave his daughter Julia in marriage to Pompeius. Gaul, both Cisalpine, and Transalpine (Gallia Narbonensis), was given to Caesar to govern for five years. Cato was sent off to take possession of the kingdom of Cyprus. Cicero, who was midway between the two parties, was exiled on motion of the radical tribune, Clodius. But the independent and violent proceedings of this demagogue led Pompeius to co-operate more with the Senate. Cicero was recalled (57 B.C.). A jealousy, fomented by the Senate, sprang up between Pompeius and Crassus. By Caesar's efforts, a better understanding was brought about between the triumvirs, and it was agreed that his own proconsulship should be prolonged for a second term of five years. Pompeius received the Spains, and Crassus, who was avaricious, was made proconsul of Syria, and commander of the armies in the Oriental provinces. In an expedition against the Parthians in 53, he perished.
CAESAR IN GAUL.—The campaigns of Caesar in Gaul covered a period of eight years. An admirable narrative of them is presented by himself in his Commentaries.
THE GAULS.—The Gauls were Celts. The Celts were spread over the most of Gaul, over Britain and the north of Italy. In Gaul, there were three general divisions of people, each subdivided into tribes. These were the Belgae, the Galli, and the Aquitani, the last of whom, however, were not Celts, but, like the Iberians in Spain, belonged to a pre-Celtic race. The Helvetii and Vindelici were in Switzerland. The Celts of Gaul had attained to a considerable degree of civilization. Their gods were the various objects of nature personified. Their divinities are described by Caesar as corresponding in their functions to the gods of Rome. Their priests were the Druids, a close corporation, but not hereditary. They not only conducted worship: they were the lawgivers, judges, and physicians of the people. They possessed a mysterious doctrine, which they taught to the initiated. They held a great yearly assembly for the trial of causes. The Bards stood in connection with the Druidical order. In worship, human sacrifices were offered in large numbers, the victims being prisoners, slaves, criminals, etc. There were temples, but thick groves were the favorite seats of worship. Caesar says that the Gauls were strongly addicted to religious observances. In their character they are described as brave and impetuous in an onset, but as lacking persistency.
The Celts in Britain were less civilized than their kinsfolk across the channel. But in their customs and religious beliefs and usages, they were similar to them. They probably came over from Gaul.
CONQUEST OF GAUL.—The first victory of Caesar was in conflict with the Helvetii, who had invaded Gaul, and whom he drove back to their homes in the Alps. The Gallic tribes applied to him for help against the Germans, who had been led over the Rhine by Ariovistus, chief of the Suevi. Him Caesar forced to return to the other side of the river. The Gallic tribes, fearing the power of Caesar, stirred up the Belgae, the most warlike of all the Gauls. These Csesar subdued, and also, with less difficulty, conquered the other nations of Gaul. Twice, in conflict with the Germans, he crossed the Rhine near Bonn and Andernach (55 and 53 B.C.). Twice, also (55 and 54 B.C.), he landed in Britain. On the second expedition he crossed the Thames. In 52 there was a general insurrection of the Gauls under Vercingetorix, a brave chieftain, to conquer whom required all of Caesar's strength and skill. The result of eight years of hard and successful warfare was the subjugation of all Gaul from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. The Celts were subdued, and steps taken which resulted in their civilization. A barrier was placed in the way of the advance of the Germans, which availed for this end during several centuries. By his successes in Gaul, Csesar acquired a fame as a general, which partly eclipsed the glory previously gained by Pompeius in the East. He became, also, the leader of veteran legions who were devoted to his interests.
THE CIVIL WAR.—The rupture between Pompeius and Caesar brought on another civil war, and subverted the Roman republic. They were virtually regents. The triumvirs had arranged with one another for the partition of power. The death of Crassus took away a link of connection which had united the two survivors. The death of Julia, the beautiful daughter of Caesar, in 54 B.C., had previously dissolved another tie. Pompeius contrived to remain in Rome, and to govern Spain by legates. Each of the two rivals had his active and valiant partisans in the city. The spoils of Gaul were sent to be expended in the erection of costly buildings, and in providing entertainments for the populace. To Pompey, in turn, Rome owed the construction of the first stone theater, which was dedicated with unprecedented show and splendor. Bloody conflicts between armed bands of adherents of the two leaders were of daily occurrence. Clodius, an adherent of Caesar and a reckless partisan, was slain by Milo, in a conflict on the Appian Way. The Senate and the republicans, of whom Cato was the chief, in order to curb the populace, and out of enmity to Caesar, allied themselves with Pompeius. It was determined to prevent him from standing as a candidate for the consulship, unless he should lay down his command, and come to Rome. He offered to resign his military power if Pompeius would do the same. This was refused. Finally he was directed to give up his command in Gaul before the expiration of the time which had been set for the termination of it. This order, if carried into effect, would have reduced him to the rank of a private citizen, and have left him at the mercy of his enemies. The tribunes, including his devoted supporter, Marcus Antonius, in vain interposed the veto, and fled from the city. Caesar determined to disobey the order of the Senate. His legions—two had been withdrawn on the false pretext of needing them for the Parthian war—clung to him, with the exception of one able officer, T. Labienus. Caesar acted with great promptitude. He crossed the Rubicon, the boundary of the Gallic Cisalpine province, before Pompeius—who had declared, that with a stamp of his foot he could call up armed men from the ground—had made adequate preparations to meet him. The strength of Pompeius was mainly in the East, the scene of his former glory; and he was, perhaps, not unwilling to retire to that region, taking with him the throng of aristocratic leaders, who fled precipitately on learning of the approach of Caesar. Pompeius sailed from Brundisium to Epirus. Cicero, who had ardently desired an accommodation between the rivals, was in an agony of doubt as to what course it was right and best for him to take, since he saw reason to dread the triumph of either side. Reluctantly he decided to cast in his lot with the Senate and its newly gained champion.
PHARSALUS: THAPSUS: MUNDA.—Caesar gained the advantage of securing the state treasure which Pompeius had unaccountably left behind him, and was able to establish his power in Italy. Before pursuing Pompeius, he marched through Gaul into Spain (49 B.C.), conquered the Pompeian forces at Ilerda, and secured his hold upon that country. He then crossed the Adriatic, He encountered Pompeius, who could not manage his imprudent officers, on the plain of Pharsalus (48 B.C.), where the senatorial army was completely overthrown. Pompeius sailed for Egypt; but, just as he was landing, he was treacherously assassinated. His head was sent to Caesar, who wept at the spectacle, and punished the murderers. Caesar gained friends everywhere by the exercise of a judicious clemency, which accorded with his natural disposition. He next went to Egypt. There he was met by Cleopatra, whose dazzling beauty captivated him. She reigned in conjunction with her younger brother, who, according to the Egyptian usage, was nominally her husband. The Egyptians were roused against Caesar, and, on one occasion, he saved his life by swimming; but he finally defeated and destroyed the Egyptian army. At Zela, in Pontus, he met and vanquished Pharnaces, the revolted son of Mithridates, and sent the laconic message, "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered). Early in 46 he landed in Africa, and, at Thapsus, annihilated the republican forces in that region. A most powerful combination was made against him in Spain, including some of his old officers and legionaries, and the two sons of Pompeius. But in the hard-fought battle at Munda (March, 45 B.C.), when Caesar was himself in great personal danger, he was, as usual, triumphant.
CAESAR AS A CIVILIAN.—Marvelous as the career of Caesar as a general was, his merit as a civilian outstrips even his distinction as a soldier. He saw that the world could no longer be governed by the Roman rabble, and that monarchy was the only alternative. He ruled under the forms of the old constitution, taking the post of dictator and censor for life, and absorbing in himself the other principal republican offices. The whole tendency of his measures, which were mostly of a very wholesome character, was not only to remedy abuses of administration, but to found a system of orderly administration in which Rome should be not the sole mistress, but simply the capital, of the world-wide community which had been subjected to her authority.
THE GOVERNMENT OF CAESAR.—Caesar made the Senate an advisory body. He increased the number of senators, bringing in provincials as well as Roman citizens. He gave full citizenship to all the Transpadane Gauls, and to numerous communities in Transalpine Gaul, in Spain, and elsewhere. He established a wide-spread colonization, thus planting his veterans in different places abroad, and lessening the number of proletarians in Italy. He rebuilt Carthage and Corinth. He re-organized the army, and the civil administration in the provinces. In the space of five years, while he was busy in important wars, he originated numerous governmental measures of the utmost value.
THE MOTIVES OF CAESAR.—The designs of Caesar and of his party are to be distinguished from what they actually accomplished. Caesar was not impelled by a desire to improve the government of the provinces, in taking up arms against the Senate. Nor did he owe his success to the support of provincials; although, in common with the rest of the democratic party at Rome, he was glad to have them for allies. The custom had grown up of virtually giving to eminent generals, absolute power for extended intervals. This was done, for example, in the case of Marius, on the occasion of the invasion of the Cimbrians and Teutones. In such exigencies, it was found necessary to create what was equivalent to a military dictatorship. The idea of military rule became familiar. The revolution made by Caesar was achieved by military organization, and was a measure of personal self-defense on his part. Being raised to the supreme power, he sought to rule according to the wise and liberal ideas which were suggested by the actual condition of the world, and the undesirableness of a continued domination of a single city, with such a populace as that of Rome. Before he could carry out his large schemes, he was cut down.
ASSASSINATION OF CAESAR.—Caesar was tired of staying in Rome, and was proposing to undertake an expedition against the Parthians. Neither his clemency nor the necessity and the merits of the government sustained by him, availed to shield him against the machinations of enemies. The aristocratic party detested his policy. He was suspected of aiming at the title, as well as the power, of a king. A conspiracy made up of numerous senators who secretly hated him, of other individuals influenced by personal spite, and of republican visionaries like Cassius and Junius Brutus, who gloried in what they considered tyrannicide, assaulted him on the ides of March (March 15, 44 B.C.) in the hall of Pompeius, whither he had come to a session of the Senate. He received twenty-three wounds, one of which, at least, was fatal, and fell, uttering, a tradition said, a word of gentle reproach to Brutus, one who had been counted a special friend. Cicero had acquiesced in the new government, and eulogized Caesar and his administration. But even he expressed his satisfaction at the event which left the republic without a master. An amnesty to those who slew Caesar was advocated by him, and decreed by the Senate.
THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE.—The Senate gave to the leading conspirators provinces; to Decimus Brutus, Cisalpine Gaul. But at Rome there was quickly a re-action of popular wrath against the enemies of Csesar, which was skillfully fomented by Marcus Antonius in the address which he made to the people over his dead body, pierced with so many wounds. The people voted to give Cisalpine Gaul to Antonius, and he set out to take it from Decimus Brutus by force of arms. Cicero delivered a famous series of harangues against Antonius, called the Philippics. Antonius, being defeated, fled to Lepidus, the governor of Transalpine Gaul. Octavius, the grand-nephew and adopted son of Caesar, a youth of eighteen, now became prominent, and at first was supported by the Senate in the hope of balancing the power of Antonius. But in October, 43, Octavianus (as he was henceforward called), Antonius, and Lepidus together formed a second triumvirate, which became legal, by the ratification of the people, for the period of five years. A proscription for the destruction of the enemies of the three contracting parties was a part of this alliance. A great number were put to death, among them Cicero, a sacrifice to the vengeance of Antonius. War against the republicans was the necessary consequence. At Philippi in Thrace, in the year 42, Antonius and Octavianus defeated Brutus and Cassius, both of whom committed suicide. Porcia, the wife of Brutus, and the daughter of Cato, on hearing of her husband's death, put an end to her own life. Many other adherents of the republic followed the example of their leaders. The victors divided the world between themselves, Antonius taking the east, Octavianus the west, while to the weak and avaricious Lepidus, Africa was assigned; but he was soon deprived of his share by Octavianus.
CIVIL WAR: ACTIUM.—Antonius was enamoured of Cleopatra, and, following her to Egypt, gave himself up to luxury and sensual gratification. Civil war between Octavianus and the followers of Antonius in Italy (40, 41 B.C.) was followed by the marriage of Octavia, the sister of Octavianus, to Antonius. But after a succession of disputes between the two regents, there was a final breach. Antonius (35) went so far as to give Roman territories to the sons of Cleopatra, and to send to Octavia papers of divorce. The Senate, at the instigation of Octavianus, deprived his unworthy colleague of all his powers. War was declared against Cleopatra. East and West were arrayed in arms against one another. The conflict was determined by the naval victory of _Octavianus_at Actium (Sept. 2, 31 B.C.). Before the battle was decided, Cleopatra fled, and was followed by Antonius. When the latter approached Alexandria, Antonius, deceived by the false report that Cleopatra had destroyed herself, threw himself upon his sword and died. Cleopatra, finding herself unable to fascinate the conqueror, but believing that he meant that she should adorn his public triumph at Rome, poisoned herself (30). Egypt was made into a Roman province. The month Sextilis, on which _Octavianus_returned to Rome, received in honor of him the name of "August," from "Augustus," the "venerated" or "illustrious," the name given him in 27 B.C. by the Roman people and Senate. He celebrated three triumphs; and, for the third time since the city was founded, the Temple of Janus was closed.
AUGUSTUS AS A RULER.—The long-continued, sanguinary civil wars made peace welcome. Augustus knew how to conceal his love of power under a mild exterior, and to organize the monarchy with a nominal adherence to republican forms. The controlling magistracies, except the censorship, were transferred to him. As Imperator, he had unlimited command over the military forces, and was at the head of a standing army of three hundred and forty thousand men. To him it belonged to decide on peace and war. The Senate became the real legislative body, issuing senatus-consulta. There was also a sort of "cabinet council" chosen by him from its members. The authority of the Tribunes belonged to him, and thus the popular assemblies became more and more a nullity. "The Senate was made up of his creatures; the people were won by bread and games; the army was fettered to him by means of booty and gifts." While the forms of a free state remained, all the functions of authority were exercised by the ruler.
STATE OF THE EMPIRE.—(1) Its Extent. The Roman Empire extended from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, a distance of more than three thousand miles, and from the Danube and the English Channel—later, from the friths of Scotland—to the cataracts of the Nile and the African desert. Its population was somewhere from eighty millions to one hundred and twenty millions. It was composed of the East and the West, a distinction that was not simply geographical, but included deeper characteristic differences. (2) The Provinces. The provinces were divided (27 B.C.) into the proconsular, ruled by the Senate, and the imperial, ruled by the legates of Augustus. His authority, however, was everywhere supreme. Over all the empire extended the system of Roman law, the rights and immunities of which belonged to Roman citizens everywhere. (3) The Two Languages. It was a Romano-Hellenic monarchy. Local dialects remained; but the Greek language was the language of commerce, and of polite intercourse in all places. The Greek tongue and Hellenic culture were the common property of the nations. The Latin was prevalent west of the Adriatic. It was adopted in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and in other provinces. It was the language of courts and of the camp. (4) Journeys and Trade. The Roman territory was covered with a net-work of magnificent roads. Journeys for purposes of trade and from motives of curiosity were common. Religious pilgrimages to famous shrines were frequent. The safety and peace which followed upon the civil wars stimulated traffic and intercourse between the different regions united under the imperial government.
LITERATURE.—The Augustan period was the golden age of Roman literature. Literary works were topics of conversation in social circles. Libraries were collected by the rich. The shops of booksellers were places of resort for cultivated people. There were active and liberal patrons of poets and of other men of letters. Such patrons were Maecenas, Horace's friend, and Augustus himself. Then favors were repaid by praises and flattery, as we see in the verses of Horace, Virgil, and especially of Ovid. The lectures of grammarians and rhetoricians, of philosophers and physicians, were largely attended. Literary societies were formed. Periodicals and bulletins were published, in which the proceedings of the Senate and of the courts were recorded. The business of scribes—copyists of manuscripts—engaged a vast number of persons.
WRITINGS OF CICERO.—Cicero (106-43), in his philosophic writings, reproduces the thoughts and speculations of the Greek sages, in the manner of a cultivated and appreciative student. His speeches and his epistles, especially those to his friend, Atticus, lift the veil, as it were, and afford us most interesting glimpses of the civil and social life of the Romans of that day.
THE POETS.—One of the most original of the Latin poets is Lucretius (95-51 B.C.), whose poem "On the Nature of Things" is an effort to dispel superstitious fear by inculcating the Epicurean doctrine that the world is self-made through the movement and concussion of atoms, and that the gods leave it to care for itself. A contemporary of Lucretius, and a poet of equal merit, but in an altogether different vein, is Catullus. He is chiefly noted for his lyrics. Virgil (70-19 B.C.), in the Aeneid, has produced a genuine Roman epic, although his dependence on Homer is obvious throughout, and in the Bucolics, and in particular in the Georgics, where he shows most originality, has made himself immortal as a pastoral poet. Horace (65-8 B.C.), like most of the Roman authors, in many of his poems is inspired by his Greek models, but, in his Satires and Poetic Epistles, expresses the character of his own genius. His "Odes," for their beauty and melody and the variety of their topics, rank among the best of all productions of their kind. Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18), in his chief work, the Metamorphoses, handled the mythical tales of the Greeks, and, in his poems on Love, likewise introduced many Grecian tales. He was much influenced by the Alexandrian poets.
THE HISTORIANS.—In historical composition, most of the Roman authors had Greek patterns before their eyes. Nevertheless, Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17), thirty-five of the one hundred and forty-two books of whose "Annals" have been preserved, and Sallust, to whom we are indebted for narratives of the conspiracy of Cataline and of the Jugurthine war, are far from being servile copyists. The simple and lucid but graceful style of the Commentaries of Caesar makes this work an example of the purest Latin prose.
LAW WRITERS.—In one department, that of jurisprudence, the Romans were eminently original. The writings of the great jurists were simple and severe, and free from the rhetorical traits which Roman authors in other departments borrowed from the Greeks.
OTHER AUTHORS.—Among other eminent authors of this period are the great Roman antiquary Varro (116-27 B.C.); the elegiac poets, Tibullus and Propertius; Phaedrus, the Roman Aesop; the historian, Cornelius Nepos; and the Greek historical writers of that day, Diodore of Sicily and Dionysius of Halicarnassus; also Strabo, the Greek geographer (64 B.C.-A.D. 24).
THE JEWS AND THEIR DISPERSION.—There were three ancient peoples, each of which fulfilled an office of its own in history. The Greeks were the intellectual people, the Romans were founders in law and politics: from the Hebrews the true religion was to spring. At the epoch of the birth of Jesus, the Hebrews, like the Greeks and Romans, were scattered abroad, and mingled with all other nations. Wherever they went they carried their pure monotheism, and built their synagogues for instruction in the law and for common worship. In the region of Babylon, a multitude of Jews had remained after the captivity. Two out of the five sections of Alexandria were occupied by them. At Antioch in Syria, the other great meeting-place of peoples of diverse origin and religion, they were very numerous. In the cities of Asia Minor, of Greece and Macedonia, in Illyricum and in Rome, they were planted in large numbers. Jewish merchants went wherever there was room for profitable trade. Generally regarded with aversion on account of their religious exclusiveness, they nevertheless made so many proselytes that the Roman philosopher, Seneca, said of them, "The conquered have given laws to the conquerors." Prophecy had inspired the Jews with an abiding and fervent expectation of the ultimate conquest of heathenism, and prevalence of their faith. If the hope of a temporal Messiah to free them from the Roman yoke, and to lead them to an external victory and dominion, burned in the hearts of most, there were some of a more spiritual mind and of deeper aspirations, who looked for One who should minister to the soul, and bring in a reign of holiness and peace.
PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE HEATHEN.—In the heathen world, there was not wanting a preparation for such a Deliverer. The union of all the nations in the Roman Empire had lessened the mutual antipathy of peoples, melted down barriers of feeling as well as of intercourse, and weakened the pride of race. An indistinct sense of a common humanity had entered the breasts of men. Writers, like Cicero, talked of a great community, a single society of gods and men. The Stoic philosophy had made this idea familiar. Mankind, it was said, formed one city. Along with this conception, precepts were uttered in favor of forbearance and fraternal kindness between man and man. In religion, there was a drift towards monotheism. The old mythological religion was decaying, and traditional beliefs as to divine things were dissolving. Many minds were yearning for something to fill the void,—for a more substantial ground of rest and of hope. They longed for a goal on which their aspirations might center, and to which their exertions might tend. The burden of sin and of suffering that rested on the common mass excited at least a vague yearning for deliverance. The Roman Empire, with all its treasures and its glory, failed to satisfy the hearts of men. The dreams of philosophy could not be realized on the basis of ancient society, where the state was every thing, and where no higher, more comprehensive and more enduring kingdom could spring into being.
CHRIST AND THE APOSTLES.—Four years before the date assigned for the beginning of the Christian era, Jesus was born. Herod, a tyrannical king, servile in his attitude toward the Romans, and subject to them, was then ruling over the Jews in Palestine. But, when Jesus began his public ministry, the kingship had been abolished, and Judaea was governed by the procurator, Pontius Pilate (A.D. 26). Jesus announced himself as the Messiah, the founder of a kingdom "not of this world;" the members of which were to be brethren, having God for their Father. He taught in a tone of authority, yet with "a sweet reasonableness;" and his wonderful teaching was accompanied with marvelous works of power and mercy, as "he went about doing good." He attached to himself twelve disciples, among whom Peter, and the two brothers James and John, were the men of most mark. These had listened to the preaching of John, the prophet of the wilderness, by whom Jesus had been recognized as the Christ who was to come. The ministry of the Christ produced a wide-spread excitement, and a deep impression upon humble and truth-loving souls. But his rebuke of the ruling class, the Pharisees, for their formalism, pretended sanctity, self-seeking, and enslavement to tradition, excited in them rancorous enmity. His disappointment of the popular desire for a political Messiah chilled the enthusiasm of the multitude, many of whom had heard him gladly. After about three years, he was betrayed by one of his followers, Judas Iscariot; was accused of heterodoxy and blasphemy before the Jewish Sanhedrim; the consent of Pilate to his death was extorted by a charge of treason based on the title of "king," which he had not refused; and he was crucified between two malefactors. Not many days elapsed before his disciples rallied from their despondency, and boldly and unitedly declared, before magistrates and people, that he had manifested himself to them in bodily form, in a series of interviews at definite places and times. They proclaimed his continued though invisible reign, his perpetual presence with them, and his future advent in power. In his name, and on the ground of his death, they preached the forgiveness of sins to all who should believe in him, and enter on a life of Christian obedience. In the year 33 or 34, the death of Stephen, the first martyr, at the hands of a Jewish mob, for a time dispersed the church at Jerusalem, and was one step towards the admission of the Gentiles to the privileges of the new faith. But the chief agent in effecting this result, and in thus giving to Christianity its universal character and mission, was the Apostle Paul, a converted Pharisee. Antioch in Syria became the cradle of the Gentile branch of the church, and of the missions to the heathen, in which Paul was the leader; while Peter was efficient in spreading the gospel among the Jews in Palestine and beyond its borders. By Paul numerous churches were founded in the course of three extended missionary journeys, which led him beyond Asia into Macedonia, Greece, and Illyricum. By him the gospel was preached from Jerusalem to Rome, where he died as a martyr under Nero in 67 or 68. Not far from the same time, according to a credible tradition, Peter, also, was put to death at Rome. The preachers of the Christian faith pursued their work with a fearless and untiring spirit, and met the malignant persecution of the Jews and the fanatical assaults of the heathen with patient endurance and with prayer for the pardon and enlightenment of their persecutors.
THE VICTORY OF THE GERMANS.—Augustus avoided war when he could. His aim was to defend the frontiers of the empire rather than to extend them. The Parthians were prevailed on to return of their own accord the standards and prisoners taken from the army of Crassus. But in Germany, Drusus, the brave step-son of Augustus, made four campaigns on the east of the Rhine, as far as the Weser and the Elbe. On his way back from the Elbe, a fall from his horse terminated his life (9 B.C.). His brother, Tiberius, managed to establish the Roman power over a part of the Germanic tribes on the right bank of the river (4 B.C.) Long before (27 B.C.) the western shore of the river had been formed into two provinces, Upper and Lower Germany. An incapable and incautious general, Quintilius Varus, excited the freedom-loving Germans to revolt under the brave chief of the Cherusci, Arminius (or Hermann). Three Roman legions were annihilated in the Teutoburg forest, Varus taking his own life. The civil and military chiefs who were taken captive, the Germans slew as a sacrifice to their gods. The rest of the prisoners were made slaves. "Many a Roman from an equestrian or a senatorial house grew old in the service of a German farmer, as a servant in the house, or in tending cattle without." There in the forest of Teutoburg the Germans practically won their independence. On hearing the bad news, Augustus, for several days, could only exclaim, "Varus! give me back my legions!" After the death of Augustus, in his seventy-sixth year, the noble son of Drusus, Germanicus, conducted three expeditions against Arminius (A.D. 14-16), obtained a victory over him, and took his wife prisoner, who died in captivity; but the Romans permanently held only the left bank of the Rhine.
ROMAN LIFE.—Various particulars characteristic of Roman ways have been, or will be, incidentally referred to. A few special statements may be given in this place. The Romans, like the Greeks, built a town round a height (or capitol) where was a stronghold (arx), a place of refuge. Here temples were erected. The forum, or market-place, was near by, where the courts sat, and where the people came together to transact business. The dwellings were on the sides of the hill, or on the plain beneath. The streets were narrow. The exterior of the houses was plain. They were of brick, generally covered with stucco, and whitewashed. Glass was too costly to be much used: hence the openings in the walls were few. When the space became valuable, as in Rome, the houses were built high. The chief room in the house was the atrium, which, in earlier times, was not only the common room but also the bedroom of the family. In the primitive dwellings it had been the only room. A passage led from it through a door-way into the street. In front and on both sides were apartments, and in the rear a walled court, or garden. Large houses had several inclosed courts. Rich men and nobles built magnificent palaces. The walls of Roman dwellings within were decorated with fresco-paintings, some of which at Pompeii are left in all their freshness. Round the dinner-table were couches, on which those who partook of the meal reclined. In other rooms chairs were plentifully supplied. Lamps were very numerous and of beautiful design, but the wick was so small that they gave but little light. There was little furniture in the atrium. Statues stood round the walls of this room, if the house were one of the better sort, and in open presses on the walls were the images or masks of the distinguished ancestors of the family. At a funeral of a member of the household they were worn in the procession by persons representing the deceased progenitors.
DRESS.—The principal material of a Roman's dress was woolen cloth. The main article of wearing apparel for a man was the toga, thrown over the shoulders, and brought in folds round the waist in a way to leave the right arm free. Under it was a tunic. At the age of about seventeen, the boy publicly laid aside the toga with a purple hem, and put on the white toga, the token of citizenship. Women wore a long tunic girded about the waist, with a tunic and a close-fitting vest beneath. Except on a journey or in an open theater, as a protection from the sun, neither men nor women wore any covering on the head. Women, when they walked abroad, wore veils which did not cover the face. The color and form of the shoes varied with the rank of the individual, and were significant of it. In the house, sandals were used.
ORDER OF OCCUPATIONS.—The interval from sunrise to sunset was divided into twelve hours. The seventh hour of the day began at noon. At the third hour, there was usually a light meal, which was followed by business, or visits of friendship. The wealthy Roman was followed about the city by a throng of clients, who called on him with their morning greeting before he rose, and received their gift of food or money. At noon came the prandium, or more substantial breakfast. This was followed by a short sleep, in the case of those who were at leisure to take it. Then came games and physical exercise of various sorts. A favorite recreation, both for young and old, was ball-games. Exercise was succeeded by the bath, for which the Romans from the later times of the republic had a remarkable fondness. In private houses the bathing conveniences were luxurious. The emperors built magnificent bath-houses, which included gymnasia, and sometimes libraries. What is now called the Turkish bath was very much in vogue. Dinner, or the cena, the principal meal, was about midway between noon and sunset. The fork was not used at the table, but only in carving; but spoons, and sometimes, it would appear, knives, were used by the host and his guests. The food was so carved that it was usually taken with the fingers. At the table, the toga was exchanged for a lighter garment, and sandals were laid aside. The beverage was wine mixed with water. At banquets of the rich, after the dessert of fruit and cakes had been taken, there was, in later times, the convivium, or social "drinking-bout." Under the empire, this became often a scene of indecent revelry. The Roman dinner-table was not so likely as a Greek repast to be enlivened by flashes of intellect and of wit, or by music furnished by the guests. Musicians were more commonly hired performers, as were also the dancers. The Romans enjoyed games of chance. Playing with dice, and gambling along with it, became common.
MARRIAGE AND THE HOUSEHOLD.—There were two kinds of marriage. By one the wife passed entirely out of the hands (manus) of the father into the hands of the husband, or under his control. There was frequently a religious rite (confarreatio); but, when this did not take place, the other customary ceremonies were essentially the same. At the betrothal the prospective bride was frequently presented with a ring, and with some more valuable gift, by the man whom she was to marry. In the household, notwithstanding the supreme authority of the husband, the wife had an honored position and an active influence. The children were, in law, the property of the father. Their lives were at his disposal. The mother had charge of their early training. The father took the principal charge of the young boy, taught him athletic exercises, and took him to the forum with him. Schools began to exist in the early period. Boys and girls studied together. The pedagogue was the servant who accompanied the child to school, and conducted him home. Greek was studied. The law of the Twelve Tables was committed to memory. Virgil and Horace became school-books, along with Cicero and earlier writers. In the later republican period, Greeks took the business of teaching largely into their hands. There were flourishing schools of rhetoric managed both by Greek and by Latin teachers. Young Romans who could afford to do so went to Athens and other cities in the East for their university training.
SLAVES.—Town-slaves were found in the richer families in great numbers (p. 152). They were not only employed in menial occupations: they were clerks, copyists, sculptors, architects, etc., as well as actors and singers. The work of the farm-slaves was harder. They were shut up in the night in large barracks, made partly under ground, into which was admitted but little light or air. They often worked in chains. In town and country both, the unlimited power of the master led to great severity and cruelty in the treatment of slaves. Women as well as men were often guilty of brutal harshness. Females as well as males were the sufferers. The town-slave, however, might be favored by his master: he might be allowed to save money of his own, and might, perhaps, buy his freedom, or receive it as a gift. During the holidays of the Saturnalia, slaves were allowed unusual privileges and pleasures. The freedmen could become citizens, and were then eligible to any office.
MAGISTRATES.—A Roman who sought office went round soliciting votes. This was called ambitio (from ambire, to go round), whence is derived the English word ambition. He presented himself in public places in a toga specially whitened, and was hence called a candidate (from candida, meaning white). He sought to get support by providing shows and games. The voting was by ballot. Magistrates had their seats of honor, which were made in a particular shape. In the different forms used in the trial of causes, there was one general practice,—the magistrate laid down the law, and referred the judgment as to the facts in the case to an umpire, either an individual or a special court.
C. JULIUS CÆSAR, m. Aurelia.
|
+—C. JULIUS CÆSAR.
|
+—Julia, m. M. Atius Balbus.
|
+—Atia, m. C. Octavius.
|
+—C. Octavius (adopted as son by the will of Julius)
became C. JULIUS CÆSAR OCTAVIANUS AUGUSTUS, m.
2, Scribonia;
|
+—Julia
m. 2, M. Vipsanius Agrippa.
|
+—Agrippina,
| m. Germanicus.
| |
| +—CAIUS (Caligula),
| | m. Cæsonia,
| | |
| | +—Julia Drusilla.
| |
| +—Agrippina,
| m. Cn. Domitius.
| |
| +—L. DOMITIUS NERO,
| m. Poppæa Sabina.
| |
| +—Claudia Augusta.
|
+—Julia,
m. Æmilius Paulus.
|
+—Æmilia Lepida, m.
1, CLAUDIUS;
2, Junius Silanus.
|
+—Junia Calvina,
m. VITELLIUS.
3, Livia. | +—TIBERIUS (adopted as son by Augustus).
TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO.
m. Livia Drusilla (afterwards wife of AUGUSTUS).
|
+—TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS NERO.
|
+—Drusus Claudius Nero,
m. Antonia, daughter of the Triumvir and niece of Augustus.
|
+—Germanicus,
| m. Agrippina.
|
+—TI. CLAUDIUS DRUSUS,
m. 5, Valeria Messalina.
|
+—Octavia,
| m. NERO.
|
+—Britannicus.
|
+—By adoption, NERO.
TIBERIUS.—During the long reign of the prudent Augustus, there was peace within the borders of the empire. He said of himself, that he "found Rome of brick, and left it of marble." This change may be taken as a symbol of the growth of material prosperity in the Roman dominions. But in his private relations, the emperor was less fortunate. His daughter Julia, a woman of brilliant talents, disgraced him by her immorality, and he was obliged to banish her. Her two elder sons died when they were young. The empire devolved on his adopted step-son Tiberius (14-37), who endeavored to continue the same conservative policy. Tiberius was at first alarmed by mutinies among the troops in Pannonia and on the Rhine. The army of the Rhine urged Germanicus, the emperor's adopted son and probable successor, to lead it to Rome, promising to place him on the throne, but Germanicus succeeded in quieting the disturbance. As there were during this reign no great wars, Tiberius was able to devote himself more exclusively to the civil administration. He transferred from the popular assembly to the Senate the right of choosing the magistrates, emphasizing in this way the dual system that Augustus had created. The rights of the Senate he appeared scrupulously to respect. For the more effective government of the city of Rome he established there a permanent prefecture and brought together in a camp before the Viminal gate the nine prætorian cohorts. Unhappily this Prætorian Guard, which might serve to overawe the city mobs, might also interfere in the affairs of government. Indeed, a little later it had to be counted with in the choice of emperors. The notorious Sejanus was prefect during a large part of this reign, and acquired so completely the confidence of Tiberius that he began to plot his overthrow. He had already caused Drusus, the son of Tiberius, to be poisoned in order to remove one obstacle. Finally the emperor discovered his plots and caused him to be arrested and put to death (31). For several years Tiberius had been living in retirement on the island of Capreæ. There his enemies represented him as given over to debauchery, while the lives of Roman citizens were never safe from his suspicions or from the accusations of the delators, men who presented formal charges of crime, there being no public prosecutors. Earlier in his reign Tiberius had shown a serious purpose to improve the administration of justice, but with the lapse of years he became distrustful and cruel. He had, moreover, changed the law of treason so that to write or speak slightingly of the emperor was interpreted as conspiracy to bring the commonwealth into contempt and was punished with death. Although he was justly hated by the Roman nobles, in the provinces he was respected because he sought to protect them against extortion and to foster their general interests. He died in the year 37 at the age of seventy-eight.
CALIGULA.—There was no law for the regulation of the succession. But the Senate, the prætorians, and the people united in calling to the throne Caius, the son of Germanicus (37-41). This ruler, called Caligula, at first mild and generous in his doings, soon rushed into such excesses of savage cruelty and monstrous vice that he was thought to be half-deranged. He was fond of seeing with his own eyes the infliction of tortures. His wild extravagance in the matter of public games and in building drained the resources of the empire. After four years, this madman was cut down by two of his guards whom he had grievously insulted.
CLAUDIUS.—Claudius, the uncle and successor of Caligula, and the son of Drusus and Antonia, was not bad, but weak. He was a student and a recluse in his habits. His favorites and nearest connections were unprincipled. The depravity of his wife, Messalina, was such that he did right in sanctioning her death. The immoral and ambitious Agrippina, whom he next married, had an influence less malign. But she was unfaithful to her husband; and this fact, together with the fear she felt that Nero, her son by her first marriage, would be excluded from the throne, impelled her to the crime of taking the life of Claudius by poison.
NERO.—Nero reigned from 54 to 68. He was the grandson of Germanicus, and had been the pupil of the philosopher Seneca, and of Burrus, an excellent man, the captain of the Prætorian Guard. The first five years of Nero's reign were honorably distinguished from the portion of it that followed. When a warrant for the execution of a criminal was brought to him, he regretted that he had ever learned to write. His first great crime was the poisoning of Britannicus, the son of Claudius. Nero became enamored of a fierce and ambitious woman, Poppæa Sabina. On the basis of false charges, he took the life of his wife, Octavia, the daughter of Claudius (A.D. 62). His criminal mother, Agrippina, after various previous attempts made by him to destroy her, was dispatched by his command (A.D. 59). His unbridled cruelty and jealousy moved him to order Seneca, one of the men to whom he owed most, to commit suicide. He came forward as a musician, and nothing delighted him so much as the applause rendered to his musical performances. He recited his own poems, and was stung with jealousy when he found himself outdone by Lucan. His eagerness to figure as a charioteer prompted him, early in his reign, to construct a circus in his own grounds on the Vatican, where he could exhibit his skill as a coachman to a throng of delighted spectators. At length he appeared, lyre in hand, on the stage before the populace. Senators of high descent, and matrons of noble family, were induced by his example and commands to come forward in public as dancers and play-actors. The public treasure he squandered in expensive shows, and in the lavish distribution of presents in connection with them.
THE CHRISTIANS.—Nero has the undesirable distinction of being the first of the emperors to persecute the Christians. In A.D. 64 a great fire broke out at Rome, which laid a third of the city in ashes. He was suspected of having kindled it; and, in order to divert suspicion from himself, he charged the crime upon the Christians, who were obnoxious, Tacitus tells us, on account of their "hatred of the human race." Their withdrawal from customary amusements and festivals, which involved immorality or heathen rites, naturally gave rise to this accusation of cynical misanthropy. A great number were put to death, "and in their deaths they were made subjects of sport; for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and, when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights." At length a feeling of compassion arose among the people for the victims of this wanton ferocity. Prior to this time, while the Christians were confounded with the Jews as one of their sects, they had been more protected than persecuted by the Roman authorities. Now that they were recognized as a distinct body,—the adherents of a new religion not identified with any particular nation, but seeking to spread itself everywhere,—they fell under the condemnation of Roman law, and were exposed to the hostility of magistrates, as well as to the wrath of the fanatical populace.
Nero was a great builder. The ground which had been burnt over in the fire he laid out in regular streets, leaving open spaces, and limiting the height of the houses. But a large area he reserved for his "Golden House," which, with its lakes and shady groves, stretched over the ground on which the Coliseum afterwards stood, and as far as the Esquiline.
THE CITY OF ROME.—Ancient Rome was mostly built on the left bank of the Tiber. It spread from the Palatine, the seat of the original settlement, over six other hills; so that it became the "city of seven hills." All of them appeared higher than they do now. Of these hills the Capitoline was the citadel and the seat of the gods. In earlier days, from a part of the summit, the Tarpeian Rock, criminals were hurled. In time the hill became covered with public edifices, of which the grandest was the Temple of "Capitoline Jupiter." On the Palatine were eventually constructed the vast palaces of the emperors, the ruins of which have been uncovered in recent times. The walls of Servius Tullius encompassed the seven hills. The walls constructed by Aurelian (270-275 A.D.), Probus, and Honorius (402 A.D.), inclosed an area twelve miles in circumference. The streets were most of them narrow; and, to economize space, the houses were built very high. One of the finest, as well as most ancient, thoroughfares was the Via Sacra, which ran past the Coliseum, or the Flavian amphitheater, and under the Triumphal Arch of Titus, erected after the capture of Jerusalem, along the east of the Forum to the Capitol. There was a particular street in Rome where shoemakers and booksellers were congregated. The central part of the city was thronged, and noisy with cries of teamsters and of venders of all sorts of wares. The fora—one of which, the "Roman Forum," between the Capitoline and the Palatine, was the great center of Roman life—were open places paved, and surrounded with noble buildings,—temples, and basilicas, or halls of justice. The fora were either places for the transaction of public business, or they served the purpose of modern market-places. Among the public buildings of note were the vast colonnades, places of resort both for business and for recreation. The sewers, and especially the aqueducts, were structures of a stupendous character. Among the most imposing edifices in ancient Rome were the baths. Those built by Diocletian had room for three thousand bathers at once. In these establishments the beauty of the gardens and fountains without was on a level with the elegance of the interior furnishings, and with the attraction of the libraries, paintings, and sculptures, which added intellectual pleasure to the physical comfort for which, mainly, these gigantic buildings were constructed. Besides the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, there were many other temples, some of which were but little inferior to that majestic edifice.
The triumphal arches—as that of Titus, already mentioned, which was built of Pentelic marble—and the commemorative columns—as the Column of Trajan, which stood in the forum that bears his name—were among the architectural wonders of the ancient capital of the world. The plain, named of old the Campus Martius, on the north-west side of the city, and bordering on the Tiber, contained, among the buildings and pleasure-grounds by which it was covered, the Pantheon, and the magnificent mausoleum of Augustus. On the south-west of the Coelian Hill, the Appian Way turns to the south-east, and passes out of the Appian Gate. It is skirted for miles with sepulchral monuments of ancient Romans, of which the circular tomb of Metella Cæcilia is one of the most interesting. There are varying estimates of the population of ancient Rome. Probably the number of free inhabitants, in the early centuries of the empire, was not far from a million; and the slaves were probably almost as many.
DEATH OF NERO: GALBA.—Growing jealous of the legates who commanded armies on the frontiers, Nero determined to destroy them. They consequently revolted; and war between the troops of two of them issued in the death of Vindex, the general in Gaul. But Galba was deputed to carry on the contest; and Nero, being forsaken even by his creature, Tigellinus, and the prætorians, at last gained courage to call on a slave to dispatch him, and died (A.D. 68) at the age of thirty. The principal events out of Italy, during his reign, were the revolt of the Britons under the brave queen Boadicea (A.D. 61), and the suppression of it by Suetonius Paulinus; the war with the Parthians and Armenians, extending slightly the frontier of the empire; and the beginning of the Jewish war. Despite the corruption at Rome, her disciplined soldiers still maintained their superiority on the borders.
OTHO: VITELLIUS.—With the death of Nero, the Augustan family came to an end. Galba began the series of military emperors. A Roman of the old type, simple, severe, and parsimonious, he pleased nobody. The prætorians killed him, and elevated Otho, a profligate noble, to the throne; but he was obliged to contend with a rival aspirant, Vitellius, commander of the German legions, who defeated him, and became emperor A.D. 69. Vitellius was not only vicious, like his predecessor, but was cowardly and inefficient. The Syrian and Egyptian legions refused to obey so worthless a ruler, and proclaimed their commander, Flavius Vespasian, as emperor. As Vespasian's general, Antonius, approached Rome, Vitellius renounced the throne, and declared his readiness to retire to private life. His adherents withstood him; and, in the struggle that followed between the two parties in the city, the Capitoline Temple was burned. The Flavian army took Rome, and Vitellius was put to an ignominious death (A.D. 69).
VESPASIAN: THE JEWISH WAR.—Vespasian, the first in the list of good emperors, restored discipline in the army and among the prætorians, instituted a reform in the finances, and erected the immense amphitheater now called the Coliseum, for the gladiatorial games. By his general, Cerealis, he put down the revolt in Germany and Eastern Gaul, and thus saved several provinces to the empire. Civilis, the leader of the rebellion, had aimed to establish an independent German principality on the west of the Rhine. Vespasian had begun the war with the Jews while Nero reigned (A.D. 66). The Romans had to face a most energetic resistance. Among the captives taken by them in Galilee was the Jewish historian, Josephus. At the end of A.D. 67, all Galilee was subdued. The fanatical, or popular, party, the Zealots, got the upper hand at Jerusalem. The city was torn with the strife of violent factions. In A.D. 70 commenced the memorable siege by Titus, the son of Vespasian, the details of which are given by Josephus. The fall of the city was attended with the conflagration of the temple. Although the estimate given by Josephus of the number that perished during the siege, which he places at eleven hundred thousand, is exaggerated, it is true that the destruction of life was immense. The inhabitants of the city who were not killed were sold as slaves. In Britain a most competent officer—Agricola, the father-in-law of Tacitus—was made governor in A.D. 78. He conquered the country as far north as the Tyne and the Solway, and built a line of forts across the isthmus between England and Scotland.
TITUS (A.D. 79-81).—Vespasian's firm and beneficent reign was followed by the accession of Titus, who had been previously associated by his father with himself in the imperial office. Titus was mild in temper, but voluptuous in his tastes, and prodigal in expenditures. One of the marked events of his short reign was the destruction of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum by a great eruption of Vesuvius (A.D. 79). The uncovering of the streets and buildings of Pompeii in recent times has added much to our knowledge of ancient arts and customs. A terrible fire and destructive pestilence at Rome were regarded as sent by the gods, not on account of the sins of the emperor, but of the nation.
DOMITIAN (A.D. 81-96).—Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, succeeded him. By nature autocratic, he refused to share the government with the senate, as Augustus had planned. In order the more completely to control this body he assumed the censorship for life. In the latter part of his reign Domitian, like Tiberius, was gloomy and suspicious, and committed many acts of tyranny. He was killed by the freedmen of his own palace (A.D. 96). His war with the Dacians on the Danube had been concluded by the dubious stipulation to pay them an annual tribute as a reward for abstaining from predatory incursions into Moesia (A.D. 90). For the first time, Rome purchased peace of her enemies. Domitian was guilty of persecuting the Christians, among whom, it is now known, was included at least one member of his own family, his niece, Flavia Domatilla, who was also allied to him by marriage. The epistle of Clement of Rome, the oldest extant Christian writing after the Apostles, refers to the barbarities inflicted upon Christian disciples by this tyrant.
NERVA (A.D. 96-98).—The Senate now took the initiative, and placed on the throne one of their own number, Nerva, an old man of mild and virtuous character. The administration was in every point in contrast with the preceding. But the best thing Nerva did was to provide for the curbing of the prætorians by appointing, with the concurrence of the Senate, a most competent man to be his colleague and successor.
TRAJAN (A.D. 98-117).—Trajan was a native of Spain, and had been brought up in the camp. He belongs among the very best of the Roman emperors. He upheld the ancient laws and institutions of the state. He provided for the impartial administration of justice. He restored freedom of speech in the Senate. He founded schools, and establishments for the care of orphans, facilitated commerce by building new roads, bridges, and havens, and adorned Rome with a public library, and with a new and magnificent forum, or market-place, where "Trajan's Column" was placed by Senate and people as a monument of his victories and services.
He relished the society of literary men like the historian Tacitus. He was an intimate friend of Pliny (the younger), whose correspondence while he was governor of Bithynia throws much light upon the emperor's character and policy. Trajan's own manner of life was simple, and free from luxury. To the people he furnished lavishly the diversions which they coveted. He made an aggressive war against the Dacians on the Danube, and constituted a new province of Dacia. He carried his arms into the Parthian territory; and three new provinces—Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria—were the fruit of his campaign in the East. In a letter to Pliny, he defined the policy to be pursued towards Christians, who had become very numerous in the region where Pliny governed. The effect of the emperor's rescript was to place Christianity among the religions under the ban of the law. This decision was long in force, and guided the policy of future emperors towards the new faith. HADRIAN (A.D. 117-138).—Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian, a lover of peace,—a cultivated man, with extraordinary taste in the fine arts, and their generous patron. He was diligent and full of vigor in the transaction of public business. Although genial and affable, his temper was not so even as that of Trajan; and he was guilty of occasional acts of cruelty. He spent the larger portion of his reign in traveling through his dominions, personally attending to the wants and condition of his subjects. He constructed great works in different portions of the empire: in Rome, his Mausoleum (now the Castle of St. Angelo), and his grand temple of Rome and Venus. He began the wall connecting the Scottish friths. A fresh revolt broke out among the Jews (A.D. 131), under a fanatic named Bar-Cocaba, which was suppressed in 135. Jerusalem was razed to the ground; and the Jewish rites were forbidden within the new city of Ælia Capitolina, which the emperor founded on its site. This gave a finishing blow to the Jewish and Judaizing types of Christianity within the limits of the Church.
ANTONINUS PIUS (A.D. 138-161).—Antoninus Pius was the adopted son and successor of Hadrian. He was one of the noblest of princes, a man of almost blameless life. His reign was an era of peace, the golden age in the imperial history. He fostered learning, was generous without being prodigal, was firm yet patient and indulgent, and watched over the interests of his subjects with the care of a father. It is a sign of the happiness of his reign that it does not afford startling occurrences to the narrator.
MARCUS AURELIUS (A.D. 161-180).—Hardly less eminent for his virtues was the next in the succession of sovereigns, Marcus Aurelius (161-180). "A sage upon the throne," he combined a love of learning with the moral vigor and energy of the old Roman character, and with the self-government and serenity of the Stoic school, of the tenets of which he was a noble exemplar as well as a deeply interesting expounder. A philosopher was now on the throne; and his reign gives some countenance to the doctrine of Plato, that the world could be well governed only when philosophers should be kings, or kings philosophers. He endured with patience the grievous faults of his wife Faustina, and of his brother by adoption, and co-regent, Lucius Verus. He protected the eastern frontier against Parthia. In the war with the Marcomanni, he drove the German tribes back over the Danube, and gained a signal victory over the Quadi in their own land. His great object was to strike terror into the barbarian enemies of the empire on the north, and prevent future incursions. Although victorious in many of his battles, he failed to accomplish this result. The danger from barbarian invasion increased with the lapse of time. Before his work was finished, Marcus Aurelius died at Vindobona (Vienna), in March, 180. During his reign, there was persecution of Christians. Especially the churches of Lyons and Vienne have left a record of their sufferings. The virtuous emperors, who were strenuous in their exertions to maintain the old laws and customs, were apt to be more severe in their treatment of Christians, whom they ignorantly regarded as a mischievous sect, than were those emperors who were men of looser principles.
STATE OF MORALS.—The Roman Empire, in the declining days of heathenism, presented the spectacle of a flourishing civilization in contrast with extreme moral degeneracy. Rich and populous cities; stately palaces; beautiful works of art—as vases, statues, carved altars—on every hand; bridges and aqueducts, and noble highways, binding land to land; institutions of education in the provincial cities as well as in Rome; a thriving trade and commerce; a rapid spread of the Roman language, of the Roman legal system, and Roman culture and manners over the subject countries,—these are among the signs and fruits of civilization. But with all this outward prosperity and elegance, there was a growing sensuality, a decay of manly feeling, a disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie, an insatiable hunger for wealth and for the pleasures of sense. One of the most corrupting features in the social condition was slavery. Every Roman of moderate means aspired to own at least a few slaves. Some owned from ten to twenty thousand, mostly field-hands. Many householders possessed as many as five hundred. Horace gives it as a sign of the simplicity of his life as a bachelor, that he is waited on at table by only three slaves. Slave-holding among the Romans brought in temptations to all sorts of brutality and vice. It brought a poisonous atmosphere into every household. Nothing more clearly illustrates the moral degradation of this period than the character of the sports in which people of all ranks delighted. The most attractive theatrical performances came to be comedies, from the Greek and Latin plays of the same order, where scenes were introduced from the licentious stories of the Greek mythology. But the Pantomime, which was often of an unchaste and even obscene character, gradually usurped the place of every other exhibition on the stage. The chief amusements of the people of all classes were the Circus and the Arena. In the Circus, before hundreds of thousands of spectators, nobles of ancient lineage competed in the chariot race. Gladiatorial games, which had first taken place at funerals, and in honor of deceased friends, acquired an almost incredible popularity. At the games instituted by Augustus, ten thousand men joined in these bloody combats. In the festivals under the auspices of Trajan, in A.D. 106, eleven thousand tame and wild animals were slain. Not satisfied with seeing pairs of men engage in mortal conflict, the Romans were eager to witness bloodshed on a larger scale. The emperors provided actual battles between hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of men, which were beheld by countless spectators. On an artificial lake in Cæsar's garden, Augustus gave a sea-fight in which three thousand soldiers were engaged. The effect of these brutal spectacles of agony and death was inevitably to harden the heart.
LITERATURE.—If the sanguinary fights in the arena excited little or no condemnation, the prevalence of various other sorts of immorality, at variance with the practice of better days, could not fail to call out different forms of censure.
One of these forms of protest was through the satirical poets. Of these caustic writers, Persius (34-62) is obscure and of a moderate degree of merit. Juvenal (about 55-135), on the contrary, is spirited and full of force. Martial (43-101), a Spaniard by birth, was the author of numerous short poems of a pithy and pointed character, called epigrammata. All these poets, if we make proper discount for the exaggeration of satire, are very instructive as to the manners and morals of their time. Lucian (120-200), who wrote in Greek, the best known of whose works are his "Dialogues," touched with his broad humor a great many of the superstitions and follies of the day.
The popular teachers in the imperial time were the rhetoricians, analogous to the Greek Sophists,—teachers of rhetoric and eloquence,—one of whom, Quintilian (who was born about 40, and died about 118), was the first to receive from the public treasury a regular salary, and had among his pupils the younger Pliny and the two grand-nephews of Domitian. The influence of the mania for rhetoric was more and more to impart an artificial character to literature and art. The epic poems of such writers as Lucan and Statitis are to a large extent imitations; although Lucan's principal poem, "Pharsalia," gives evidence of poetic talent. Where there was so little productive genius, it was natural that grammarians and commentators should abound. There was one great writer, the historian Tacitus (about 54-117), who towers above his contemporaries, and in vigor and conciseness has seldom been equaled. The elder Pliny (23-79), whose curiosity to witness the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 cost him his life, was a famous observer and author in natural history. His nephew, the younger Pliny, the friend of Trajan, has left to us ten books of "Epistles," which present an agreeable picture of the life and thoughts of a cultivated Roman gentleman. The philosopher Seneca, with the exception of Marcus Aurelius, the most eminent expositor of the Roman Stoic school, was a voluminous author. No ancient heathen writer has uttered so many thoughts and precepts which bear a resemblance to teachings of the New Testament.
The study that nourished most in this period is Jurisprudence. It is the classic era of the jurists. Persons versed in the law were preferred by the emperors for high offices. Men who would have been statesmen under the Republic, found a solace and delight in legal studies. Among the most learned jurists of this era, were Caius Papinian, and Ulpian. Of the Greek writers, one of the most important is Plutarch (about 50-120), whose "Lives," and "Essays" (or Moralia), are among the most delightful and instructive of all the works of antiquity. One of the noblest philosophical writers of that or of any other period is the Stoic Epictetus (50-c.120).
The two most popular systems of philosophy in the closing days of the Republic and the early period of the Empire, were the Stoic and the Epicurean. The severity of the Stoic doctrine was somewhat softened by its Roman teachers; but the rigorous self-control, the superiority to misfortune, and the contempt of death, which it recommended, found favor with noble Romans in dark days. Cato and other champions of the falling Republic were disciples of this school. Later, New Platonism, of a mystical and contemplative type, secured many adherents.
SKEPTICISM.—Long before the fall of the Republic, faith in the old mythology had begun to decline. This change followed upon an intimate contact of the Romans with the Greek religion. It was hastened by the familiarity acquired by the Romans with so great a variety of heathen systems. The decay of morality was attended with a spread of skepticism as regards the supernatural world altogether. In the course of the debate in the Roman Senate on the punishment of the confederates of Catiline, Julius Caesar opposed their execution, on the ground that death puts an end to consciousness, and thus to all suffering. It does not appear that in that body, where Cicero and Cato were present, any one disputed this tenet. Cicero in his philosophical essays advocates the doctrine of immortality by arguments, mostly gathered from Greek sources,—arguments some of which are of more and some of less weight. His correspondence, on the contrary, even in times of bereavement, affords no proof that this consoling truth had any practical hold upon his convictions.
SUPERSTITION.—The spread of skepticism was attended, as time went on, with a re-action to the other extreme of superstition. Magic and sorcery came into vogue. There was an eagerness to become acquainted with Oriental religious rites, and to pay homage to deities worshiped in the East with mysterious ceremonies. Another tendency strongly manifest was towards what is called syncretism, or a mingling of different religious systems. It was hoped that the truth might be found by combining beliefs drawn from many different quarters. This eclectic drift was signally manifest in religion as well as in philosophy.
COMMODUS.—Rome had enjoyed good government for eighty-four years. This was owing to the fact that her sovereigns had been nominated to their office, instead of inheriting it. None of the emperors during this interval had male children. Marcus Aurelius made the mistake of associating with him in power his son Commodus, who was eighteen years old when his father died, and reigned alone from 180 to 192. He began his despicable career as sole ruler by buying peace of the Marcomanni and the Quadi. He turned out to be a detestable tyrant, who was likewise guilty of the worst personal vices. He was strangled in his bedroom by one of his concubines, Marcia, with the assistance of others, all of whom he was intending to kill. At this time the army, where there had been more energy and virtue than in any other class, began to decline in discipline. Society was growing more and more corrupt. It proves the inherent strength of the organization of the Roman Empire, that, amid all the causes of disintegration and decay, it lasted for two centuries longer.
We now enter upon a period of military license. The emperors are appointed by the soldiers. The rulers, when the soldiers fall out with them, are slain. In the course of ninety-two years, from 192 to 284, twenty-five emperors, with an average reign of less than four years for each, sat on the throne. Only two reigns exceeded ten years. Ten emperors perished by violence at the hands of the soldiers. A real advantage in this way of making emperors, was, that supreme power might thus devolve on able generals; but another, and a fatal result, was the demoralizing of the armies, by whose favor the rulers of the state were set up and pulled down.
TO ALEXANDER SEVERUS (A.D. 222).—The assassins of Commodus, with the assent of the praetorians, made a worthy senator, Pertinax, emperor; but his honesty and frugality, and his disposition to maintain discipline among the soldiers, caused them to murder him three months after his accession (193). It is said that they then sold the imperial office at auction to a rich senator, but the leaders of the armies in different regions refused their consent. Of these, Septimius Severus (193-211) made his way to the throne, and put down his rivals. The empire became a military despotism. A garrison of forty thousand troops, the prefect of whom was in power second only to the sovereign, took the place of the old prætorians. Severus was a good general. In a war against the Parthians, he captured Ctesiphon, their capital. Caracalla, his son (211-217), was a base tyrant. He was murdered by the prætorian prefect, Macrinus, who reigned for a short time (217-218), but perished in consequence of his attempts to reform the discipline of the army. Heliogabalus (218-222) was not more cruel than others had been, but his gross and shameless debauchery was without a precedent.
POWER OF THE PROVINCES: DISCORD.—In the reign of Caracalla is placed the Edict which gave the rights of citizenship to all the free inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The provinces had been steadily rising in power and influence. At Rome, among officials of the highest grade, as well as in the higher professions, there was a throng of provincials. The provinces were disposed to nominate emperors of their own. It was hard for the central authority to keep under control the frontier armies. To add to these sources of division, there was a growing jealousy between the East and West, owing to a difference in language, ideas, and interests. Persia was soon to threaten the empire on the East, and Gothic barbarians to invade its territories.
ALEXANDER SEVERUS: PERSIA.—Alexander Severus (222-235) was a man of pure morals, and sincerely disposed to remedy abuses and to govern well. But the evils were too great for the moderate degree of vigor with which he was endowed. The overthrow of the Parthian kingdom, in 226, created, in the New Persian Monarchy, a formidable enemy to Rome. Alexander did little more than check the advance of Persia. In a war against the Germans, he was slain by his own soldiers.
TO DECIUS (A.D. 249).—The fierce and brutal Maximin, who had excited the soldiers of Alexander Severus to mutiny, reigned from 235 to 238. The Senate roused itself to resist his advance into Italy; and he, and his son with him, were killed in his tent by his soldiers. Gordian (238-244) at least held the frontier against the attacks of the Persians. Philip, an Arabian, probably a Roman colonist, after reigning from 244 to 249, was supplanted by Decius, whom his rebellious Moesian and Pannonian soldiers raised to power.
DECIUS TO CLAUDIUS (A.D. 250-268).—The short reign of Decius was marked by the first general persecution of the Christian Church. During his reign, the Goths (A.D. 250) invaded the empire. They traversed Dacia, and crossed the Danube. They ravaged Moesia, and even made their way into Thrace. Decius was defeated by them in Moesia, and slain. The peril of the empire continually increased. The German tribes on the north, the Goths on the Lower Danube and the Euxine, and Persia in the east, arrayed themselves in hostility.
The reigns of Valerian (253-260) and of his associate and successor, Gallienus (260-268), were marked by continuous disaster. Numerous independent rulers—"the thirty tyrants"—established themselves, generally for a very short time, in different regions. In the East, one kingdom, the capital of which was Palmyra, and which had for a ruler Zenobia, the widow of its founder, lasted for ten years (264-273). The Goths occupied Dacia, and from the Cimmerian Bosphorus sent out their predatory expeditions in all directions, plundering cities, including Athens and Corinth, and carrying off immense booty to their homes south of the Danube. The Persians conquered Armenia, took Valerian prisoner, advanced into Syria, and burned Antioch.
TO DIOCLETIAN (A.D. 284).—It would seem as if the Roman empire was on the verge of dissolution. But a series of vigorous emperors—among them Claudius (268-270) and Aurelian (270-275)—quelled rebellion within its borders, and re-established its boundaries; although Aurelian gave up to the Goths Dacia, which had been of no benefit to the empire. Probus (276-282) was a prudent as well as valiant ruler. Carus (282-283) invaded Persia, captured Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and might, perhaps, have completed the conquest of the country, but for his death. Numerianus (283-284) was the last in the succession of rulers during this period of military control, of which the corruption of the army was the worst result.
DIOCLETIAN.—Once more the gigantic and weakened frame of the Roman Empire was invigorated by a change in the character of the chief rulers and in the method of government. Diocletian (284-305), one of a number of energetic emperors who were of Illyrian birth, first stripped the imperial office of its limitations, and converted it into an absolute monarchy. This new system was carried to its completion by Constantine. Diocletian took from the Senate what political jurisdiction was left to it. He abolished the difference between the treasury of the state and the private coffers of the prince. The precedence of Rome was taken away by making other great cities to be seats of government. There were to be two emperors under the title of Augustus, with two Caesars under them; and thus the empire was divided, for administrative purposes, into four parts. Maximian, the second Augustus, was to rule over Italy, Africa, and the islands, with Milan for his residence. Constantius Chlorus had the western provinces, —Spain, Gaul, and Britain. At Nicomedia, Diocletian, a man of imposing presence and of great talents as a statesman, exercised rule for twenty years with efficiency and success. The new system, if it involved the peril of strife among the regents, led to a more vigilant and efficient government in the different provinces, and provided for a peaceful succession to the throne. But the government came to resemble, in the omnipotence of the emperor, in the obsequious homage paid to him, and in the cringing manners of the court, an Oriental despotism. The old heathen religion was considered by conservative Romans to be an essential part of the imperial system, and indispensable to the unity of the empire. It was this view, in connection with other influences, which moved Diocletian, near the close of his reign, in 303, to set on foot a systematic persecution of the Christian Church, by a series of extremely severe and well-contrived measures, through which it was designed to extirpate the new religion. The last great persecution, in the reign of Decius, cruel though it had been, did not approach in severity this final effort to exterminate the disciples of the Christian faith, who had now become very numerous. Terrible sufferings were inflicted, but without avail. In 305 Diocletian, partly on account of a serious illness, formally abdicated, and obliged Maximian to do the same. Civil wars followed, until Constantine, the son of Constantius, gained the supremacy, first as joint ruler with Licinius, who governed in the East, and then, after a bloody struggle which began in A.D. 314, as sole master of the empire (A.D. 323).
CONSTANTINE (A.D. 306-337).—The career of Constantine was stained by acts of cruelty towards members of his own family. In the closing period of his life, he was less just and humane than in earlier days. The change which had taken place in the imperial system was signally manifest in his removal of the seat of government to CONSTANTINOPLE, which was built up by him, and named in his honor. Placed between Europe and Asia, on a tongue of land where it was protected from assault, it was admirably suited for a metropolis. But the change of capital involved dangers for the western portions of the empire, exposed as they were to the assaults of the barbarians. The changes in the government begun by Diocletian were completed by Constantine. The empire was divided, for purposes of government, into four prefectures, each of which was subdivided into dioceses. Constantine established, likewise, different classes of nobles, the type of modern systems of nobility. He organized the army afresh, under the Master of the Horse and Master of the Foot, each, however, commanding, in action, both infantry and cavalry, and each having under him dukes and counts. In short, the system of central and despotic administration, with subordinate rulers, which Diocletian began, was perfected by Constantine. Diocletian, in order to fortify the imperial power against the army, had shared his power with "a cabinet of emperors," which his genius enabled him to control. To prevent the breaking up of the empire through the system of viceroys thus created to preserve it, Constantine separated the civil authority from the military as regards the subordinate rulers, while both functions were united in himself. He still further exalted his throne by giving it even more of an Oriental character, by creating a multitude of officials, who were satellites of the sovereign, and by becoming the secular head and guardian of the Christian Church. The arrangements of his court, with its grades of officials, from the chamberlain downwards, were after the Oriental pattern.
PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.—The failure of the grand attempt of Diocletian to exterminate Christianity was an indication of its coming triumph. Its progress had been gradual yet rapid, and, in its earlier stages especially, obscure. Of the labors of most of the apostles we know little. On the approach of the Jewish war (p. 180), the Apostle John, and other Christians with him, had repaired to Asia Minor. There, at Ephesus, this apostle lived until the reign of Trajan, and from that center exerted a wide influence, the traces of which are marked and various. The cities were the principal scenes of early missionary work. They were the "strategic points." In them it was easier for Christian preachers to gain a hearing, and in them they were exempt from the hindrance created by strange dialects. Wherever Christians went, even for purposes of trade or mechanical industry, they carried the seeds of the new doctrine. Even with regard to the churches of Alexandria and Carthage, which became so flourishing, and in the case of the church at Rome itself, we can not say how they were first planted. The exultant terms in which the ecclesiastical writers at the end, and even as early as the middle, of the second century speak of the increasing number of the converts, proves that the Christian cause was fast gaining ground. Its adherents were sometimes of the higher class, but mostly from the ranks of the poor.
PERSECUTIONS.—Persecution from the side of the heathen began among the populace. Always when fire, tempest, or plague occurred, they were ascribed to the wrath of the heathen gods at the desertion of their altars, and the cry was for Christian blood. But Christianity, from the time of Trajan, was an illegal religion. Magistrates might at any time require Christians to do homage to the emperor's bust, or to burn incense to the old divinities. To make a proselyte of a Roman citizen, or to meet in private companies for worship, was unlawful. The persecutions by public authority have been said to be ten; but this number is too small if all of them are reckoned, and too large if only those of wide extent are included. The constancy with which even young women and children sometimes endured the torture, excited wonder in the beholders. Among the more noted martyrs are Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (116); Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, who had been a pupil of the Apostle John, and was put to death in 155; and Cyprian, the aged bishop of Carthage, one of the leading ecclesiastics of the time, who suffered under Valerian in 258.
THE CHURCH UNDER CONSTANTINE.—The accession of Constantine made Christianity the predominant religion in the Roman Empire. His conversion was gradual. More and more he came to rely for support in his conflicts with his rivals upon the God of the Christians. The sign of the cross, which he said that he beheld in the sky, and which led him to make the cross his standard, may have been an optical illusion occasioned partly by his own mental state at the moment, when, after prayer, he was standing at noon-day in the door of his tent. He remained, like many others in that day, not without relics of the old beliefs, as is seen from inscriptions on his coins, and other evidences. His own baptism he deferred until he was near his end, on account of the prevalent idea that all previous guilt is effaced in the baptismal water. The edict of unrestricted toleration was issued from Milan in 312. Constantine did not proscribe heathenism. He forbade immoral rites, and rites connected with magic and sorcery. But, with this exception, heathen worshipers were not molested. But the emperor gave his zealous personal countenance to the Christian cause, and marks of his favor to its adherents. By the privileges and immunities which he granted to the Church and its ministers, he did more than he would have been likely to effect by the use of severity against its adversaries. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH.—The early Christian societies were little republics, at first under the supervision of the apostles. Their organization shaped itself partly after the model of the synagogue, and partly from the pattern of the civil communities and the voluntary associations about them. In the apostolic age a body of elders or bishops and a body of deacons in each church guided its affairs, while the members took an active part in the choice of their officers, and in the general direction of ecclesiastical proceedings. In the second century, when we get a distinct view of the churches after the obscure interval that follows the age of the apostles, we find that over the elders is a bishop, whose office grows in importance as the churches become larger, as the need of more compact organization is felt, and as the clergy become more and more distinct from the laity. The bishop of the city church acquires jurisdiction over the adjacent country churches. The bishop in the capital of each province comes to exercise a certain superintendence within the province. This is the metropolitan system. More and more the bishops of the great cities, especially Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, exercise a parallel supervision in larger divisions of the empire. This is the patriarchal system. As early as the closing part of the second century, the catholic or universal church presents itself before us, conceived of as a unity which is made such by the hierarchy of bishops, and by connection with the apostolic sees,—the churches founded by the apostles in person. As the apostles were thought of as having a head in Peter, the bishops of Rome, who were looked on as his successors, had accorded to them a precedence over other bishops. The grandeur of Rome, the strength of the church there, its services to other churches in the empire, especially in the West, together with many other considerations additional to its alleged historic relation to Peter and to Paul, gave to the Roman See, as time went on, a growing and acknowledged pre-eminence. The custom of holding synods helped to build up the unity of the Church, and to give power and dignity to its officials.
SECTS: THEOLOGY.—The Church from the beginning had to contend with opposing sects. There was a desire to amalgamate the Christian doctrine with other systems. On the Jewish side, the Ebionites clung to the Old Testament ritual observances, a part of them being bitterly hostile to the Apostle Paul, and another part, the Nazareans, not sharing this fanatical feeling, but still adhering to the Jewish ceremonies. On the other hand, the Gnostics introduced a dualism, and ascribed to the Demiurge—a second deity, either subordinate to the supreme God, or antagonistic to him—the origination of this world and of the Old Testament religion. They made a compound of Christianity, Judaism, and heathen religion and speculation, each Gnostic sect giving to one or the other of these ingredients the preponderance in the strange and often fantastic medley. The controversy with heathenism was prosecuted with the pen. Of the numerous defenses of Christianity, now addressed to heathen rulers and now to its opponents in private stations, the most remarkable work in the first three centuries was the writing of Origen—who was the most eminent of the teachers of theology at Alexandria—in reply to Celsus. Origen, after scholarly labors so vast as to earn for him the title of the Adamantine, died in 254, in consequence of his sufferings in the Diocletian persecution. Two defenses of the Christian faith, composed about the middle of the second century by Justin Martyr, are specially instructive as to the state of Christian opinion and the customs of the Church. The first great center of theological activity was Alexandria, where philosophy was studied in a liberal spirit. In the East, the questions relative to the divinity of Jesus and the relation of the divine to the human nature, engrossed attention. In the West, it was the practical aspects of theology, the doctrine of sin and of the deliverance of the will by grace, which were chiefly discussed. The Arian controversy grew out of the assertion by Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, that Jesus was the first-made of all beings, the instrument of the creation of all other beings, but himself a creature. The leader of the orthodox opposition to this opinion was the famous Alexandrian archdeacon, afterwards bishop, Athanasius. This debate it was which led to the assembling, under the auspices of Constantine, of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), the first of a series of General Councils, for the adjudication of doctrinal disputes, that were held in this and the following centuries. The Arian doctrine was condemned at Nicaea, and, after a long contest in the period subsequent, was finally determined to be heretical. In the West, the main controversy was that raised by Pelagius, respecting the power of the will, the native character of men, and the agency of God in their conversion. In this debate, Augustine (354-430), the most eminent theologian of the West, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was the renowned champion of the doctrine of grace against what he considered an exaggerated assertion of free-will. Pelagianism was condemned in the West, and nominally in the East where views intermediate between the Pelagians and Augustinians commonly prevailed. The most eminent scholar contemporary with Augustine was Jerome, who died in 420, the author of the Latin version of the Scriptures, called the Vulgate. Preceding Augustine in North Africa, early in the third century, was Tertullian, a vigorous and fervid writer, who first made Latin the vehicle of theological discussion; and, a little later, Cyprian, whose works relate chiefly to church unity and hierarchical government, of which he was a devoted champion. Late in the second century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of that day, composed an elaborate work against the Gnostic heresies. Irenaeus had known Polycarp, a disciple of John the apostle.
CHRISTIAN LIFE.—Passing within the sphere of Christian life, there can be no doubt that Christianity exerted a power, of which there had been no experience before, in reforming the character and conduct of those even who had been addicted to crime and vice. The fraternal feeling of Christians for one another impressed the heathen about them as something new and singularly attractive. It expressed itself in unstinted charity for those in poverty, and in helpfulness for all sorts of distress. The church was a home for the weary and friendless. In the strong reaction against the sensuality of a dissolute society, ascetic tendencies appeared, which, in process of time, issued in monasticism. Anthony of Thebes, born about 250, was one of the earliest and most celebrated of the Anchorites, who chose a hermit life, and abjured all the luxuries of life and most of the comforts which belong to social existence. To the Anchorites succeeded the Caenobites, societies of monks who dwelt in a common habitation under fixed rules; and these were naturally followed by confederacies of such communities under one organization. The monastic vows were poverty, or the renunciation of property; celibacy, or abstinence from marriage; and obedience to the conventual superior. Sometimes in the early centuries great evils and abuses sprang up in connection with monastic life. For example, monks might become fanatical and violent. But they furnished numerous examples of sincere piety, and of unselfish and intrepid self-sacrifice for the welfare of others.
CHANGES IN WORSHIP.—As the Church grew in numbers and wealth, costly edifices were constructed for worship. The services within them became more elaborate. At length art was called in to adorn the Christian sanctuaries. Sculpture and painting were enlisted in the work of providing aids to devotion. Relics of saints and martyrs were cherished as sacred possessions. Religious observances were multiplied; and the Church, under the Christian emperors, with its array of clergy and of imposing ceremonies, assumed much of the stateliness and visible splendor that had belonged to the heathen system which it had supplanted.
LAST DAYS OF HEATHENISM.—When Christianity had become powerful, its disciples forgot the precepts of their Master, and sometimes persecuted the heathen. Christian mobs demolished the old temples. The great temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed, and the statue of the god was broken in pieces. Theodosius I. (379-395) made the celebration of heathen rites a capital offense, and confiscated the property by which heathen worship had been supported. Arians, too, he persecuted, but with less harshness. The Eastern emperor, Justinian, suppressed the school of New Platonic philosophers at Athens, and banished the teachers (529). Heathenism lingered in remote districts, and was hence called paganism, or the religion of rustics. The last adherents of the ancient religion inhabited in the seventh century remote valleys of the Italian islands. The oracles were for ever dumb. The old divinities were never more to be invoked. But it was not by force that heathenism was extirpated. If it had not lost its vitality, it would have survived the penal laws against it. It perished by the expulsive energy of a better faith.
CAUSES OF THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY.—The causes of the spread and triumph of Christianity lie ultimately in the need which men feel of religion, especially in times of dread and distress, and in the intrinsic excellence which was felt to belong to Christianity. In the first and second centuries the dreary feeling engendered by the hollow skepticism that prevailed was favorable to the Christian cause. There was a void to be filled, and the gospel came to fill it. In the third century, when the progress of Christianity was specially rapid, there was a perceptible revival of religious feeling among the heathen; and this, too, operated to the advantage of the gospel. At least it must have done so in numerous instances. In that century the terrible plagues which desolated the empire, with the sufferings that sprung from wild anarchy and misgovernment, made the church a welcome asylum for the afflicted. In the first place, Christianity was a religion. It was neither a merely speculative nor a merely moral system. It took hold of the supernatural. Secondly, it presented to a corrupt society a moral ideal of spotless perfection. Thirdly, it offered, in the doctrine of the cross, a welcome solace,—consolation in life, with a sense of reconciliation, and the hope of everlasting good. Other causes, such as Gibbon enumerates, were operative. But these are themselves mostly effects or aspects of the gospel; or they were auxiliary, not principal, causes.
CHRISTIANITY AND LIBERTY.—The founders of Christianity had no thought of becoming the authors of a political revolution. They had a very different purpose in view. To overthrow the existing order of society would have been equally unwise and impracticable. What was needed was a new spirit of justice and of love. The virtues that were called for then were the passive virtues,—gentleness, forbearance, the calm endurance of ills of which there was no present remedy. The Christian spirit, therefore, did not evoke in the disciples of the new faith sentiments of liberty akin to those which had belonged to Greek and Roman heroes. Indirectly, however, Christianity brought into human society the germs of liberty. In the first place, while it enjoined absolute submission to rulers, it made an exception whenever their commands should require disobedience to God's law. This position involved the denial to the state of that absolute supremacy accorded to it by the ancients. The allegiance to the state became a qualified allegiance. Secondly, there arose within the state another community, which took into its hands, to a large extent, the regulation of social life. The boundaries of the two authorities might be indistinct, but there was a real division of control between them. It is true that tyranny might arise within the Christian organization itself: still, its very existence planted on the earth a principle of liberty, which was destined ultimately to work out the destruction of all tyranny, whether civil or religious. For the first time the rulers of the Roman world were faced by an opposition, meek yet too inflexible for all their power to overcome. This is the first stage in the history of modern liberty. The "heroic and invincible Athanasius" as Milton styles him, boldly confronted Constantine and his successors, and chose to spend twenty years of his life in voluntary or enforced exile rather than bow to their tyrannical decrees. Ambrose, the great archbishop of Milan, compelled the Emperor Theodosius—who, in a fit of anger had ordered a massacre at Thessalonica—to do penance before he could be admitted to the communion. Such occurrences indicate that the days of imperial omnipotence, even over unarmed subjects, were past.
SUCCESSORS OF CONSTANTINE.—Constantine left his empire to his three unworthy sons. Constantine, the eldest, had the Western provinces for his share. He endeavored to wrest Italy from his brother Constans, but was slain at Aquileia (340). This event left Constans the master of the entire West. He took up his abode in Gaul, where he was slain by Magnentius, the leader of a mutinous body of soldiers (350). Constantius was at Edessa, engaged in war against the Persians. He marched westward, and routed Magnentius at Mursia, in Pannonia. This rival fled to Gaul, and was there attacked and destroyed. Gallus, the cousin of Constantius, was put to death for the murder of one of the emperor's officers (354). Julian, the brother of Gallus, was the sole remaining survivor of the family from which the emperor sprung. Constantius, under whom the whole empire was now for a few years (357-361) united, made a triumphal visit to Rome. He was the defender of the Arians, but he found it impossible to coerce the Roman Christians into the adoption of his opinion. The orthodox bishop whom he had banished, was restored. Constantius was succeeded by his cousin Julian (361-363), commonly called the Apostate. Fascinated by the heathen philosophy, and a secret convert to the old religion, he
CONSTANTIUS CHLORUS, m.
1, Helena;
|
+—CONSTANTINE I (the Great) m.
1, Minervina;
2, Fausta
|
+—CONSTANTINE II.
|
+—CONSTANTIUS II.
| |
| +—Constantia,
| m. GRATIAN.
|
+—CONSTANS.
|
+—CONSTANTIA, m.
| 1, Hannibalianus;
| 2, GALLUS.
|
+—HELENA,
m. JULIAN.
2, Theodora. | +—Constantius, m. | 1, Galla; | 2, Basilina. | | | +—GALLUS | | m. Constantia, widow of Hannibalianus. | | | +—JULIAN | m. Helena, daughter of Constantine I. | +—Constantia, m. LICINIUS.
proved that its vitality was gone, by his ineffectual exertions to rescue it, and restore its predominance. He was not without merits as a ruler. He looked out for the impartial administration of justice: he revived discipline and a military spirit in the army, and sought to infuse a better spirit into the civil administration. While he avoided cruel persecution, he directed all his personal efforts to the weakening of the Christian cause. Julian led an expedition against the Persians. He sailed down the Euphrates to Circesium, and thence proceeded into the interior of Persia. He repulsed the enemy, but was slain while engaged in the pursuit. The soldiers on the field of battle chose one of his officers, Jovian (363-364), who was a Christian, to be his successor. He conducted the retreat of the army. His reign lasted for only seven months. He showed no intolerance either towards Pagans or Arians, but he gave back to Christianity its former position. The army next chose Valentinian I. (364-375), the son of a Pannonian warrior, who associated with him, as emperor in the East, his brother Valens (364-378). Valens ruled from Constantinople. Valentinian fixed his court at Milan, and sometimes at Treves. He was an unlettered soldier, but strict and energetic in the government of the state, as well as of the army. His time was mostly spent in conflict with the barbarians on the northern frontiers. He carried forward this contest with vigor on the Rhine and on the Danube. He trained up his son Gratian to be his successor. The great event of the reign of Valens was the irruption of the Huns into Europe, and the consequent invasion of the Goths, by whom Valens was defeated and slain in 378. Several emperors followed, until, on the death of Theodosius I., (the Great) (395), the Roman Empire was divided. In 476, after successive invasions of barbarians had disorganized the western part of the Empire, the line of phantom emperors at Rome came to an end. The fourth century, in which these invasions—which overthrew the Western Empire, and transferred power to new races—occurred, forms the era of transition from ancient to mediaeval history.
LITERATURE.—The general works on Ancient History (p. 16). On
Roman History as a whole: MERIVALE'S General History of
Rome (from 753 B.C. to A.D. 476: 1 vol.); DURUY, History of
Rome, etc. (8 vols., 410); Wägner, Rom, etc. (3 vols.);
Allen, A Short Story of the Roman People; FREEMAN,
Outlines of Roman History.
On the Roman Republic: MOMMSEN, The History of Rome (4 vols.); LIDDELL, A History of Rome, etc. (1 vol.); IHNE, The History of Rome (Eng. trans., 3 vols.); Michelet, History of the Roman Republic (1 vol., 12mo); Schwegler, Römishce Geschichte (4 vols); How and Leigh, A History of Rome; Shuckburgh, A History of Rome.
On the Roman Empire: MERIVALE, History of the Romans under the Empire (7 vols ); Seeley, Roman Imperialism [three Lectures]; MOMMSEN, The Provinces (5th volume of his History, 1885); Bury, Students' Roman Empire; Bury, Later Roman Empire (2 vols.).
On special periods: IHNE, Early Rome (1 vol.); T. Arnold, History of Rome (3 vols; reaches into the second Punic war); Long, The Decline of the Roman Republic (5 vols.); R. B. Smith, Rome and Carthage; MERIVALE, The Roman Triumvirates; T Arnold, History of the Later Roman Commonwealth (2 vols.); GIBBON, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Smith's edition); FINLAY, A History of Greece from the Conquest of the Romans to the Present Time (7 vols.); Dill, Roman Society (5th century).
Trollope, Life of Cicero (2 vols.); FORSYTH, Life of Cicero (2 vols.); Middleton's Life of Cicero; Froude, Life of Caesar (1 vol.); Boissier, Ciceron et ses Amis (1 vol., 12mo).
Treatises: Taylor, Const, and Polit. History of Rome; KUHN, Verfassung d. Römischen Städte; GUHL AND KÖNER, Life of the Greeks and Romans; Marquardt, Handbuch d. Römischen Alterthümer (7 vols.); BECKER, Gallus (an archaeological novel); Abbott, Roman Political Institutions; Greenidge, Roman Public Life; Preston and Dodge, Private Life of the Romans; Madvig, Verfassung und Verwaltung des Röm Staates (2 vols.); Lanciani (Ancient Rome, and others); Burn, Rome and the Campagna; ZIEGLER, Das alte Rom; Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography; Smith and Cheatham's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities; FRIEDLÄNDER, Sittengeschichte Roms (2 vols.); Histories of Roman Literature by Simcox. Cruttwell, SCHMITZ, Teuffel. Mac-Kail, Fowler.
On Early Christianity: The Lives of Jesus, by NEANDER, WEISS, Farrar, Edersheim, Andrews. Neander's Planting and Training of the Church. Works on the Life of St. Paul, by CONYBEARE AND HOWSON, by Lewins, by Farrar. Fisher's The Beginnings of Christianity; Pressensé, Early Days of Christianity. Church Histories of NEANDER, GIESELER, SCHAFF, Robertson, HASE, Kurtz, ALZOG. UHLHORN, Christian Charity in the Ancient Church; Ramsay, The Church and the Roman Empire, before 170 A.D.
Reber, History of Ancient Art; Wickoff, Roman Art; see
Dictionaries, p. 122.
CHARACTER OF THE MIDDLE AGES.—The middle ages include the long interval between the first general irruption of the Teutonic nations towards the close of the fourth century, to the middle of the fifteenth century, when the modern era, with a distinctive character of its own, began. Two striking features are observed in the mediæval era. First, there was a mingling of the conquering Germanic nations with the peoples previously making up the Roman Empire, and a consequent effect produced upon both. The Teutonic tribes modified essentially the old society. On the other hand, there was a reaction of Roman civilization upon them. The conquered became the teachers and civilizers of the conquerors. Secondly, the Christian Church, which outlived the wreck of the empire, and was almost the sole remaining bond of social unity, not only educated the new nations, but regulated and guided them, to a large extent, in secular as well as religious affairs. Thus out of chaos, Christendom arose, a single homogeneous society of peoples. It was in the middle ages that the pontifical authority reached its full stature. The Holy See exercised the lofty function of arbiter among contending nations, and of leadership in great public movements, like the Crusades. Civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, emperors and popes, were engaged in a long conflict for predominance. Thus there are three elements which form the essential factors in Mediæval History,-the Barbarian element, the Roman element, with its law and civil polity, and with what was left of ancient arts and culture, and the Christian, or Ecclesiastical, element. As we approach the close of the mediæval era, a signal change occurs. The nations begin to acquire a more defined individuality; the superintendence of the church in civil affairs is more and more renounced or relinquished; there dawns a new era of invention and discovery, of culture and reform.
GRADUAL OVERTHROW OF THE EMPIRE.—When we speak of the destruction of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, we must not imagine that it was sudden, as by an earthquake. It was gradual. Had the empire not been undermined from within, it would not have been overthrown from without. The Roman armies were recruited by bringing numerous barbarians into the ranks. At length whole tribes were suffered to form permanent settlements within the boundaries of the empire. A "king" with his entire tribe would engage to do military service in exchange for lands. More and more both the wealth and the weakness of Rome were exposed to the gaze of the Germanic nations. Their cupidity was aroused as their power increased. Meantime the barbarians were learning from their employers the art of war, and were gaining soldierly discipline. Their brave warriors rose to places of command. They made and unmade the rulers, and finally became rulers themselves. Another important circumstance is, that most of the Germanic tribes were converts to Christianity before they made their attacks and subverted the throne of the Cæsars. In fine, there was a long preparation for the great onset of the barbarian peoples in the fifth century.
CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE EMPIRE.—But the success of the barbarian invasions presupposes an internal decay in the empire. It was one symptom of a conscious decline, that the conquering spirit was chilled, and the policy was adopted of fixing the limits of the Roman dominion at the Rhine and the Danube. Rome now stood on the defensive. The great service of the imperial government, for which it was most valued, was to protect the frontiers. This partly accounts for the consternation of Augustus, when, in the forests of Germany, the legions of Varus were destroyed (p. 172). The essential fact is, that Rome became unable to keep up the strength of its armies. First, there were lacking the men to fill up the legions. The civil wars had reduced the population in Italy and in other countries. The efforts of Augustus to encourage marriage by bounties proved of little avail. Secondly, the class of independent Italian yeomen, which had made up the bone and sinew of the Roman armies, passed away. Slavery supplanted free labor. Thirdly, in the third century terrible plagues swept over the empire. In 166 a frightful pestilence broke out, from which, according to Niebuhr, the ancient world never recovered. It was only the first in a series of like appalling visitations. Fourthly, the death of liberty carried after it a loss of the virtue, the virile energy, by which Rome had won her supremacy. Fifthly, the new imperial system, after Diocletian, effective as it was for maintaining an orderly administration, drained the resources of the people. The municipal government in each town was put into the hands of curiales, or the owners of a certain number of acres. They were made responsible for the taxes, which were levied in a gross amount upon the town. The fiscus, or financial administration of the empire, was so managed that the civil offices became an intolerable burden to those who held them. Yet it was a burden from which there was no escape. One result was, that, while slaves were often made coloni,—that is, tillers or tenants, sharing with the owner the profits of tillage,—and thus had their condition improved, many freeholders sank to the same grade, which was a kind of serfdom. When to the exhausting taxation by government, there were added the disposition of large proprietors to despoil the poorer class of landholders, and from time to time the predatory incursions of barbarians, the small supply of Roman legionaries is easily accounted for.
THREE RACES OF BARBARIANS.—While the empire, as regards the power of self-defense, was sinking, the barbarians were not only profiting by the military skill and experience of the Romans, but were forming military unions among their several tribes. In the East, there was one civilized kingdom, Persia, the successor of the Parthian kingdom, but not powerful enough to be a rival,—certainly not in an aggressive contest. But northward and northeast of the Roman boundaries, there stretched "a vague and unexplored waste of barbarism," "a vast, dimly-known chaos of numberless barbarous tongues and savage races." A commotion among these numerous tribes, the uncounted multitudes spreading far into the plain of Central Asia, had begun as early as the days of Julius Caesar. They were made up of three races,—the Teutons, or Germanic peoples; eastward of them, the Slavonians; and, farther beyond, the Asiatic Scythians. The Slavonians, an Aryan branch, like the Teutons, had their abodes in the space between Germany and the Volga. They were a pastoral and an agricultural race, of whose religion little is known. Their incursions and settlements belong to the sixth and seventh centuries, and to the history of the Eastern Empire.
TEUTONIC CONFEDERACIES.—Of the confederacies of German tribes, the Goths are first to be mentioned. In the third century they had spread over the immense territory between the Baltic and the Black seas. They were divided into the West Goths (Visigoths) and East Goths (Ostrogoths). Their force was augmented by the junction of kindred tribes. To the east of them, towards the Don, was a tribe of mixed race, the Alani. In the third century the Goths had made their terrible inroads into Mæsia and Thrace, and the brave emperor Decius had perished in the combat with them. They had pushed their marauding excursions as far as the coasts of Greece and Ionia. In the middle of the fourth century they were united, with their allied tribes, under the sovereignty of the East Gothic chieftain, Hermanric. A second league of Germanic peoples was the Alemanni, which included the formidable tribes called by Cæsar the Suevi, and who, after various incursions, had established themselves on the Upper Rhine, in what is now Baden, Würtemberg, and north-east in Switzerland, and in the region southward to the summits of the Alps. Their invasion of Italy in 255, when they poured through the passes of the Rhetian Alps, and penetrated as far as Ravenna, was repelled by Aurelian, afterwards emperor. A third confederacy was that of the Franks (or Freemen) on the Lower Rhine and the Weser. In North Germany, between the Elbe and the Rhine, were the Saxons. The Burgundians, between the Saxons and the Alemanni, made their way to the same river near Worms. East of the Franks and Saxons, were the valiant Lombards, who made their way southwards to the center of Europe, and finally to the Danube. The Frisians were situated on the shore of the North Sea and in the adjacent islands. North of the Saxons were the Danes and other peoples of Scandinavia,—Teutons all, but a separate branch of the Teutonic household. To bold and warlike tribes, now banded together, such as were the Franks and the Alemanni, the Rhine, with its line of Roman cities and fortresses, could form no permanent barrier. When they crossed it, they might be driven back; but this was only to renew their expeditions at the first favorable moment. The prey which they saw near by, and of which they dreamed in the distance, was too enticing. No more could the Danube fence off the thronging nations; all of whom had heard, and some of whom had beheld, the wealth and luxury of the civilized lands.
Beginning at the Euxine, and moving westward along the line of the Danube and the Rhine, we find, at the end of the fourth century, that the six most prominent names of Teutonic tribes are the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, Saxons, and Lombards. Over the vast plains to the south and west of the Caspian are spread the Huns, who belong to one branch of the Scythian or Turanian group of nations.
HABITS OF THE GERMANS.—We have notices of the Germans from Julius Caesar, the most full description of them in the Germania of Tacitus. They were tall and robust, and seemed to the Romans, who were of smaller stature, as giants. Tacitus speaks of their "fiercely blue eyes." They lived in huts made of wood, and containing the cattle as well as the family. They tilled the soil, but their favorite employments were war and the chase. Capable of cruelty, they were still of a kindly temper, and fond of feasts and social gatherings, where they were apt to indulge in excessive drinking and in gambling. They were brave, and not without a delicate sense of honor. Family ties were sacred. The women were chaste, and were companions of their husbands, although subject to them. Most of the people were freemen, who were land-owners, and carried arms. The nobles were those of higher birth, but with no special privileges. The freemen owned slaves, who were either criminals or persons who had lost their freedom in gaming or prisoners of war. There were also freedmen or leti, who held land of a superior. Many freedmen lived apart, but many were gathered in villages. The land about a village was originally held in common. Each village had a chief, and each collection of villages, or hundred, possessed a chief of high rank; and there was a "king," or head of the tribe. All these chieftains were elected by the freemen at assemblies periodically held. When the duke or general was chosen, he was raised on a shield on the shoulders of the men. The judges in the trial of causes sat, with assessors or jurymen around them, in the open air. But private injuries were avenged by the individual or by his family. One marked characteristic of the Germans was the habit of devoting themselves to the service of a military leader. They paid to him personal allegiance, and followed him in war. The Germans were, above all, distinguished by a strong sense of personal independence. If their mode of living resembled outwardly that of other savage races, yet in their free political life, and in the noble promise of their language even in its rudiments, the comparison does not hold. In their faithfulness, courage, and personal purity, they are emphatically contrasted with the generality of barbarous peoples.
RELIGION OF THE GERMANS.—We know more of the Scandinavian religion through the Eddas, the Iliad of the Northmen, than of the religion of the Germans; but the two religions were closely allied. Among the chief gods worshiped by the Germans were Woden, called "Odin" in the North, the highest divinity, the god of the air and of the sky, the giver of fruits and delighting in battle; Donar (Thor), the god of thunder and of the weather, armed with a hammer or thunderbolt; Thiu (Tyr), a god of war, answering to Mars; Fro (Freyr), god of love; and Frauwa (Freya), his sister. Particular days were set apart for their worship. Their names appear in the names of the days of the week,—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Sunday is the day of the sun, and Monday the day of the moon. Saturday alone is a name of Latin origin. Among the minor beings in the German mythology were fairies, elves, giants, and dwarfs. There were festivals to the gods. Their images were preserved in groves. Lofty trees were held sacred to divinities. The oak and the red ash were consecrated to Donar. Sacrifices, and among them human sacrifices, were offered to the gods. Their will was ascertained by means of the lot, the neighing of wild horses, and the flight of birds. Priests were not without influence, but were not a professional class, and were never dominant. Valiant warriors at death were admitted into Walhalla (the hall of the slain), where they sat at banquet with the gods.
THEODOSIUS | +—THEODOSIUS I (the Great), m., | 1, Flaccilla; | 2, Galla sister of Valentinian II | | | +—Grantianus | | | +—Pulcheria | | | +—ARCADIUS | | m. Eudoxia | | | | | +—THEODOSIUS II | | | m. Eudocia | | | | | | | +—Eudoxia | | | | m. VALENTINIAN III | | | | | | | +—Flaccilla | | | | | +—Pulcheria | | | m. MARCIAN | | | | | +—Three other daughters | | | +—HONORIUS | | m. Maria, daughter of Stilicho | | | +—Placidia m. | 1, Adolphus; | 2, CONSTANTIUS | | | +—VALENTINIAN III, | | m. Eudoxia. | | | | | +—Eudoxia, m. | | | 1, Palladius, son of MAXIMUS; | | | 2, Huneric, son of GENSERIC. | | | | | | | +—Ideric | | | | | +—Placidia | | m. OLYBRIUS | | | +—Honoria | +—Honorius | +—Serena, | m. Stilicho | | | +—Maria | +—Thermantia
[From Rawlinson's Manual of Ancient History.]
THE GOTHS: THEODOSIUS I.—Towards the close of the fourth century, when Valens (364-378) was reigning in the East, the Huns moved from their settlements north of the Caspian, defeated the Alans, a powerful nation, and, compelling them to enter their service, invaded the empire of the Ostrogoths, then ruled by Hermanric. The Huns belonged to one branch of the Scythian race. They had migrated in vast numbers from Central Asia. Repulsive in form and visage, with short, thick bodies, and small, fierce eyes, living mostly on horseback or in their wagons, these terrible warriors, with their slings and bone-pointed arrows, struck terror into the nations whom they approached. The Gothic Empire fell. The Ostrogoths submitted, and Hermanric died, it is thought by his own hand. The Visigoths crowded down to the Danube, and implored Valens to give them an asylum upon Roman territory. They had previously been converted to Christianity, mainly by the labors of Ulphilas, who had framed for them an alphabet, and translated nearly the whole Bible into their tongue. Fragments of this Moeso-Gothic version are the oldest written monument in the Teutonic languages. Christianity was taught to them by Ulphilas in the Arian type; and this circumstance was very important, since it was the occasion of the spread of Arianism among many other Teutonic peoples. Valens granted their request to cross the Danube, and, under Fritigern and Alavivus, to settle in Moesia (376). By the connivance of the officers of Valens, they were allowed to retain their arms. The avarice of corrupt imperial governors provoked them to revolt; and, in the battle of Adrianople, Valens was defeated. The house into which the wounded emperor was carried was set on fire, and he perished. Gratian, who, since the death of Valentinian I. (375), had been the ruler of the West, summoned the valiant Theodosius from his estate in Spain, to which he had been banished, to sustain the tottering empire. Gratian made him regent in the East. His father had cleared Britain of the Picts and Scots, and restored it to the empire. Under him the son had learned to be a soldier. He had been driven into retirement by court intrigues. He now accomplished, as well as it could be done, the mighty task laid upon him. He checked the progress of the Goths, divided them, incorporated some of them in the army, and dispersed the rest in Thrace, Moesia, and Asia Minor (382). Four years later forty-thousand Ostrogoths were received into the imperial service. Once Rome had conquered the barbarians, and planted its colonies among them; now, after they had proved their power, and gained boldness by victory, it received them within its own borders. The indolence and vice of Gratian produced a revolution in the West. Maximus was proclaimed imperator by the legions of Britain, and Gratian was put to death by his cavalry (383). After sanguinary conflicts, Theodosius obtained, also, supreme power in the West. He gave to orthodoxy, in the strife with Arianism, the supremacy in the East; and, under his auspices, the General Council of Constantinople re-affirmed the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity (381). In the ancient church he had a glory second only to that of Constantine. With the exception of his harsh and inquisitorial laws for the forcible suppression of Arianism and paganism, his legislation was generally wise and beneficent.
ARCADIUS: HONORIUS.—Theodosius left the government of the East to his son Arcadius, then eighteen years of age, and that of the West to a younger son, Honorius. The empire of the East continued ten hundred and fifty-eight years after this division; that of the West, only eighty-one years. The Eastern Empire was defended by the barriers of the Danube and the Balkan mountains, by the strength of Constantinople, together with the care taken to protect it, and by the general tendency of the barbarian invasions westward. Rome, in the course of a half-century, was the object of four terrible attacks,—that of Alaric and the Visigoths; of Radagaisus with the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans; of Genseric with the Vandals; of Attila with the Huns.
ALARIC IN ITALY.—The Visigoths made Alaric—the head of their most illustrious family, the Balti—their leader. Honorius was controlled by the influence of Stilicho, a brave soldier, by birth a Vandal; Arcadius was ruled by a Goth, Rufinus, a cunning and faithless diplomatist. Alaric and his followers were enraged at the withholding of the pay which was due to them yearly from Arcadius. Rufinus, in order to keep up his sway, and out of hostility to Stilicho, arranged that they should invade Eastern Illyricum, a province on which each of the emperors had claims, and which he feared that Stilicho would seize. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed through the undefended strait of Thermopylae, spared Athens, but devastated the rest of Greece. The only protector of the empire now was Stilicho, to whom Theodosius had committed the care of his two sons, and whose power was exercised in the West. He caused the perfidious Rufinus to be put to death by Gainas, one of the Gothic allies of Arcadius. The place of the minister was taken by Eutropius, an Armenian who had been a slave. Stilicho fought the Goths in two campaigns, but, perhaps from policy, suffered them to escape by the Strait of Naupactus (Lepanto). To prevent further ravages, Arcadius had no alternative but to appoint Alaric master-general or duke of Illyricum. This obliged Stilicho to retire. Raised upon the shield, and thus made king by his followers, Alaric led them to the conquest of Italy. Honorius fled for refuge from Milan to the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. Stilicho came to his relief, and defeated the Visigoths at Pollentia (402). But Honorius copied the example of Arcadius, made Alaric a general, and gave him the commission to conquer Illyricum for the Western Empire. After his defeat, he was moving against Rome with his cavalry, when his retreat was purchased by a pension. It was when Honorius was celebrating his triumph at Rome that a monk named Telemachus leaped into the arena to separate the gladiators. He was stoned to death by the spectators, but the result of his self-devotion was an edict putting a final stop to the gladiatorial shows. The emperor now fixed his residence, which had been at Milan, at Ravenna, a city that was covered on the land side by a wide and impassable morass, over which was an artificial causeway, easily destroyed in case it could not be defended. It had served him as an asylum during the invasion of Alaric.
RADAGAISUS.—The empire was not long left in peace. Alaric was a Christian, and partially civilized. Radagaisus was a Goth, but a heathen and a barbarian. The Suevi under his command, took their course southward from the neighborhood of the Baltic, and, drawing after them the Burgundians, Vandals, and Alans,—tribes which began to be alarmed by the hordes of Huns that were gathering behind them,—advanced to the pillage of the empire. Leaving the bulk of their companions on the borders of the Rhine, two hundred thousand of them crossed the Alps, and made their way as far as Florence. Stilicho once more saved Rome and the empire by forcing them back into the Apennines, where most of them perished from famine. Radagaisus surrendered, and was beheaded. The news of this disaster moved the host which had been left behind, joined by the remainder of the army of Radagaisus, to make an attack upon Gaul. Despite the resistance of the Ripuarian Franks, to whom Rome had committed the defense of the Rhine, they crossed that river on the last day of the year 406. For two years Gaul was a prey to their ravages, until the Suevi, the Alans, and the Vandals, sought for fresh booty on the south of the Pyrenees (409). In Gaul they "destroyed the cities, ravaged the fields, and drove before them in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars." Brief as was this period of devastation, it marks the severance of Gaul from the empire.
ALARIC AGAIN IN ITALY.—Stilicho had kept up friendly relations with Alaric, and had retained in Italy thirty thousand barbarians in the pay of the empire. The brave general became an object of suspicion to Honorius, who caused him to be assassinated, and the wives and children of the barbarian troops to be massacred. The men fled to Alaric. He came back with them to avenge them. He appeared under the walls of Rome. "It was more than six hundred years since a foreign enemy had been there, and Hannibal had advanced so far, only to retreat." When the envoys of the Senate represented to Alaric how numerous was the population, he answered, "The thicker the hay, the easier it is mowed." But he consented to accept an enormous ransom, and retired to winter quarters in Tuscany. The court at Ravenna refused to assign lands to the Visigoths for a permanent settlement in Northern Italy. Alaric demanded the post of master-general of the Western armies. Once more he advanced to Rome, seized the "Port" of Ostia, and compelled the Senate to appoint Attalus, the prefect of the city, emperor. He besieged Ravenna without effect, quarreled with Attalus, and deposed him, and for the third time marched upon Rome. Slaves within the city opened the Salarian gate to their countrymen, and on the 24th of August, 410, the sack of the city began. To add to the horrors of the scene, a terrific thunderstorm was raging. For three days Rome was given up to pillage. Only the Christian temples were respected, which were crowded by those who sought within them an asylum. Rome had been the center of Paganism. The scattering and destruction of its patrician families was the ruin of the old religion. Alaric did not long survive his victory. He died at Consentia in Bruttium. He was buried under the little river Basentius, which was turned out of its course while the sepulcher was constructing, and then restored to its former channel. The slaves employed in the work were put to death, that the place of his burial might remain a secret (410).
ATHAULF: WALLIA.—Athaulf (called Adolphus), the brother and successor of Alaric, was an admirer of the empire. He enlisted in the service of Honorius, and married his sister, Placidia, who was in the hands of the Goths, either as a captive or as a hostage. He put down usurpers in the south of Gaul who had set themselves up as emperors, and entered Spain, in order to drive out the barbarians from that country. But he was assassinated (415). His successor, Wallia, carried forward his plans, in the name of Honorius, against the Alans, the Suevi, and the Vandals. He partly exterminated the Alans, chased the Suevi into the mountains on the north-west, and the Vandals into the district called after them, Andalusia.
THREE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS.—The kingdom of the Suevi thus established (419), under the kings reigning from 438 to 455 conquered Lusitania, and would have subdued all Spain had they not been checked by the Visigoths. As a reward for their services, the latter received from Honorius, Aquitaine in Gaul, as far as the Loire and the Rhone, with Toulouse for their capital. They conquered the Suevi in 456, and in 585 subjugated them; in 507 the Franks had driven them out of Gaul. Early in the fifth century the Burgundian kingdom grew up in South-eastern Gaul. At the end of that century the Rhone was a Burgundian river. Lyons and Vienne were Burgundian cities. Thus in the first twenty years of the fifth century there arose three barbarian kingdoms. Of these, that of the Suevi soon vanished (585), being absorbed by the Visigoths; that of the Burgundians continued until 534; while that of the Visigoths in Spain lasted until the conquest by the Arabs in 711.
CONQUEST OF AFRICA BY THE VANDALS.—Honorius died in 423. He had shown himself a zealous defender of the Church against heresy, and was the author of edicts for the suppression of heathenism, and for the destruction of heathen temples and idols. But he had proved himself inefficient in the defense of the empire. His nephew Valentinian III., the son of Placidia and of the general Constantius, whom she had married in 417, succeeded him; but he was only six years old, and for twenty-five years the government was carried on in his name by his unworthy mother. She had two able generals, Aëtius and Boniface, whose discord was fatal in its effects. At the same time in the East, the government was managed by Pulcheria for her brother, Theodosius II., who had succeeded Arcadias in 408. Aëtius, who was a Hun, by insidious arts persuaded Placidia to recall Boniface, who was governor of Africa, at the same time that he advised Boniface to disobey the order which he represented as a sentence of death. Boniface sent to Gonderic, king of the Vandals in Spain,—who, after the retreat of the Visigoths, were strong in that country,—an offer of an alliance. Genseric, the Vandal leader, the brother and successor of Gonderic, landed in Africa in 429 with fifty thousand men. Too late the treachery of Aëtius was explained to Boniface. Genseric, with his allies, tribes of nomad Moors, defeated him in a bloody battle, and besieged Hippo for fourteen months. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, animated the courage of its defenders until his death in 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Boniface was again defeated, and Hippo was taken. The Vandals pushed on their conquest, but eight years passed before Carthage was reduced (439). Valentinian had recognized by treaty the kingdom of the Vandals. Genseric was characterized by genius and energy as well as by cruelty and avarice. He built up a navy, and made himself master of Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. He was able to defy Constantinople, on account of his control of the Mediterranean. At the same time he entered into relations with the barbarians in the north, in order that Aëtius, who endeavored to bring in some degree of order and obedience in the empire, might be checked and restrained on all sides. The Vandals were Arians, and made full use of the difference in faith as a motive for plundering and maltreating the orthodox Christians in Africa, whom their arms had subdued.
ATTILA: CHALONS.—The enemy whom Genseric invoked to make a diversion in his favor against the combined rulers of the East and of the West, was Attila. For a half-century the Huns had halted, in their migration, in the center of Europe, and held under their sway the Ostrogoths, the Gepids, the Marcomanni, and other tribes. The empire of Attila extended from the Baltic to the north of the Danube, and as far east as the Volga. His name inspired terror wherever it was heard. He was styled "the scourge of God." The "sword of Mars"—the point of an ancient sword which, it was said, was discovered by supernatural means, and was presented to him—was deemed the symbol of his right to the dominion of the world. Yet, notwithstanding his fierce visage and haughty mien, he was an indulgent ruler of his own people, and not without pity and other generous traits. Such was the dread of him that it was said that no blade of grass grew on the path which his armies had traversed. First, he attacked Theodosius II. in the East, to force him to recall the troops which he had sent against Genseric. He crossed the Danube, destroyed seventy cities, and forced the Eastern emperor not only to pay a tribute heavier than he had paid before, but also to cede to the Huns the right bank of the river. Theodosius failed in a treacherous attempt to assassinate him through Attila's ambassador, Edecon, whom he had bribed. Attila discovered the plot, but pardoned with disdain the ambassadors of the emperor who went to him in his wooden palace in Pannonia. He contented himself with reproaching Theodosius with "conspiring, like a perfidious slave, against the life of his master." Regarding Constantinople as impregnable, he turned to the West. He demanded of the Western emperor the half of his states; and, moving to the Rhine with six hundred thousand barbarians, he crossed that river and the Moselle, advanced on his devastating path into the heart of Gaul, crossed the Seine, and laid siege to Orleans. Everywhere the inhabitants fled before him. The courage of the people in Orleans was sustained by their bishop, who at length, as the city was just falling into the hands of the assailants, saw a cloud of dust, and cried, "It is the help of God." It was Aëtius, who, on the death of Boniface, had thought it prudent to fly to the Huns, had come back to Italy at the head of sixty thousand men, obtained forgiveness of Placidia, and been made master-general of her forces. He had united to the Roman troops the barbarians who had occupied Gaul, the Visigoths under Theodoric, the Saxons, the Burgundians, the Ripuarian and the Salian Franks. On the Catalaunian fields, a vast plain near Chalons, whither Attila now retreated to find room for the effective use of his cavalry, the two multitudinous armies, each composed of a motley collection of nations, met. It was, like the conflict at Marathon, one of the decisive battles of history. It was to determine whether the Aryan or the Scythian was to be supreme in Europe. The battle-field was strewn, it was said, with the bodies of a hundred and sixty thousand men,—an exaggeration indicating that the carnage was too great to be estimated. Attila was worsted. He encircled his camp with a rampart of wagons; and in the morning the victors saw him standing on the top of a mound composed of the trappings of horsemen, which was to serve as his funeral-pile, with torch-bearers at hand ready to light it in case of defeat. Aëtius was weakened by the withdrawal of the Visigoths: the allies did not venture to attack the lion standing thus at bay, but suffered him to return to Germany (451).
ATTILA IN ITALY.—The next year Attila invaded Upper Italy. He destroyed Aquileia, the inhabitants of which fled to the lagoons of the Adriatic, where their descendants founded Venice. Padua, Verona, and other cities were reduced to ashes. At Milan he saw a painting which represented the emperor on his throne, and the chiefs of the Huns prostrate before him. He ordered a picture to be painted in which the king of the Huns sat on the throne, and the emperor was at his feet. The Italians were without the means of defense. Leo I. (Leo the Great), bishop of Rome, at the risk of his life accompanied the emperor's ambassadors to Attila's camp. Their persuasions, with rich gifts and the promise of a tribute, availed. The army of Attila was weakened by sickness, and Aëtius was approaching. The king of the Huns decided to retire to his forests. The apparition of the two apostles, Peter and Paul, threatening the barbarian with instant death if he did not comply with the prayer of their successor, is the subject of one of the paintings of Raphael. Some months after he left Italy Attila died at the royal village near the Danube, probably from the bursting of an artery during the night (453). The nations which he had subjugated regained their freedom. The chiefs of the Huns contended for the crown in conflicts which dissipated their strength. The expeditions of Attila were like a violent tempest,— destructive for the moment, the traces of which soon disappear.
About the name of Attila, there gathered cycles of traditions, Gallo-Roman or Italian, East German or Gothic, West German and Scandinavian, and Hungarian. Such traditions in Germany formed, later, the germ of the national epic, the Nibelungen-lied. They testify to the powerful impression which the hero of the Huns made on the memory and imagination of the different nations.
GENSERIC.—Attila did not see Rome; but Genseric, his ally, visited it with fire and sword (455). The emperor was Petronius Maximus, a senator, who had slain Valentinian III. as the penalty for a mortal offense. The weakness of Maximus as a ruler caused him to be destroyed by the populace. Eudoxia, the widow of Valentinian, whom Maximus had compelled to marry the author of her husband's death, had secretly implored the aid of the king of the Vandals. Once more Leo showed his fearless spirit by going into the camp of the Vandal king, and interceding for Rome. He only succeeded, however, in mitigating to a limited extent the horrors that attended the pillage of the city by the fierce and greedy soldiers, the Vandals and Moors, who followed Genseric, For fourteen days (June 15-29, 455) Rome was given up to carnage and robbery. The conqueror carried off every thing of value that was capable of being transported. Eudoxia was rudely stripped of her jewels, and with her two daughters, descendants of the great Theodosius, was conveyed away with the conqueror to Carthage. For twenty years longer Genseric ruled over the Mediterranean in spite of the hostility of both empires. An expedition sent against him at the instigation of Ricimer, the Sueve, by the Eastern emperor Leo, was ill commanded by Basiliscus, and failed. But after the Vandal king died (477), his kingdom was torn by civil and religious disorders, and by the revolts of the Moors, and, fifty-seven years after the death of its founder, was conquered by the general of the Eastern Empire.
FALL OF ROME: ODOACER.—After the death of Maximus, Avitus was appointed emperor by the king of the Visigoths in Gaul. The barbarians hesitated to assume the purple themselves, but they determined on whom it should be bestowed. Of the emperors that succeeded, Majorian (457-461)—who was raised to the throne by Ricimer, military leader of the German mercenaries in the Roman army—presents an instance of a worthy character in a corrupt time. At last another leader of mercenaries (Orestes, a Pannonian) made his son emperor,—a boy six years old, called Romulus Augustulus (475). Odoacer, who commanded the Heruli, Rugii, and other federated tribes,—mercenaries to whom Orestes refused to grant a third part of the lands of Italy,—made himself ruler of that country. The Senate of Rome, in pursuance of his wishes, in an address to the Eastern emperor Zeno, declared that an emperor in the West was no longer necessary, and asked him to make Odoacer patrician, and prefect of the diocese of Italy. It was in this character—not as king, but in nominal subordination to Zeno, the head of the united Roman Empire—that Odoacer governed (476). For more than a half-century people had been accustomed to see the barbarians exercise supreme control, so that the extinguishment of the Western Empire was an event less marked in their eyes than it seemed to the view of subsequent ages.
OSTROGOTHIC KINGDOM OF THEODORIC.—When Odoacer had reigned twelve years, Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths in Moesia,—who in his youth had lived at the court of Constantinople, had defended the Eastern emperor, but had been provoked to hostility to him,—was authorized by Zeno to move upon Italy. A host consisting of two hundred thousand fighting-men, together with their families and goods, followed the Gothic leader. Defeated at Verona (489), Odoacer was forced to make a treaty for a division of power, and to surrender Ravenna, where he had taken refuge; but very soon, in the tumult of a banquet, he was slain by Theodoric's own hand, either from fear of a rival, or because he suspected that Odoacer was plotting against him. From this time the long reign of Theodoric was one of justice and of peace. More by negotiation than by war, he extended his dominion so that it embraced Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum, and Rhoetia, and, in the West, Southeastern Gaul (Provence). The Bavarians paid him tribute; the Alemanni invoked his assistance against the Franks, against whom he afforded succor to the Goths of Aquitaine. In his administration he showed reverence for the old imperial system, and for its laws and institutions. He fostered agriculture, manufactures, and trade. Although he could not write, he encouraged learning; and a learned Roman, Cassiodorus, he appointed to high offices. He permitted the Goths alone to bear arms. He caused to be compiled from the Roman law a collection of statutes for the Goths and for his new subjects, and established mixed tribunals for causes in which both were parties. Cassiodorus ascribes to Theodoric the words, "Let other kings seek to procure booty, or the downfall of conquered cities: our purpose is, with God's help, so to conquer that our subjects shall lament that they have too late come under our rule." He did what he could to promote peace among other barbarian nations. The prosperity of Italy, and the increase of its population, were a proof of the good government which it enjoyed. An Arian, he respected the Catholics, confirmed the immunities enjoyed by the churches, and generally allowed the Romans to elect their own bishop. He also protected the Jews. The persecution of the Arians in the East (524) by Justin I., awakened in his mind the belief that a conspiracy was forming against him. He accused Boethius of being a partner in it, and adjudged him to death (524). While in prison at Pavia, this cultivated man, whom Theodoric had highly esteemed, composed a work on the "Consolations of Philosophy," which has made his name immortal in literature. The course of Theodoric at this time drew upon him the severe displeasure of his orthodox subjects. Soon after his death (526) his ashes were taken out of the tomb, and scattered to the winds. Hence nothing remains of his sepulcher at Ravenna but his empty mausoleum.
Before the close of the century, as we shall see, another German tribe, the Lombards, founded a powerful state in Italy, which continued for more than two hundred years (568-774).
THE FRANKS: CLOVIS.—When Clovis (481-511), a warlike and ambitious chief of the Merovingian family of princes, became king of the Franks, they numbered but a few thousand warriors. The remnant of the Roman dominion on the Seine and the Loire he annexed, after having put to death Syagrius, the Roman governor, who was delivered up to him by the Visigoths. He made Soissons, and then Paris, the seat of his authority. A Salian Frank himself, he joined to himself the Ripuarian Franks on the Lower Rhine, and made war on the Alemanni, who were planted on both sides of the river. Before a battle (formerly thought to have been at Tolbiac), he vowed, that, if the victory were given him, he would worship the God of the Christians, of whom his wife Clotilde was one. Clotilde was the niece of the Burgundian king, who was an Arian; but she was orthodox. The victory was won. Clovis, with three thousand of his nobles, was baptized by Remigius (St. Remi), Archbishop of Rheims. Hearing a sermon on the crucifixion, Clovis exclaimed, that, if he and his faithful Franks had been there, vengeance would have been taken on the Jews. He was a barbarian still, and the new faith imposed little restraint on his ambition and cruelty. But his conversion was an event of the highest importance. The Gallic church and clergy lent him their devoted support. The Franks were destined to become the dominant barbarian people. It was now settled that power was to be in the hands of Catholic—as distinguished from heretical Arian—Christianity. Clovis forced Gundobald, the Burgundian king, to become tributary, and to embrace the Catholic faith. He extended his kingdom to the Rhone on the east, and on the south (507-511), confined the Visigoths in Gaul to the strip of territory called Septimania, which they held for three centuries longer. Brittany alone remained independent under its king. Clovis was hailed as the "most Christian king" and the second Constantine, and was made patrician and consul by the Eastern emperor Anastasius, in which titles, with their insignia, he rejoiced. In the closing part of his life he took care to destroy other Frank chieftains who might possibly undertake to dispute or divide with him his sovereignty.
DISTRIBUTION OF TRIBES.—If we look at the map at the close of the fifth century, we find that all the western dominions of Rome are subject to Teutonic kings. The Franks, still retaining Western and Central Germany, rule in Northern Gaul, and are soon to extend their sway to the Pyrenees, and to conquer Burgundy. The West Goths are the masters in Spain, and still hold Aquitaine, the most of which, however, is soon to be lost to the Franks. Italy and the lands north of the Alps and the Adriatic form the East Gothic kingdom of Theodoric. Africa is governed by the Arian Vandals. To the north of the Franks, the tribes of Germany, which were never subject to Rome, have already begun their conquests in Britain. With the exception of Britain, which is falling under the power of the Saxons, and Africa, these countries are still nominally parts of the Roman Empire, of which Constantinople is the capital. In the east, the boundaries of the empire, notwithstanding the aggressions and insults which it has suffered, are but little altered.
THE MEROVINGIANS.—The dominion of Clovis was partitioned among his four sons (511). Theodoric, the eldest, in Rheims, ruled the Eastern Franks, in what soon after this time began to be called Austrasia, on both banks of the Rhine. Neustria, or the rest of the kingdom north of the Loire, was governed in parts by the other three. Theodoric gained by conquest the land of the Thuringians, whose king, Hermanfrid, he treacherously destroyed. A part of this land was given to the Saxons. The history of the Franks for half a century lacks unity. The several rulers rarely acted in concert. They made expeditions against the Burgundians, the Visigoths, and the Ostrogoths. Twice they attacked the Burgundians. The last time, in 534, they conquered them, deprived them of their national kings, and forced them to become Catholic. In 531 they made war on the Visigoths to avenge the wrongs inflicted on Clotilde, a princess of their family who suffered indignities at the hands of the Arian king Amalaric. They crossed the Pyrenees, and brought away Clotilde. A second division of the kingdom was made in 561 among the grandsons of Clovis, and consummated in 567. Austrasia, having Rheims for its capital, had a population chiefly German. Neustria, where the Gallo-Roman manners were adopted, had Soissons for its capital; and Burgundy had its capital at Orleans. The population in both these last dominions was more predominantly Romano-Celtic, or "Romance." Family contests, and wars full of horrors,—in which the tragic feud of two women, Brunhilde of Austrasia, a daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths, and Fredegunde of Neustria, played a prominent part,—ensued. In 613 Clotaire II. of Neustria united the entire kingdom. Brunhilde was captured, and put to death in a barbarous manner. The son of Clotaire, Dagobert, was a worthless king. The Frank sovereigns of the royal line are inefficient, and the virtual sovereignty is in the hands of the "Mayors of the Palace," the officers whose function it was to superintend the royal household, and who afterwards were leaders of the feudal retainers. The family of the Pipins, who were of pure German extraction, acquired the hereditary right to this office, first in Austrasia and later in Neustria. The descendants of Pipin of Heristal, as dukes of the Franks, had regal power, while the title of king was left to the Merovingian princes. The race of Pipin was afterwards called Carolingians, or Karlings. The preponderance of power at first had been with Neustria, but it shifted to the ruder and more energetic Austrasians. The battle of Testry, in which Pipin of Heristal at their head overcame the Neustrians, determined the supremacy of Germany over France (687). His son and successor, Charles Martel (715-741), made himself sole "Duke of the Franks;" and Pipin the Short (741-768), the son of Charles Martel, became king, supplanting the Merovingian line (752).
SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.—In the fourth century, when the power of Rome was declining, the Picts and Scots from the North began to make incursions into the Roman province of Britain. At the same time Teutonic tribes from the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe, began to land as marauders upon the coast. Honorius withdrew the Roman troops from the island in 411; and it was conquered by these invading tribes, especially the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They became one people, called Anglo-Saxons, Angles or English. They were fierce barbarians, who drove the Celts whom they did not kill or enslave—and whom they called Welsh, or strangers—into Wales and Cornwall. They formed kingdoms, the first of which, Kent, was the result of the coming of Hengist and Horsa, whom Vortigern, the native prince, had invited to help him against the Picts (449). There were seven of these Saxon kingdoms (the Heptarchy), not all of which were at any one time regular communities. They were almost constantly at war with one another and with the natives. They had a king elected from the royal family. Freemen were either Earls or Churls, the "gentle" or the "simple." The churl was attached to some one lord whom he followed in war. The thanes were those who devoted themselves to the service of the king or some other great man. The thanes of the king became gentlemen and nobles. There were thralls, or slaves, either prisoners in war, or made slaves for debt or for crime. Connected with the king was a sort of Parliament, called the Witenagemôt, or Meeting of the Wise, composed originally of all freemen, and then of the great men, the Ealdormen, the king's thanes. After the Saxons were converted, the bishops and abbots belonged to it. In minor affairs, the "mark," or township, governed itself.
CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS—The seven kingdoms, in the ninth century (828), were united under Egbert, who became king of Wessex in 802. He was called the king of England. Towards the Celtic Christians the heathen Saxons were hostile. The conversion of the Saxons was due to the labors of Augustine and forty monks, whom Gregory the Great (Gregory I.) sent to the island as missionaries in 597. Their first conversions were in Kent, whose king, Ethelbert, had married Bertha, the daughter of a Frankish king. Augustine, who had great success, became the first archbishop of Canterbury, and he consecrated a bishop of London. During the seventh century the other Saxon kingdoms were gradually converted. York became a seat of a second archbishopric. While Britain had been cut off from close relations with the continent, the Celtic Church there had failed to keep pace with the changes of rite and polity which had taken place among Christians beyond the channel. The consequence was a strife on these points between the converted Saxons, who were devoted to the holy see, and the "Culdees" or Old British Christians.
CONVERSION OF THE IRISH.—About the middle of the fifth century the gospel had been planted in Ireland, mainly by the labors of Patrick, who had been carried to that country from Scotland by pirates when he was a boy, and had returned to it as a missionary. The cloisters, and the schools connected with them, which he founded, flourished, became nurseries of study as well as of piety, and sent out missionaries to other countries of Western Europe.
CHARACTER OF THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS.—The Teutonic tribe was made up of freemen and of their dependents. The rights of freemen, such as the right to vote, continued; but these were modified as differences of rank and wealth arose. Their leaders in peace and war were the duke (dux), the count (comes, or graf), and the herzog (duke of higher grade) over larger provinces. The companions of the king and the local chiefs grew into a nobility. Once or twice in the year there was a gathering of the freemen in assemblies, to decree war or to sanction laws. Land was partly held in common, partly by individuals either as tenants of the community, or as individual owners. The soil was shared in proportions by the conquerors and the conquered.
THE CHURCH.—The Germanic tribes were generally more or less acquainted with the Romans, and were Christians by profession. They were subject to the influences of religion, of law, and of language, in the countries where they settled. Power passed from the Empire to the Church. The Church was strong in its moral force. Its bishops commanded the respect of the barbarians. They were moral and social leaders. In the period of darkness and of tempest, the voices of the Christian clergy were heard in accents of fearless rebuke and of tender consolation. In the cities of Italy and Gaul, the bishops, at the call of the people, informally took the first place in civil affairs. Remarkable men arose in the Church, who were conspicuous as ambassadors and peace-makers, as intercessors for the suffering, and courageous protectors of the injured. Such a man was Leo the Great. The barbarians were awed by the kingdom of righteousness, which, without exerting force, opposed to force and passion an undaunted front. There was often a conflict between their love of power and passionate impatience of control, and their reverence for the priest and for the gospel. They could not avoid feeling in some measure the softening and restraining influence of Christian teaching, and learning the lessons of the cross. Socially, the Church, as such, "was always on the side of peace, on the side of industry, on the side of purity, on the side of liberty for the slave, and protection for the oppressed. The monasteries were the only keepers of literary tradition: they were, still more, great agricultural colonies, clearing the wastes, and setting the example of improvement. They were the only seats of human labor which could hope to be spared in those lands of perpetual war." Nevertheless, the religious condition of the West, the condition of the Church and of the clergy, could not fail to be powerfully affected for the worse by the influx of barbarism, and the corrupting influence of the barbarian rulers. A great deterioration in the Church and in its ministry ensued after the first generation following the Germanic conquests passed away. This demoralization was more among the secular clergy than the monastic.
The "History of the Franks," by Gregory of Tours (540-594), is an instructive memorial of the times. He was himself an intrepid prelate, who did not quail before Chilperic I. and Fredegunde, but braved their wrath. Chilperic proposed to establish by his authority a new view of the Trinity of his own devising, but was resisted by Gregory, who told him that no one but a lunatic would embrace such an opinion. A still more crude reform of the alphabet, which the Frankish king contrived, and proposed to put in force by having existing books rewritten, Gregory effectually resisted.
ROMAN LAW.—The barbarians were profoundly impressed by the system of Roman law. This they recognized as the rule for the Roman population in the different countries. More and more they incorporated its exact provisions into their own codes. Among the West Goths in Spain the two elements were ultimately fused into one body of laws (642-701). Under the Franks, the Roman municipal system was not extinguished; the Teutonic count or bishop standing in the room of the Roman president or consular, and a more popular body taking the place of the restricted municipality. The Roman civil polity, with its definite enactments for every relation in life and every exigency, was always at hand, and exercised an increasing control.
STATE OF LEARNING.—The Latin language—the rustic Latin of the lower classes—was spoken by the conquered peoples. Latin was the language of the Church and of the Law. The consequence was, that the two languages, the tongue of the conquerors and of the Roman subjects, existed side by side in an unconscious struggle with one another. In the west and south of Europe, the victory was on the side of the Latin. The languages of these countries, the "Latin nations," grew out of the rustic dialects spoken in Roman times. In these nations the result of the mixture of the races was the final predominance of the Latin element in the civilization. In Gaul, the Franks yielded to Latin influences: France was the product. With the fall of the empire, classical culture died out. The cathedral and cloister schools preserved the records of literature. The study of language, and the mental discrimination and refinement which spring from it and from literary discipline, passed away. Centuries of comparative illiteracy—dark centuries—followed. Yet the monks were often active in their own rude style of composition; and among them were not only good men, but men of eminent natural abilities, who were unconsciously paving the way for a better time.
SAXON ENGLAND.—In England, by the Saxon conquest, a purely Teutonic kingdom was built up. The Saxons were heathen, who had never felt the civilizing influence of Rome. The traces of the earlier state of things in the province which had long been sundered from the empire, they swept away in the progress of their conquest.
RELIGIOUS DISPUTES.—While the West was beginning to recover from the shock of the barbarian invasions, society in the Eastern Empire was growing more enervated and corrupt. For a considerable period the Byzantine government was managed by the influence of women. Thus Theodosius II., the successor of Arcadius (408-450), was governed during his whole reign by his sister Pulcheria. In the East, there was an intense interest felt in the abstruse questions of metaphysical theology. The Greek mind was speculative; and eager and often acrimonious debate on such questions as were raised by Nestorius respecting the two natures of the Saviour, was heard even in the shops and markets. The court meddled actively in these heated controversies, and was swayed to one party or the other by the theologians whom, for the time, it took into its favor. The emperors assumed the high prerogative of personally deciding in doctrinal disputes, and of dictating opinions to the clergy, who gradually lost their independence, and became abjectly subservient to the imperial will.
THE HIPPODROME.—The rage for doctrinal dispute in the sixth century was only exceeded by the passions kindled in connection with the circus, or hippodrome, at Constantinople. In old Rome the competitors in the chariot-races were organized, the drivers wore their respective badges,—red, white, blue, or green,—and emperors of the baser sort, like Caligula and Caracalla, visited the stables, and were enrolled on the lists of the rival factions. But in Constantinople the factions of the blue and the green, not content with the contest of the race-course, were violent political parties in which courtiers and the emperor himself took sides. The animosity of the blues and the greens broke out in frequent bloody conflicts in the streets. Their respective adherents spread into the provinces. On one occasion, under Justinian, they raised a sedition called Nika (from the watchword used by the combatants), which well-nigh subverted the throne. In this period the body-guard of the emperor played a part resembling that of the old praetorians at Rome.
JUSTINIAN.—A new dynasty began with Justin I., who succeeded Anastasius in 518. A peasant from Dardania (Bulgaria), who to the end of life was obliged to sign his name by means of an engraved tablet, but, from being prefect of the Guard, became emperor, Justin was still not without merit as a ruler. He educated his nephew, Justinian I. (527-565), and made him his successor. Justinian married Theodora, who had been a comedian and a courtesan, and was famous for her beauty. She was the daughter of Acacius, who had had the care of the wild beasts maintained by one of the factions of the circus. She joined the blues, and it was her brave spirit that prevented Justinian from taking flight when he was in imminent danger from the revolt of the Nika. The most important proceedings and decisions in affairs of state were determined by her will. Outwardly correct in her life, and zealous for orthodoxy, her vigor of mind and cleverness were not without service to the government; but her vindictive passions had full indulgence. Justinian's reign was the most brilliant period in the Byzantine history after the time of Constantine. Under his despotic rule the last vestiges of republican administration were obliterated. His love of pomp and of extravagant expenditure, in connection with his costly wars, subjected the people to a crushing weight of taxation.
WAR WITH PERSIA.—The brilliant achievements in war during Justinian's reign were owing to the skill and valor of his generals, especially of the hero Belisarius. After a hundred years of amity with Persia, war with that kingdom broke out once more under Anastasius and Justin. Belisarius saved the Asiatic provinces, and defended the empire on the east against Cobad, and against his successor, Chosroes I. (531-579), who was, perhaps, the greatest of the Persian kings of the Sassanid dynasty. The "endless peace" made with him in 533 lasted but seven years. Chosroes captured Antioch in 540. The worst consequences of this success were again averted by Belisarius, who was recalled from Italy in all haste. In the treaty of 562, Justinian ingloriously agreed to pay for the honor of being the protector of the Christians in Persia the annual tribute of thirty thousand pieces of gold.
CONQUEST OF AFRICA—From a military point of view the conquests of Justinian in Africa, in Italy, and in Spain, were the signal events of his reign. Victory proved fatal to the barbarian conquerors in those countries. They were weakened by the southern climate, by sensual indulgence, and by strife among themselves. Justinian was ready to profit by this diminished capacity of resistance. Gelimer, king of the Vandals, had put to death Hilderic, a kinsman of Theodosius I. The emperor made this an occasion of attacking the Vandal kingdom, which was distracted by religious differences and contention. Belisarius sailed to Africa with a fleet of six hundred vessels, manned with twenty thousand sailors and fifteen thousand troops. Three months after landing he gained a decisive victory, and took possession of Africa, Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles (534). He carried Gelimer as a captive to Constantinople, and presented him to Justinian and Theodora, seated side by side in the hippodrome to receive the triumphal procession in honor of the victor. The captive ruler could only exclaim, "Vanity, vanity! All is vanity!"
CONQUEST OF ITALY.—Professedly to avenge the wrongs of Amalasontha, the ambitious and intriguing daughter of Theodoric, who had been killed as a consequence of the disaffection of the Goths, Belisarius was sent to Italy. Sicily was conquered (535), and Naples and Rome were taken (536). Vitiges, the new king of the Goths, united the forces of the nation; but he was driven to shut himself up in Ravenna, and Ravenna surrendered (540). The Goths had offered the sovereignty of the country to Belisarius. The jealousy of Justinian, and war with Persia, led to the recall of Belisarius before he could complete the work of conquest. The Goths under Totila, a nephew of the late king, regained the greater part of Italy. Belisarius (544-549) was sent for the second time to conquer that country. He gained important successes, and recaptured Rome; but he was feebly supported by the suspicious and envious ruler at Constantinople, and was at length called home. Narses, a eunuch, insignificant in person, but as crafty as he was brave, was commissioned to accomplish what Belisarius had not been allowed to effect. He entered Italy at the head of an army, made up mostly of Huns, Heruli, and other barbarians, and defeated Totila, who died of his wounds (552). The Ostrogothic kingdom fell. The Gothic warriors who survived had leave to quit the country with their property, they having taken an oath never to return. The Ostrogoths, as a nation, vanish from history. The EXARCHATE, or vice-royalty of the Eastern Empire, was established, with its seat at Ravenna. In Spain, Justinian obtained Corduba, Assidona, Segontia (554), in reward of the assistance which he had rendered to Athanagild against a competitor for the throne. Constantinople was saved by Belisarius from a threatened attack of the Bulgarians, who had crossed the Danube on the ice (559). This great general, whose form and stature and benign manners attracted the admiration of the people, as his noble but poorly requited services gave him a right to the gratitude of the sovereign, was accused, in 563, of conspiracy against the life of Justinian. His property was confiscated, but his innocence was finally declared. The story that he was deprived of his eyes, and compelled to beg his bread, is not credited. He died in 565. A few months later Justinian himself died at the age of eighty-three. He has been aptly compared, as to his personal character and the character of his reign, to Louis XIV. of France. Among the many structures which he reared was the temple of St. Sophia at Constantinople, and countless fortresses for the defense of the capital, of the Danube, and of other parts of the exposed frontier.
THE CIVIL LAW.—Justinian's principal distinction in history grows out of his relation to legislation, and to the study of the law. He caused a famous lawyer, Tribonian, with the aid of a body of jurists, to make those collections of ancient law which are still in force in many countries. The Code included the imperial constitutions and edicts in twelve books (527, 528). This was followed (533) by the Institutes, embracing the principles of Roman jurisprudence, which was to be studied in the schools of Constantinople, Berytus, and Rome; and the Digest, or Pandects, comprising the most valuable passages from the writings of the old jurists, that were deemed of authority. In this last work three million lines were reduced to a hundred and fifty thousand. Finally a fourth work, The Novels, embraced the laws of Justinian after the publication of the code (534-565). These works, taken together, form the Civil Law,—the Corpus Juris Civilis. They are the legacy of Rome to later times. Humane principles are incorporated into the civil law, but, likewise, the despotic system of imperialism.
THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY.—In the great "Wandering of the Nations," the German tribe of Lombards, or Langobards, had made their way into Pannonia. To the east of them, in Dacia, there had arisen the kingdom of the Gepidae, a people akin to the Goths. In that region, also, were the Turanian Avars, with whom the Lombards allied themselves, and overthrew the kingdom of the Gepidæ. After the conquest of Italy, Narses had established there the Byzantine system of rule and of grinding taxation. Discontent was the natural result. The enemies of Narses at Constantinople persuaded Justin II. and his queen Sophia, who had great influence over him, that prudence demanded the recall of the able, but avaricious and obnoxious, governor. The queen was reported to have said, that "he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the women of the palace, where a distaff should be placed in the eunuch's hand." "I will spin her such a thread," Narses is said to have replied, "as she shall not unravel her life long." He forthwith invited the Lombards into Italy, an invitation which they were not both to accept. Alboin was their leader, who had married the beautiful Rosamond, daughter of the Gepid king whom he had slain. Narses repented of his rash proceeding, but he died before he could organize a resistance to the invaders. These founded the great Lombard kingdom in the north of Italy, and the smaller Lombard states of Spoleto and Beneventum. Ravenna,—the residence of the Exarchs,—Rome, Naples, and the island city of Venice, were centers of districts still remaining subject to the Greek emperor, as were also the southern points of the two peninsulas of Southern Italy, and, for the time, the three main islands. Alboin was killed in 574 at the instigation of Rosamond, to whom, it was said, at a revel he had sent wine to drink in the skull of Cunimund, her father. The Lombards were not like the Goths. They formed no treaties, but seized on whatever lands they wanted, reserving to themselves all political rights. The new-comers were Arian in religion, and partly heathen. There was little intermixture by marriage between the two classes of inhabitants. Lombard and Roman was each governed by his own system of law. Later, especially under the kings Liutprand, Rachis, and Aistulf (749-756), this antagonism was much lessened, and the Roman law gained a preponderating influence in the Lombard codes. Gradually the power of the independent Lombard duchies increased. The strength of the Lombard kingdom was thus reduced. The Lombards more and more learned the arts of civilized life from the Romans, and shared in the trading and industrial pursuits of the cities. Their gradual conversion to Catholic Christianity brought the two peoples still nearer together. It was within half a century of the Lombard conquest that Gregory I. (Gregory the Great) held the papal office (590-604).
AFTER JUSTINIAN.—During the century and a half that followed the death of Justinian, the history of the Byzantine court and empire is an almost unbroken tale of crime and degeneracy. The cruelty of such emperors as Phocas (602-610) and Justinian II. surpasses the brutality of Nero and Domitian. The reign of Heraclius is the only refreshing passage in this dreary and repulsive record. He led his armies in person in a series of campaigns against Chosroes II., the Persian king. At the very time when Constantinople was besieged in vain by a host of Persians and Avars, he conducted his forces into the heart of the Persian Empire; and in a great battle near Nineveh in 627, he won a decisive victory. With the reign of Heraclius, the transient prosperity of the Greek Empire comes to an end. It was exhausted, even by its victories. Overwhelmed with taxation, it was ruined in its trade and industry. Despotism in the rulers, sensuality and baseness in rulers and subjects, undermined public and private virtue. In addition to other enemies on every side, it was attacked by the Arabians; and Heraclius lived to see the loss of Syria and of Egypt, and the capture of Alexandria, by these new assailants.
CONTROVERSY ON IMAGE WORSHIP.—The period of theological debate, when at its height in the fourth and fifth centuries, whatever extravagances of doctrinal zeal attended it, dealt with themes of grave importance; and controversy was often waged by men of high ability and moral worth. After that time, there succeeded to the tempest an intellectual stagnation, under the blighting breath of despotism, coupled with the effect of a lassitude, the natural sequel of the long-continued disputation. But, in the eighth and ninth centuries, a new controversy took place, which convulsed the Eastern Empire, and extended to the West. The matter in dispute was the use of images in worship. Pictorial representations had been gradually introduced in the earlier centuries, but had been opposed, especially in Egypt and in the African Church. After the time of Constantine, they came by degrees into universal use. This formed a ground of reproach on the part of the Mohammedans. The warfare upon images was begun by Leo III., the Isaurian (717-741), a rough soldier with no appreciation of art, who issued an edict against them. The party of "image-breakers," or iconoclasts, had numerous adherents; and the opposite party of "image-worshipers," who had a powerful support from the monks in the convents, were ardent and inflexible in withstanding the imperial measures. Neither the remonstrances of John of Damascus, the last of the Greek Fathers, nor of the Roman bishop, made an impression on Leo. The agitation spread far and wide. Subsequent emperors followed in his path. At length, however, the Empress Irene (780-802) restored image-worship; and, in 842, the Empress Theodora finally confirmed this act. In the controversy, religious motives were active, but they were mingled on both sides with political considerations. The alienation of feeling on the part of the Roman bishops was one cause of the separation of Italy from the Greek Empire.
LITERATURE AND CULTURE.—While there was a prevalence of illiteracy in the West, there continued in the Eastern Empire an interest in letters, and a respect for classical literature. Devoted Greek monks taught the Gospel to the Bulgarians and to the Slavonian tribes on its borders. Cyril and Methodius, faithful missionaries, gave the Bible to the Moravians in their own tongue. In the seventh century, John of Damascus compiled from the Greek Fathers a celebrated treatise on theology. But the period of original thought in theology, as elsewhere, had passed by. This work of the Damascene was made up chiefly of excerpts from the Fathers before him. In earlier days the church in the East had been served by erudite theologians of great talents and of great excellence, such as Basil the Great (328-379), Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzum (326-390); all of whom were liberal-minded men, strenuous defenders of orthodox doctrine, and yet not unfriendly to philosophical study. Of even wider fame was John Chrysostom (347-407), a preacher of captivating eloquence and of an earnest Christian spirit, whose censure of the vices of the Byzantine court provoked the wrath of the Empress Eudoxia, and twice drove him into banishment. In the declining days of the empire, literary effort was mainly confined to compilations and comments. Eusebius, in the fourth century, had written a History of the Church, and a Chronicle, or General History; and, a century later (about 432), Zosimus composed a History in a spirit of antipathy to Christianity and of sympathy with the old religion. To Procopius (who died about 565) we owe an interesting history of the times of Justinian. After the seventh century, all traces of life and spirit vanish from the pages of the Byzantine historians. In mathematics and astronomy, in architecture and mechanics, the Byzantine Greeks were the teachers of the Arabians and of the new peoples of the West. The Byzantine style of architecture was of a distinct type, and was widely diffused.
THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.—In the sixth century the Slavonian tribes come into view. The Avars stirred up such a commotion among those tribes as the Huns had created among the Germans. The Slaves were driven to the northwest, where later they came into relations with Germany; and to the southwest, where, as conquerors and as learners, they stood, in some degree, in relation to the Eastern Empire, in the same position as that of the Germans in reference to the Western. North and East of the Adriatic arose Slavonian States, as Servia, Croatia, Carinthia. Istria and Dalmatia, except the cities on the coast, became Slavonic. The Slaves displaced the old Illyrian race. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Macedonia and Greece were largely occupied by Slavonians. The Bulgarians were a Turanian people, who mixed with the Slavonians, and adopted their language. In 895 the Magyars, a Turanian people, crowded into Dacia and Pannonia; and thus the Bulgarians were confined to the lands south of the Danube. The Magyars formed the kingdom of Hungary. The Slavonian Russians were cut off from the Southern tribes of the same race.
CONDITION OF ARABIA.—In the sixth century the influence of the Greek and of the Persian Empires, especially of the Persian, was prevalent in Arabia. It was then inhabited mostly by tribes either distinct or loosely bound together, and contained no independent state of any considerable importance. The Arabs of that day had "all the virtues and vices of the half-savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty." In the Hejaz district—situated between fertile and more civilized Yemen, or Arabia Felix, in the south-west of the peninsula and the Sinaitic region,—and in Nejd to the east of Hejaz, which were the two districts in which Islam and the Arabian Empire took their rise, dwelt tribes whose common sanctuary was the Kaaba at Mecca, in the wall of which was the quadrangular black stone kissed by all devotees, and supposed to have been received from the angel Gabriel. The religion of the Arabs was polytheism in many different forms, in which idol-worship was prominent; but all agreed in acknowledging one supreme God, Allah, in whose name solemn oaths were taken. Once in the year the tribes gathered in Mecca for their devotions; and a great fair in the vicinity, attended by a poetical contest, made the city prosperous. The town was made up of separate Septs, or patriarchal families, each under its own head, of which septs the Omayyads were of principal importance, and had charge of the Kaaba. Mohammed belonged to the Hashimites, another and poorer branch of the leading tribe of Koreish. The Koreishites, by their trading-journeys to Syria, had acquired more culture then others, whether Bedouins, or residents of Medina. At the time when Mohammed was born, which was probably in 572, the religion of the Arabs had sunk into idolatry or indifference. There were three hundred and sixty images in the Kaaba. But there were some who were called hanifs, who were serious and earnest, and turned away from idolatrous worship. Besides the Sabian religion of the Persian sun-worshipers, the leading tenets and rites of Christianity and of Judaism, both in the degenerate types which they assumed on the Syrian borders, were not unfamiliar to Arabs dwelling in the caravan routes on the borders of the Red Sea.
CAREER OF MOHAMMED.—Mohammed was early left an orphan under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. In his youth he tended sheep, and gathered wild berries in the desert. In his twenty-fifth year he became the commercial agent of a wealthy widow, Khadija, made journeys for her into Palestine and Syria,—where he may have received religious knowledge and impressions from Christian monks and Jewish rabbis,—and, after a time, married her. He is described as having a commanding presence, with piercing eyes, fluent in speech, and with pleasing ways. Eventually he came into close contact with the hanifs. He followed the custom of retiring for meditation and prayer to the lonely and desolate Mount Hira. A vivid sense of the being of one Almighty God and of his own responsibility to God, entered into his soul. A tendency to hysteria in the East a disease of men as well as of women—and to epilepsy helps to account for extraordinary states of body and mind of which he was the subject. At first he ascribed his strange ecstasies, or hallucinations, to evil spirits, especially on the occasion when an angel directed him to begin the work of prophesying. But he was persuaded by Khadija that their source was from above. He became convinced that he was a prophet inspired with a holy truth and charged with a sacred commission. His wife was his first convert. His faith he called Islam, which signifies "resignation to the divine will." His cousin Ali, his friend Abubekr, and a few others, believed in him. There is no doubt that the materials of Mohammed's creed were drawn from Jewish and Christian sources: Abraham was the hanif, whose pure monotheism he claimed to re-assert; but the animating spirit was from within. The sum of his doctrine was, that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God.
AFTER THE HEGIRA.—The Koreishites, the rulers and the elders, persecuted him. They flung out the reproach, that his adherents were from the poor or from the rank of slaves. This provoked him to denounce them, and to threaten them with the Divine judgment and with perdition. He lost his uncle in 619: his wife had died before. He had found sympathy with his claims from pious men from Medina. They offered him an asylum. Thither he went in 622, the date of his Hijira, or flight from Mecca, from which the Mohammedan calendar is reckoned. At Medina he won influence: he was frequently resorted to as an adviser, and as a judge to settle disputes. His activity in this direction was beneficent. His injunctions respecting the rights of property, and the protection due to women, were, in the main, discreet and wholesome. Naturally and speedily he became a political leader as well as a religious reformer. This new course on which he entered made a breach between him and the Jews, whom he had hoped to conciliate. He drew off from fellowship with them, made Friday the principal day of public worship, and Mecca its principal seat. For the Jewish fast he substituted the month of Ramadan. His plan was to cement together the Arab tribes, superseding the old tie of blood by the new bond of fellowship in adherence to him. The project of a holy war to conquer and to crush the idolaters, and to establish his own authority, was the means to this end. Mecca was the first object of assault. He attacked and plundered a Meccan caravan in 623. The next year he defeated the Koreishites in the battle of Bedr. In the battle of Ohod (625) his followers were worsted. Other conflicts ensued, with attacks on the Jews in the intervals, until, in 630, he entered Mecca at the head of ten thousand men, and destroyed all the idols. This event secured the adhesion of the Arabian tribes, together with the chiefs of Yemen and of the other more civilized districts. Hearing that the Emperor Heraclius was proposing to attack him, he went forth to meet him, but found that the rumor was false. He was preparing a new expedition against the Greeks when he died, in 632.
CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED.—From the time of the flight of Mohammed to Medina, the prophet turned more and more into the politician. Under the circumstances, this was, perhaps, an almost inevitable change. But one consequence was the bringing out of his natural vindictiveness, and the transformation of the enthusiast into the fanatic. Beginning as the prophet of Arabia, he came to think that he was the prophet of the whole world. There was a call to a wider warfare against idolatry. A crusade, partly political and partly religious, involved a mixture of craft and cruelty which exhibit his character in a new light. Yet it is probable that he always sincerely felt that his work in general was one to which he was called of God. Even the prosaic regulations and "orders of the day," which are placed in the Koran, if not the reproduction, in cataleptic visions, of his previous thoughts, may have been regarded by him as having a divine sanction. The extent of possible self-deception in so extraordinary a combination of qualities, it is not easy to define. His conduct was, for the most part, on a level with his precepts. There was one exception; he allowed not more than four wives to a disciple: he himself, at one time, had eleven. While Khadija lived he was wedded to her alone.
THE KORAN.—The Koran is regarded as the word of God by a hundred millions of disciples. It is very unequal in style. In parts it is vigorous, and here and there imaginative, but generally its tone is prosaic. Its narrative portions are chiefly about scriptural persons, especially those of the Old Testament. Mohammed's acquaintance with these must have been indirect, from rabbinical and apocryphal sources. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ are acknowledged as prophets. The deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity are repudiated. The miracles of Jesus are acknowledged. Mohammed does not claim for himself miraculous power. Predestination is taught, but this became a conspicuous tenet of Moslems after the death of the founder. The immortality of the soul is admitted, the pains of hell are threatened to the wicked and to "infidels;" and a sensual paradise is promised to the faithful, although it is declared that higher spiritual joys are the lot of the most favored. The faith of Mohammed was, in substance, Judaism, the religion of the Old Testament; power being set before holiness, however, in the conception of God, and the supernatural mission of Mohammed substituted for the future Messianic reign of righteousness and peace, and coupled with the emphatic proclamation of the last judgment. The law in the Koran is a civil as well as a moral code. Notwithstanding his countenance of sensuality by his own practice, as well as by his legalizing of polygamy, and his notion of paradise, Mohammed elevated the condition of woman among the Arabs. Before there was unbridled profligacy: now there was a regulated polygamy. Severe prohibitions are uttered against thieving, usury, fraud, false witness; and alms-giving is emphatically enjoined. Strong drink and gambling were prohibited.
The gem of the Koran is "The Lord's Prayer of the Moslems:" "In the name of God, the compassionate Compassioner, the Sovereign of the day of judgment. Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance. Direct us in the right way; in the way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious, in whom there is no wrath, and who go not astray."
THE ARABIC CONQUESTS: SYRIA, PERSIA, EGYPT.—Mohammed made no provision for the succession. The Caliphs, or "successors," combined in themselves civil, military and religious authority. They united the functions of emperor and pope. Ali, the husband of Fatima, Mohammed's favorite daughter, had hoped to succeed him. But, by the older companions of the prophet, Abubekr, Mohammed's father-in-law was appointed. The Shiites were supporters of Ali, while the Sunnites, who adhered to "the traditions of the elders," were against him. These two parties have continued until the present day; the Persians being Shiites, and the Turks, Sunnites. Mohammed, before he died, was inflamed with the spirit of conquest. Full of the fire of fanaticism, mingled with a thirst for dominion and plunder, the Arabians rapidly extended their sway. These warriors, to their credit be it said, if terrible in attack, were mild in victory. Their two principal adversaries were the Eastern Empire and Persia. Mohammedanism snatched from the empire those provinces in which the Greek civilization had not taken deep root, and it made its way into Europe. It conquered Persia, and became the principal religion of those Asiatic nations with which history mainly has to do. Mohammed had made a difference in his injunctions between heathen, apostates, and schismatics, all of whom were to embrace Islam or to perish, and Jews and Christians, to both of whom was given the choice of the Koran, tribute, or death. They must buy the right to exercise their religion, if they refused to say that "Allah is God, and Mohammed is His prophet." Omar (634-644), the next caliph after Abubekr, and a leader distinguished alike for his military energy and his simplicity of manners and life, first brought all Arabia, which was impelled as much by a craving for booty as by religious zeal, into a cordial union under his banner. Then he carried the war beyond the Arabian borders. Palestine and Syria were wrested from the Greek Empire; the old cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Damascus fell into the hands of the impetuous Saracens. A mosque was erected on the site of Solomon's Temple. The Persian Empire was invaded, and, after a series of sanguinary battles, especially the battle of Cadesia (636), followed by the battle of Nehavend (641), was destroyed. Ctesiphon, with all its riches, was captured, and Persepolis was sacked. The last king of the line of Sassanids, Yezdegerd III., having lived for many years as a fugitive, perished by the hand of an assassin (652). Meantime Egypt had submitted to the irresistible invaders under Amr, who was aided by the Christian sect of the Copts, out of hostility to the Greek Orthodox Church. After a siege of fourteen months, Alexandria was taken; but it is probably not true that the library was burned by Omar's order. In the disorders of the times, the great collections of books had probably, for the most part, been dispersed and destroyed. Six friends of Mohammed, selected by Omar, chose Othman (644-656) for his successor, who stirred up enmity by his pride and avarice. Under him the Christian Berbers in Africa were won over to the faith of Islam, and paved the way for its further advance.
THE OMAYYADS: CONQUEST OF AFRICA AND SPAIN.—Othman was assassinated by three fanatics, and Ali was then raised to the caliphate; but Muawiyah, representing the family of the Omayyads, made himself the head of an opposing party, and, after the assassination of Ali, became sole caliph (661). He removed the seat of the caliphate to Damascus. He carried the Arabian conquests as far as the Indus and Bokhara. He created a fleet on the Mediterranean, under an "Admiral," that is, a commander on the sea. In seven successive years he menaced Constantinople with his navy. At a later time, in 717, under the caliph Soliman, another great attempt was made on the capital of the Greek Empire. With an army of a hundred and twenty thousand men, he traversed Asia Minor and the Hellespont, and was supported in his attack by a fleet of eighteen hundred sail. But the energetic defense, which was aided by the use of "the Greek fire,"—an artificial compound which exploded and burned with an unquenchable flame,—caused the grand expedition to fail; and the Eastern Empire had another long lease of life. The successors of Muawiyah accomplished the subjugation of Africa. They were invited by the native inhabitants, who groaned under the burdens of taxation laid on them by the Greek emperors. About A.D. 700 the Arab governor, Musa, completed the conquest of the African dominion of the Greeks as far as the Atlantic. The amalgamation of the Berbers with the other inhabitants of that region, and with the Arabs, resulted in the race called Moors. At this time the Spanish Visigothic kingdom, which had become Catholic (586-601), was much enfeebled, and a prey to discord. Under Tarik—from whom Gibraltar, or the mountain of Tarik near which he landed, is named—the Arabs crossed into Spain, and for the first time found themselves face to face with the barbarians of the North. In the great battle of Xeres de la Frontera, near the Guadalquivir, in 711, which lasted for three days, the fate of the Visigothic kingdom was decided. Eight years were occupied in conquering Spain. In 720 the Saracens occupied Septimania north of the Pyrenees, a dependency of the Gothic kingdom. Gaul now lay open before them. The Mohammedan power threatened to encircle Christendom, and to destroy the Church and Christianity itself. In the plains between Tours and Poitiers, the Saracens were met by the Austrasian Franks under Charles Martel (732). The impetuous charges of the Saracen cavalry were met and beaten back by the infantry of the Franks, which confronted them like an iron wall. The Mohammedan defeat saved Christian Europe from being trampled under foot by the Mussulman; it saved the Christian people of the Aryan nations from being subjugated by the Semitic disciples of the Koran. At the same time that Spain was overrun, the Turkish lands on the east of the Caspian were subdued. The old antipathy between the Iranians and Turanians, the Schiite Persians and the Sunnite Turks, was afterwards carried into Europe by the Ottoman Moslems.
THE ABBASSIDES: BAGDAD.—Misgovernment embittered the faithful against the rule of the Omayyads in Damascus, although Syria had become a source of higher culture for the Arabians: there they became acquainted with Greek learning. The adherents of Ali found vigorous champions in the Abbassides, who, as Hashimites, laid claim to the caliphate. One of them, Abul Abbas, was made caliph by the soldiers in 750. The fierce cruelty of his party against the Omayyads led to the murder of all of them except Abderrahman, who fled to Africa, and, in 755, founded an independent caliphate at Cordova. The Abbassides attached themselves to the Sunnite creed. Under Almansor, the brother and successor of Abbas, Bagdad, a city founded by Almansor (754-775) on the banks of the Tigris, was made the seat of the caliphate, and so continued until the great Mongolian invasion in 1258. Bagdad was built on the west bank of the Tigris, but, by means of bridges, stretched over to the other shore. It was protected by strong, double walls. It was not only the proud capital of the caliphate: it was, besides, the great market for the trade of the East, the meeting-place of many nations, where caravans from China and Thibet, from India, and from Ferghana in the modern Turkestan, met throngs of merchants from Armenia and Constantinople, from Egypt and Arabia. There trading-fleets gathered which carried the products of the North and West down the great rivers to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Bagdad was to the caliphs what Byzantium was to Constantine, or Alexandria to the Ptolemies. It became the grandest city in the world. Canals to the number of six hundred ran through it, and a hundred and five bridges bound its two parts together. It was furnished with many thousand mosques and as many baths. The palace of the caliphs comprised in itself all the splendor which Asiatic taste and extravagance could collect and combine in one edifice.
THE EASTERN CALIPHATE.—Deprived of the western extremity of their empire, the Abbassides still ruled over Asia and Africa. In their luxurious and splendid court, the caliphs, served by a vast retinue of officers with the Vizier at their head, copied the magnificence of the ancient Persians. The most famous of the caliphs of Bagdad is Harun-al-Rashid, or "Aaron the Just" (786-809). His name is familiar even to children as the wonderful hero of the "Arabian Nights." His reign, like that of Solomon in ancient Judæa, was considered in after times the golden age of the caliph dominion. As in the case of Charlemagne, poetry and romance invested his character and reign with all that can give glory and honor to a king and a sage. Brilliant pictures were drawn of the boundless wealth and luxury of his court, and of his admirable piety and wisdom. About him there was assembled a host of jurists, linguists, and poets. Three hundred scholars traveled at his expense through different lands. Righteous judgments were ascribed to him, and oracular sayings. He was made the ideal ruler of Oriental fancy. His real character fell much below the later popular conception. He behaved like an Eastern despot towards all his kindred who stood in his way. The Persian family of Barmecides he exterminated, when his passionate attachment to one of them turned to hatred on account of an obscure affair connected with the harem. Stories told by Western chroniclers of his relations with Charlemagne require to be sifted. The Greek emperor Nicephorus, who had rashly defied him, he addressed as the "Roman dog." Nine times Harun invaded the Greek Empire, left its provinces wasted as by a hurricane, and extorted from it a tribute which he obliged the emperors, who repented of their daring, to pay in coin stamped with his image. His best distinction is in the liberal patronage which he, no doubt, extended to learning. In this he was imitated by his son Al Mamun (813-833), who founded numerous schools, and expended vast sums in behalf of science and letters. The caliphate was weakened by the introduction of the Turks, somewhat as the Roman Empire fared from its relations with the Germans. Motasem (833-842), the eighth of the Abbassides, brought in a Turkish guard of forty thousand slaves, purchased in Tartary. These soldiers, instead of remaining servants, became lawless masters, and disposed of the throne as the prætorians at Rome had done. The palace of the caliphs was filled with violence. Revolution and anarchy, kept up during two centuries, broke the caliphate into fragments. Conspiracies and insurrections were the order of the day. Africa had detached itself in the time of Harun-al-Rashid. In Asia various independent dynasties arose, formed mostly by Turkish governors of provinces.
THE TURKISH EMIRS.—In the eleventh century, the Seljukian Turks despoiled the Arabs of their sovereignty in the East. The caliph at Bagdad gave up all his temporal power to Togrul Bey (1058), and retained simply the spiritual headship over orthodox Mussulmans. To the Turk who bore the title Emir al Omra, was given the military command. He was what the Mayor of the Palace had been among the Franks. In 1072 his son, Malek Shah, made Ispahan his capital, and governed Asia from China to the vicinity of Constantinople.
THE FATIMITE CALIPHATE.—In the ninth and tenth centuries the Aglabites (800-909), whose capital was Cairoan (in Tunis), were dominant in the Western Mediterranean, established themselves, in their marauding expeditions, in Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily, and several times attacked Italy. In 909 they, with the Edrisites, adherents of Ali, in Fez, formed, under a Fatimite chief, Moez, with Egypt, the African Caliphate, the seat of which was at Cairo (968). The Fatimite caliphs extended their power over Syria. The most famous of the caliphs of Cairo was Hakem (996-1020), a monster of cruelty, who claimed to be the incarnation of Deity. These caliphs claimed to be the descendants of Ali and of Fatima. Their dynasty was extinguished by Saladin in 1171.
THE CALIPHS OF CORDOVA.—In Spain the caliphs of Cordova allowed to the Christians freedom of worship and their own laws and judges. The mingling of the conquerors with the conquered gave rise to a mixed Mozarabic population. The Franks conquered the country as far as the Ebro (812). Under Mohammed I. (852), the Saracen governors of the provinces sought to make themselves independent; but the most brilliant period of the caliphate of Cordova followed, under Abderrahman III. (912-961). In the eleventh century there was anarchy, produced by the African guard of the caliphs, which played a part like that of the Turkish guard at Bagdad, and by reason of the rebellion of the governors. In 1031 the last descendant of the Omayyads was deposed, and in 1060 the very title of caliph vanished. The caliphate gave place to numerous petty Moslem kingdoms. The African Mussulmans came to their help, and thus gave the name of Moors to the Spanish Mohammedans. Their language and culture, however, remained Arabic. The Arabian conquests had moved like a deluge to the Indus, to the borders of Asia Minor, and to the Pyrenees. In Syria they were not generally resisted by the people. Egypt, for the same reason, was an easy conquest. It took the Moslems sixty years to conquer Africa. In three years nearly all Spain was theirs; and it was not until seven hundred years after this time that they were utterly driven out of that country.
THE MOSLEM GOVERNMENT—The Moslem civilization rested on the Koran. Grammar, lexicography, theology, and law stood connected at first with the study and understanding of the Sacred Book. The Caliph was the fountain of authority. There was a fixed system of taxation, the poll-tax and land-tax being imposed only on non-Moslem subjects. All Moslems received a yearly pension, a definite sum determined by their rank. The empire was divided into provinces, each governed by a Prefect, who was a petty sovereign, subject only to the Caliph. The Generals were appointed by the caliph, by the prefects, or by the Vizier, who was the prime minister. The Judges (cadis) were appointed by the same officers. There was a court of appeal over which the caliph presided. There were inspectors of the markets, who were also censors of morals. The Imam had for his function to recite the public prayers in the mosque. The leader of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca was an officer of the highest dignity.
THEOLOGY: LAW: LITERATURE.—The Mohammedans entered into discussions of theology, which gave rise to differences, and to schools and sects. The nature of the Deity, predestination, the future life, were subjects of profound and subtle inquiry. More than once, pantheistic doctrine was broached by speculative minds, such as Avicenna and Averrhoes. In Persia, Súfism, a form of mysticism, made great progress. It extolled the unselfish love of God, and a contemplative and ascetic life. Law was studied; and on the basis of the Koran, and of reasonings upon it, systems of jurisprudence were created. Science and Literature kept pace with legal studies. Poetry flourished through the whole period of the Eastern caliphate. There were, also, Persian poets who hold an important place in the history of literature, of whom Firdousi (about 940 to 1020) and Saadi (who died in 1291) are the most eminent. Under the Abbassides in Syria, through Christian scholars and by translations, the Arabians became acquainted with the Greek authors. They cultivated geography. The Moslems were students of astronomy, and carried the study of mathematics, which they learned from the Greeks and Hindus, very far. But they apparently felt no interest in the poets, orators, and historians of antiquity. In the study of Aristotle, and in metaphysical philosophy, they were proficients. Medicine, also, they cultivated with success. They delved in Alchemy in the search for the transmutation of metals.
COMMERCE AND THE ARTS.—The Moslems engaged actively in commerce. They acquired much skill in various branches of mechanical art. The weapons of Damascus and of Toledo, the silks of Granada, the saddles of Cordova, the muslins, silks, and carpets of the Moslem dominions in the East, were highly prized in Christian countries. They manufactured paper. Forbidden to represent the human form in painting and sculpture, their distinction in the fine arts is confined to architecture. Peculiar to them is the Arabesque ornamentation found in their edifices: the idea of the arch was borrowed from the Byzantine style. One of their most famous monuments is the mosque at Cordova. The ruins of the Alhambra, in Spain, a palace and a fortress, illustrate the richness and elegance of the Saracenic style of building.
THE ARABIAN MIND.—Neither in architecture, nor in any other department, were the Arabs in a marked degree original. They invented nothing. They were quick to learn, and to assimilate what they learned. They were apt interpreters and critics, but they produced no works marked by creative genius. Many of the scholars at the court of the caliphs were Christians and Jews. Yet Bagdad, Samarcand, Cairo, Grenada, Cordova, were centers of intellectual activity and of learning when the nations of Western Europe had not escaped from the barbarism resulting from the Teutonic invasions.
LITERATURE.—Lives of Mohammed by MUIR, SPRENGER (German), Irving: Encycl. Brit., Art. Mohammedanism; Kuenen, National Religions and Universal Religions; Nöldeke, Gesch. d. Quorans (1860); Muir, The Corân (1878); R. B. Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (1875); Stobart, Islam and its Founder; Ockley, History of the Saracens (sixth edition, 1857); FREEMAN, History and Conquests of the Saracens (1870).
PIPIN of Heristal, d. 714.
|
+—Charles Martel, d. 741.
|
+—PIPIN the Short, king 752-768.
|
+—CHARLEMANGE, 768-814 (emperor 800).
| |
| +—Pipin, King of Italy, d. 810.
| | |
| | +—BERNARD, d. 818.
| |
| +—Charles, King of Franconia.
| |
| +—LOUIS the Pious, 814-840.
| |
| | LOTHARINGIA
| |
| +—LOTHAR I, 843-855.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS II, 855-875
| | | |
| | | +—Hermingarde, m.
| | | BOSO I, King of Provence, 879-887
| | | |
| | | +—LOUIS, 887-905 (emperor 901) m. Eadgifu,
| | | daughter of Edward the Elder
| | |
| | +—Lothar II, d. 869.
| | |
| | +—Charles, d. 863
| |
| | GERMANY
| |
| +—LOUIS the German, 843-876.
| | |
| | +—CARLOMAN, d. 880.
| | | |
| | | +—ARNULF, King of Germany, 887-899 (emperor 896).
| | | |
| | | +—LOUIS the Child, 900-911.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS the Younger. d 880.
| | |
| | +—CHARLES the Fat (emperor 881-887), d. 888.
| |
| | FRANCE
| |
| +—CHARLES the Bald, 843-877 (emperor 875).
| |
| +—LOUIS II, 877-879.
| |
| +—LOUIS III, 879-882
| |
| +—Carloman, 879-884
| |
| +—CHARLES the Simple, m. Eadgifu,
| daughter of Edward the Elder
| |
| +—LOUIS IV (D'Outremer), 936-954.
| |
| +—Matilda, m. CONRAD the Peaceful.
| | |
| | +—RUDOLPH III, 993-1032
| |
| +—LOTHAR, 954-986.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS V, 986-987.
| |
| +—Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, d. 994.
|
+—Carloman, 768-771.
Robert the Strong, d. 866.
|
+—EUDES, king 887-893.
|
+—ROBERT, king 922-923.
|
+—Emma, m. RUDOLPH of Burgundy; king 923-926.
|
+—Hugh the Great (father of Hugh Capet).
PIPIN THE SHORT.—The great event of the eighth century was the organization and spread of the dominion of the Franks, and the transfer to them of the Roman Empire of the West. Three Frank princes—Charles Martel, Pipin the Short, and Charlemagne, or Karl the Great—were the main instruments in bringing in this new epoch in European history. They followed a similar course, as regards the wars which they undertook, and their general policy. Charles Martel, the conqueror of the Saracens at Poitiers, rendered great services to the Church; but he provoked the lasting displeasure of the ecclesiastics by his seizures of church property. He rewarded his soldiers with archbishoprics. Pipin, however, was earnestly supported by the clergy. He had the confidence and favor of the Franks, and in 751, with the concurrence of Pope Zacharias, deposed Childeric III., and assumed the title of king. The long hair of Childeric, the badge of the Frank kings, was shorn, and he was placed in a monastery. In 752 Pipin was anointed and crowned at Soissons by Boniface, the bishop of Mentz, who exerted himself to restore order and discipline in the Frank Church, which had fallen into disorder in the times of Charles Martel.
PIPIN IN ITALY.—The controversy with the Greeks about the use of images had alienated the popes from the Eastern Empire. The encroachments of the Lombards threatened Rome itself, and were a constant menace to the independence of its bishops. Pope Stephen III. resorted to Pipin for help against these aggressive neighbors; and, in 754, Stephen solemnly repeated, in the cathedral of St. Denis, the ceremony of his coronation. The Carlovingian usurpation was thus hallowed in the eyes of the people by the sanction of the Church. The alliance between the Papacy and the Franks, so essential to both, was cemented. Pipin crossed the Alps in 754, and humbled Aistulf, the Lombard king; but, as Aistulf still kept up his hostility to the Pope, Pipin once more led his forces into Italy, and compelled him to become tributary to the Frank kingdom, and to cede to him the territory which he had won from the Greek Empire,—the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, or the lands and cities between the Apennines and the Adriatic, from Ferrara to Ancona. This territory the Frank king formally presented to St. Peter. Thus there was founded the temporal kingdom of the popes in Italy. Pipin was called Patricius of Rome, which made him its virtual sovereign, although the office and title implied the continued supremacy of the Eastern Empire. He united under him all the conquests which had been made by Clovis and his successors. His sway extended over Aquitaine and as far as the Pyrenees. It was the rule of the Teutonic North over the more Latin South, which had no liking for the Frank sovereignty.
CHARLEMAGNE: THE SAXONS AND SARACENS.—Pipin died in 768. By the death of his younger son, Carloman, his older son, Charles, in 771 became the sole king of the Franks. Charlemagne is more properly designated Karl the Great, for he was a German in blood and speech, and in all his ways. He stands in the foremost rank of conquerors and rulers. His prodigious energy and activity as a warrior may be judged by the number of his campaigns, in which he was uniformly successful. The eastern frontier of his dominions was threatened by the Saxons, the Danes, the Slaves, the Bavarians, the Avars. He made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slaves, four against the Avars. Adding to these his campaigns against the Saracens, Lombards, and other peoples, the number of his military expeditions is not less than fifty-three. In all but two of his marches against the Saxons, however, he accomplished his purpose without a battle. That he was ambitious of conquest and of fame, is evident. That he had the rough ways of his German ancestors, and was unsparing in war, is equally certain. Yet he was not less eminent in wisdom than in vigor; and his reign, on the whole, was righteous as well as glorious. The two most formidable enemies of Charlemagne were the Saxons and the Saracens. The Saxon war "was checkered by grave disasters, and pursued with undismayed and unrelenting determination, in which he spared neither himself nor others. It lasted continuously—with its stubborn and ever-recurring resistance, its cruel devastations, its winter campaigns, its merciless acts of vengeance—as the effort which called forth all Charles's energy for thirty-two years" (772-804). The Saxons were heathen. The conquest of them was the more difficult because it involved the forced introduction of Christianity in the room of their old religion. More than once, when they seemed to be subdued, they broke out in passionate and united revolt. Their fiercest leader in insurrection was Witikind. A last and terrible uprising, in consequence of the slaughter of forty-five hundred Saxons on the Aller as a punishment for breach of treaty, was put down in 785, when Witikind submitted, and consented to receive Christian baptism. During the progress of the Saxon war, at the call of the Arab governor of Saragossa for aid against the caliph Abderrahman, Charles marched into Spain, and conquered Saragossa and the whole land as far as the Ebro. On his return, in the valley of Ronceveaux, the Frank rear guard was surprised and destroyed by the Basques. There fell the Frank hero Roland, whose gallant deeds were a favorite subject of mediæval romances. The duchy of Bavaria was abolished after a second revolt of its duke, Tassilo (788). One of the most brilliant of Charlemagne's wars was that against the Hunnic Avars (791). Their land between the Ems and Raab he annexed to his empire. Bavarian colonists were planted in it. Enormous treasures which they had gathered, in their incursions, from all Europe, were captured, with their "Ring," or palace-camp. The Slavonic tribes were kept in awe. Brittany was subjugated in 811. In the closing years of Charles's reign, the Danes became more and more aggressive and formidable. He visited the northern coasts, made Boulogne and Ghent his harbors and arsenals, and built fleets for defense against the audacious invaders.
CHARLEMAGNE IN ITALY.—Some of the most memorable incidents in Charlemagne's career are connected with Italy. While he was busy in the Saxon war, he had been summoned to protect Pope Hadrian I. (772-795) from the attack of the Lombards. To please his mother, Charles had married, but he had afterwards divorced, the daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius. She was the first in the series of Charlemagne's wives, who, it is said, were nine in number. By the divorce he incurred the resentment of Desiderius, who required the Pope to anoint the sons of Carloman as kings of the Franks. In 772 Charlemagne crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis and the St. Bernard, captured Pavia, and shut up Desiderius in a Frank monastery. The king of the Franks became king of the Lombards, and lord of all Italy, except the Venetian Islands and the southern extremity of Calabria, which remained subject to the Greeks. The German king and the Pope were now, in point of fact, dominant in the West. A woman, Irene, who had put out the eyes of her son that she herself might reign, sat on the throne at Constantinople. This was a fair pretext for throwing off the Byzantine rule, which afforded no protection to Italians. Once more Charles visited Italy, to restore to the papal chair Leo III., who had been expelled by an adverse party, and, at Charles's camp at Paderborn, had implored his assistance. On Christmas Day in the year 800, during the celebration of mass in the old Basilica of St. Peter, Leo III. advanced to Charlemagne, and placed a crown on his head, saluting him, amid the acclamations of the people, as Roman emperor.
MEANING OF CHARLES'S CORONATION.—The coronation of Charlemagne made him the successor of Augustus and of Constantine. It was not imagined that the empire had ever ceased to be. The Byzantine emperors had been acknowledged in form as the rulers of the West: not even now was it conceived that the empire was divided. In the imagination and feeling of men, the creation of the Caesars remained an indivisible unity. The new emperor in the West could therefore only be regarded as a rival and usurper by the Byzantine rulers; but Charlemagne professed a friendly feeling, and addressed them as his brothers,—as if they and he were exercising a joint sovereignty. In point of fact, there had come to be a new center of wide-spread dominion in Western Europe. The diversity in beliefs and rites between Roman Christianity and that of the Greeks had been growing. The popes and Charlemagne were united by mutual sympathy and common interests. The assumption by him of the imperial title at their instance, and by the call of the Roman people, was the natural issue of all the circumstances.
CHARLES'S SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.—Charlemagne showed himself a statesman bent on organization and social improvement. There was a system of local officers. The border districts of the kingdom were made into Marks, under Margraves or Marquesses, for defense against the outlying tribes. One of them, to the east of Bavaria, was afterwards called Austria. Dukes governed provinces, some of which afterwards became kingdoms. Their power the emperor tried to reduce. The empire was divided into districts, in each of which a Count (Graf) ruled, with inferior officers, either territorial or in cities. Bishops had large domains, and great privileges and immunities. The officers held their places at the king's pleasure: they became possessed of landed estates, and the tendency was, for the offices to become hereditary.
The old German word Graf is of uncertain derivation, but means the same as count (from the Latin comes). Mark is a word found in all the Teutonic languages. From the signification of boundary, it came to be applied, like its synonym march, to a frontier district. A margrave (Mark-Graf) was a mark-count, or an officer ruling for the king in such a district. A viscount (vicecomes) was an officer subordinate to a count. Pfalz, meaning originally palace (from the Latin palatium), was the term for any one of the king's estates. The palsgrave (Pfalz-Graf) was first his representative in charge of one of these domains. The stallgrave (Stall-Graf) corresponded to the constable (comes stabuli) in English and French. It signifies the officer in charge of the king's stables, the groom. He had a military command. A later designation of the same office is marshal (from two old German words, one of which means a horse, as seen in our word mare, having the same etymology, and the other means a servant).
Imperial deputies, or missi, lay and ecclesiastical together, visited all parts of the kingdom to examine and report as to their condition, to hold courts, and to redress wrongs. There were appeals from them to the imperial tribunal, over which the Palsgrave presided. Twice in the year great Assemblies were held of the chiefs and people, to give advice as to the framing of laws. The enactments of these assemblies are collected in the Capitularies of the Frank kings. In the Church, Charlemagne tried to secure order, which had sadly fallen away, and had given place to confusion and worldliness. He himself exercised high ecclesiastical prerogatives, especially after he became emperor.
LEARNING AND CULTURE.—One of the chief distinctions of Charlemagne is the encouragement which he gave to learning. In his own palace at Aachen (Aix), he collected scholars from different quarters. Of these the most eminent is Alcuin, from the school of York in England. He was familiar with many of the Latin writers, and while at the head of the school in the palace, and later, when abbot of St. Martin in Tours, exerted a strong influence in promoting study. Charlemagne himself spoke Latin with facility, but not until late in life did he try to learn to write. It was his custom to be read to while he sat at meals. Augustine's City of God was one of the books of which he was fond. In the great sees and monasteries, schools were founded, the benefits of which were very soon felt.
CHARLES'S PERSONAL TRAITS.—Charlemagne was seven feet in height, and of noble presence. His eyes were large and animated, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his frame would have led one to expect. His bearing was manly and dignified. He was exceedingly fond of riding, hunting, and of swimming. Eginhard, his friend and biographer, says of him, "In all his undertakings and enterprises, there was nothing he shrank from because of the toil, and nothing that he feared because of the danger." He died, at the age of seventy, on Jan. 28, 814. He had built at Aix la Chapelle a stately church, the columns and marbles of which were brought from Ravenna and Rome. Beneath its floor, under the dome, was his tomb. There he was placed in a sitting posture, in his royal robes, with the crown on his head, and his horn, sword, and book of the Gospels on his knee. In this posture his majestic figure was found when his tomb was opened by Otto III., near the end of the tenth century. The marble chair in which the dead monarch sat is still in the cathedral at Aix: the other relics are at Vienna. The splendor of Charlemagne's reign made it a favorite theme of romance among the poets of Italy: a mass of poetic legends gathered about it.
EXTENT OF THE EMPIRE.—Charlemagne's empire comprised all Gaul, and Spain to the Ebro, all that was then Germany, and the greater part of Italy. Slavonic nations along the Elbe were his allies. Pannonia, Dacia, Istria, Liburnia, Dalmatia,—except the sea-coast towns, which were held by the Greeks,—were subject to him. He had numerous other allies and friends. Even Harunal-Rashid, the famous Caliph of Bagdad, held him in high honor. Among the most valued presents which were said to have come from the Caliph were an elephant, and a curious water-clock, which was so made, that, at the end of the hours, twelve horsemen came out of twelve windows, and closed up twelve other windows. This gift filled the inmates of the palace at Aix with wonder.
CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.—The number of free Franks diminished under Charlemagne. They were thinned out in the wars, or sunk into vassalage. The warnings and rebukes in the Capitularies, or body of laws, show that the upper clergy were often sensual and greedy of gain. The bishops would often lead in person their contingent of troops, until they were forbidden to do so by law. Nine-tenths of the population of Gaul were slaves. Charlemagne made Alcuin the present of an estate on which there were twenty thousand slaves. Especially in times of scarcity, as in 805 and 806, their lot was a miserable one. At such times, they fled in crowds to the monasteries. The social state was that of feudalism "in all but the development of that independence in the greater lords, which was delayed by the strength of Karl, but fostered, at the same time, by his wars and his policy towards the higher clergy."
CONVERSION OF GERMANY: BONIFACE.—The most active missionaries in the seventh and eighth centuries were, from the British islands. At first they were from Ireland and Scotland. Columban, who died in 615, and his pupil Gallus, labored, not without success, among the Alemanni. Gallus established himself as a hermit near Lake Constance. He founded the Abbey of St. Gall. The Saxon missionaries from England were still more effective. The most eminent of these was Winfrid, who received from Rome the name of Bonifacius (680-755). He converted the Hessians, and founded monasteries, among them the great monastery of Fulda. There his disciple, Sturm, "through a long series of years, directed the energies of four thousand monks, by whose unsparing labors the wilderness was gradually reclaimed, and brought into a state of cultivation." Boniface had proved the impotence of the heathen gods by felling with the axe an aged oak at Geismar, which was held sacred by their worshipers. Among the Thuringians, Bavarians, and other tribes, he extirpated paganism by peaceful means. He organized the German Church under the guidance of the popes, and, in 743, was made archbishop of Meniz, and primate. But his Christian ardor moved him to carry the gospel in person to the savage Frisians, by whom he was slain. He thus crowned his long career with martyrdom.
CONVERSION OF THE SCANDINAVIANS.—The apostle of the Scandinavians was Ansgar (801-865). The archbishopric of Hamburg was founded for him by Louis the Pious, with the papal consent; but, as Hamburg was soon plundered by pirates, he became bishop of Bremen (849). In that region he preached with success. Two visits he made to Sweden, the first with little permanent result; but, at the second visit (855), the new faith was tolerated, and took root. The triumph of the religion of the cross, which Ansgar had planted in Denmark, was secured there when Canute became king of England. The first Christian king in Sweden was Olaf Schooskonig (1008). In Norway, Christianity was much resisted; but when Olaf the Thick, who was a devoted adherent of the Christian faith, had perished in battle (1033), his people, who held him in honor, fell in with the church arrangements which he had ordained; and he became St. Olaf, the patron saint of Norway.
THE BENEDICTINES.—Benedict, born at Nursia, in Umbria, in 480, the founder of the monastery of Monte Cassino, north-west of Naples, was the most influential agent in organizing monasticism in Western Europe. He was too wise to adopt the extreme asceticism that had often prevailed in the East, and his judicious regulations combined manual labor with study and devotion. They not only came to be the law for the multitude of monasteries of his own order, but also served as the general pattern, on the basis of which numerous other orders in later times were constituted. His societies of monks were at first made up of laics, but afterwards of priests. The three vows of the monk were chastity, including abstinence from marriage; poverty, or the renunciation of personal possessions; and obedience to superiors. The Benedictine cloisters long continued to be asylums for the distressed, schools of education for the clergy, and teachers of agriculture and the useful arts to the people in the regions where they were planted. Their abbots rose to great dignity and influence, and stood on a level with the highest ecclesiastics.
DIVISIONS IN THE EMPIRE.—The influence of Charlemagne was permanent; not so his empire. It had one religion and one government, but it was discordant in language and in laws. The Gallo-Romans and the Italians spoke the Romance language, with variations of dialect. The Germans used the Teutonic tongue. Charlemagne left to the Lombards, to the Saxons, and to other peoples, their own special laws. The great bond of unity had been the force of his own character and the vigor of his administration. His death was, therefore, the signal for confusion and division. The tendency to dismemberment was aided by the ambition of the princes of the imperial family. The Austrasian Franks, to whom Charlemagne belonged, craved unity. The Gallo-Romans in the West, the Teutons in the East, aspired after independence.
Louis the Pious (814-840), Charlemagne's youngest son,—who, in consequence of the death of his elder brothers, was the sole successor of his father,—lacked the energy requisite for so difficult a place. He was better adapted to a cloister than to a throne. He had been crowned at Aix before his father's death; but he consented to be crowned anew by Pope Stephen IV. at Rheims, in 816. His troubles began with a premature division of his states between his sons, Lothar, Pipin, and Louis. His nephew, Bernhard, who was to reign in Italy in subordination to his uncle, rebelled, but was captured and killed (818). In order to provide for his son Charles the Bald, whose mother Judith he had married for his second wife, he made a new division in 829. The elder sons at once revolted against their father, and Judith and her son were shut up in a cloister (830). Louis the son repented, the Saxons and East Franks supported the emperor, and he was restored. In 833 he took away Aquitaine from Pipin, and gave it to Charles. The rebellious sons again rose up against him. In company with Pope Gregory IV., who joined them, they took their father prisoner on the plains of Alsace, his troops having deserted him. The place was long known as the "Field of Lies." He was compelled by the bishops to confess his sins in the cathedral at Soissons, reading the list aloud. Once more Louis was released, and forgave his sons; but partition after partition of territory, with continued discord, followed until his death. The quarrels of his surviving sons, Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald, brought on, in 841, the great battle of Fontenailles. The contest was occasioned by the ambition of Lothar, the eldest, who claimed for himself the whole imperial inheritance. There was great carnage, and Lothar was defeated. The bishops present saw in the result a verdict of God in favor of his two adversaries. The result was the Treaty of Verdun for the division of the empire.
TERMS OF THE TREATY OF VERDUN.—Louis the German took the Eastern and German Franks, and Charles the Bald the Western and Latinized Franks. Lothar, who retained the imperial title, received the middle portion of the Frank territory, including Italy and a long, narrow strip of territory between the dominions of his brothers, and extending to the North Sea. This land took later the name of Lotharingia, or Lorraine. It always had the character of a border-land. While Louis's share comprised only German-speaking peoples, Charles's kingdom was made up almost exclusively of Gallo-Roman inhabitants; while under Lothar the two races were mingled. This division marks the birth of the German and French nations as such. The German-speaking peoples in the East, who were affiliated in language, customs, and spirit, more and more grew together into a nation. In like manner, the subjects of the Western kingdom more and more were resolved into a Franco-Roman nationality. Lothar ruled at Aix-la-Chapelle, and was styled emperor; but each of the other kingdoms was independent, and the empire of Charlemagne was dissolved. Only for a short time, under Charles the Fat (881-887), nearly the whole monarchy of Charlemagne was united under one scepter. When he was deposed it was again broken in pieces; and four distinct kingdoms emerged,—those of the Eastern and Western Franks, "the forerunners of Germany and France," and the kingdoms of Italy and of Burgundy, in South-eastern Gaul, which were sometimes united and sometimes separate. Lotharingia was attached now to the Eastern and now to the Western Frank kingdom. In theory there was not a severance, but a sharing, of the common possession which had been the object of contention.
EASTERN CARLOVINGIANS.—Charles the Fat was a weak and sluggish prince. He offered no effectual resistance to the destructive ravages of the Normans, or Scandinavian Northmen. He was deposed in 887, and died in the following year on an island in the Lake of Constance. His successor, the grandson of Louis the German, Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, became king of the Germans, (887-899) and emperor; and, after his short reign, the line of Louis died out in Louis the Child, the weak son of Arnulf (900-911). The house of Charlemagne survived only among the Western Franks.
During the reign of Louis the Child, Hatto (I.), archbishop of Mentz and primate of Germany, was regent and guardian of the king. He was a bold defender of the unity of the empire. He was charged, truly or falsely, with taking the life of Adalbert, a Frank nobleman whom he had enticed into his castle. There was a popular tradition that the devil seized Hatto's corpse, and threw it into the crater of Mount Ætna. The mistake is often made of connecting the popular legend of the "Mouse-tower" at Bingen on the Rhine, with him. It was told of a later Hatto (Hatto II.), who was likewise archbishop of Mentz (968). He was charged with shutting up the poor in a barn, in a time of famine, and of burning them there. As the story runs, he called them "rats who ate the corn." Numberless mice swam to the tower which he had built in the midst of the stream, and devoured him. Southey has put the tale into a ballad,—"God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop."
KINGDOM OF FRANCE.—In 841 Rouen fell into the hands of the Normans, and Paris lay open to their attacks. In 861 Charles the Bald invested a brave soldier, Robert the Strong, whose descent is not known, with the county of Paris, that he might resist the invaders. He held the country between the Seine and the Loire, under the name of the Duchy of France. The other Francia, east of the Rhine, continued to be an important part of Germany, the district called Franconia. Robert was the greatgrandfather of Hugh Capet, the founder of the kingdom of France. Under the imbecile Charles the Fat, the audacious Northmen (885-886) laid siege to Paris. It was Odo, or Eudes, count of Paris, who led the citizens in their heroic and successful resistance. Him the nobles of France chose to be their king. His family were called "Dukes of the French." Their duchy—Western or Latin Francia—was the strongest state north of the Loire. The feudal lords were growing mightier, and the imperial or royal power was becoming weaker. After Odo of Paris was elected to the Western kingdom, there followed a period of about a hundred years during which there was a king sometimes from his house and sometimes from the family of the Carlovingians. The latter still spoke German, and, when they had the power, reigned at Laon in the northeastern corner of the kingdom. Odo ruled from 888 until 898. He had to leave the southern part of France independent. During the last five years of his life he was obliged to contend with Charles the Simple (893-929), who was elected king by the Carlovingian party of the north. The most noted of the Carlovingian kings at Laon was Louis "from beyond seas" (936-954), Charles's son, who had been carried to England for safety. His reign was a constant struggle with Hugh the Great, duke of the French, the nephew of King Odo. Hugh would not accept the crown himself. On the death of Louis V. (986-987), the direct line of Charlemagne became extinct. The only Carlovingian heir was his uncle, Charles, duke of Lorraine. His claim the barons would not recognize, but elected Hugh Capet, duke of France, to be king, who, on the 1st (or the 3d) of July, 987, was solemnly crowned in the cathedral of Noyon, by the archbishop of Rheims. Just at this juncture, when the contest was between the dukes of the French and Charles of Lorraine, the Carlovingian claimant to the sovereignty, the adhesion and support of Duke Richard of Normandy (943-996) was of decisive effect. The Normans had been on the side of Laon; now they turned the scale in favor of the elevation of the Duke of France. The German party at Laon could not withstand the combined power of Rouen and Paris. Thus with Hugh Capet, the founder of the Capetian line, the kingdom of France began, having Paris for its capital; and the name of France came gradually to be applied to the greater part of Gaul. But when Hugh Capet became king, the great feudal states were almost independent of the royal control. Eight were above the rest in power and extent. "The counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Vermandois, and the dukes of Normandy, Brittany, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, regarded themselves as the new king's peers or equals." Lorraine, Arles, and Franche Comté—parts of modern France—"held of the emperor, and were, in fact, German." Hugh Capet's dukedom was divided by the Seine. He was lay abbot of St. Denis, the most important church in France.
THE GERMAN KINGDOM.—With the death of Louis the Child (911) the German branch of the Carlovingian line was extinguished. The Germans had to choose a king from another family. Germany, like France, was now composed of great fiefs. But there were two parties, differing from one another in their character and manners. The one consisted of the older Alemannic and Austrasian unions, where the traces of Roman influence continued, where the large cities were situated, and the principal sees. Here were formed the duchies of Swabia and Bavaria, and Franconia (Austrasian France). To the other, consisting chiefly of the duchy of Saxony, were attached Thuringia and a part of Frisia. In France the royal power, at the start, was so weak, that, not being dreaded, it was suffered to grow. In Germany the royal power was so strong that there was a constant effort to reduce it. Hence in France the result was centralization; in Germany the tendency was to division. In France the long continuance of the family of Hugh Capet made the monarchy hereditary. In Germany the frequent changes of dynasty helped to make it elective.
CONRAD I.—When Louis died, Conrad of Franconia (911-918) was chosen king by the clerical and secular nobles of the five duchies, in which the counts elevated themselves to the rank of dukes,—Franconia, Saxony, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria. Germany thus became an elective kingdom; but since, as a rule, the sovereignty was continued in one family, the electoral principle was qualified by an hereditary element. Conrad began the struggle against the great feudatories, which went on through the Middle Ages. The dukes always chafed under the rule of a king; yet, for the glory of the nation and for their own safety against attacks from abroad, they were anxious to preserve it from extinction. The Hungarians, to whom Louis the Child had consented to pay tribute, renewed their incursions. They marched in force as far as Bremen. Conrad had wished to reduce the power of Saxony, and to detach from it Thuringia. He was constantly at war with his own subjects. Yet on his death-bed he showed his disinterested regard to the interests of the kingdom. He called to him his brother Eberhard, and charged him to carry his crown and crown jewels to his enemy Henry, duke of the Saxons, who was most capable of defending the country against the Hungarian invaders.
ITALY.—After the empire of Charles the Fat was broken up, a strong anti-German feeling was manifest in Italy. The people wanted the king of Italy, and, if possible, the emperor of the Romans, to be of their own nation. But they could not agree: there was a violent contest between the supporters of Berengar of Friuli and the supporters of Guido of Spoleto. Arnulf came twice into Italy to quell the disturbance, and on his second visit, in 896, was crowned emperor. Civil war soon broke out again. Within twenty years the crown had been given to five different aspirants. They were Germans, or were Italians only in name. Berengar I. (888-924) was crowned emperor by the Pope, but had to fight against a competitor, Rudolph, king of Burgundy, whom the turbulent nobles set up in his place. Berengar was finally defeated and assassinated. His grandson, Berengar II. (of Ivrea) (950-961), had to fly to Germany (943) to escape a competitor for the throne, Hugh, count of Provence, brother of Ermengarde, Berengar's step-mother, to whom she had given the crown. His relations with Otto I. (the Great) led to very important consequences, to be narrated hereafter.
STATE OF LEARNING IN THE TENTH CENTURY.—Under Charles the Bald, there were not wanting signs of intellectual activity. John Scotus Erigena,—or John Scot, Erinborn,—who was at the head of his palace-school, was an acute philosopher, who, in his speculations in the vein of New Platonism, tended to pantheistic doctrine. His opinions were condemned at the instance of Hincmar, the eminent archbishop of Rheims. But after the deposition of Charles the Fat (887), there followed a period of darkness throughout the West. The universal political disorder was enough to account for this prevalent ignorance. But, in addition, the Latin language ceased to be spoken by the people, while the new vernacular tongues were not reduced to writing. Latin could only be learned in the schools; and these fell more and more into decay, in the confusion of the times. The mental stimulus which the study of the Latin had communicated, there was nothing, as yet, in the new languages to replace.
THE PAPACY IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES.—While Italy was under the rule of Justinian and his successors, the popes were subject to the tyranny of the Eastern emperors. After the Lombard conquest, their position, difficult as it was on account of the small protection afforded them from Constantinople, was favorable to the growth of their influence and authority. By their connection with Pipin and Charlemagne, they were recognized as having a spiritual headship, the counterpart of the secular supremacy of the emperor. The election of the Pope was to be sanctioned by the emperor, and that of the emperor by the Pope. But Charlemagne was supreme ruler over all classes and persons in Italy, as in his own immediate dominions. In the disorder that ensued upon his death, the imperial authority in all directions was reduced. The Frank bishops were frequently appealed to as umpires among the contending Carolingian princes. The growth of the power of the great bishops carried in it the exaltation of the highest bishop of all, the Roman pontiff. A pallium, or mantle, was sent by the Pope to all archbishops on their accession, and was considered to be a badge of the papal authority. In the earlier part of the ninth century, there appeared what are called the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, consisting of forged ecclesiastical documents purporting to belong to the early Christian centuries, which afforded a sanction to the highest claims of the chief rulers of the Church. These are universally known to be an invention; but, in that uncritical day, this was not suspected. They contained not much in behalf of hierarchical claims which had not, at one time or another, been actually asserted and maintained. In the spirit of the decretals Pope Nicholas I. (858-867) acted, when this energetic pontiff overruled the iniquitous decision of two German synods, and obliged Lothar, king of Lotharingia, to take back his lawful wife, Theutberga, whom he had divorced out of regard to a mistress, Waldrada. In the tenth century (904-962), when Italy, in the absence of imperial restraint, was torn by violent factions, the Papacy was for half a century disposed of by the Tuscan party, and especially by two depraved women belonging to it, Theodora, and her daughter Maria (or Marozia). The scandals belonging to this dismal period in the history of the papal institution are to be ascribed to the anarchy prevailing in Italy, and to the vileness of the individuals who usurped power at Rome.
INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN.—The Scandinavians, or Northmen, were a Teutonic people, by whom were gradually formed the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Their incursions, prior to Charlemagne, were towards the Rhine, but at length assumed more the character of piracy. They coasted along the shores in their little fleets, and lay in wait for their enemies in creeks and bays; whence they were called vikings, or children of the bays. By degrees they ventured out farther on the sea, and became bolder in their depredations. They sent their light vessels along the rivers of France, and established themselves in bands of five or six hundred at convenient stations, whence they sallied out to plunder the neighboring cities and country places. They did not cause, but they hastened, the fall of the Frank Empire. In 841 they burned Rouen; in 843 they plundered Nantes, Saintes, and Bordeaux. Hastings, a famous leader of these hardy sea-robbers, sailed along the coast of the Spanish peninsula, took Lisbon and pillaged it, and burned Seville. Making a descent upon Tuscany, he captured, by stratagem, and plundered the city of Luna, which he at first mistook for Rome. In 853 the daring rovers captured Tours, and burned the Abbey of St. Martin; and, three years later, they appeared at Orleans. In 857 they burned the churches of Paris, and carried away as captive the abbot of St. Denis. As pagans they had no scruple about attacking churches and abbeys, to which fugitives resorted for safety and for the hiding of their treasures. Robert the Strong fell in fighting these marauders (866). Their devastations continued down to the year 911, in the reign of Charles the Simple; then the same arrangement was made which the Romans had adopted in relation to the Germanic invaders. By the advice of his nobles, Charles decided to abandon to the Northmen, territory where they could settle, and which they could cultivate as their own. Rolf, or Rollo, one of their most formidable chiefs, accepted the offer; and the Northmen established themselves (911) in the district known afterwards as Normandy. Rollo received baptism, wore the title of duke, and thus became the liege of King Charles, who reigned at Laon, and whom he loyally served. Later the Normans joined hands with ducal France, and helped Paris to throw off its dependence on royal France and the house of Charlemagne which had ruled at Laon. It was by Norman help that the duchy of France was raised to the rank of a kingdom, and Hugh Capet, in the room of being a vassal of kings of German lineage, became the founder of French sovereigns. Under the Normans, tillage flourished; and the feudal system was established with greater regularity than elsewhere.
THE DANES IN ENGLAND.—When, in 827, Egbert, the king of Wessex, united all the Saxons in England under his rule, the Danish attacks had already begun. In his later years these ravages increased. Alfred (871-901) was reduced to such straits in 878, that, with a few followers, he hid himself among the swamps and woods of Somersetshire. It was then, according to the legend, that he was scolded by the woman, who, not knowing him, had set him to watch her cakes, but found that he, absorbed in other thoughts, had allowed them to burn. Later, Alfred gained advantages over the Danes; but, in the treaty that was made with them, they received, as vassals of the West Saxon king, East Anglia, and part of Essex and Mercia. Already they had a lodgment in Northumberland, so that the larger part of England had fallen into Danish hands. The names of towns ending in by, as Whitby, are of Danish origin. Alfred compiled a body of laws called dooms, founded monasteries, and fostered learning. He himself translated many books from the Latin. His bravery in conflict with the Danes enabled him to spend his last years in quiet. Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred (925-940), was victorious over the Danes, and over the Scotch and Welsh of the North. Under Edgar (959-975), the power of England was at its height. He kept up a strong fleet; but, in the time of Aethelred II. (the Unready), the Danish invasions were renewed. He and his bad advisers adopted the practice of buying off the invaders at a large price. In 994 Swegen invaded the country. He had been baptized, but had gone back to heathenism. In 1013 England was completely conquered by him. Aethelred fled to Duke Richard the Good of Normandy.
CANUTE.—The son of Aethelred, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, after the death of Swegen, kept up the war with his son Cnut, or Canute. After fighting six pitched battles with him, Edmund consented to divide the kingdom with him; but in the same year (1016) the English king died. Canute (1017-1035) now became king of all England. He had professed Christianity, and unexpectedly proved himself, after his accession, to be a good ruler. One of the legends about him is, that he once had a seat placed for himself by the seashore, and ordered the rising tide not to dare to wet his feet. Not being obeyed by the dashing waves, he said, "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws." After that he never wore his crown, but left it on the image of Jesus on the cross. Canute inherited the crown of Denmark, and won Norway and part of Sweden; so that he was the most powerful prince of his time. His sons, however, did not rule well; and in 1042 the English chose for king one of their own people, Edward, called the Confessor, the son of Aethelred. In the time of Canute, the power of the Danes, and of the Northmen generally, was at its height. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and England were ruled by them; and Scandinavian princes by descent governed in Normandy and in Russia. Although a most vigorous race, the Northmen showed a wonderful facility in adopting the language and manners of the people among whom they settled. The effect of their migrations was to diminish the strength and importance of their native countries which they had left.
OTHER SETTLEMENTS OF NORTHMEN.—The Northmen made many other voyages which have not yet been mentioned. As early as 852 there was a Scandinavian king in Dublin. They early conquered the Shetland Isles, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides. On the northern coast of Scotland, they founded the kingdom of Caithness, which they held to the end of the twelfth century. Iceland was discovered by the Northmen, and was settled by them in 874. About the same time Greenland was discovered, and towards the end of the tenth century a colony was planted there. This led to the discovery of the mainland of America, and to the occupation, for a time, of Vinland, which is supposed to have been the coast of New England. In Russia, where the Northmen were called Varangians, Rurik, one of their leaders, occupied Novgorod in 862, and founded a line of sovereigns, which continued until 1598.
INCURSIONS OF SARACENS.—The Saracens were marauders in Italy, as the Northmen were in France. From Cairoan (in Tunis), as we have seen, they sent out their piratical fleets, which ravaged Malta, Sicily, and other islands of the Mediterranean. These corsairs, checked for the moment by the fleets of Charlemagne, afterwards began anew their conquests. From Sicily, of which they made themselves masters in 831, they passed over to the Italian mainland. Among their deeds are included the burning of Ostia, Civita Vecchia, and the wealthy abbey of Monte Cassino, They landed on the shores of Provence, established a military colony there, pillaged Arles and Marseilles, and continued their depredations in Southern France and Switzerland.
INCURSIONS OF HUNGARIANS.—The Magyars, called by the Greeks Hungarians, a warlike people of the Turanian group of nations, crossed the Carpathian Mountains about 889. They overran the whole of Hungary and Transylvania. In 900, in the course of their predatory invasions, they penetrated into Bavaria, and the king of Germany paid them tribute. They carried their incursions into Lombardy and into Southern Italy. They even crossed the Rhine, and devastated Alsace, Lorraine, and Burgundy. Such terror did they excite that their name remained in France a synonym of detestable ferocity.
CHARACTER OF THE LATER INVASIONS.—The incursions in the ninth century differed from the great Germanic invasions which had subverted the Roman Empire. The Northmen and the Saracens moved in small bands, whose main object was plunder, and not either permanent conquest, or, as was the aim of the Arabians, the spread of a religion by the sword. The Hungarians alone established themselves in the valley of the Theiss and the Danube, after the manner of the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Goths; and there they remained. The great effect of the last invasion was to accelerate the breaking up of political unity, and the introduction of feudal organization, or the preponderance of local rule as opposed to centralized power.
Later than the events narrated above, there were two great achievements of the Northmen, which it is most convenient to describe here, although they occurred in the eleventh century. They are the conquest of England, and the founding of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily.
The NORMAN INVASION.—The duchy of Normandy had become very strong and prosperous, and, under the French-speaking Northmen, or Normans, had grown to be one of the principal states in Western Europe. Edward, king of England, surnamed the Confessor, or Saint (1042-1066) had been brought up in Normandy, and favored his own Norman friends by lavish gifts of honors and offices. The party opposed to the foreigners was led by Godwin, earl of the West Saxons. After being once banished, he returned in arms; and Norman knights and priests were glad to escape from the country. Edward's wife was Edith, daughter of Godwin. They had no children; and on his death-bed he recommended that Earl Harold, the son of Godwin, should be his successor. The Normans claimed that he had promised that their duke, William, should reign after him. It was said that Harold himself, on a visit to William, had, either willingly or unwillingly, sworn to give him his support. Edward, who was devout in his ways, though a negligent ruler, was buried in the monastery called Westminster, which he had built, and which was the precursor of the magnificent church bearing the same name that was built afterwards by King Henry III. Harold was now crowned. Duke William, full of wrath, appealed to the sword; and, under the influence of the archdeacon Hildebrand, Pope Alexander II. took his side, and sanctioned his enterprise of conquest. At the same time the north of England was invaded by the king of the Norwegians, a man of gigantic stature, named Hardrada. The Norman invaders landed without resistance on the shore of Sussex, on the 28th of September, 1066, and occupied Hastings. Harold encamped on the heights of Senlac. On the 14th of October the great battle took place in which the Normans were completely victorious. The English stood on a hill in a compact mass, with their shields in front and a palisade before them. They repulsed the Norman charges. But the Normans pretended to retreat. This moved the Saxons to break their array in order to pursue. The Normans then turned back, and rushed through the palisade in a fierce onset. An arrow pierced the eye of Harold, and he was cut to pieces by four French knights. The Norman duke, William the Conqueror, was crowned king on Christmas Day; but it was four years before he overcame all resistance, and got full control over the country. The largest estates and principal offices in England he allotted to Normans and other foreigners. The crown of William was handed down to his descendants, and gradually the conquerors and the conquered became mingled together as one people.
CHARACTER OF THE SAXONS.—The Saxons at the time of the Conquest were a strong and hardy race, hospitable, and fond of good cheer, which was apt to run into gluttony and revels. Their dwellings were poor, compared with those of the better class of Normans. They were enthusiastic in out-door sports, such as wrestling and hunting. They fought on foot, armed with the shield and axe. The common soldier, however, often had no better weapon than a fork or a sharpened stick. The ordeals in vogue, as a test of guilt and innocence when one was accused of a crime, were, plunging the arm into boiling water, or holding a hot iron in the hand for three paces. London was fast growing to be the chief town, and eclipsing Winchester, the old Saxon capital. A king like Alfred, and scholars like Bede and Alcuin, not to speak of old chronicles and ballads, show that literature was valued; but the Danish invasions in Northumberland, where schools and letters had flourished, did much to blight the beginnings of literary progress.
THE NORMAN SPIRIT AND INFLUENCE.—The tapestry at Bayeux represents in a series of pictures the course of the Norman conquest. There we see the costume of the combatants. The Norman gentlemen were mounted, and fought with lance and sword. Of their bravery and military skill, their success affords abundant proof. Although the Normans were victors and masters in England, not only was the conquest gradual, but the result of it was the amalgamation of the one people with the other. The very title of conqueror, attached to William, was a legal term (conquaestor), and meant purchaser or acquirer. There was an observance of legal forms in the establishment and administration of his government. The folkland, or the public land, was appropriated by him, and became crown-land. So all the land of the English was considered to be forfeited, and estates were given out liberally to Norman gentlemen. The nobility became mainly Norman, and the same was true of the ecclesiastics and other great officers. All the land was held as a grant from the king. In 1085 the making of Domesday was decreed, which was a complete statistical survey of all the estates and property in England. The object was to furnish a basis for taxation. The Domesday Book is one of the most curious and valuable monuments of English history. Among the changes in law made by William was the introduction of the Norman wager of battle, or the duel, by the side of the Saxon methods of ordeal described above. In most of the changes, there was not so much an uprooting as a great transformation of former rules and customs.
ENGLAND AND THE CONTINENT.—One of the most important results of the Norman Conquest was the bringing of England into much more intimate relations with the continent. The horizon of English thought and life was widened. One incidental consequence was the closer connection of the English Church with the Papacy. Foreign ecclesiastics, some of them men of eminence and of learning, were brought in. It was this connection with the continent that led England to take so important a part in the Crusades.
THEN NORMAN GOVERNMENT.—As regards feudalism, one vital feature of it—the holding of land by a military tenure, or on condition of military service—was reduced to a system by the conquest. But William took care not to be overshadowed or endangered by his great vassals. He levied taxes on all, and maintained the place of lord of all his subjects. He was king of the English, and sovereign lord of the Norman nobles. He summoned to the Witan, or Great Assembly, those whom he chose to call. This summons, and the right to receive it, became the foundation of the Peerage. Out of the old Saxon Witan, there grew in this way the House of Lords. The lower orders, when summoned at all, were summoned in a mass; afterwards we shall find that they were called by representatives; and, in—the end, when the privilege of appearing in this way was converted into a right, the House of Commons came into being. In like manner, the King's Court gradually came to be, in the room of the Assembly itself, a judicial and governing Committee of the Assembly. From this body of the king's immediate counselors emerged in time the Privy Council and the Courts of Law. Out of the Privy Council grew, in modern times, the Cabinet, composed of what are really "those privy councilors who are specially summoned." Committees of the National Assembly, in the course of English history, acquired "separate being and separate powers, as the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the government." Thus the English Constitution is the product of a steady growth.
MINGLING OF BLOOD AND LANGUAGES.—A multitude of Normans emigrated into England, especially to London. The Normans became Englishmen, as a natural consequence. But they affected the spirit and manners of the people by whom they were absorbed. By opening avenues for French influence, chivalry, with its peculiar ideas and ways, was brought into England. But it must never be forgotten that the Normans were kinsfolk of the Saxons. Both conquerors and conquered were Teutons. The conquest was very different, in this particular, from what the conquest of Germany by France, or of France by Germany, would be. The French language which the Normans spoke had been acquired by them in their adopted home across the channel. To this source the Latin element, or words of Latin etymology, in our English tongue is mainly due. The loss of the old Saxon inflections is another marked change; but this is not due, to so large an extent, solely to the influence of Norman speech. But the English language continued to be essentially Teutonic in its structure. For a long time the two tongues lived side by side. At the end of the twelfth century, if French was the language of polite intercourse, English was the language of common conversation and of popular writings. Learned men spoke, or could speak, and they wrote, in Latin.
NORMAN BUILDINGS.—The Normans built the cathedrals and castles. Down to the eleventh century, the Romanesque, or "round-arched" architecture, derived from Italy, had been the one prevalent style in Western Europe. In the modification of it, called the Norman style, we find the round arch associated with massive piers and narrow windows. Durham cathedral is an example of the Norman Romanesque type of building. The Norman conquerors covered England with castles, of which the White Tower of London, built by William, is a noted specimen. Sometimes they were square, and sometimes polygonal; but, except in the palaces of the kings, they afforded little room for artistic beauty of form or decoration. They were erected as fortresses, and were regarded by the people with execration as strongholds of oppression.
THE NORMAN KINGDOM OF NAPLES AND SICILY.—Early in the eleventh century, knights from Normandy wandered into Southern Italy, and gave their aid to different states in battle against the Greeks and Saracens. In 1027 the ruler of Naples gave them a fertile district, where they built the city of Aversa. By the reports of their victories and good fortune, troops of pilgrims and warriors were attracted to join them. The valiant sons of the old count, Tancred of Hauteville, were among the number. They supported the Greek viceroy in an attack on the Arabs in Sicily; but, on his failing duly to reward them, they turned against him, and conquered Apulia for themselves. Under Robert Guiscard (1057-1085), they made themselves masters of all Southern Italy. They had already defeated Pope Leo IX. at Civitella, and received from him as fiefs their present and anticipated conquests in Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily. Twelve years after, Robert, with the help of his brother Roger, wrested Sicily, with its capital, Palermo, from the Saracens, who were divided among themselves (1072). The seaports of Otranto and Bari were also taken by Robert. He even entered on the grand scheme of conquering the Byzantine Empire, but his death frustrated this endeavor. His nephew Roger II. (1130-1154) took the remaining possessions of the Greeks in Southern Italy and Sicily, united them in the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, and received from the Pope the title of king. In this kingdom the feudal system was established, and trade and industry flourished. In culture and prosperity it surpassed all the other Italian communities. At Salerno was a famous school of medicine and natural science; at Amalfi and Naples were schools of law. But the Norman nobility was corrupted and enervated by the luxury of the South, and by the influence of Mohammedan customs, and modes of thought. During fifty-six years Roger and his two successors, William the Bad (1154-1166) and William the Good (1166-1189), ruled this flourishing kingdom, which then fell by inheritance to the Hohenstaufen German princes. On the mainland and in Sicily, numerous stately buildings and ruined castles and towers point back to the romantic period of Norman rule.
NORMAN TRAITS.—It is a remarkable fact, that the Normans, although so distinguished as rovers and conquerors, have vanished from the face of the earth. They were lost in the kingdoms which they founded. They adopted the languages of the nations which they subdued. But while in England they were merged in the English, and modified the national character, this effect was not produced in Italy and Sicily. In Sicily they found Greek-speaking Christians and Arabic-speaking Mussulmans; and Italians came into the island in the track of the conquerors. The Normans did not find there a nation as in England; and they created not a nation, but a kingdom of a composite sort, beneficent while it lasted, but leaving no permanent traces behind. "The Normans in Sicily," says Mr. Freeman, "so far as they did not die out, were merged, not in a Sicilian nation, for that did not exist, but in the common mass of settlers of Latin speech and rite, as distinguished from the older inhabitants, Greek and Saracen." Independent, enterprising, impatient of restraint, gifted with a rare imitative power which imparted a peculiar tinge and a peculiar grace to whatever they adopted from others, they lacked originality, and the power to maintain their own distinctive type of character and of speech.
Mr. Freeman has eloquently described the spread of the Normans, "the Saracens of Christendom," in all corners of the world. They fought in the East against the Turks. "North, south, east, the Norman lances were lifted." The Norman "ransacked Europe for scholars, poets, theologians, and artists. At Rouen, at Palermo, and at Winchester he welcomed merit in men of every race and every language." "And yet that race, as a race, has vanished." "The Scottish Brace or the Irish Geraldine passed from Scandinavia to Gaul, from Gaul to England, from England to his own portion of our islands; but at each migration, he ceased to be Scandinavian, French, or English: his patriotism was in each case transferred to his new country, and his historic being belongs to his last acquired home." Norman blood was in the veins of the Crusaders who first stood on the battlements of Jerusalem, and of the great German emperor, Frederic II.
TANCRED OF HAUTEVILLE.
|
+—Robert Guiscard, Duke of Apulia, d. 1085.
|
| SICILY
|
+—ROGER, the Great Count, d. 1101
|
+—Roger (of Apulia, 1127; king, 1130), 1101-1154.
|
+—WILLIAM I the Bad, 1154-1166,
| m. Margaret, daughter of Garcia IV of Navarre.
| |
| +—WILLIAM II the Good, 1166-1189,
| m. Joanna, daughter of Henry II of England.
|
+—CONSTANCE (d. 1198),
m. Emperor Henry VI.
ORIGIN OF FEUDALISM.—When the Franks conquered Gaul, they divided the land among themselves. This estate each free German held as allodial property, or as a free-hold. The king took the largest share. His palaces were dwellings connected with large farms or hunting-grounds, and he went with his courtiers from one to another. To his personal followers and officers he allotted lands. These benefices, it seems, were granted at first with the understanding that he might resume them at will. As holders of them, the recipients owed to him personal support. Other chiefs, and land-owners of a minor grade, took the same course. This was the germ of feudalism. More and more it grew to be the characteristic method of living and of government in Western Europe after the fall of Charlemagne's empire. The inheritors of his dominion were not the kings of France, of Germany, or of Italy, but the numerous feudal lords. Against the invasions of the Norman, Saracen, and Hungarian plunderers, the kings and the counts proved themselves incapable of defending territory or people. Meantime, the principle of heredity—the principle that benefices should go down from father to son, or to the next heir—had gained a firm footing. Another fact was that the royal offices became hereditary, and were transmitted to the heirs of allodial property. Thus the exercise of government and the possession of land were linked together. In times of danger, small proprietors more and more put themselves under the protection of the richer and stronger: that is, allodial property became feudal. This custom had begun long before, in the decadence of the Roman empire, when not only poor freemen, but also men of moderate means, ruined by taxation, put themselves under the protection of the great, and settled on their lands. They became thus colons (coloni). In the later times of disorder of which we are now speaking, farmhouses in the country gave place to fortified castles on hill-tops or other defensible sites, about which clustered in villages the dependents of the lord, who tilled his land, fought for him, and, in turn, were protected by him.
THE SUBSTANCE OF FEUDALISM.—"Feudality recognizes two principles, the land and the sword, riches and force,—two principles on which every thing depends, to which every thing is related, and which are united and identified with one another; since it is necessary to possess land in order to have the right to use the sword in one's own name (that is to say, to have the right of private war), and since the possession of land imposes the duty of drawing the sword for the suzerain, and in the name of the suzerain of whom the land is held." Feudalism is a social system in which there is a kind of hierarchy of lands in the hands of warriors, who hold of one another in a gradation. There is a chain reaching up from the tower of the simple gentleman to the royal chateau, or castle. In this social organization, there are the two grand classes of the seigneurs and the serfs; but the seigneur, even if he be a king, may also hold fiefs as a vassal.
SUZERAIN AND VASSAL.—The suzerain and the vassal, or liege, were bound together by reciprocal obligations. The vassal owed (1) military service on the demand of the lord; (2) such aid as the suzerain called for in the administration of justice within his jurisdiction; (3) other aids, such as, when he was a prisoner, to pay the ransom for his release; and pecuniary contributions when he armed his eldest son, and when he married his eldest daughter. These were legal or required aids. They took the place of taxation in modern states. There were other things that the vassal was expected to do which were gracious or voluntary. If the liege died without heirs, or forfeited the fief by a violation of the conditions on which it was held, it reverted to the lord. The liege was invested with the fief. He knelt before the suzerain, put his hands within the hands of the suzerain, and took an oath to be his man. This was homage,—from homo in the Latin, and homme in French, signifying man. The suzerain might at any time require its renewal. Under the feudal system, every thing was turned into a fief. The right to hunt in a forest, or to fish in a river, or to have an escort on the roads, might be granted as a fief, on the condition of loyalty, and of the homage just described.
PRIVATE WAR.—The vassal had the right to be tried by his peers; that is, by vassals on the same level as himself. He might, if treated with injustice, go to the superior: he might appeal to the suzerain of his immediate lord. But suzerains preferred to take justice into their own hands. Hence the custom of private war prevailed, and of judicial combats, or duels, so common in the middle ages.
ENTANGLEMENTS OF FEUDALISM.—Many suzerains were mutually vassals, each holding certain lands of the other. The same baron often held lands of different suzerains, who might be at war with each other, so that each required his service. The sovereign prince might be bound to do homage to a petty feudal lord on account of lands which the prince had inherited or otherwise acquired. The power of the suzerain depended on a variety of circumstances. The king might be weak, since feudalism grew out of the overthrow of royal power. The king of France, with the exception of titular prerogatives and some rights with regard to churches, which were often disputed, had no means of attack or defense beyond what the duchy of France furnished him. Yet logically and by a natural tendency, the king was the supreme suzerain. "Feudalism carried hid in its bosom the arms by which it was one day to be struck down."
ECCLESIASTICAL FEUDALISM.—The clergy were included in the feudal system. The bishop was often made the count, and, as such, was the suzerain of all the nobles in his diocese. Cities were often under the suzerainty of bishops. Besides their tithes, the clergy had immense landed possessions. The abbots and bishops often availed themselves of the protection of powerful vassals, of whom they were the suzerains. On the other hand, bishops, who were also themselves dukes or counts, sometimes did homage for their temporalities to lay suzerains, especially to the king. In France and in England, in the middle ages, the feudal clergy possessed a fifth of all the land; in Germany, a third. The church, through bequests of the dying and donations from the living, constantly increased its possessions. It might be despoiled, but it could defend itself by the terrible weapon of excommunication.
SERFS AND VILLAINS.—In the eleventh century Europe was thus covered with a multitude of petty sovereigns. Below the body of rulers, or the holders of fiefs, was the mass of the people. These were the serfs,—the tillers of the ground, who enjoyed some of the privileges of freemen, and who, since they were attached to the seigneurie, could not be sold as slaves. The villains were a grade above the serfs. The term (from villæ) originally meant villagers. They paid rent for the land which the proprietor allowed them to till; but they were subject, like the serfs, to the will of the suzerain; and the constant tendency was for them to sink into the inferior condition. Slavery, as distinguished from serfdom, gradually passed away under the emancipating spirit fostered by Christianity and the Church.
THE INHERITANCE OF FIEFS.—At first the Salic principle, which excluded females from inheriting fiefs, prevailed. But that gave way, and daughters were preferred in law to collateral male relatives. When a female inherited, the fief was occupied by the suzerain up to the time of her marriage. It never ceased to be under the protection of the sword. In France, the right of primogeniture was established, but with important qualifications, which varied in different portions of the country. The eldest, however, always had the largest portion. In Germany, the tendency to the division of fiefs was more prevalent. Among the Normans in England, and under their influence in Palestine, the law of inheritance by the eldest was established in its full rigor.
SPIRIT OF FEUDALISM.—Feudalism had more vitality than the system of absorbing all the land by a few great proprietors, which existed in the period of the decline of the Roman Empire. Individuality, courage, the proud sense of belonging to an aristocratic order, were widely diffused among the numerous feudal landowners. The feeling of loyalty among them was a great advance upon the blind subjection of the slave to his master. But the weight of feudalism was heavy on the lower strata of society. The lord was an autocrat, whose will there was neither the power nor the right to resist, and who could lay hold of as much of the labor and the earnings of the subject as he might choose to exact. The petty suzerain, because his needs were greater, was often more oppressive than the prince. The serf could not change his abode, he could not marry, he could not bequeath his goods, without the permission of his lord.
HENRY I [1] 918-936.
|
+—OTTO I, 936-973, Emperor, 962, m.
| 1, Eadgyth, d. of Edward the Elder;
| |
| +—Liutgarde.
|
| 2, Adelheid, [2] d. of Rudolph II, King of Burgundy.
| |
| +—OTTO II, 973-983, m.
| Theophania, daughter of Romanus II, Eastern Emperor.
| |
| +—OTTO III, 983-1002.
|
+—Henry the Wrangler, Duke of Bavaria.
|
+—Henry the Wrangler.
|
+—(St.) HENRY II, 1002-1024, m. Cunigunda of Luxemburg.
CONRAD I, [1] 911-918.
|
+—C. Werner (?) m. daughter.
|
+—Conrad the Red, (killed at the Lechfeld, 955) m.
Liutgarde, daughter of Eadgyth and Otto I.
|
+—Otto.
|
+—Henry.
|
+—CONRAD II, the Salic, 1024-1039, m.
Gisela, d. of Hermann II, Duke of Swabia.
|
+—HENRY III, 1039-1056, m.
1, Gunhilda, daughter of Cnut;
2, Agnes, daughter of William, Count of Poitiers.
|
+—HENRY IV, 1056-1106, m.
1, Bertha, daughter of Otto, Marquis of Susa;
|
+—HENRY V, 1106-1125, m.
| Matilda, d. of Henry I of England.
|
+—Agnes, m.
1, Frederick of Hohenstaufen,
Duke of Swabia, 1080-1105;
|
+—Frederick the One-eyed,
Duke of Swabia, d. 1147, m.
1, Judith, daughter of Henry the Black.
|
+—FREDERICK I, Barbarossa, 1152-1190.
| |
| +—HENRY VI, 1190-1197, m.
| | Constance of Sicily, d. 1198.
| | |
| | +—FREDERICK II, 1214-1250, m.
| | 1, Constance, d. of
| | Alfonso II of Aragon;
| | |
| | +—CONRAD IV, 1250-1254, m.
| | | Elizabeth, daughter of
| | | Otto II of Bavaria.
| | | |
| | | +—Conradin, d. 1268.
| | |
| | +—Manfred,[5] d. 1266.
| |
| | 2, Iolande de Brienne;
| |
| | 3, Isabella, d. of
| | John of England.
| |
| +—PHILIP, 1198-1208, m.
| Irene, d. of Isaac II,
| Angelus, Eastern Emperor.
| |
| +—Beatrix, m.
| OTTO IV,[4] 1208-1214,
| d. 1218.
|
+—CONRAD III,[3] 1137-1152.
2, Leopold III, Marquis of Austria, d. 1136.
2, Adelaide, a Russian princess.
1 Conrad I and Henry I seem to have been related. By one account their mothers were the daughters of Emperor Arnulf.
2 Widow of Lothar, King of Italy.
3 Elected 1127 in opposition to Lotharl accepted as his successor.
4 Elected in opposition to Philip; accepted as his successor, 1208; ruined by battle of Bouvines.
5 King of Naples and Sicily after Conrad IV; killed in battle at Benevento against Charles of Anjou. Manfred's mother was Bianca Langia, daughter of a Lombard noble.
HENRY THE FOWLER (918-936).—The envoys who carried to Duke Henry of Saxony the announcement of his election as king of Germany are said to have found him in the Hartz Mountains with a falcon on his wrist: hence he was called Henry the Fowler. He is a great figure in mediæval history, and did much to make Germany a nation. He won back Lorraine, which had broken off from the kingdom. With it the Netherlands—Holland, Flanders, etc.—came to Germany. He united all the five great dukedoms, and governed with wisdom and moderation. At the end of five years, the Hungarians poured in with irresistible force. There was no alternative but to conclude with them a truce for nine years, during which he was to pay tribute. He set to work at once, however, to strengthen the defenses of his kingdom. He built walled towns and fortresses in the eastern districts of Saxony and Thuringia, and drafted one out of nine of the men from the population in the marches for military service. The fortresses were to be kept stored with provisions. The oldest towns of Saxony and of Thuringia are of this date. Then he disciplined his soldiers, and trained them to fight, like the Hungarians, on horseback. He conquered the Slavonian Wends who dwelt east of the Elbe and the Saale, and established the margraviate of Meissen to repel their attacks. His victory over the Slaves at Lenzen (929) made the north-eastern frontiers of Germany secure. Eadgyth, the daughter of Edward, king of England, was given in marriage to his eldest son, Otto. Henry now felt himself strong enough to throw off the Hungarian yoke, and answered with defiance their demand for the annual tribute. The struggle with them was hard; but they were completely vanquished at Merseburg in 933, and their camp taken. Henry founded the mark of Schleswig as a defense against the Danes. This wise and vigorous monarch laid the foundations of the German Empire. He was not only a mighty warrior: he built up industry and trade. He was buried at Quedlinburg in the abbey which he had founded.
OTTO I.: THE PALSGRAVES.—Otto I. (936-973) carried forward with equal energy the work which his father had begun. Having been chosen king by the German princes and chiefs at Aix, he was presented to the people in the church by the archbishop of Mentz; and they gave their assent to the election by raising the hand. Otto had a contest before him to maintain the unity of the kingdom. He aimed to make the office of duke an office to be allotted by the king, and thus to sap the power of his turbulent lieges. The dukes of Bavaria and Franconia, with Lorraine, and with the support of Louis IV., king of France, rose in arms against him. He subdued them; and the great duchies which had revolted against him becoming vacant, he placed in them members of his own family. He confirmed his authority by extending the power of the palsgraves, or counts palatine,—royal officers who superintended the domains of the king in the several duchies, and dispensed justice in his name. He favored the great ecclesiastics as a check to the aspiring lay lords. He invested the bishops and abbots with ring and staff, and they took the oath of fealty to him.
WARS OF OTTO I—Against the Hungarians, Otto achieved a triumph. He gained a victory over them at Augsburg in 955, in which they were said to have lost a hundred thousand men. This put an end to their incursions into Germany. He was likewise the victor in conflict with Slavonians. He subdued Boleslav I. of Bohemia, who had thrown off the German suzerainty, and obliged him to pay a tribute. Under the pious Boleslav II., Christianity was established there, and a bishopric founded at Prague (967). The Duke of Poland was forced to do homage to him, and to permit the founding of the bishopric of Posen. Against the Danish king, Harold the Blue-toothed, he carried his arms to the sea, the northern boundary of Jutland. He erected three new bishoprics among the Danes, and founded the archbishopric of Magdeburg, with subordinate sees in the valleys of the Elbe and the Oder. These achievements gave Otto great renown in Western Europe. The kings sent ambassadors to him, and presents came from the sovereigns at Constantinople and Cordova.
OTTO I. IN ITALY.—Otto now turned his eyes to Italy. After Arnulf, the Carlovingian emperor, left Italy (in 896), that country had been left to sixty years of anarchy. The demoralization and disorder of Italy, the profligacy of the Romans and of the pontiffs,— every thing being then subject to the riotous aristocratic factions, —rendered unity impossible. For a time (926-945) Hugh of Provence was called king: then followed his son Lothar (945-950). The next Italian king, Berengar II. of Ivrea (950), who, like his two predecessors, was an offshoot of the Carlovingian house, tried to force Adelheid, the beautiful young widow of Lothar, into a marriage with his son Adalbert. She (being then nineteen years of age) escaped with great difficulty from the prison where she was confined, took refuge in the castle of Canossa, and appealed to the great Otto, king of the Germans, for help,—to Otto, "that model of knightly virtue which was beginning to show itself after the fierce brutality of the last age." He descended into Italy, married the injured queen, and obliged Berengar to own him as suzerain (951). Berengar proved faithless and rebellious. Once more Otto entered Italy with an overpowering force, and was proclaimed king of the Lombards at Pavia. Pope John XII. had proposed to him to assume the imperial office. He was crowned, with his queen, in St. Peter's, in 962. He had engaged to confirm the gifts of previous emperors to the popes. When John XII. reversed his steps, allied himself with Berengar, and tried to stir up the Greeks, and even the Hungarians, against the emperor, Otto came down from Lombardy, and captured Rome. He caused John to be deposed by a synod for his crimes, and Leo VIII. to be appointed in his place (963). But, while Otto was again absent, Leo was driven out by the Romans, and John returned; but, soon after, he died. The Romans then elected Benedict pope. Otto captured Rome once more, deposed him, and restored Leo. Benedict was held in custody, and died in Hamburg. On a third journey to Italy, in 966, Otto crushed the factions which had so long degraded Rome and the Church. On this occasion, he negotiated a marriage between Theophano, a Greek princess, and his son, also named Otto. Thus he acquired the southern extremity of Italy.
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.—Otto had taken Charlemagne for his model. The "Holy Roman Empire of the German nation," the great political institution of the middle ages, was now established. In theory it was the union of the world-state and the world-church,—an undivided community under Emperor and Pope, its heaven-appointed secular and spiritual heads. As an actual political fact, it was the political union of Germany and Italy, in one sovereignty, which was in the hands of the German king. The junction of the two peoples was not without its advantages to both. It was, however, fruitful of evils. The strength of Germany was spent in endless struggles abroad, which stood in the way of the building up of a compact kingdom at home. For Italy it was the rule of foreigners, of which she might feel the need, but to which she was never reconciled.
OTTO II.: OTTO III.: HENRY II.—Otto II. (973-983) was highly gifted intellectually, but lacked his father's energy and decision. Henry the Quarrelsome, duke of Bavaria, revolted, but was put down, and deprived of his duchy. Otto obliged Lothar, the West Frankish king, to give up his claim to Lotharingia, which he attempted to seize. Otto, in 980, went to Italy, and, in the effort to conquer Southern Italy from the Greeks and Saracens, barely escaped with his life. This was in 982. He never returned to Germany. While Otto III. (983-1002) was a child, his mother, Theophano, was regent for a time in Germany, and his grandmother, Adelheid, in Italy. One of Otto's tutors was Gerbert, an eminent scholar and theologian. The proficiency of the young prince caused him to be styled the "Wonder of the World." He was crowned emperor in Rome in 996, when he was only sixteen years old. He dreamed of making Rome once more the center of the world, for his interest was chiefly in Italy. But his schemes were ended by his early death. At this time and afterward, there was deep agitation manifested in Europe, owing to the general expectation that before long the world would come to an end. On this account pilgrims flocked to Rome. Henry II. (1002-1024), as nearest of kin to the Saxon house, was the next emperor. Besides waging war with his own insurgent lieges, he had to carry on a contest for fourteen years with Bokslav, king of Poland, who had to give up Bohemia and Meissen. He founded the bishopric of Bamberg (1007). From this time the German kings, before their coronation as emperors, took the title of King of the Romans. The highest nobles were styled "Princes." The nobles lived in the castles, which were built for strongholds, as the power of the lords grew, and private wars became more common.
CONRAD II.: BURGUNDY: the POLES.—At a great assembly of dukes, counts, and prelates at Oppenheim on the Rhine, Conrad, a Franconian nobleman (Conrad II.), was elected emperor (1024-1039). He was in the prime of life, and went to work vigorously to repress disorder in his kingdom. He had the support of the cities, which were now increasing in importance. At his coronation in Rome, in 1027, there were two kings present, Canute of England and Denmark, and Rudolph III. of Burgundy (or Arles, as the kingdom was called which had been formed by Rudolph II., by uniting Burgundy with a great part of Provence). After the death of Rudolph, who had appointed Conrad his successor, the emperor was crowned king of Arles, which remained thus attached to Germany. But at a later time the Romance, or non-German portions, were absorbed by France. The Duchy of Burgundy, a fief of the French king, was not included in the kingdom. The Poles invaded Germany in great force. Miesko, their leader, was repelled, and obliged to do homage for his crown, and to give up Lusatia, which had been received by Boleslav from Henry II. In Italy, Conrad issued an edict making the smaller fiefs there hereditary. He seems to have designed to do away with dukes, and to make the allegiance of all vassals to the king immediate.
HENRY III.: THE TRUCE OF GOD.—With Henry III. (1039-1056) the imperial power reached its height. He was for a time duke of Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia, as well as emperor. In Hungary he conquered the enemies of Peter the king, and restored him to the throne, receiving his homage as vassal of the empire. He had great success in putting down private war. In 1043 he proclaimed a general peace in his kingdom. He favored the attempt to bring in the Truce of God. This originated in Aquitaine, where the bishops, in 1041, ordered that no private feuds should be prosecuted between the sunset of Wednesday and the sunrise of Monday, the period covered by the most sacred events in the life of Jesus. This "truce," which was afterwards extended to embrace certain other holy seasons and festivals, spread from land to land. It shows the influence of Christianity in those dark and troublous times. Although it was imperfectly carried out, it was most beneficent in its influence, and specially welcome to the classes not capable of defending themselves against violence.
SYNOD OF SUTRI.—In 1046 Henry was called into Italy by the well-disposed of all parties, to put an end to the reign of vice and disorder at Rome. He caused the three rival popes to be deposed by a synod at Sutri, and a German prelate, Suidger, bishop of Bamberg, to be appointed under the name of Clement II., by whom he was crowned emperor. After Clement died, Henry raised to the Papacy three German popes in succession. While in the full exercise of his great authority, and when he was not quite forty years of age, he died.
HENRY IV.: HIS CONTESTS IN GERMANY.—Henry IV. (1056-1106), at his father's death, was but six years old. He had been crowned king at the age of four. Agnes of Poitou, his mother, the regent, had no ability to curb the princes, who were now released from restraint, and eager for independence. By a bold stratagem, an ambitious prelate, Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, carried off the young king, and assumed the guardianship over him. He had a rival in the person of Adalbert, archbishop of Bremen, whom Henry liked best, as being more indulgent and complaisant, and who at length became his chosen guide. But in 1066 the princes caused Adalbert to be banished from court. They obliged Henry to marry Bertha, the daughter of the margrave of Turin, to whom he had been betrothed by his father. The union was repugnant to him, and he sought a divorce; although her patience eventually won the victory, and she became a cherished wife. Henry, arrived at man's estate, was involved in a contest with three of the great dukes. It was evident that he meant to tread in the footsteps of his father, and to reduce the princes to submission. Hostility arose, especially between the young king and the Saxons, who did not relish the transfer of the imperial office to the Franconian line. The passionate and wilful disposition of Henry, and his sensual propensities, were his worst enemies. The strongholds which he erected among the Saxons, in themselves a menace, were made haunts of his boon companions and comrades in the chase. The extortion and depredations to which the Saxons were a prey provoked a great insurrection, which at first prevailed; but the excesses of the elated insurgents—as seen, for example, in the plundering and burning of churches—caused a reaction. Henry suppressed the revolt, and dealt with the Saxons with the utmost harshness, treating their dukedom as conquered territory. The Saxon chiefs were now in durance: his enemies on every side had willingly yielded, or were prostrate. The hour seemed to have come for Henry to exercise that sovereignty as Roman emperor over Church and State which his father had wielded; but he found himself confronted by a new and powerful antagonist in the celebrated Pope Hilde-brand, or Gregory VII. (1073-1085).
HILDEBRAND: INVESTITURES.—The state of affairs in the Roman Church had called into existence a party of reform, the life and soul of which was Hildebrand. He was the son of a carpenter of Soano, a small town in Tuscany, and was born in 1018. He was educated in a monastery in Rome, and spent some time in France, in the great monastery of Cluny. He became the influential adviser of the popes who immediately preceded him. The great aim of Hildebrand and of his supporters—one of the most prominent of whom was the zealous Peter Damiani, bishop of Ostia—was to abolish simony and the marriage of priests. By simony was meant the purchase and sale of benefices, which had come to prevail in the different countries. The old church laws requiring celibacy had been disregarded, and great numbers of the inferior clergy were living with their wives. In Hildebrand's view, there could be no purity and no just discipline in the Church without a strict enforcement of the neglected rule. The priests must put away their wives. Connected with these reforms was the broader design of wholly emancipating the Church from the control of the secular power, and of subordinating the State to the Church. For this end there must be an abolition of investiture by lay hands. This demand it was that kindled a prolonged and terrible controversy between the emperors and the popes. The great ecclesiastics had temporal estates and a temporal jurisdiction, which placed them in a feudal relation, and made them powerful subjects. It was the custom of the kings to invest them with these temporalities by giving to them the ring and the staff. This enabled the kings to keep out of the benefices persons not acceptable to them, who might be elected by the clergy. On the other hand, it was complained that this custom put the bishops and other high ecclesiastics into a relation of dependence on the lay authority; and, moreover, that, the ring and staff being badges of a spiritual function, it was sacrilegious for a layman to bestow them.
CONTEST OF HILDEBRAND AND HENRY IV.—In the period of lawlessness at Rome, Hildebrand had welcomed the intervention of Henry III., and even of Henry IV., at the beginning of his reign. But this he regarded as only a provisional remedy made necessary by a desperate disorder. On acceding to the Papacy, he began to put in force his leading ideas. The attempt to abolish the marriage of priests was resisted, and stirred up great commotion in all the countries. The legates of the Pope set themselves to stem the tide of opposition by inveighing, in addresses to the common people, against the married clergy, as unfit to minister at the altar. By this means, a popular party in favor of the reform was created. In 1075, in a synod at Rome, Hildebrand pronounced the ban against five councilors of Henry IV. for simony. At the same time he threatened Philip of France with a similar penalty. He forbade princes to invest with any spiritual office. To oaths of allegiance he did not object, but to any investiture of a spiritual kind. Gregory selected Henry IV. as the antagonist with whom to fight out the battle. Henry's ecclesiastical appointments were not simoniacal in fact, although they violated the papal decrees against simony. His real offense was his determination to make the appointments himself. Moreover, in 1075, he ventured to name Germans to the sees of Ferno and Spoleto. Unfortunately he was weakened by the disaffection of the German princes, and, most of all, of the Saxons. The fire of rebellion in Saxony had not been quenched: it was still smouldering. Gregory summoned Henry to Rome to answer to the charges made against him. In three German synods held in 1076, the incensed emperor caused empty accusations to be brought against the Pope, and a declaration to be passed deposing him. He sent to the pontiff a letter filled with denunciation, and addressed "to the false monk, Hildebrand." Gregory issued decrees excommunicating Henry, deposing him, and declaring his subjects free from their obligation of allegiance. It was the received doctrine, that a heretic or a heathen could not reign over Christian people. The discontented German princes took sides with Gregory. In an assembly at Tribur in 1076, they invited the Pope to come to Augsburg, and to judge in the case of Henry: he was to live as a private man; and, if he remained excommunicate for a year, he was to cease to be king altogether.
HUMILIATION OF HENRY IV.—Henry was now as anxious for reconciliation with the Pope as before he had been bold in his defiance. In the midst of winter, with his wife and child and a few attendants, he crossed the Mt. Cenis pass, undergoing extreme difficulty and hardship, and presented himself as a penitent before Gregory, who had arrived, on his way to Augsburg, at the strongly fortified castle of Canossa. The Pope kept him waiting long, it is said, barefoot and bareheaded in the court-yard of the castle. Finally he was admitted and absolved, but only on the condition that Gregory was to adjust the matters in dispute between the emperor and his subjects.
CONTINUED CONFLICT.—When Henry found that his imperial rights were still withheld, his fiery spirit rebounded from this depth of humiliation. The Lombards, with whom Gregory was unpopular, joined him. A majority of the German princes, adhering to the Pope, in 1077 elected Rudolph, duke of Swabia, emperor. The Pope took up his cause, and in 1080 once more excommunicated and deposed Henry. The emperor proclaimed anew, through synods, the Pope's deposition, and things were back in the former state. The emperor's party appointed a counter-pope, Guibert, archbishop of Ravenna, under the name of Clement III. Rudolph was killed in battle (1080). Henry's power now vastly increased. He invaded Italy (1081), and laid waste the territory of Matilda, countess of Tuscany, a fast friend of Gregory. In 1084 he captured Rome. The Pope had found a defender in Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke of Lower Italy, whom he had excommunicated, but whom (in 1080) he forgave, and took into his service. Robert released Gregory, who had been besieged in the Castle of St. Angelo. Hildebrand died at Salerno, May 25, 1085. When near his end he uttered the words which are inscribed on his tomb: "I have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore do I die in exile." Of the rectitude of his intentions, there is no room for doubt, whatever view is taken of the expediency of his measures. He united with an unbending will the power of accommodating himself to circumstances, as is witnessed in his treatment of Robert Guiscard, and in his forbearance towards William the Conqueror, king of England, with whom he did not wish to break.
Of this great pontiff, Sir James Stephen says: "He found the Papacy dependent on the empire: he sustained it by alliances almost commensurate with the Italian peninsula. He found the Papacy electoral by the Roman people and clergy: he left it electoral by a college of papal nomination. He found the emperor the virtual patron of the holy see: he wrested that power from his hands. He found the secular clergy the allies and dependants of the secular power: he converted them into the inalienable auxiliaries of his own. He found the higher ecclesiastics in servitude to the temporal sovereigns: he delivered them from that yoke to subjugate them to the Roman tiara. He found the patronage of the Church the mere desecrated spoil and merchandise of princes: he reduced it within the dominion of the supreme pontiff. He is celebrated as the reformer of the impure and profane abuses of his age: he is more justly entitled to the praise of having left the impress of his own gigantic character on the history of all the ages which have succeeded him."
LAST DAYS OF HENRY IV.—In 1085 Henry IV. returned to Germany, having been crowned emperor by his Pope, Clement III. The Saxons were tired of strife; and, on the assurance that their ancient privileges should be restored, they were pacified. Hermann of Luxemburg, whom they had recognized as their king, had resigned the crown (1088). The last days of Henry were clouded by the rebellion of his sons, first of Conrad (1093), and then of Henry (1104), who was supported by the Pope, Paschal II. The emperor was taken prisoner, and obliged to sign his own abdication at Ingelheim in 1105. The duke of Lotharingia and others came to his support, and a civil war was threatened; but Henry died at Lüttich in 1106. His body was placed in a stone coffin, where it lay in an unconsecrated chapel, at Spires, until the removal of the excommunication (1111).
CONCORDAT OF WORMS.—Henry V. (1106-1125) was not in the least disposed to yield up the right of investiture. Hence he was soon engaged in a controversy with Paschal II. Henry went to Rome with an army in 1110, and obliged the Pope to crown him emperor, and to concede to him the right in question. When he went back to Germany, the Pope revoked the concession, and excommunicated him. The German princes, as might be expected, sided with the pontiff. The conflict in Germany went on. The emperor's authority, which was established in the South by means of his powerful supporters, was not secured in the North; but, during the last three years of his life, he was at peace with the Church. By the Concordat of Worms in 1122, it was agreed that investiture should take place in the presence of the emperor or of his deputies; that the emperor should first invest with the scepter, and then consecration should take place by the Church, with the bestowal of the ring and the staff. All holders of secular benefices were to perform feudal obligations.
LOTHAR OF SAXONY.—The princes over whom Henry V. had exercised a severe control opposed the elevation of Frederick of Hohenstaufen, the son of his sister Agnes. At a brilliant assembly at Mentz, Lothar of Saxony was chosen emperor (1125-1137). He allowed all the Pope's claims, and was crowned at Rome by Innocent II., accepting the allodial possessions of Matilda of Tuscany, as a fief from the pontiff. He carried on a war with the Hohenstaufen princes, Frederick of Swabia, and his brother Conrad, who finally yielded. Lothar was helped in the conflict by Henry the Proud, the duke of Bavaria, who also became duke of Saxony. Germany under Lothar extended its influence in the north and east.
CULTURE IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.—The tenth century, owing to causes which have been explained, was a dark age. In the eleventh century circumstances were more favorable for culture. Under the Saxon emperors, intercourse was renewed with the Greek Empire. There was some intercourse with the Arabs in Spain, among whom several of the sciences were cultivated, especially mathematics, astronomy, and medicine (p. 232). The study of the Roman law was revived in the Lombard cities, and this had a disciplinary value. The restoration of order in the Church, after the synod of Sutri (1046), had likewise a wholesome influence in respect to culture. There were several schools of high repute in France, especially those at Rheims, Chartres, Tours, and in the monastery of Bec, in Normandy, where Lanfranc, an Italian by birth, a man of wisdom and piety, was the abbot.
THE TWO RELIGIONS.—The Crusades were a new chapter in the long warfare of Christendom with Mohammedanism. "In the Middle Ages, there were two worlds utterly distinct,—that of the Gospel and that of the Koran." In Europe, with the exception of Spain, the Gospel had sway; from the Pyrenees to the mouths of the Ganges, the Koran. The border contests between the two hostile parties on the eastern and western frontiers of Christendom were now to give place to conflict on a larger scale during centuries of invasion and war.
STATE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE.—The Greek Christian Empire lay between the Christian peoples of the West and the dominion of the Arabs. That empire lived on, a spiritless body. After Justinian, there is an endless recurrence of wars with the Arabs, and with the barbarians on the North, and of theological disputes, either within the empire itself, or with the Church of the West. The Greeks complained that a phrase teaching the procession of the Spirit from the Son had been added in the West to the Nicene Creed. The Latins complained of the use of leavened bread in the sacrament, of the marriage of priests, and of some other Greek peculiarities. The separation of the two churches was consummated when, in 1054, the legate of the Pope laid on the altar of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, an anathema against "the seven mortal heresies" of the Greeks.
ATTACKS OF RUSSIANS AND BULGARIANS.—Left to itself, the empire showed some energy in repelling the attacks of the Russians and Bulgarians. A number of capable rulers arose. The Russians, of the same race of Northmen who had ravaged Western Europe, kept up their assaults until their chief, Vladimir, made peace, accepted Christianity, and married the sister of the emperor, Basil II. (988). The empire between 988 and 1014 was invaded twenty-six times by King Samuel of Bulgaria. But the Bulgarian kingdom was overthrown, in 1019, by Basil II. In the twelfth century it regained its independence.
THE GREEK EMPERORS.—In the ninth century the Greeks made head against the Arabs, especially by means of their navy. In the tenth century John I. (Zimisces) crossed the Euphrates, and created alarm in Bagdad. The tenacity of life in the Greek Empire was surprising in view of the languishing sort of existence that it led. After Heraclius, there were three dynasties, the last of which, the Macedonian (867-1056), produced three remarkable men, Nicephorus Phocas, Zimisces, and Basil II. But the dynasty of Comneni, which, in the person of Isaac I., ascended the throne in 1057, had to combat a new and vigorous enemy, the Turks, who had now made themselves masters of Asia. One of this line of emperors, Alexius I., appealed to the Germans for help. This had some influence in giving rise to the first of the Crusades. In these conflicts the Latins bore the brunt. The exhausted Greek Empire played a minor part.
CONQUESTS OF THE TURKS.—The Mussulman dominion of the Arabs had become enfeebled. The Ommiad dynasty at Cordova had disappeared under the assaults of Christians, and of the Moors of Africa. The Fatimite caliphs were confined to Egypt. The rule of the Abassids of Bagdad had been well-nigh demolished by the Seljukian Turks in 1058. They founded in the eleventh century an extensive empire. The sultan, Alp Arslan, took the emperor, Romanus IV. Diogenes, prisoner (1071), and conquered Armenia. Malek Shah invaded Syria, Palestine, Jerusalem, and carried his arms as far as Egypt, while a member of the Turkish family of Seljuk wrested Asia Minor from the Greeks, and established the kingdom of Iconium, which was called Roum, extending from Mount Taurus to the Bosphorus. After the death of Malek Shah, there were three distinct sultanates, Persia, Syria, and Kerman,—the last being on the shores of the Indian Ocean.
THE PILGRIMS TO JERUSALEM.—The immediate occasion of the Crusades was the hard treatment of the Christian pilgrims who visited the sepulcher of Christ in Jerusalem. There the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, had erected a stately church. Pilgrimages—which had become more and more a custom since the fourth century—naturally tended to the sacred places in Palestine. Especially was this the case in the eleventh century, when piety had been quickened by the Cluny movement. In 1064 a great pilgrimage, in which seven thousand persons, priests and laity, of all nations, were included, under Siegfried, archbishop of Mentz, made its way through Hungary to Syria. Not more than a third of them lived to return. The reports of returning pilgrims were listened to with absorbing interest, as they told of the spots to which the imagination of the people was constantly directed. What indignation then was kindled by the pathetic narrative of the insults and blows which they had endured from the infidels who profaned the holy places with their hateful domination! In the ninth century, under caliphs of the temper of Haroun Al-Raschid, Christians had been well treated. About the middle of the tenth century the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt were the rulers at Jerusalem. Hakem was fierce in his persecution, but his successors were more tolerant. When the Seljukian Turks got control there, the harassed pilgrims had constant occasion to complain of insult and inhumanity.
THE CALL OF THE GREEKS.—The Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, threatened by the Mussulmans on the opposite bank of the Bosphorus, sent his call for succor to all Christian courts. Two popes, Sylvester II. and Gregory VII., had in vain exhorted the princes to rise in their might, to do away with the wrong and the shame which the disciples of Jesus were suffering at the hands of his enemies.
MOTIVES TO THE CRUSADES.—After this, only a spark was needed to kindle in the Western nations a flame of enthusiasm. The summons to a crusade appealed to the two most powerful sentiments then prevalent,—the sentiment of religion and that of chivalry. The response made by faith and reverence was reinforced by that thirst for a martial career and for knightly exploits which burned as a passion in the hearts of men. The peoples in the countries formed by the Germanic conquests were full of vigor and life. Outside of the Church, there was no employment to attract aspiring youth but the employment of a soldier. Western Europe was covered with a net-work of petty sovereignties. Feudal conflicts, while they were a discipline of strength and valor, were a narrow field for all this pent-up energy. There was a latent yearning for a wider horizon, a broader theater of action. Thus the Crusades profoundly interested all classes. The Church and the clergy, the lower orders, the women and the children, shared to the full in the religious enthusiasm, which, in the case of princes and nobles, took the form of an intense desire to engage personally in the holy war, in order to crush the infidels, and at the same time to signalize themselves by gallant feats of arms. There was no surer road to salvation. There was, moreover, a hope, of which all in distressed circumstances partook, of improving their temporal lot.
THE COUNCIL OF CLERMONT.—The prime author of the first Crusade was Pope Urban II. He authorized an enthusiast, Peter the Hermit, of Amiens, to travel on an ass through Italy and Southern France, and to stir up the people to the great undertaking of delivering the Holy Sepulcher. With an emaciated countenance and flashing eye, his head bare, and feet naked, and wearing a coarse garment bound with a girdle of cords, he told his burning tale of the inflictions endured by the pilgrims. At the great council of Clermont, in 1095, where a throng of bishops and nobles, and a multitude of common people who spoke the Romanic tongue, were assembled, Urban himself addressed the assembly in a strain of impassioned fervor. He called upon everyone to deny himself, and take up his cross, that he might win Christ. Whoever would enlist in the war was to have a complete remission of penances,—a "plenary indulgence." The answer was thundered forth, "God wills it." Thousands knelt, and begged to be enrolled in the sacred bands. The red cross of cloth or silk, fastened to the right shoulder, was the badge of all who took up arms. Hence they were called crusaders (from an old French word derived from crucem, Lat. acc. of crux, a cross).
THE UNDISCIPLINED BANDS.—The farmer left his plow, and the shepherd his flock. Both sexes and all ages were inspired with a common passion. Before a military organization could be made, a disorderly host, poorly armed and ill-provided, led by Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, a French knight, started for Constantinople by way of Germany and Hungary. They were obliged to separate; and, of two hundred thousand, it is said that only seven thousand reached that capital. These perished in Asia Minor. They left their bones on the plain of Nicoea, where they were found by the next crusading expedition.
FIRST CRUSADE (1096-1099).—"The Crusades were primarily a Gaulish movement:" in French-speaking lands, the fire of chivalric devotion was most intense. The first regular army of soldiers of the cross departed by different routes under separate chiefs. First of these was Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lower Lorraine, the bravest and noblest of them all. With him were his brothers, Baldwin, and Eustace, count of Boulogne. Prominent among the other chiefs were Hugh, count of Vermandois; Robert, duke of Normandy, who had pawned his duchy to his brother, William II., the king of England; Robert, count of Flanders; Raymond, count of Toulouse; Bohemond of Tarentum, son of Robert Guiscard; and Tancred, Robert Guiscard's nephew. The Spaniards were taken up with their own crusade against the Moors. In consequence of the late absorbing struggles between emperors and popes, the Germans and Italians did not now embark in the enterprise. The relation of the Norman dynasty in England to the conquered Saxons prevented the first crusading host from receiving substantial aid from that country. The leaders of the army finally consented to become the feudal dependents of the emperor Alexius while they should be within his borders, and to restore to him such of their conquests as had been lately wrested by the Turks from the Eastern Empire. Alexius was more alarmed than gratified on seeing the swarm of warriors which he had brought into his land. After a siege of seven weeks, Nicea was surrendered, not, however, into the hands of the European soldiers who had conducted the siege, but to the shrewd Alexius. At Doryleum, in a desperate battle the Turks were defeated; but, on their march eastward, they wasted the lands which they left behind them. The crusaders suffered severely from disease consequent on the heat. A private quarrel broke out between Tancred and Baldwin. Baldwin, invited to Edessa by the Greek or Armenian ruler, founded there a Latin principality. After besieging Antioch for several months, by the treachery of a renegade Christian, Bohemond, with a few followers, was admitted into the city. The Christians slew ten thousand of its defenders; but, three days after, Antioch was shut in by a great army of Turks under the sultan Kerboga. The crusaders were stimulated by the supposed discovery of the "holy lance," or the steel head of the spear which had pierced the side of Jesus. The Turks were vanquished, and the citadel of Antioch was possessed by Bohemond. The wrangling chieftains were now compelled by the army to set out for Jerusalem. When they reached the heights where they first caught a glimpse of the holy city, the crusaders fell on their knees, and with tears of joy broke out in hymns of praise to God. But, not accustomed to siege operations, and destitute of the machines and ladders requisite for the purpose, they found themselves balked in the first attempts to capture the city. Yet after thirty days, their needs having been meantime in a measure supplied, Jerusalem was taken by storm (July 15, 1099). The infuriated conquerors gave the rein to their vindictive passions. Ten thousand Saracens were slaughtered. The Jews were burned in the synagogues, to which they had fled. When the thirst for blood and for plunder was sated, feelings of penitence and humility took possession of the victors. The leaders, casting aside their arms, with bared heads and barefoot, entered into the church of the Holy Sepulcher, and on their bended knees thanked God for their success. After debate, the princes united in choosing Godfrey of Bouillon as ruler of the city. He would not wear a royal crown in the place where the Saviour of the world had worn on his bleeding forehead a crown of thorns. He designated himself Protector of the Holy Sepulcher. Shortly after, at Ascalon, he won a great victory against the vastly superior forces of the Egyptian sultan. Godfrey died the next year (1100), and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, who first took the title of King of Jerusalem. The force of the Moslems, and the almost incessant strife and division among the crusaders themselves, made the kingdom hard to defend.
THE NEW KINGDOM.—Venice, Genoa, and Pisa had the most to do with the defense and enlargement of the new kingdom. It was organized according to the method of feudalism. It continued until the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187.
THE MILITARY ORDERS.—The principal supporters of the new kingdom at Jerusalem were the orders of knights, in which were united the spirit of chivalry and the spirit of monasticism. To the monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, they added a fourth vow, which bound them to fight the infidels, and to protect the pilgrims. These military orders acquired great privileges and great wealth. Each of them had its own peculiar apparel, stamped with a cross. The two principal orders were the Knights of St. John, or the Hospitallers, and the Knights Templar. The Hospitallers grew out of a hospital established in the eleventh century near the Holy Sepulcher, for the care of sick or wounded pilgrims. The order, when fully constituted, contained three classes of members,—knights, who were all of noble birth, priests and chaplains, and serving brothers. After the loss of the Holy Land, the island of Rhodes was given up to them. This they held until 1522, when they were driven out by the Turks, and received from the emperor, Charles V., the island of Malta. The Templars gained high renown for their valor, and, by presents and legacies, acquired immense wealth. After the loss of their possessions in Palestine, most of their members took up their abode in Cyprus: from there many of them went to France. Not a few of them became addicted to violent and profligate ways. They were charged, whether truly or falsely, with unbelief, and Oriental superstitions caught up in the East from their enemies. These accusations, coupled with a desire to get their property, led to their suppression by Philip V. in the beginning of the fourteenth century. A third order was that of Teutonic Knights, founded at Jerusalem about 1128. In the next century they subjugated the heathen Wends in Prussia (1226-1283).
WELFS AND WAIBLINGS.—The emperor Lothar died on a journey back from Italy in 1137. Henry the Proud, of the house of Welf, to whom he had given the imperial insignia, hoped to be his successor, and hesitated to recognize Conrad III. (1137-1152) of the house of Hohenstaufen, who was chosen. Conrad required him to give up Saxony, for the reason that one prince could not govern two duchies. When he refused, Bavaria, also, was taken from him, and given to Leopold, margrave of Austria. This led to war, in which the king, as usual, was strongly supported by the cities. Henry the Proud left a young son, known later as Henry the Lion. Count Welf, the brother of Henry the Proud, kept up the war in Bavaria. He was besieged in Weinsberg. During the siege, it is said that his followers shouted "Welf" as a war-cry, while the besiegers shouted "Waiblings,"—Waiblingen being the birthplace of Frederick, duke of Swabia, brother of Conrad. These names, corrupted into Guelphs and Ghibellines by the Italians, were afterwards attached to the two great parties,—the supporters, respectively, of the popes and the emperors. Henry the Lion afterwards received Saxony; and the mark of Brandenburg was given in lieu of it to Albert the Bear.
Welf I. was a powerful nobleman, who received from Henry IV. the fief of Bavaria. When Henry V died, the natural heirs of the extinct Franconian line were his nephews, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia, and Conrad. But the Saxons supported the wealthy Lothar, who was chosen emperor, and won over to his side Henry the Proud, grandson of Welf I., to whom Lothar gave his daughter in marriage, and gave, also, the dukedom of Saxony, in addition to his dukedom of Bavaria. In these events lay the roots of the long rivalship between the Welfs and the Hohenstaufens. Henry the Lion, as stated above, was the son of Henry the Proud.
WELF, Duke of Bavaria, 1070-1101.
|
+—HENRY the Black, Duke of Bavaria, 1120-1126.
|
+—Judith, m. to Frederic, Duke of Swabia (d. 1147),
| the son of Agnes, who was the daughter of HENRY IV. FREDERIC I
| (Barbarossa) was the son of Judith, and this Frederic of Swabia.
| The Swabian dukes were called Hohenstaufens, from a
| castle on Mount Staufen in Wurtemberg.
|
+—HENRY the Proud,
Duke of Bavaria 1126, of Saxony 1137; deprived, 1138.
|
+—HENRY the Lion, m.
Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England.
|
+—HENRY the Young, d. 1227.
|
+—OTTO IV, d. 1218.
SECOND CRUSADE (1147-1149).—The preacher of the second Crusade was St. Bernard, whose saintly life and moving eloquence produced a great effect. Louis VII. of France and Conrad III. were the leaders. The expedition was attended by a series of calamities. The design of recapturing Edessa from Noureddin, the sultan of Aleppo, was given up. The siege of Damascus failed (1148). Conrad returned home with broken health. Soon after, Damascus fell into the hands of Noureddin, who was a brave and upright leader. Through one of his lieutenants, he conquered Egypt. After his death, Saladin, who sprung from one of the tribes of Kurds, and was in his service, rose to power there, and set aside the Fatimite caliphate (1171). He was not less renowned for his culture and magnanimity than for his valor. Saladin united under his scepter all the lands from Cairo to Aleppo. In the battle at Ramla, not far from Ascalon (1178), the crusaders gained their last notable victory over this antagonist, which served to prolong for some years the existence of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Afterwards victory was on his side: the crusaders were overthrown in the fatal battle of Tiberias, and Jerusalem was taken by him (1187). Thus the Latin kingdom fell. The Saracen conqueror was much more humane after success than the Christian warriors had been in like circumstances.
FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.—Frederick I.—Barbarossa, or Redbeard, he was called in Italy—(1152-1190) was one of the grand figures of the Middle Ages. He was thirty-one years of age at his election as emperor, and had already been with the crusaders to the Holy Land. In him great strength of understanding and a capacity for large undertakings were combined with a taste for letters and art. His aim was to bring back to the empire the strength and dignity which had belonged to it under the Saxon and Franconian emperors. The rulers of Bohemia and Poland he obliged to swear fealty as vassals. He put down private war, and restored order in Germany. The palatinate on the Rhine, formerly a part of Franconia, he gave to his half-brother Conrad, who founded Heidelberg (1155).
STRUGGLE WITH THE LOMABARD CITIES.—The principal conflict of Frederick I. was in Italy, where he endeavored to restore the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities, which had grown prosperous and freedom-loving, and were bent on managing their own municipal affairs. They had thrown off the rule of bishops and counts. The burghers of Milan, the principal town, had obliged the neighboring nobles and cities to form a league with them. The smaller cities, as Como and Lodi, preferred the emperor's control to being subject to Milan. Pavia clung to the empire. But most of the cities prized their independence and republican administration. The Pope and the emperor were soon at variance, and the cities naturally looked to the pontiff for sympathy and leadership. In 1158 Frederick again crossed the Alps, bent on establishing the imperial jurisdiction as it had stood in the days of Charlemagne. The study of the Roman law was now pursued with enthusiasm at Bologna and Padua. At a great assembly in the Roncalian Fields, Frederick caused the prerogatives of the empire to be defined according to the terms of the civil law. The emperor was proclaimed as "lord of the world,"—dominus mundi. In the room of the consuls, a Podesta was appointed as the chief officer in each city, to represent his authority. Milan, which had submitted, revolted, but, after a siege of two years, was forced to surrender, and was destroyed, at the emperor's command, by the inhabitants of the neighboring cities (1162). In 1159 Alexander III. was elected Pope by a majority of the cardinals. Victor IV. was chosen by the imperial party, and was recognized at a council convened by Frederick at Pavia. On the death of Victor, another anti-pope, Paschal III., was elected in his place; and, on the fourth visit of Frederick to Italy (1166-1168), he conducted Paschal to Rome. In 1167 the cities of Northern Italy, which maintained their cause with invincible spirit, united in the Lombard League. They built the strongly fortified place, Alessandria,—named after the Pope,—and took possession of the passes of the Alps. The emperor, whose army was nearly destroyed by a pestilence at Rome, escaped, with no little difficulty and danger, to Germany.
FREDERICK I. AND POPE ALEXANDER III.—For nearly seven years Frederick remained in Germany. He put an end to a violent feud which had been raging between Henry the Lion and his enemies (1168). In 1174 he was ready to resume his great Italian enterprise. But he did not succeed in taking Alessandria. All his efforts to induce Henry the Lion to come to his support failed. He was consequently defeated in the battle of Legnano (1176). The extraordinary abilities and indefatigable energy of the great emperor had been exerted in the vain effort, as he himself now perceived it to be, to break down the resistance of a free people to a system which they felt to be an obsolete despotism. A reconciliation took place at Venice in 1177 between Pope Alexander III. and Frederick, in which the latter virtually gave up the plan which he had so long struggled to realize. It was a day of triumph for the Papacy. At Constance, in 1183, a treaty was made with the Lombard cities, in which their self-government was substantially conceded, with the right to fortify themselves, and to levy armies, and to extend the bounds of their confederacy. The overlordship of the emperor was recognized. There was to be an imperial judge in each town, to whom appeals in the most important causes might be made. The "regalian rights" to forage, food, and lodging for the emperor's army, when within their territory, were reduced to a definite form. The cities grew stronger from their newly gained freedom; yet the loss of imperial restraint was, on some occasions, an evil.
FREDERICK IN GERMANY.—After his return to Germany, Frederick deprived Henry the Lion of his lands; and when Henry craved his forgiveness at the Diet of Erfurt in 1181, he was allowed to retain Brunswick and Lüneburg. He was to live for three years, with his wife and child, at the court of his father-in-law, Henry II., king of England. His son William, born there, is the ancestor of the present royal family in England. In 1184 the emperor, in honor of his sons, King Henry, and Frederick, duke of Swabia, who were of age to become knights, celebrated at Mentz a magnificent festival, where a great throng of attendants was gathered from far and near. In a last and peaceful visit to Italy, his son Henry was married to Constance, the daughter of Roger II., and the heiress of the Norman kingdom of Lower Italy and Sicily.
THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1192).—The old emperor now undertook another Crusade (1189), in which he was supported by Philip II. (Philip Augustus), king of France, and Richard the Lion-Hearted (Cæur-de-Lion), king of England, but of French descent. Having spent the winter at Adrianople, Frederick crossed into Asia Minor, and conquered Iconium. In his advance he showed a military skill and a valor which made the expedition a memorable one; but at the river Calycadnus in Cilicia, either while bathing or attempting to cross on horseback, the old warrior was swept away by the stream, and drowned (1190). His son Frederick died during the siege of Acre. Richard and Philip quarreled, before and after reaching Acre, which surrendered in 1191. Philip returned to France. Richard, with all his valor, was twice compelled to turn back from Jerusalem. Nothing was accomplished except the establishment of a truce with Saladin, by which a strip of land on the coast, from Joppa to Acre, was given to the Christians, and pilgrimages to the holy places were allowed. Richard was distinguished both for his deeds of arms and for his cruelty. On his return, he was kept as a prisoner by Leopold, duke of Austria, by the direction of the emperor, Henry VI., for thirteen months, and released on the payment of a ransom, and rendering homage. He was charged with treading the German banner in the filth at Acre. His alliance with the Welfs in Germany is enough to explain the hostility felt towards him by the imperial party.
HENRY VI.: POPE INNOCENT III.—Henry VI. (1190-1197) had the prudence and vigor of his father, but lacked his magnanimity. He was hard and stern in his temper. Twice he visited Italy to conquer the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the inheritance of his wife. He waged a new war with Henry the Lion (1192-1194), which ended in a marriage of Agnes, the emperor's cousin, with Henry, the son of Henry. It was a project of the emperor to convert Germany and Italy, with Sicily, into a hereditary monarchy; but the princes would not consent. He aspired to incorporate the Eastern Empire in the same dominion. While engaged in strife with the aged Pope, Coelestin II., respecting the Tuscan lands of Matilda, which she had bequeathed to the Church, the emperor suddenly died. His son Frederick was a boy only three years old. On the death of Coelestin II., early in 1198, Innocent III., the ablest and most powerful of all the popes, acceded to the pontifical chair. Innocent was a statesman of unsurpassed sagacity and energy. He was imbued with the highest idea of the pontifical dignity. He made his authority felt and feared in all parts of Christendom. He exacted submission from all rulers, civil and ecclesiastical. The Empress Constance, in order to secure Italy for Frederick, accepted the papal investment on conditions dictated by the Pope. After her death Innocent ruled Italy in the character of guardian of her son. He dislodged the imperial vassals from the Tuscan territory of Matilda, and thus became a second founder of the papal state.
FOURTH CRUSADE (1202-1204).—Under the auspices of Innocent III., a Crusade was undertaken by French barons, with whom were associated Baldwin, count of Flanders, and Boniface, marquis of Montferrat. Arrived at Venice, the crusaders were not able to furnish to the Venetians the sum agreed to be paid for their transportation. The Venetians, whose devotion was strongly tempered with the mercantile spirit, under the old doge, Henry Dandolo, greatly to the displeasure of the Pope, persuaded them to assist in the capture of Zara, which the king of Hungary had wrested from Venice. Then, at the call of Alexius, son of the Eastern emperor, Isaac Angelus, they went with the Venetian fleet to Constantinople, and restored these princes to the throne. The result of the contentions that followed with the Greeks was the pillage of Constantinople, and the establishment of the Latin Empire under Baldwin. Principalities were carved out for different chiefs; the Venetians taking several Greek coast towns, and afterwards Candia (Crete). The patriarch of Constantinople had to take his pallium from Rome. The Latin service was established in the churches. There was no real union between the Greeks and the invaders, but constant strife, until, in 1261, Michael Paloeologus, the head of a Greek empire which had been established at Nicoea, put an end to the Latin kingdom.
CHILDREN'S CRUSADE.—The failure of the stupendous undertakings for the conquest of the infidels was attributed to the wicked wrangles, and still more to the vicious lives, of the crusaders, whose defeat was regarded as indicative of the frown of Heaven on their evil courses. This feeling gave occasion to the Children's Crusade, in 1212. Many thousands of French and German boys made their way, in two distinct expeditions, to Marseilles and the seaports of Italy, in order to be conveyed thence to the Holy Land. But few returned: nearly all perished by the way, or were seized, and carried off to slave-markets. The enterprise grew out of a wild construction of the injunction of Jesus to let little children come to him.
OTTO IV.: CIVIL WAR IN GERMANY.—Frederick had been elected king; but, on the death of his father, his claims were disregarded. The Hohenstaufens chose Philip, brother of Henry VI.: the Welfs appointed Otto, the second son of Henry the Lion. Innocent claimed the right, not to appoint the emperor, but to decide between the rival claimants. He decided, in 1201, in favor of Otto IV. (1198-1214). Philip's party, however, seemed likely to succeed; but, in 1208, he was murdered. Otto, having made large promises of submission to the Pope's requirements, was crowned emperor, and universally acknowledged. When he failed to fulfill his pledges, and began to assert the old imperial prerogatives in Italy, he was excommunicated and deposed by Innocent (1210).
FREDERICK (II.) MADE KING.—Innocent was now led to take up the cause of young Frederick (1212). The latter won Germany over to his side, and received the German crown at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1215. Otto was restricted to his ancestral territory in Brunswick.
CHARACTER OF FREDERICK II. (1214-1250).—Frederick II., on account of his extraordinary natural gifts and his accomplishments, was called the wonder of the world. He knew several languages, and, in intercourse with the Saracens_ in Sicily, had acquired a familiarity with the sciences. In many of his ideas of government he was in advance of his time. But his reign was largely spent in a contest with the Lombard cities and with the popes. He is styled by an eminent modern historian, "the gay, the brave, the wise, the relentless, and the godless Frederick." He was often charged with skepticism in relation to the doctrines of the Church. The main ground of this imputation seems to have been a temper of mind at variance with the habit of the age,—a very moderate degree of reverence for ecclesiastical authority, and the absence of the usual antipathy to heresy and religious dissent.
FIFTH CRUSADE (1228-1229).—Having caused his son Henry to be elected king of Rome, Frederick, in 1220, left Germany for fifteen years. It was the policy of the popes to keep the Sicilian crown from being united with the empire, and the emperor from gaining the supremacy in Lombardy. Frederick, at his coronation at Aix, and afterwards, had engaged to undertake a crusade. But he had postponed it from time to time. Pope Honorius III. had patiently borne with this delay. But when Frederick, in 1227, was about to start, and was prevented, as he professed, by the contagious disease in his army, from which he himself was suffering, Gregory IX., the next pope, placed him under the ban of the Church. Nevertheless, the emperor, in the following year, embarked on his crusade. His vigor as a soldier, and, still more, his tact in conciliating the Saracens, enabled him to get possession of Jerusalem. No bishop would crown an excommunicate, and he had to put the crown on his own head. That he left a mosque unmolested was a fresh ground of reproach. He negotiated an armistice with the sultan, Kameel (El Kámil), who ceded Nazareth and a strip of territory reaching to the coast, together with Sidon. Fifteen years later (in 1244) Jerusalem was finally lost by the Christians.
CONTEST OF FREDERICK WITH THE POPES.—On his return to Italy, Frederick drove the papal troops out of Apulia. In a personal interview with Gregory IX. at San Germane, a treaty was made between them, the ban was removed, and the treaty of Frederick with the Sultan was sanctioned by the Pope. Frederick now displayed his talent for organization in all parts of his empire. His constitution for the Sicilian kingdom, based on the ruins of the old feudalism, is tinged with the modern political spirit. His court, wherever he sojourned, mingled an almost Oriental luxury and splendor with the attractions of poetry and song. A sore trial was the revolt of his son Henry (1234), whom he conquered, and confined in a prison, where he died in 1242. The efforts of Frederick to enforce the imperial supremacy over the Lombard cities were met with the same stubborn resistance from the Guelfs which his grandfather had encountered. In 1237 he gained a brilliant victory over them at Cortenuova. But the hard terms on which Frederick insisted, in connection with other transactions offensive to the Pope, called out another excommunication from Gregory IX. (1239). The Genoese fleet, which was conveying ecclesiastics to a council called by the Pope at Rome, was captured by direction of Frederick; and the prelates were thrown into prison. Pope Innocent IV. (1243-1254) fled to Lyons, and there published anew the ban against the emperor, declared him deposed, and summoned the Germans to elect another emperor in his place. The ecclesiastical princes in Germany chose Henry Raspe (1246-1247), landgrave of Thuringia, who was defeated by Conrad, Henry's son. The next emperor thus chosen, William of Holland (1247), made no headway in Germany. During this period of civil war, many German cities gained their freedom from episcopal rule, attained to great privileges, and came into an immediate relation to the emperor. A fearful war raged in Italy between the Guelfs and Ghibellines, in the midst of which Frederick died, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. Had he been as conscientious and as capable of curbing his passions and appetites as he was highly endowed in other respects, he might have been a model ruler. As it was; although his career was splendid, his private life, as well as his public conduct, was stained with flagrant faults.
THE SICILIAN KINGDOM.—The kingdom of the Two Sicilies was bravely defended by Manfred, son of Frederick II, in behalf of young Conradin, the son of the new emperor, Conrad IV. The Pope gave the crown to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX. of France. Charles, after the fall of Manfred at Beneventum (1266), gained the kingdom. Conradin went to Italy, but was defeated and captured in 1268, and was executed at Naples. Such was the tragic end of the last of the Hohenstaufens. The unbearable tyranny of the French led to a conspiracy called the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and, at Easter Monday, at vesper time, the rising took place. All the French in Sicily were massacred. Peter of Aragon, who had married the daughter of Manfred, became king of Sicily. The dominion of Charles of Anjou was restricted to Naples.
SPAIN.—The Spaniards had a crusade to carry forward in their own land, which lasted for eight hundred years. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, especially under Abderrahman III. (912-961), the Moorish civilization was most brilliant. In Cordova, there were six hundred mosques. There were said to be seventeen universities and seventy large libraries in Spain. The caliph's fleets were dominant in the Mediterranean. He was mild in his policy towards Jews and Christians. In the eleventh century the caliphs gave themselves up to luxury, and the control of their forces was in the hands of the viziers. Of these, Almanzor, the general of Hakem II (976-1013), was the most famous. He took the city of Leon, and plundered the church of St. James of Compostella, the patron saint of Spain. After this time the caliphate of Cordova broke up into numerous kingdoms. The Christian Visigoths in the north-west had built up the little kingdom of Oviedo, which later took the name of Leon. The rest of Christian Spain was united under Sancho the Great (970-1035). To one of his sons, Ferdinand I, he left Castile, to which Leon and the Asturias were united; to another, Aragon; and, to a third, Navarre and Biscay. It was under Ferdinand that the exploits of the Spanish hero, the Cid (Rodrigo Diaz of Bivar), in conflict with the infidels, began. The complete conquest of the Moors was prevented by the strife of the Christian kingdoms with one another. Under Alfonso VI (1072-1109), they were all once more united.
GREAT DEFEAT OF THE MOORS.—The invasion of the Almoravids, invited over from Africa by the Mussulman princes (1086), checked the progress of the Christian conquest. These allies of the Arabs built up a kingdom for themselves, reconquered Valencia, and taxed to the utmost the power of the Christians to resist their progress. New sects of fanatical Moslems, the Almohads, having conquered Morocco, passed over into Spain. The Mohammedans were thus at war among themselves, and were divided into three parties. Military orders were established in Spain; and the kings of Castile, Leon, and Navarre, aided by sixty thousand crusaders from Germany, France, and Italy, defeated Mohammed, the chief of the Almohads, with great slaughter, in a decisive battle near Tolosa (1212). The Spanish crusade built up the little kingdom of Portugal, and the states of Castile and of Aragon. They were destined to play an important part in the history of commerce and discovery. The Spanish character owed some of its marked traits to this prolonged struggle with the Moslems.
THE MONGOLIAN INVASIONS.—At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Genghis Khan, the leader of Mongolian hordes which roamed over the Asiatic plateau between China and Siberia, conquered China, and overthrew the ruling dynasty. He subdued Hindustan and the empire of the Chowares, which had been founded by a Seljukian slave, and spread his power from the Caspian Sea through Persia to India (1218). Bokhara and Samarcand were among the populous cities which were burned with all their treasures by these ruthless invaders. Libraries were converted into stalls for the horses of the brutal conquerors. The sons and successors of Genghis Khan swept over the countries north of the Black Sea, captured Moscow and Kiev, burned Cracow, and pursued their murderous and devastating path over Poland and Hungary, At the battle of Wahlstatt (1241), the Germans under Henry the Pious, duke of Liegnitz, were defeated. The victories of the Tartars were frightful massacres. It was a custom of the Mongols to cut off an ear of the slaughtered enemy. It was said that at Liegnitz these trophies filled nine sacks. The Mongol hosts retired from Europe. They attacked the caliphate of Bagdad, a city which they took by storm, and plundered for forty days. They destroyed the dynasty of the Abassids. They marched into Syria, stormed and sacked Aleppo, and captured Damascus. For a time the central point of the Tartar conquests was the city or camping-ground of Karakorum in Central Asia. After a few generations their empire was broken in pieces. The "Golden Horde," which they had planted in Russia, on the east of the Volga, remained there for two centuries. Bagdad was held by the Mongols until 1400, when it was conquered, and kept for a short time, by Tamerlane.
The religion of the Tartars was either Lamaism—a corrupted form of Buddhistic belief and worship,—or Mohammedanism. In China and Mongolia they were Lamaists: elsewhere they generally adopted the faith of Islam. Their original religion was Shamaism, a worship of spirits, akin to fetichism. The later Mongol sovereigns, especially Kublai Khan, were ready to promote peaceful intercourse with Europe. It was at this time that Marco Polo resided at their court.
SIXTH CRUSADE (1248-1254): SEVENTH CRUSADE (1270).-Two additional Crusades were undertaken under the leadership of that upright and devout king, Louis IX. of France. The first (1248-1254) resulted in the taking of Damietta in Egypt (1249); but the next year Louis, with his whole army, was captured, and obtained his release after much delay, by the surrender of his conquests, and in return for a large ransom. Not disheartened by this failure, the pious monarch, in 1270, sailed to Tunis, where he and most of his army perished from sickness. In 1291 Acre, the last town held by the Christians, was taken by the Egyptian Mamelukes; and the Crusades came to an end.
EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES.—The Crusades were a spontaneous movement of Christian Europe. It was a great tide, which bore away all classes of people. It lends to the Middle Ages an ideal and heroic character. An overpowering sentiment, submerging calculation and self-interest, swept over society. There was infinite suffering: countless lives were the forfeit. The results, however, were beneficent, 1. It is true that the conquests made in the East were all surrendered. The holy places were given up. Yet the Turks had received a check which was a protection to Europe during the period when its monarchies were forming, and were gaining the force to encounter them anew, and repel their dangerous aggressions. 2. The Feudal System in Europe was smitten with a mortal blow. Smaller fiefs, either by sale or by the death of the holders, were swallowed up in the larger. The anarchical spirit was counteracted. Political unity was promoted. 3. There was a lessening of the social distance between suzerain and serf. They fought side by side, and aided one another in common perils. The consequence was an increase of sympathy. 4. There was an expansion of knowledge. There was a widening of geographical knowledge. An acquaintance was gained with other peoples and countries. To the more civilized Saracens, the crusaders seemed brutal and barbarous. The crusaders in turn were impressed with the superior advancement and elegance of the Saracens. It was not the lord only who beheld distant lands: the serf was taken from the soil to which he had been tied. He drew stimulus and information from sojourning under other skies. 5. A great impulse was given to trade and commerce. An acquaintance was gained with new products, natural and artificial. New wants were created. 6. The cities advanced in strength and wealth. Important social consequences resulted from their growth.
WHY THE CRUSADES TERMINATED.—After the thirteenth century it was impossible to rekindle the crusading enthusiasm. The fire had burned out. It seemed as if the idea had exhausted itself in action. This effect was due, (1) to the absence of novelty in such undertakings; (2) to the long experience of the hardships belonging to them, which tended to dampen the romantic zeal that had formed a part of the motive; (3) to the disappointments following upon the practical failure of so prodigious and costly exertions; (4) to an altered condition of public feeling of a more general character. Antipathy to the infidel, the more exclusive sway of religious sentiment, were giving way to a mingling of secular aims and interests. There were new and wider fields of activity at home. The mood of men's minds was no longer the same.
LUXURIES INTRODUCED BY THE CRUSADES.—The effect of the Crusades in bringing in new comforts and luxuries, and in thus altering the style of living, was remarkable. At the very outset, a great deal of money, obtained by the sale or pawning of estates, was spent in the outfit of the hundred thousand nobles, who, at the beginning, took the cross. Costly furs, embroidered cushions, curtains of purple dye, pavilions worked with gold, banners of purple or of cloth-of-gold, showy costumes, and shining armor,—such was the splendor that met the eyes of thousands who had never before beheld such a spectacle. The journey to the East brought under the observation of the crusaders, arts and fashions to which they had been strangers, They saw the gilded domes and marble palaces of Constantinople, and the treasures of ancient art which had been gathered within the walls of that ancient capital. Antioch, with all its wealth, fell into their hands. Later, the merchants of both religions followed in the wake of the armies, and met one another. The superb fabrics of the East were carried to the West by routes which now became safe and familiar. The precious ores and tissues of Damascus, and the beautiful glassware of Tyre, were conveyed to Venice, and thence to places more distant. Silk stuffs of exquisite beauty were brought from Mosul and Alexandria. The elegance of the East, with its rich fabrics, its jewels and pearls, was so enchanting that an enthusiastic crusader termed it "the vestibule of Paradise." It was not the nobles alone in the West who acquired these attractive products of skill and industry. The cities shared in them. Even the lower classes partook of the change in the way of living.
LIFE IN THE CASTLE.—Even in the earlier days of feudalism, the seclusion of the castle was not without an influence in promoting domestic intercourse and affection. A new sentiment respecting woman sprang up in the Middle Ages, and was fostered by the honor which the New Testament and the teaching of the Church rendered to saintly women. A spirit of gallantry and devotion to woman, partly natural to the Germanic race, and partly arising from causes like that just named, sprang up in the midst of prevailing ignorance and perpetual strife. In the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries life in the castle is found to be very much improved. In the eleventh century it lacked comfort, to say nothing of luxury. The lights were torches of dry wood: even candles were not in general use. Houses in France, England, and Germany commonly had thatched roofs. They were made of logs covered with a sort of clay or mud. They were built with low and narrow doors, and with small windows which admitted but little light. In the middle of the smoky hall was a large, round fireplace. There was no chimney, but only a funnel, which pierced the ceiling. The seats were benches and stools. The feet of the family and guests were kept warm by hay spread beneath them. In the later period the substitution of dry rushes and straw was thought to be a marvelous gain. Beds of straw were introduced into all the apartments of nobles, and even of kings. To sleep on a straw couch was deemed a regal luxury. One consequence of the Crusades was to introduce carpets and hangings into the dwellings of the great. Improved timepieces took the place of the water-clocks, which were a wonder in the days of Charlemagne. In the twelfth century the castle begins to look less like a dungeon. Within and without, it ceases to wear so exclusively the aspect of a fortress. The furniture has more beauty. In the great hall are the large tables attached to the floor, the sideboards, the cupboards, the stately chair of the lord, the couch with its canopy, the chests for the wearing-apparel, the armor on the walls. In the thirteenth century France was covered with chateaux, which, in the case of princes and nobles of highest rank, had their spacious courts, their stables, their lodgings for the servants. All these were within the precincts of the palace. In the great hall were held the assemblies of vassals, banquets, judicial trials. In the wealthiest mansions, there was a main saloon on the floor above, reached by a spiral stairway, and serving also for the principal bed-chamber. There the stone floor gave place to marble of varied colors. Mosaics and other ornaments were introduced. Sculptures, carvings, and mural paintings decorated the apartments. Glass mirrors, imported by way of Venice, began to supersede the mirrors of polished metal. Larger windows, of painted glass, became common among the rich, in the room of the small pieces of glass, or of alabaster, which had before served to let in a few rays of light. Tallow candles came into vogue. Lamps were not unknown. On great occasions, lanterns and wax candles were used for a festive illumination. Chimneys were in use, and about the vast fire-place the family group could gather. The hospitality of the castle was often bountiful. The chase, the favorite amusement, gave life and animation to the scene, and prepared the inmates for the feast that followed. Minstrels enlivened the social gathering. Troops of mountebanks and buffoons furnished amusement, and were sometimes lavishly rewarded. There were singers and buffoons who were attached permanently to the household. There were others who traveled from place to place, and were even organized into corporations or guilds. The fool, or jester, to whom a large license was allowed, was long deemed a necessary adjunct of the castle-hall. Carriages were little used; rank was indicated by the accouterments of the war-horse or of the palfrey. From the twelfth century onward, the improvement in the comforts of living was not confined to the nobles and to rich burghers in cities. It was shared by the rural classes, notwithstanding the miseries—such as insecurity, and dangers of famine—that belonged to their condition.
POVERTY AND DISEASE.—A French writer on the history of luxury, speaking of France in this period, says, "In the cities, we meet at once luxury, certain beginnings of prosperity, and frightful misery. Beggary exists in a form the most hideous: there is an organization of it with grades, and a sort of hierarchy. In the face of sumptuous costumes, of chateaux better adorned, of the nascent wealth of industry, France included more than two thousand lepers, and knew not how to treat maladies born of the most imperfect hygiene and the most sordid filth. Such were the extremes. The course of general progress went forward between them." The condition of the poorest class in England was no better. "The absence of vegetable food for the greater part of the year, the personal dirt of the people, the sleeping at night in the clothes worn in the day, and other causes, made skin-diseases frightfully common. At the outskirts of every town in England, there were crawling about emaciated creatures covered with loathsome sores, living Heaven knows how. They were called by the common name of lepers; and probably the leprosy, strictly so called, was awfully common." Such being the life of the poor in villages, and in the absence of drainage and other modern safeguards of health, in large towns, it is no wonder that in the Middle Ages there were terrible pestilences, and that the average length of life was much less than at present.
ORIGIN AND NATURE OF CHIVALRY.—It was in the period of the crusades that the mediaeval institution of chivalry was ennobled by receiving a religious consecration. Chivalry is a comprehensive term, denoting a system of ideas and customs that prevailed in the middle ages. In the western kingdoms of Europe there was gradually formed a distinct class of warriors of superior rank, who fought on horseback, and were recognized as knights by a ceremony of equipment with arms. Among the customs of the ancient Germans, which are noticed by Tacitus, and in which may be discovered the germs of chivalry, are the remarkable deference paid to women, attendance of the aspiring youth on a military superior,—out of which vassalship arose,—and the formal receiving of arms on reaching manhood. At the outset, knighthood was linked to feudal service: the knights were landholders. In the age of Charlemagne, the warriors on horseback—the caballarii—were the precursors, both in name and function, of the chevaliers of later times. The word knight, meaning a youth or servant, and then a military attendant, came to be a term of equivalent meaning. The necessary connection of knighthood with the possession of fiefs was broken in the thirteenth century, through changes in the circumstances of warfare. Knighthood became independent of feudalism. It was a personal distinction, frequently bestowed as a reward for brave deeds, and often conferred with elaborate ceremonies, partly of a religious character. When the boy of gentle birth passed from under the care of females, he first served as a page or valet at the court of a prince or the castle of a rich noble. Having been thus trained in habits of courtesy and obedience, he was advanced, not earlier than the age of fourteen, to the rank of squire, and instructed in horsemanship and in the use of weapons. He followed his master to the tournament and in battle, until finally he was himself dubbed a knight, was clothed in armor of steel, and took on him all the obligations and privileges of his order. The introduction of hereditary surnames and of armorial bearings served to distinguish the members of this order. He who was a knight in one place was a knight everywhere.
There were different classes of knights. The "bachelor," who bore a forked pennon, was below the "knight-banneret," who alone had the right to carry the square banner. The banneret was required to have a certain estate, and to be able to bring into the field a certain number of lances, i.e., inferior knights with their men-at-arms and foot-soldiers. Each knight was accompanied by his squire and personal attendants. Not seldom two knights joined together in a brotherhood in arms, pledging themselves to sustain each other in every peril.
THE VIRTUES OF KNIGHTHOOD.—There were characteristic obligations of knighthood. One was loyalty, which included a strict fidelity to all pledges, embracing promises made to an enemy. Another knightly virtue was courtesy, which was exercised even towards a foe. The spirit of gallantry, inspiring devotion to woman, especially the chosen object of love, and protection to womanly weakness, was always a cardinal trait of the chivalric temper. Courage, which delighted in daring exploits, and sought fields for the exercise of personal prowess, was an indispensable quality of the knights. The ideal of chivalry was honor rather than benevolence. The influence of chivalry in refining manners was very great; but, especially in its period of decline, it allowed or brought in much cruelty and profligacy. Its distinctive spirit could find room for exercise only amid conflict and bloodshed, which it naturally tended to promote.
CEREMONIES OF INVESTITURE.—When the knight was created according to the complete form, he entered into a bath on the evening previous, was instructed by old knights in "the order and feats" of chivalry, was then clad in white and russet, like a hermit, passed the night in the chapel in "orisons and prayers," and at daybreak confessed to the priest, and received the sacrament. He then returned to his chamber. At the appointed hour he was conducted to the hall, where he received the spurs and was girded with the sword by the prince or other lord who was to confer the distinction, by whom he was smitten on the shoulder and charged to be "a good knight." Thence he was escorted to the chapel, where he swore on the altar to defend the church, and his sword was consecrated.
JUDICIAL COMBATS.—The disposition to resort to single combats as a judicial test of guilt or innocence was stimulated by the development of chivalry. There were other ordeals long in vogue, by which it was thought that Heaven would interpose miraculously to shield, and thus to vindicate, the innocent, and to expose the criminal. Such were the plunging of the hand into boiling water, the contact of the flesh with red-hot iron or with fire, the lot, the oath taken on holy relics, the reception of the Eucharist, which would choke the perjurer, and send his soul to perdition. The ordeals were regulated and managed by the clergy. Among the German, and also the Celtic tribes, there are traces of the duel between combatants, for purposes of divination, or of determining on which side in a controversy the right lay. The judicial combat in mediaeval Europe became general. Champions, in cases where the rights of women were in debate, and in other instances where the wager of battle between the direct antagonists in a dispute was impracticable, were selected, or volunteered, to try the issue in an armed conflict. Sometimes professional champions, hired for the occasion, were employed. The custom of judicial combats by degrees declined. The municipalities and the spirit of commerce were averse to it. It was opposed by the Emperor Frederic II. and by Louis IX. of France. The influence of the Roman law helped to undermine it; but the opposition of the Church was the most effectual agency in doing away with it. The modern duel, which survived the judicial combat, is a relic of the ancient custom of avenging private injuries, and of proving the courage of the combatants between whom a quarrel had arisen. In the opening of Shakespeare's play of Richard II., in the quarrel of Mowbray and Bolingbroke, the idea of the judicial combat mingles with the motives and feelings characteristic of the duel when stripped of its religious aspect.
HUGH THE GREAT (d. 956), m.
3, Hedwiga, daughter of Henry I of Germany.
|
+—HUGH CAPET, 987-996.
|
+—ROBERT, 996-1031.
|
+—HENRY I,1031-1060.
|
+—PHILIP I, 1060-1108, m.
Bertha, daughter of Florence I, Count of Holland.
|
+—LOUIS VI, 1108-1137.
|
+—LOUIS VII, 1137-1180,
m. 3, Alice, daughter of Theobold II,
Count of Champagne.
|
+—PHILIP II (Augustus), 1180-1223,
m. 1, Isabella, daughter of Baldwin V,
Count of Hainault.
|
+—LOUIS VIII, 1223-1226,
m. Blanche, daughter
of Alfonso IX of Castile.
|
+—(St.) Louis IX, 1226-1270,
m. Margaret, daughter of
Raimond Berengar IV, Count of Provence.
|
+—2, PHILIP III, 1270-1285,
| m. 1, Isabella, daughter
| of James I of Aragon.
| |
| +—PHILIP IV, 1285-1314,
| | m. Jeanne,
| | heiress of Champagne and Navarre.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS X, 1314-1316.
| | |
| | +—PHILIP V, 1316-1322.
| | |
| | +—CHARLES IV, 1322-1328.
| |
| +—Charles, Count of Valois (d.
| 1325), founder of the house of
| Valois, m. Margaret, daughter
| of Charles II of Naples.
| |
| +—PHILIP VI, succeeded 1328.
|
+—Robert, Count of Clermont,
founder of the house of Bourbon.
WILLIAM I, 1066-1087, m.
Matilda, daughter of Baldwin V of Flanders
|
+—WILLIAM II (Rufus), 1087-1100.
|
| (Malcolm Canmore m. St. Margaret)
| |
| +—Mary m. Eustace, Count of Boulogne
| |
| +—Maud
| |
| +—Matilda.
| m.
+—HENRY I, 1100-1135
| |
| +—MATILDA (d. 1167) m.
| 1, Emperor Henry V;
| 2, Geoffrey Plantagenet,
| Count of Anjou
| |
| +—HENRY II, 1154-1189 m.
| Eleanor of Aquitaine, etc.,
| wife of Louis VII of France.
| |
| +—3, RICHARD I, 1189-1199.
| |
| +—5, JOHN, 1199-1216, m.
| Isabella of Angouleme
| |
| +—HENRY III, 1216-1272,
| m. Eleanor, daughter of
| Raymond Berengar IV of
| Provence.
| |
| +—EDWARD I, succeeded 1272.
|
+—Adela, m. Stephen, Count of Blois.
|
+—STEPHEN, 1135-1154. m.
Maud, daughter of Malcolm Canmore and St. Margaret.
The emperors, the heads of the Holy Roman Empire, were the chief secular rulers in the Middle Ages, and were in theory the sovereigns of Christendom. But in the era of the Crusades, the kingdoms of England and France began to be prominent. In them, moreover, we see beginnings of an order of things not embraced in the mediaeval system. In France, steps are taken towards a compact monarchy. In England, there are laid the foundations of free representative government.
CONNECTION OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE.—For a long time the fortunes of England and of France are linked together. The kings of the French, with their capital at Paris, had been often obliged to contend with their powerful liegemen, the dukes of Normandy, at Rouen. When the Norman duke became king of England, he had an independent dominion added to the great fief on the other side of the channel. It sometimes looked as if England and France would be united under one sovereignty, so close did their relations become.
DEATH OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.—It was while William the Conqueror, angry with the king of the French, was burning Mantes, in the border-land between Normandy and France, that, by the stumbling of his horse in the ashes, he was thrown forward upon the iron pommel of his saddle, and received the hurt which ended, in the next month, in his death (Sept., 1087). On his death-bed he was smitten with remorse for his unjust conquest of England, and for his bloody deeds there. He would not dare to appoint a successor: it belonged, he said, to the Almighty to do that; but he hoped that his son William might succeed him. The burial service at Caen, in the church which he had built, was interrupted by Ascelin, a knight, who raised his voice to protest against the interment, for the reason that the duke had wrongfully seized from his father the ground on which the church stood. The family of William made a settlement with Ascelin on the spot by paying a sum of money, and the service proceeded. The whole ground was afterwards paid for. William had left money for the rebuilding of the churches which he had burned at Mantes. He gave his treasures to the poor and to the churches in his dominions. These circumstances illustrate in a striking way how, in the Middle Ages, ruthless violence was mingled with power of conscience and a sense of righteous obligation.
WILLIAM RUFUS.—William the Conqueror was succeeded by his son, William Rufus (1087-1100), who was as able a man as his father. He promised to be liberal, and to lay no unjust taxes; but he proved to be—especially after the death of the good Lanfranc, the archbishop of Canterbury—a vicious and irreligious king. The Norman nobles would have preferred to have his brother Robert, who was duke of Normandy, for their king; but the English stood by William. He left bishoprics and abbacies vacant that he might seize the revenues. One of his good deeds was the appointment of the holy and learned Anselm to succeed Lanfranc; but he quarreled with Anselm, who withdrew from the kingdom. Normandy, which he had tried to wrest from his elder brother Robert, was mortgaged to him by the latter, in order that he might set out upon the first Crusade. That duchy came thus into the king's possession. William, while hunting in the New Forest, was killed, if not accidentally, then either, as it was charged, by Walter Tyrrel, one of the party, or by some one who had been robbed of his home when the New Forest was made. He was found in the agonies of death, pierced by an arrow shot from a cross-bow.
HENRY I. OF ENGLAND (1100-1135): LOUIS VI. (the FAT) OF FRANCE (1108-1137): LOUIS VII. (1137-1180).—Henry was the youngest son of the Conqueror. His wife was English, and was a great-granddaughter of Edmund Ironside. Her name was Edith, but she assumed the Norman name of Matilda. Her mother Margaret, wife of Malcolm of Scotland, was of the stock of the West Saxon kings. Thus the blood of Alfred, as well as of William the Conqueror, flowed in the veins of the later English kings. In the absence of his older brother Robert, who was in Jerusalem, he took the crown, and put forth a Charter of Liberties, promising the Church to respect its rights, and giving privileges to his vassals which they in turn were to extend to their own vassals. Robert came back from the Holy Land, and tried to wrest England from his brother. He failed in the attempt. After this, Henry got possession of Normandy by the victory of Tinchebrai in 1106, and kept Robert a prisoner in Cardiff Castle until his death (1135). Louis the Fat, king of France, espoused the cause of William of Clito, son of Robert, but was beaten in 1119 at Brenneville. Peace was made between the two kings; but in 1124 Henry of England combined with his son-in-law, Henry V. of Germany, for the invasion of France. Louis called upon his vassals, who gathered in such force that the emperor abandoned the scheme. Louis then undertook to chastise those great vassals who had not responded to his summons. William, the duke of Aquitane, seeing the power of the suzerain, came into his camp, and offered him his homage. Louis inflicted a brutal punishment in Flanders, where the count, Charles the Good, had been assassinated in 1127, and which had failed to furnish its contingent in 1124. He obliged the Flemish lords to elect as their count, William Clito, whose rule, however, they presently cast off. Louis the Fat united his son Louis in marriage with Eleanor, the only daughter of William (X.), the duke of Aquitaine, and thus paved the way for a direct control over the South. The duchy of Aquitaine included Gascony and other districts, and the suzerainty over Auvergne, Périgord, etc. Louis the VII. (1137-1180) was not able to preserve the dominion, extending from the north to the south of France, which he inherited. He plunged into a dispute with Pope Innocent II. in relation to the church of Bourges, where he claimed the right to name the archbishop. St. Bernard took the side of the Pope. Suger, abbot of St. Denis, an able minister, the counselor of the last king, supported Louis. The king attacked the lands of Theobald of Champagne, who sided with the Pope, and in his wrath burned the parish church of Vitry, with hundreds of poor people who had taken refuge in it. His own remorse and the excommunication of the Pope moved him to do penance by departing on a Crusade. Suger, not liking the risk which the monarchy incurred through the absence of the king, opposed the project. St. Bernard encouraged it. The Crusade failed of any important result; but it helped to infuse a national spirit into the French soldiers, who fought side by side with the army of the emperor, Conrad III. On his return, on the alleged ground that Eleanor was too near of kin, he divorced her, and rendered back her dowry (1152).
LOUIS VII. OF FRANCE (1137-1180): STEPHEN (1135-1154) AND HENRY II. of ENGLAND (1154-1189).—The king of England, Henry I., after the death of his son by shipwreck, declared his daughter Matilda his heir. She was the widow of Henry V., the emperor of Germany. In 1127 she married Geoffrey, count of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet on account of his habit of wearing a sprig of broom (genet) in his bonnet. Henry left Matilda, whom he called the "Empress," under the charge of his nephew, Stephen of Blois, who got himself elected king by the barons or great landowners,—as there was no law regulating the succession of the crown,—and was crowned at Westminster. They had sworn, however, to support Matilda. Her uncle David, king of Scots, took up her cause; but the Scots were defeated at the Battle of the Standard in 1138. England was thrown into utter disorder by these circumstances: some of the barons fought on one side, and some on the other. There were thieves along the highways, and the barons in their castles were no better than the thieves. The empress landed in England in 1139, to recover her rights. In the civil war that ensued, Stephen was taken prisoner (1141); but Matilda, whose imperious temper made her unpopular in London, was driven out of the city. Stephen was released in exchange for the Earl of Gloucester. Matilda was at one time in great peril, but contrived to escape in a winter night from Oxford Castle (1142). In 1153 peace was made, by which Stephen was to retain the kingdom, but was to be succeeded by Matilda's eldest son.
CRUELTY OF THE NOBLES.—In the time of Stephen and Matilda, the barons, released from the strong hand of his predecessor, were guilty of atrocities which made the people mourn the loss of Henry.
"They built strong castles, and filled them with armed men. From these they rode out as robbers, as a wild beast goes forth from its den. 'They fought among themselves with deadly hatred, they spoiled the fairest lands with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties they destroyed almost all the provision of bread.' Whatever money or valuable goods they found, they carried off. They burnt houses and sacked towns, If they suspected any one of concealing his wealth, they carried him off to their castle; and there they tortured him, to make him confess where his money was. 'They hanged up men by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about men's heads, and twisted them till they went to the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling, and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest short and narrow, and not deep, and that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein so that they broke all their limbs. In many of the castles were hateful and grim things called rachenteges, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. It was thus made: it was fastened to a beam, and had a sharp iron to go about a man's neck and throat, so that he might noways sit or lie or sleep; but he bore all the iron. Many thousands they starved with hunger.' The unhappy sufferers had no one to help them. Stephen and Matilda were too busy with their own quarrel to do justice to their subjects. Poor men cried to Heaven, but they got no answer. 'Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep.'"
DOMINIONS OF HENRY II.—Henry, the son of the empress and of Count Geoffrey of Anjou, was the first of the Angevin kings of England. They had Saxon blood in their veins, but were neither Norman nor Saxon, except in the female line. It was eighty-eight years since the Conquest; and, although the higher classes talked French, almost every one of their number was of mixed descent. The line between Saxon and Norman was becoming effaced. A vassal of the king of France, Henry held so many fiefs that he was stronger than the king himself, and all the other crown vassals taken together. From his father he had Anjou; from his mother, Normandy and Maine; the county of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine he received by Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII., whom he married. Later, by marrying one of his sons to the heiress of Brittany, that district, the nominal fief of Normandy, came practically under his dominion. He was a strong-willed man, who reduced the barons to subjection, and pulled down the castles which had been built without the king's leave. It might seem probable that the possessor of so great power would absorb the little monarchy of France. But this was prevented by long-continued discord in England,—discord in the royal family, between the king and the clergy, and, later, between the king and the barons. On the Continent, the king of England required a great and united force to break the feudal bonds which grew stronger between the king of France and the French provinces of England. We shall soon see how France enlarged her territory, and how the English dominion on the Continent was greatly reduced.
REFORMS OF HENRY.—In order to control the barons, he arranged with them to pay money in lieu of military service. In this way they were weakened. At the same time, he encouraged the small landowners to exercise themselves in arms, which would prepare them for self-defense and to assist the king. Moreover, he sent judges through the land to hear causes. They were to ask a certain number of men in the county as to the merits of the cases coming before them. These men took an oath to tell the truth. They gradually adopted the custom of hearing the evidence of others before giving to the judges their verdict,—that is, their declaration of the truth (from vere dictum). Out of this custom grew the jury system.
BECKET: CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON.—The Conqueror had granted to ecclesiastical courts the privilege of trying cases in which the clergy were concerned. On this privilege the clergy had been disposed to insist ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. Under Stephen the energetic restraint exercised upon them was removed. In the early years of the reign of Henry II., there were great disorders among the Norman clergy, and crimes were of frequent occurrence. These were often punished more lightly than the same offenses when committed by a layman, as church courts could not inflict capital punishment. Henry undertook to bring the clergy under the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. In this attempt he was resisted by Thomas à Becket, who had been his chancelor, and whom he raised to the archbishopric of Canterbury (1162), in the full expectation of having his support. He had been gay and extravagant in his ways, and zealous in behalf of whatever the king wished. But the brilliant chancelor became a strict and austere prelate, the champion of the clergy, with a will as inflexible as that of Henry. The only bishop that voted against him at his election, remarked that "the king had worked a miracle in having that day turned a layman into an archbishop, and a soldier into a saint." In this controversy, the clergy had reason to fear that Henry, if he got the power, would use it to punish and plunder the innocent. At a great council of prelates and barons, the Constitutions of Clarendon were adopted (1164), which went far towards the subjecting of the ecclesiastics, as to their appointment and conduct, to the royal will.
Becket, with the other prelates, swore to observe these statutes; but he repented of the act, was absolved by the Pope from his oath, and fled to France. Later a reconciliation took place between him and the king. Becket returned to England, but with a temper unaltered. A hasty expression of Henry, uttered in wrath, and indicating a desire to be rid of him, was taken up by four knights, who attacked the archbishop, and slew him, near the great altar in the cathedral at Canterbury (Dec. 29, 1170). The higher nobles welcomed the occasion to revolt. Henry was regarded as the instigator of the bloody deed, and was moved to make important concessions to the Pope, Alexander III. His life was darkened by quarrels with his sons. In 1173 the kings of France and Scotland, and many nobles of Normandy and England, joined hands with them. Henry, afflicted with remorse, did penance, allowing himself to be scourged by the monks at the tomb of Becket, or "St. Thomas,"—for he was canonized. The people rallied to him, and the nobles were defeated. The rebellion came to an end. The king of Scotland became more completely the vassal of England. In another rebellion the king's sons rebelled against him: in 1189 John, the youngest of them, joined with his brother Richard. Then Henry's heart was broken, and he died.
CONQUEST OF IRELAND.—In the first year of Henry's reign, he was authorized by Pope Hadrian IV. to invade Ireland. In 1169 Dermot of Leinster, a fugitive Irish king, undertook to enlist adventurers for this service. He was aided by Richard of Clare, earl of Pembroke, called Strongbow, and others. They were successful; and in 1171 Henry crossed over to Ireland, and was acknowledged as sovereign by all the chiefs of the South. A synod brought the Irish Church into subjection to the see of Canterbury. But there was constant warfare, and the North and East of the island were not subdued. The whole country was not conquered until Elizabeth's time, four centuries later.
WEAKENING OF GREAT VASSALS IN FRANCE.—The weakening of Henry's power was the salvation of Louis VII., who had more the spirit of a monk than of an active and resolute monarch. At his death a new epoch is seen to begin. The dominion of the great vassals declines, and the truly monarchical period commences. It was the change which ended in making the king the sole judge, legislator, and executive of the country. Louis the Fat, Philip Augustus, and St. Louis (Louis IX.) are the early forerunners of Louis XIV., under whom the absolute monarchy was made complete.
PHILIP AUGUSTUS OF FRANCE (1180-1223): RICHARD THE LIONHEARTED OF ENGLAND (1189-1199).—Philip Augustus was the last king of France to be crowned before his accession. The custom had helped to give stability to the regal system. Now it was no longer needful. Philip was only fifteen years old when he began to reign alone. For forty-three years he labored with shrewdness and perseverance, and with few scruples as to the means employed, to build up the kingly authority. His first act was a violent attack on the Jews, whom he despoiled and banished. This was counted an act of piety. He acquired Vermandois, Valois, and Amiens; refusing to render homage to the Bishop of Amiens, who claimed to be its suzerain. During the life of Henry II., Philip had allied himself closely with his son Richard (the Lion-hearted), who succeeded his father. Richard was passionate and quarrelsome, yet generous. He was troubadour as well as king. After his coronation (1189), the two kings made ready for a Crusade together. To raise money, Richard sold earldoms and crown lands, and exclaimed that he would sell London if he could find a buyer. The two kings set out together in 1190. They soon quarreled. Philip came home first, and, while Richard was a prisoner in Austria, did his best to profit by his misfortunes, and to weaken the English reigning house. In the absence of Richard, John, his ambitious and unfaithful brother, was made regent by the lords and the London citizens. As nothing was heard of the king, John claimed the crown. Hearing of the release of Richard, Philip wrote to John (1194), "Take care of yourself, for the devil is let loose." Richard made war on Philip in Normandy, but Pope Innocent III. obliged the two kings to make a truce for five years (1199). Two months after, Richard was mortally wounded while besieging a castle near Limoges, where it was said that a treasure had been found, which he as the suzerain claimed. He had never visited England but twice; and, although he always had the fame of a hero, the country had no real cause to regret his death.
JOHN OF ENGLAND (1199-1216).—John (surnamed Sansterre, or Lackland, a name given to the younger sons, whose fathers had died before they were old enough to hold fiefs) was chosen king. Anjou, Poitou, and Touraine desired to have for their duke young Arthur, duke of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey, John's elder brother. Philip Augustus took up the cause of Arthur, but deserted him when he had gained for himself what he wished. When Philip wished to reopen the war he took advantage of a complaint from one of John's vassals, Hugh of Lusignan, whose affianced bride John had stolen away. As suzerain Philip summoned John to answer at Paris, and when he did not appear the court declared his fiefs forfeited. It was in this war that Arthur was captured by his uncle and was murdered. This crime served only to strengthen Philip's cause. He seized on Normandy, which thenceforward was French, and Brittany, which became an immediate fief of the king (1204). He took the other possessions of England in Northern Gaul. There were left to the English the duchy of Aquitaine, with Gascony and the Channel Islands. The lands south of the Loire John had inherited from his mother.
TYRANNY OF JOHN.—John robbed his subjects, high and low, under the name of taxation. Not content with forcing money out of the Jews, one of whom he was said to have coerced by pulling out a tooth every day, he treated rich land-owners with hardly less cruelty. He had not, like Henry II., the support of the people, and added to his unpopularity by hiring soldiers from abroad to help him in his oppression.
JOHN'S QUARREL WITH THE POPE: MAGNA CHARTA.—As rash as he was tyrannical, John engaged in a quarrel with Pope Innocent III. The monks of Canterbury appointed as archbishop, not the king's treasurer, whom he bade them choose, but another. The Pope neither heeded the king nor confirmed their choice, but made them elect a religious and learned Englishman, Stephen Langton. John, in a rage, drove the monks out of Canterbury, and refused to recognize the election. The Pope excommunicated him, and laid England under an interdict; that is, he forbade services in the churches, and sacraments except for infants and the dying; marriages were to take place in the church porch, and the dead were to be buried without prayer and in unconsecrated ground. As John paid no regard to this measure of coercion, Innocent declared him deposed, and charged the king of France to carry the sentence into effect (1213). Resisted at home, and threatened from abroad, John now made an abject submission, laying his crown at the feet of Pandulph, the Pope's legate. He made himself the vassal of the Pope, receiving back from him the kingdoms of England and Ireland, which he had delivered to Innocent, and engaging that a yearly rent should be paid to Rome by the king of England and his heirs. Philip had to give up his plan of invading England. John's tyranny and licentiousness had become intolerable. Langton, a man of large views, and the English Church, united with the barons in extorting from him, in the meadow of Runnymede,—an island in the Thames, near Windsor,—the Magna Charta, the foundation of English constitutional liberty. It secured two great principles: first, that the king could take the money of his subjects only when it was voted to him for public objects; and secondly, that he could not punish or imprison them at his will, but could only punish them after conviction, according to law, by their countrymen.
The Great Charter is based on the charter of Henry I. It precisely defines and secures old customs, 1. It recognizes the rights of the Church. 2. It secures person and property from seizure and spoliation without the judgment of peers or the law of the land. 3. There are regulations for courts of law. 4. Exactions by the lord are limited to the three customary feudal aids. The benefits granted to the vassal are to be extended to the lower tenants. 5, How the Great Council is to be composed, and how convened, is defined. 6. The "liberties and free customs" of London and of other towns are secured. 7. Protection is given against certain oppressive exactions of the Crown. 8. The safety of merchants against exactions in coming into England, and in going out, and in traveling through it, is guaranteed. 9. There is some provision in favor of the villain.
WAR WITH FRANCE.—John joined in a great coalition against Philip Augustus. He was to attack France in the south-west; while the emperor, Otto IV., and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne, with all the princes of the Low Countries, were to make their attack on the north. It was a war of the feudal aristocracy against the king of the French. At the great battle of Bouvines (1214) the French were victorious. The success, in the glory of which the communes shared, added no territory to France; but it awakened a national spirit. John was beaten in Poitou, and went home.
DEPOSITION OF JOHN.—In England, John found that all his exertions against the Charter, even with the aid of Rome, were unavailing. In a spirit of vengeance, he brought in mercenary freebooters, and marched into Scotland, robbing and burning as he went. Every morning he burned the house in which he had lodged for the night. At length the English barons offered the crown to Louis, the eldest son of Philip Augustus; but John died in 1216, and Louis found himself deserted. He had shown a disposition to give lands to the French.
THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR.—The war against the Albigenses began in the reign of Philip; but he pleaded that his hands were full, and left it to be waged by the nobles. That sect had its seat in the south of France, and derived its name from the city of Albi. It held certain heterodox tenets, and rejected the authority of the priesthood. In 1208, under Innocent III., a crusade was preached against Raymond VI., count of Toulouse, in whose territory most of them were found. This was first conducted by Simon de Montfort, and then by Philip's son, Louis VIII., the county of Toulouse being a fief of France. The result of the desolating conflict was, that part of the count's fiefs were in 1229 transferred to the crown, and the country itself in 1270. In that year, at the council of Toulouse, the Inquisition, a special ecclesiastical tribunal, was organized to complete the extermination of the Albigensians who had escaped the sword. The advantages resulting from the crushing of the sovereignties of the south were sure to come to the French monarchy. But Philip left it to the nobles and to his successors to win the enticing prize.
The first period of rivalry between England and France ends with John and Philip Augustus. For one hundred and twenty years, each country pursues its course separately. Monarchy grows stronger in France: constitutional government advances in England.
LOUIS IX. OF FRANCE (1226-1270).—In Louis IX. (St. Louis) France had a king so noble and just that the monarchy was sanctified in the eyes of the people. At his accession he was but eleven years old, and with his mother, Blanche of Castile, had to encounter for sixteen years a combination of great barons determined to uphold feudalism. Most of them staid away from his coronation. When the young king and his mother approached Paris, they found the way barred; but it was opened by the devoted burghers, who came forth with arms in their hands to bring them in. The magistrates of the communes swore to defend the king and his friends (1228). They were supported by the Papacy. In 1231 the war ended in a way favorable to royalty. The treaty of 1229 with Raymond VII., count of Toulouse, led to the gradual absorption of the South. Theobald of Champagne became king of Navarre, and sold to the crown Chartres and other valuable fiefs. In the earlier period of his reign Louis was guided by his wise, even if imperious, mother, who held the regency.
ENGLAND AND FRANCE.—In 1243 Louis defeated Henry III. of England, who had come over to help the count of La Marche and other rebellious nobles. In 1245 Charles of Anjou, the king's brother, married Beatrice, through whom Provence passed to the house of Anjou. The king's long absence (1248-1254), during the sixth Crusade, had no other result but to show to all that he combined in himself the qualities of a hero and of a saint. After his return, his government was wise and just, and marked by sympathy with his people. In 1259 he made a treaty with Henry III., yielding to him the Limousin, Périgord, and parts of Saintonge, for which Henry relinquished all claims on the rest of France. Louis fostered learning. The University of Paris flourished under his care. In his reign Robert of Sorbon (1252) founded the Sorbonne, the famous college for ecclesiastics which bears his name.
CIVIL POLICY OF LOUIS.—In his civil policy Louis availed himself of the Roman law to undermine feudal privileges. The legists enlarged the number of cases reserved for the king himself to adjudicate. He established new courts of justice, higher than the feudal courts, and the right of final appeal to himself. He made the king's "Parliament" a great judicial body. He abolished in his domains the judicial combat, or duel,—the old German method of deciding between the accused and the accuser. He liberated many serfs. But, mild as he was, he had no mercy for Jews and heretics. In his intercourse with other nations, he blended firmness and courage with a fair and unselfish spirit. He refused to comply with the request of the Pope to take up arms against the emperor, Frederic II.; but he threatened to make war upon him if he did not release the prelates whom he had captured on their way to Rome. The "Pragmatic Sanction" of St. Louis is of doubtful genuineness. It is an assertion of the liberties of the Gallican Church. With loyalty to the Holy See, and an exalted piety, Louis defended the rights of all, and did not allow the clergy to attain to an unjust control. Voltaire said of him, "It is not given to man to carry virtue to a higher point." He stands in the scale of merit on a level with Alfred of England.
PARLIAMENTS IN FRANCE.—The word parliament in French history has a very different meaning from that which it bears when applied to the English institution of the same name. There were thirteen parliaments in France, each having a jurisdiction of its own. They were established at different times. Of these the Parliament of Paris was the oldest and by far the most important. The king and other suzerains administered justice, each in his own domain. The Parliament of Paris was originally a portion of the king's council that was set apart to hear causes among the fiefs. It considered all appeals and judicial questions. But in the reign of Louis IX., commissioners, or baillis, of the king, held provincial courts of appeal in his name. The great suzerains established, each in his own fief, like tribunals, but of more restricted authority. Louis IX. made it optional with the vassal to be tried by his immediate suzerain, or in the king's courts, which were subordinate to his council. As time went on, the authority of the royal tribunals increased, as that of the feudal courts grew weaker. In the Parliament of Paris, a corps of legists who understood the Roman law were admitted with the lords, knights, and prelates. More and more these "counsellors" were left to themselves. Later there was a division into Chambers, of which the Grand Chamber for the final hearing and decision of appeals was of principal importance. Philip the Fair (1303) gave a more complete organization to Parliament. He provided that it should hold two annual sittings at Paris. Thus there grew up a judicial aristocracy. After 1368 the members were appointed for life. At length, under Henry IV., the seats in Parliament became hereditary. The great magistrates thus constituted wore robes of ermine, or of scarlet adorned with velvet. The Palace of Justice (Palais de Justice), on an island in the Seine, was given to Parliament for its sessions by Charles V. In its hall scenes of tragic interest, including, in modern times, the condemnation of Marie Antoinette and of Robespierre, have taken place. The crown was represented by a great officer, a public prosecutor or attorney-general (procureur général). He and his assistants were termed the "king's people" (gens du roi). They had the privilege of speaking with their hats on. It was an ancient custom to enroll the royal ordinances in the parliamentary records. Gradually it came to be considered that no statute or decree had the force of law unless it was entered on the registers of Parliament. Great conflicts occurred with the kings when Parliament refused "to register" their edicts or treaties. Then the king would hold "a bed of justice,"—so called from the cushions of the seat where he sat in the hall of Parliament, whither he came in person to command them to register the obnoxious enactment. This royal intervention could not be resisted: commonly the enrollment would be made, but sometimes under a protest. Each of the local parliaments claimed to be supreme in its own province: they were held to constitute together one institution, and all the judges were on a level. Attempts at political interference by Parliaments, the kings resisted. At the French Revolution in 1790, the Parliaments were finally abolished.
HENRY III. (1216-1272).—John's eldest son, Henry, when he was crowned by the royalists, was only nine years old. For a short time he had a wise guardian in William, Earl of Pembroke. In two battles, one on the land and one on the sea, Louis VIII. (1223-1226), son of Philip Augustus of France, was defeated. He made peace, and returned to France. Henry married Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, count of Provence,—a beautiful and accomplished woman, but she was unpopular in England. The king, as well as his wife, lavished offices, honors, and lands upon foreigners. He was a weak prince, and unwisely accepted for his second son, Edmund, the crown of the Two Sicilies, which could be won only at the expense of England. This measure induced the barons to compel Henry to a measure equivalent to the placing of authority in the hands of a council. This brought on a war between the king and the barons. The latter were led by Simon de Montfort (the second of the name), who had inherited the earldom of Leicester through his mother. Through him PARLIAMENT assumed the form which it has since retained. The greater barons, the lords or peers, with the bishops and principal abbots, came together in person, and grew into the House of Lords. The freeholders of each county had sent some of the knights to represent them. The attendance of these knights now began to be regular; but besides the two knights from each county, who were like the county members of our own time, Simon caused each city and borough to send two of their citizens, or burgesses. Thus the House of Commons arose. Simon defeated Henry at Lewes (1264): but the barons flocked to the standard of Prince Edward, who escaped from custody; and Simon was defeated and slain at the battle of Evesham in 1265. Henry was restored to power. He died in 1272, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, which he had begun to rebuild. Under Henry, the Great Charter, with some alterations, was three times confirmed. A Charter of the Forest was added, providing that no man should lose life or limb for taking the king's game. Cruel laws for the protection of game in the forests or uncultivated lands had been a standing grievance from the days of the Norman Conquest. The confirming of the Great Charter in 1225 was made the condition of a grant of money from the National Council to the king. When the bishops, in 1236, desired to have the laws of inheritance conformed to the rules of the Church, the barons made the laconic answer, "We will not change the laws of England" (Nolumus leges Anglice mutare).
RISE OF THE CITIES.—Under feudalism, only two classes present themselves to view,—the nobility and the clergy on the one hand, and the serfs on the other. This was the character of society in the ninth century. In the tenth century we see the beginnings of an intermediate class, the germ of "the third estate." This change appears in the cities, where the burghers begin to increase in intelligence, and to manifest a spirit of independence. From this time, for several centuries, their power and privileges continued to grow.
GROWTH OF THE CITIES.—The same need of defense that led to the building of towers and castles in the country drove men within the walls of towns. Industry and trade developed intelligence, and produced wealth. But burghers under the feudal rule were obliged to pay heavy tolls and taxes. For example, for protection on a journey through any patch of territory, they were required to make a payment. Besides the regular exactions, they were exposed to most vexatious depredations of a lawless kind. As they advanced in thrift and wealth, communities that were made up largely of artisans and tradesmen armed themselves for their own defense. From self-defense they proceeded farther, and extorted exemptions and privileges from the suzerain, the effect of which was to give them a high though limited degree of self-government.
ORIGIN OF MUNICIPAL FREEDOM.—It has been supposed that municipal government in the Middle Ages was a revival of old Roman rights and customs, and thus an heirloom from antiquity. The cities—those on the Rhine and in Gaul, for example—were of Roman origin. But the view of scholars at present is, that municipal liberty, such as existed in the Middle Ages, was a native product of the Germanic peoples. The cities were incorporated into the feudal system. They were subject to a lay lord or to a bishop. In Italy, however, they struggled after a more complete republican system.
CITIES AND SUZERAINS.—In the conflicts which were waged by the cities, they were sometimes helped by the suzerain against the king, and sometimes by the king against the nearer suzerain. In England the cities were apt to ally themselves with the nobility against the king: in Germany and France the reverse was the fact. But in Germany the cities which came into an immediate relation to the sovereign were less closely dependent on him than were the cities in France on the French king.
TWO CLASSES OF CITIES.—Not only did the cities wrest from the lords a large measure of freedom: it was often freely conceded to them. Nobles, in order to bring together artisans, and to build up a community in their own neighborhood, granted extraordinary privileges. Charters were given to cities by the king. Communities thus formed differed from the other class of cities in not having the same privilege of administering justice within their limits.
GERMAN CITIES.—The cities in Germany increased in number on the fall of the Hohenstaufen family. They made the inclosure of their walls a place of refuge, as the nobles did the vicinity of their castles. They eventually gained admittance to the Diets of the empire. They formed leagues among themselves, which, however, did not become political bodies, any more than the Italian leagues.
THE ROMAN LAW.—The revised study of the Roman law brought in a code at variance with feudal principles. The middle class, that was growing up in the great commercial cities, availed themselves, as far as they could, of its principles in regard to the inheritance of property. The legists helped in a thousand ways to emancipate them from the yoke of feudal traditions.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.—The cities themselves often had vassals, and became suzerains. Government rested in the hands of the magistrates. They were chosen by the general assembly of the inhabitants, who were called together by the tolling of the bell. The magistrates governed without much restraint until another election, unless there were popular outbreaks, "which were at this time," as Guizot remarks, "the great guarantee for good government." Where the courage and spirit of burghers were displayed was in the maintenance of their own privileges, or purely in self-defense. In all other relations they showed the utmost humility; and in the twelfth century, when their emancipation is commonly dated, they did not pretend to interfere in the government of the country.
TRAVELERS AND TRADE.—The East, especially India, was conceived of as a region of boundless riches; but commerce with the East was hindered by a thousand difficulties and dangers. Curiosity led travelers to penetrate into the countries of Asia. Among them the Polo family of Venice, of whom Marco was the most famous, were specially distinguished. Marco Polo lived in China, with his father and his uncle, twenty-six years. After his return, and during his captivity at Genoa, he wrote the celebrated accounts of his travels. He died about 1324. Sir John Mandeville also wrote of his travels, but most of his descriptions were taken from the work of Friar Odoric, of Pordenone, who had visited the Far East. Merchants did not venture so far as did bold explorers of a scientific turn. Commerce in the Middle Ages was mainly in two districts,—the borders of the North Sea and of the Baltic, and the countries upon the Mediterranean. Trade in the cities on the African coast, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was flourishing; and the Arabs of Spain were industrious and rich. Arles, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Amalfi, Venice, vied with one another in traffic with the East. Intermediate between Venice and Genoa, and the north of Europe, were flourishing marts, among which Strasburg and other cities on the Rhine—Augsburg, Ulm, Ratisbon, Vienna, and Nuremberg—were among the most prominent. Through these cities flowed the currents of trade from the North to the South, and from the South to the North.
THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE.—To protect themselves against the feudal lords and against pirates, the cities of Northern Germany formed (about 1241) the Hanseatic League, which, at the height of its power, included eighty-five cities, besides many other cities more or less closely affiliated with it. This league was dominant, as regards trade and commerce, in the north of Europe, and united under it the cities on the Baltic and the Rhine, as well as the large cities of Flanders. Its merchants had control of the fisheries, the mines, the agriculture, and manufactures of Germany. Lübeck, Cologne, Brunswick, and Dantzic were its principal places. Lübeck was its chief center. In all the principal towns on the highways of commerce, the flag of the Hansa floated over its counting-houses. Wherever the influence of the league reached, its regulations were in force. It almost succeeded in monopolizing the trade of Europe north of Italy.
FLANDERS: ENGLAND: FRANCE.—The numerous cities of Flanders—of which Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges were best known—became hives of industry and of thrift. Ghent, at the end of the thirteenth century, surpassed Paris in riches and power. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, the number of its fighting men was estimated at eighty thousand. The development of Holland was more slow. Amsterdam was constituted a town in the middle of the thirteenth century. England began to exchange products with Spain. It sent its sheep, and brought back the horses of the Arabians. The cities of France—Rouen, Orleans, Rheims, Lyons, Marseilles, etc.—were alive with manufactures and trade. In the twelfth century the yearly fairs at Troyes, St. Denis, and Beaucaire were famous all over Europe.
NEW INDUSTRIES.—It has been already stated that the crusaders brought back to Europe the knowledge as well as the products of various branches of industry. Such were the cloths of Damascus, the glass of Tyre, the use of windmills, of linen, and of silk, the plum-trees of Damascus, the sugar-cane, the mulberry-tree. Cotton stuffs came into use at this time. Paper made from cotton was used by the Saracens in Spain in the eighth century. Paper was made from linen at a somewhat later date. In France and Germany it was first manufactured early in the fourteenth century.
THE JEWS.—The Jews in the Middle Ages were often treated with extreme harshness. An outburst of the crusading spirit was frequently attended with cruel assaults upon them. As Christians would not take interest, money-lending was a business mainly left to the Hebrews. By them, bills of exchange were first employed.
OBSTACLES TO TRADE.—The great obstacle to commerce was the insecurity of travel. Whenever a shipwreck took place, whatever was cast upon the shore was seized by the neighboring lord. A noble at Leon, in Brittany, pointing out a rock on which many vessels had been wrecked, said, "I have a rock there more precious than the diamonds on the crown of a king." It was long before property on the sea was respected, even in the same degree as property on the land. Not even at the present day has this point been reached. The infinite diversity of coins was another embarrassment to trade. In every fief, one had to exchange his money, always at a loss. Louis IX. ordained that the money of eighty lords, who had the right to coin, should be current only in their own territories, while the coinage of the king should be received everywhere.
GUILDS.—A very important feature of mediæval society was the guilds. Societies more or less resembling these existed among the Romans, and were called collegia,—some being for good fellowship or for religious rites, and others being trade-corporations. There were, also, similar fraternities among the Greeks in the second and third centuries B.C. In the Middle Ages, there were two general classes of guilds: First, there were the peace-guilds, for mutual protection against thieves, etc., and for mutual aid in sickness, old age, or impoverishment from other causes. They were numerous in England, and spread over the Continent. Secondly, there were the trade-guilds, which embraced the guilds-merchant, and the craft-guilds. The latter were associations of workmen, for maintaining the customs of their craft, each with a master, or alderman, and other officers. They had their provisions for mutual help for themselves and for their widows and orphans, and they had their religious observances. Each had its patron saint, its festivals, its treasury. They kept in their hands the monopoly of the branch of industry which belonged to them. They had their rules in respect to apprenticeship, etc. Almost all professions and occupations were fenced in by guilds.
MONASTICISM.—Society in the Middle Ages presented striking and picturesque contrasts. This was nowhere more apparent than in the sphere of religion. Along with the passion for war and the consequent reign of violence, there was a parallel self-consecration to a life of peace and devotion. With the strongest relish for pageantry and for a brilliant ceremonial in social life and in worship, there was associated a yearning for an ascetic course under the monastic vows. As existing orders grew rich, and gave up the rigid discipline of earlier days, new orders were formed by men of deeper religious earnestness. In the eleventh century, there arose, among other orders, the Carthusian and Cistercian; in the twelfth century, the Premonstrants and the Carmelites, and the order of Trinitarians for the liberation of Christian captives taken by the Moslems. The older orders, especially that of the Benedictines in its different branches, became very wealthy and powerful. The Cistercian Order, under its second founder, St. Bernard (who died in 1153), spread with wonderful rapidity.
THE MENDICANT ORDERS.—In the thirteenth century, when the papal authority was at its height, the mendicant orders arose. The order of St. Francis was fully established in 1223, and the order of St. Dominic in 1216. They combined with monastic vows the utmost activity in preaching and in other clerical work. These orders attracted young men of talents and of a devout spirit in large numbers. The mendicant friars were frequently in conflict with the secular clergy,—the ordinary priesthood,—and with the other orders. But they gained a vast influence, and were devotedly loyal to the popes. It must not be supposed that the monastic orders generally were made up of the weak or the disappointed who sought in cloisters a quiet asylum. Disgust with the world, from whatever cause, led many to become members of them; but they were largely composed of vigorous minds, which, of their own free choice, took on them the monastic vows.
THE RISE OF THE UNIVERSITIES.—The Crusades were accompanied by a signal revival of intellectual activity. One of the most important events of the thirteenth century was the rise of the universities. The schools connected with the abbeys and the cathedrals in France began to improve in the eleventh century, partly from an impulse caught by individuals from the Arabic schools in Spain. After the scholastic theology was introduced, teachers in this branch began to give instruction near those schools in Paris. Numerous pupils gathered around noted lecturers. An organization followed which was called a university,—a sort of guild,—made up of four faculties,—theology, canon law, medicine, and the arts. The arts included the three studies (trivium) of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, with four additional branches (the quadrivium),—arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. Paris became the mother of many other universities. Next to Paris, Oxford was famous as a seat of education. Of all the universities, Bologna in Italy was most renowned as a school for the study of the civil law.
SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY.—The scholastic theology dates from the middle of the eleventh century. It was the work of numerous teachers, many of them of unsurpassed acuteness, who, at a time when learning and scholarship were at a low ebb, made it their aim to systemize, elucidate, and prove on philosophical grounds, the doctrines of the Church. Aristotle was the author whose philosophical writings were most authoritative with the schoolmen. In theology, Augustine was the most revered master.
The main question in philosophy which the schoolmen debated was that of Nominalism and Realism. The question was, whether a general term, as man, stands for a real being designated by it (as man, in the example given, for humanity), or is simply the name of divers distinct individuals.
THE LEADING SCHOOLMEN.—In the eleventh century Anselm of Canterbury was a noble example of the scholastic spirit. In the thirteenth century Abelard was a bold and brilliant teacher, but with less depth and discretion. He, like other eminent schoolmen, attracted multitudes of pupils. The thirteenth century was the golden age of scholasticism. Then flourished Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventura, and others very influential in their day. There were two schools of opinion,—that of the Thomists, the adherents of Aquinas, the great theologian of the Dominican order; and that of the Scotists, the adherents of Duns Scotus, a great light of the Franciscans. They differed on various theological points not involved in the common faith.
The discussions of the schoolmen were often carried into distinctions bewildering from their subtlety. There were individuals who were more disposed to the inductive method of investigation, and who gave attention to natural as well as metaphysical science. Perhaps the most eminent of these is Roger Bacon. He was an Englishman, was born in 1219, and died about 1294. He was imprisoned for a time on account of the jealousy with which studies in natural science and new discoveries in that branch were regarded by reason of their imagined conflict with religion. Astrology was cultivated by the Moors in Spain in connection with astronomy. It spread among the Christian nations. Alchemy, the search for the transmutation of metals, had its curious votaries. But such pursuits were popularly identified with diabolic agency.
THE VERNACULAR LITERATURES: THE TROUBADOURS.—Intellectual activity was for a long time exclusively confined to theology. The earliest literature of a secular cast in France belongs to the tenth and eleventh centuries, and to the dialect of Provence. The study of this language, and the poetry composed in it, became the recreation of knights and noble ladies. Thousands of poets, who were called Troubadours (from trobar, to find or invent), appeared almost simultaneously, and became well known in Spain and in Italy as well as in France. At the same time the period of chivalry began. The theme of their tender and passionate poems was love. They indulged in a license which was not offensive, owing to the laxity of manners and morals in Southern France at that day, but would be intolerable in a different state of society. Kings, as well as barons and knights, adopted the Provençal language, and figured as troubadours. In connection with jousts and tournaments, there would be a contest for poetical honors. The "Court of Love," made up of gentle ladies, with the lady of the castle at their head, gave the verdict. Besides the songs of love, another class of Provençal poems treated of war or politics, or were of a satirical cast. From the Moors of Spain, rhyme, which belonged to Arabian poetry, was introduced, and spread thence over Europe. After the thirteenth century the troubadours were heard of no more, and the Provençal tongue became a mere dialect.
THE NORMAN WRITERS.—The first writers and poets in the French language proper appeared in Normandy. They called themselves Trouvères. They were the troubadours of the North. They composed romances of chivalry, and Fabliaux, or amusing tales. They sang in a more warlike and virile strain than the poets of the South. Their first romances were written late in the twelfth century. About that time Villehardouin wrote in French a history of the conquest of Constantinople. From the poem entitled "Alexander," the name of Alexandrine verse came to be applied to the measure in which it was written. A favorite theme of the romances of chivalry was the mythical exploits of Arthur, the last Celtic king of Britain, and of the knights of the Round Table. Another class of romances of chivalry related to the court of Charlemagne. The Fabliaux in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were largely composed of tales of ludicrous adventures.
GERMAN, ENGLISH, AND SPANISH WRITERS.—In Germany, in the age of the Hohenstaufens, the poets called Minnesingers abounded. They were conspicuous at the splendid tournaments and festivals. In the thirteenth century numerous lays of love, satirical fables, and metrical romances were composed or translated. Of the Round Table legends, that of the San Graal (the holy vessel) was the most popular. It treated of the search for the precious blood of Christ, which was said to have been brought in a cup or charger into Northern Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. During this period the old ballads were thrown into an epic form; among them, the Nibelungenlied, the Iliad of Germany. The religious faith and loyalty of the Spanish character, the fruit of their long contest with the Moors, are reflected in the poem of the Cid, which was composed about the year 1200. It is one of the oldest epics in the Romance languages. In England during this period, we have the chronicles kept in the monasteries. Among their authors are William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk of St. Albans.
DANTE.—Dante, the chief poet of Italy, and the father of its vernacular literature, was born in Florence in 1265. The Divine Comedy is universally regarded as one of the greatest products of poetical genius.
The family of Alighieri, to which Dante belonged, was noble, but not of the highest rank. He was placed under the best masters, and became not only an accomplished student of Virgil and other Latin poets, but also an adept in theology and in various other branches of knowledge. His training was the best that the time afforded. His family belonged to the anti-imperial party of Guelfs. The spirit of faction raged at Florence. Dante was attached to the party of "Whites" (Bianchi), and, having held the high office of prior in Florence, was banished, with many others, when the "Blacks" (Neri) got the upper hand (1302). Until his death, nineteen years later, he wandered from place to place in Italy as an exile. Circumstances, especially the distracted condition of the country, led him to ally himself with the Ghibellines, and to favor the imperial cause. All that he saw and suffered until he breathed his last, away from his native city, at Ravenna, combined to stir within him the thoughts and passions which find expression in his verse.
No poet before Dante ever equaled him in depth of thought and feeling. His principal work is divided into three parts. It is an allegorical vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Through the first two of these regions, the poet is conducted by Virgil. In the third, Beatrice is his guide. When he was a boy of nine years of age, he had met, at a May-day festival, Beatrice, who was of the same age; and thenceforward he cherished towards her a pure and romantic affection. Before his twenty-fifth year she died; but, after her death, his thoughts dwelt upon her with a refined but not less passionate regard. She is his imaginary guide through the abodes of the blest. His Young Life (Vita Nuova) gives the history of his love. The "Divine Comedy"—so called because the author would modestly place it below the rank of tragedy,—besides the lofty genius which it exhibits, besides the matchless force and beauty of its diction, sums up, so to speak, what is best and most characteristic in the whole intellectual and religious life of the Middle Ages. Thomas Aquinas was Dante's authority in theology· The scholastic system taught by the Church is brought to view in his pictures of the supernatural world, and in the comments connected with them.
PAINTING.—After the Lombard conquest of Italy, art branched off into two schools. The one was the Byzantine, and the other the Late Roman. In the Byzantine paintings, the human figures are stiff, and conventional forms prevail. The Byzantine school conceived of Jesus as without beauty of person,—literally "without form or comeliness." The Romans had a directly opposite conception. Byzantine taste had a strong influence in Italy, especially at Venice. This is seen in the mosaics of St. Mark's Cathedral. The first painter to break loose from Byzantine influence, and to introduce a more free style which flourished under the patronage of the Church, was Cimabue (1240-1302), who is generally considered the founder of modern Italian painting. The first steps were now taken towards a direct observation and imitation of nature. The artist is no longer a slavish copyist of others. "Cimabue" says M. Taine, "already belongs to the new order of things; for he invents and expresses." But Cimabue was far outdone by Giotto (1276-1337), who cast off wholly the Byzantine fetters, studied nature earnestly, and abjured that which is false and artificial. Notwithstanding his technical defects, his force, and "his feeling for grace of action and harmony of color," were such as to make him, even more than Cimabue, "the founder of the true ideal style of Christian art, and the restorer of portraiture." "His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile, and richly creative nature." The contemporary of Dante, his portrait of the poet has been discovered in recent times on a wall in the Podesta at Florence. "He stands at the head of the school of allegorical painting, as the latter of that of poetry." The most famous pupil of Giotto was Taddeo Gaddi (about 1300-1367).
SCULPTURE.—In the thirteenth century, the era of the revival of art in Italy, a new school of sculpture arose under the auspices especially of two artists, Niccolo of Pisa and his son Giovanni. They brought to their art the same spirit which belonged to Giotto in painting and to Dante in poetry. The same courage that moved the great poet to write in his own vernacular tongue, instead of in Latin, emboldened the artists to look away from the received standards, and to follow nature. In the same period a new and improved style of sculpture appears in other countries, especially in the Gothic cathedrals of Germany and France.
ARCHITECTURE.—The earliest Christian churches were copies of the Roman basilica,—a civil building oblong in shape, sometimes with and sometimes without rows of columns dividing the nave from the aisles: at one end, there was usually a semicircular apse. Most of the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were built after this style. Then changes were introduced, which in some measure paved the way for the Gothic, the peculiar type of mediæval architecture. The essential characteristic of this style is the pointed arch. This may have been introduced by the returning crusaders from buildings which they had observed in the East. Its use and development in the churches and other edifices of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were without previous example. The Gothic style was carried to its perfection in France, and spread over England and Germany. The cathedrals erected in this form are still the noblest and most attractive buildings to be seen in the old European towns.
The cathedral in Rheimes was commenced in 1211: the choir was dedicated in 1241, and the edifice was completed in 1430. The cathedral of Amiens was begun in 1220; that of Chartres was begun about 1020, and was dedicated in 1260; that of Salisbury was begun in 1220; that of Cologne, in 1248; the cathedral of Strasburg was only half finished in 1318, when the architect, Erwin of Steinbach, died; that of Notre Dame in Paris was begun in 1163; that of Toledo, in 1258. These noble buildings were built gradually: centuries passed before the completion of them. Several of them to this day remain unfinished.
PHILIP VI, 1328-1350, m.
Jeanne, daughter of Robert II, Duke of Burgundy.
|
+—JOHN, 1350-1364, m.
Bona, daughter of John, King of Bohemia.
|
+—CHARLES V, 1364-1380, m.
Jeanne, daughter of Peter I, Duke of Bourbon.
|
+—CHARLES VI, 1380-1422, m.
| Isabella, daughter of Stephen, Duke of Bavaria.
| |
| +—CHARLES VII, 1422-1461,
| m. Mary, daughter
| of Louis II of Anjou.
| |
| +—LOUIS XI, 1461-1483,
| m. (2), Charlotte,
| daughter of Louis,
| Duke of Savoy.
| |
| +—3, CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498,
| m. Anne of Bretagne.
|
+—Louis, Duke of Orleans (d. 1407) m.
Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzi, Duke of Milan.
|
+—Charles, Duke of Orleans (d. 1467),
| m. Mary of Cleves.
| |
| +—2, Anne of Bretagne,
| m. LOUIS XII, 1498-1515.
| |
| +—Claude, m. FRANCIS I, 1515-1547.
|
+—John, Count of Angoulême (d. 1467).
|
+—Charles, count (d. 1496),
m. Louisa, daughter
of Philip II, Duke of Savoy.
|
+—FRANCIS I, 1515-1547.
| |
| +—HENRY II. 1547-1559, m..
| Catherine de' Medici, d.. 1589.
| |
| +—FRANCIS II, 1559-1560, m.
| | Mary, Queen of Scots.
| |
| +—CHARLES IX, 1560-1574,
| | m. Elizabeth, daughter of
| | Emperor Maximilian II.
| |
| +—HENRY III. 1574-1589, m.
| | Louis, daughter of Nicholas,
| | Duke of Mercoeur.
| |
| +—Margaret,
| m.
| +—HENRY IV, succeeded 1589.
| |
| +—Jeanne, m. Anthony of Bourbon.
| |
+—MARGARET, m. (2), HENRY II OF NAVARRE.
EDWARD I, 1272-1307, m..
1, Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III of Castile;
|
|
+—4, EDWARD II, 1307-1327, m..
Isabel, daughter of Philip IV of France.
|
+—EDWARD III, 1327-1377, m.
Philippa, daughter of William III of Hainault.
|
+—Edward, the Black Prince,
| m. Joan of Kent.
| |
| +—RICHARD II, 1377-1399, m.
| Anne, daughter of Emperor Charles IV.
|
+—Lionel, Duke of Clarence.
| |
| +—Philippa, m. Edmund Mortimer.
| |
| +—Roger Mortimer.
| |
| +—Edmund Mortimer.
| |
| +—Anne Mortimer, m.
| Richard, Earl of Cambridge.
| |
| +—Richard, Duke of York.
| |
| +—EDWARD IV, 1461-1483.
| | |
| | +—EDWARD V (d. 1483).
| |
| +—RICHARD III, 1483-1485.
|
+—John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
| |
| +—HENRY IV, 1399-1413.
| |
| +—HENRY V, 1413-1422.
| |
| +—HENRY VI, 1422-1461.
|
+—Edmund, Duke of York.
|
+—Richard, Earl of Cambridge m.
Anne Mortimer (wh. see).
2, Margaret, daughter of Philip III of France.
CHARACTER OF THE NEW ERA.—The Church was supreme in the era of the Crusades. These had been great movements of a society of which the Pope was the head,—movements in which the pontiffs were the natural leaders. We come now to an era when the predominance of the Church declines, and the Papacy loses ground. Mingled with religion, there is diffused a more secular spirit. The nations grow to be more distinct from one another. Political relations come to be paramount. The national spirit grows strong,—too strong for outside ecclesiastical control. Within each nation the laity is inclined to put limits to the power and privileges of the clergy. In several of the countries, monarchy in the modern European form gets a firm foothold. The enfranchisement of the towns, the rise of commerce, the influence gained by the legists and by the Roman law, of which they were the expounders, had betokened the dawn of a new era. The development of the national languages and literatures signified its coming. Germany and the Holy Roman Empire no longer absorb attention. What is taking place in France and England is, to say the least, of equal moment.
PHILIP III. OF FRANCE (1270-1285).—In France royalty made a steady progress down to the long War of a Hundred Years. Philip III. (1270-1285) married his son to the heiress of Navarre. His sway extended to the Pyrenees. He failed in an expedition against Peter, king of Aragon, who had supported the Sicilians against Charles of Anjou; but the time for foreign conquests had not come.
PHILIP IV. OF FRANCE (1285-1314): WAR WITH EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND.— Philip IV. (the Fair) has been styled the "King of the Legists." He surrounded himself with lawyers, who furnished him, from their storehouse of Roman legislation, weapons with which to face baron and pope. In 1292 conflicts broke out between English and French sailors. Philip, in his character as suzerain, undertook to take peaceful possession of Guienne, but was prevented by the English garrisons. Thereupon he summoned Edward I. of England, as the holder of the fiefs, before his court. Edward sent his brother as a deputy, but the French king declared that the fiefs were forfeited in consequence of his not appearing in person.
In the war that resulted (1294-1297), each party had his natural allies. Philip had for his allies the Welsh and the Scots, while Edward was supported by the Count of Flanders and by Adolphus of Nassau, king of the Romans. In Scotland, William Wallace withstood Edward. Philip was successful in Flanders and in Guienne. Edward, who was kept in England by his war with the Scots, secured a truce through the mediation of Pope Boniface VIII. Philip then took possession of Flanders, with the exception of Ghent. Flanders was at that time the richest country in Europe. Its cities were numerous, and the whole land was populous and industrious. From England it received the wool used in its thriving manufactures. To England its people were attached. Philip loaded the Flemish people with imposts. They rose in revolt, and Robert d'Artois, Philip's brother, met with a disastrous defeat in a battle with the Flemish troops at Courtrai, in 1302. The Flemish burghers proved themselves too strong for the royal troops. Flanders was restored to its count, four towns being retained by France.
CONFLICT OF PHILIP IV. AND BONIFACE VIII.—The expenses of Philip, in the support of his army and for other purposes, were enormous. The old feudal revenues were wholly insufficient for the new methods of government. To supply himself with money, he not only levied onerous taxes on his subjects, and practiced ingenious extortion upon the Jews, but he resorted again and again to the device of debasing the coin. His resolution to tax the property of the Church brought him into a controversy, momentous in its results, with Pope Boniface VIII.
Boniface's idea of papal prerogative was fully as exalted as that formerly held by Hildebrand and Innocent III. But he had less prudence and self-restraint, and the temper of the times was now altered. If Philip was sustained by the Roman law and its interpreters, whose counsels he gladly followed, Boniface, on the other hand, could lean upon the system of ecclesiastical or canon law, which had long been growing up in Europe, and of which the Canonists were the professional expounders. The vast wealth of the clergy had led to enactments for keeping it within bounds, like the statute of mortmain in England (1279) forbidding the giving of land to religious bodies without license from the king. The word mortmain meant dead hand, and was applied to possessors of land, especially ecclesiastical corporations, that could not alienate it. The jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, which kings, because they happened to have a less liking for feudal law, had often favored, had now come to be another great matter of contention. In 1296 Boniface VIII., in the bull clericis laicos,—so named, like other papal edicts, from the opening words,—forbade the imposition of extraordinary taxes upon the clergy without the consent of the Holy See. Philip responded by forbidding foreigners to sojourn in France, which was equivalent to driving out of the country the Roman priests and those who brought in the obnoxious bull. At the same time he forbade money to be carried out of France. This last prohibition cut off contributions to Rome. The king asserted the importance of the laity in the Church, as well as of the clergy, and the right of the king of France to take charge of his own realm. There was a seeming reconciliation for a time, through concessions on the side of the Pope; but the strife broke out afresh in 1301. Philip arrested Bernard Saisset, a bold legate of the Pope. Boniface poured forth a stream of complaints against Philip (1301), and went so far as to summon the French clergy to a council at Rome for the settlement of all disorders in France. The king then appealed to the French nation. On the 10th of April, 1302, he assembled in the Church of Notre Dame, at Paris, a body which, for the first time, contained the deputies of the universities and of the towns, and for this reason is considered to have been the first meeting of the States General, The clergy, the barons, the burghers, sided cordially with the king. The Pope then published the famous bull, Unam Sanctam, in which the subjection of the temporal power to the spiritual is proclaimed with the strongest emphasis. Boniface then excommunicated Philip, and was preparing to depose him, and to hand over his kingdom to the emperor, Albert I.
DEATH OF BONIFACE VIII.—Meantime Philip had assembled anew the States General (1303). The legists lent their counsel and active support. It was proposed to the king to convoke a general council of the Church, and to summon the Pope before it. William of Nogaret, a great lawyer in the service of Philip, was directed to lodge with Boniface this appeal to a council, and to publish it at Rome. With Sciarra Colonna, between whose family and the Pope there was a mortal feud, Nogaret, attended also by several hundred hired soldiers, entered Anagni, where Boniface was then staying. The two messengers heaped upon him the severest reproaches, and Colonna is said to have struck the old pontiff in the face with his mailed hand. The French were driven out of the town by the people; but from the indignities which he had suffered, and the anger and shame consequent upon them, Boniface shortly afterwards died.
THE "BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY" (1309-1379).—From the date of the events just narrated, the pontifical authority sank, and the secular authority of sovereigns and nations was in the ascendant. After the short pontificate of Benedict XL, who did what he could to reconcile the ancient but estranged allies, France and the Papacy, a French prelate, the Archbishop of Bordeaux, was made pope under the name of Clement V., he having previously engaged to comply with the wishes of Philip. While the Papacy continued subordinate to the French king, its moral influence in other parts of Christendom was of necessity reduced. Clement V, was crowned at Lyons in 1305, and in 1309 established himself at Avignon, a possession of the Holy See on the borders of France. After him there followed at Avignon seven popes who were subject to French influence (1309-1376). It is the period in the annals of the Papacy which is called the "Babylonian captivity." Philip remained implacable. He was determined to secure the condemnation of Boniface VIII., even after his death. Clement V. had no alternative but to summon a council, which was held at Vienne in 1311, when Boniface was declared to have been orthodox, at the same time that Philip was shielded from ecclesiastical censure or reproach.
SUPPRESSION OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.—One of the demands which Philip had made of Clement V., and a demand which the council had to grant, was the condemnation of the order of Knights Templars, whose vast wealth Philip coveted. On the 13th of October, 1307, the Templars were arrested overall France,—an act which evinces both the power of Philip, and his injustice. They were charged with secret immoralities, and with practices involving impiety. Provincial councils were called together to decree the judgment preordained by the king. The Templars were examined under torture, and many of them were burned at the stake. A large number of those who were put to death revoked the confessions which had been extorted from them by bodily suffering. Individuals may have been guilty of some of the charges, but there is no warrant for such a verdict against the entire order. The order was abolished by Clement V.
LAW STUDIES: MERCENARY TROOPS.—During the reign of Philip the Fair, it was ordained that Parliament should sit twice every year at Paris (1303). A university for the study of law was founded at Orleans. The king needed soldiers as well as lawyers. Mercenary troops were beginning to take the place of feudal bands. Philip brought the Genoese galleys against the ships of Flanders.
THE THREE SONS OF PHILIP: THE "SALIC LAW."—Three sons of Philip reigned after him. Louis X. (1314-1316) was induced to take part in an aristocratic reaction, in behalf of "the good old customs," against the legists; but he continued to emancipate the serfs. He was not succeeded by his daughter, but by his brother. This precedent was soon transformed into the "Salic law" that only heirs in the male line could succeed to the throne. The rule was really the result of the "genealogical accident" that for three hundred and forty-one years, or since the election of Hugh Capet, every French king had been succeeded by his son. In several cases the son had been crowned in the lifetime of the father. Thus the principle of heredity, and of heredity in the male line, had taken root.
Under Philip V. and his successor, Charles IV. (1322-1328), there was cruel persecution of the Jews, and many people suffered death on the charge of sorcery.
EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND (1272-1307): CONQUEST OF WALES: WILLIAM WALLACE.—Edward, who was in the Holy Land when his father died, was a gallant knight and an able ruler,—"the most brilliant monarch of the fourteenth century." Llywelyn, prince of Wales, having refused to render the oath due from a vassal, was forced to yield. When a rebellion broke out several years later, Wales was conquered, and the leader of the rebellion was executed (1283). Thus Wales was joined to England; and the king gave to his son the title of "Prince of Wales," which the eldest son of the sovereign of England has since worn. Edward was for many years at war with Scotland, which now included the Gaelic-speaking people of the Highlands, and the English-speaking people of the Lowlands. The king of England had some claim to be their suzerain, a claim which the Scots were slow to acknowledge. The old line of Scottish princes of the Celtic race died out. Alexander III. fell with his horse over a cliff on the coast of Fife. Two competitors for the throne arose, both of them of Norman descent,—John Baliol and Robert Bruce. The Scots made Edward an umpire, to decide which of them should reign. He decided for Baliol (1292), stipulating that the suzerainty should rest with himself. When he called upon Baliol to aid him against France, the latter renounced his allegiance, and declared war. He was conquered at Dunbar (1296), and made prisoner. The strongholds in Scotland fell into the hands of the English. The country appeared to be subjugated, but the Scots were ill-treated by the English. William Wallace put himself at the head of a band of followers, defeated them near Stirling in 1292, and kept up the contest for several years with heroic energy. At length Edward, through the skill acquired by the English in the use of the bow, was the victor at Falkirk in 1298. Wallace, having been betrayed into his hands, was brutally executed in London (1305).
Edward carried off from Scone the stone on which the Scottish kings had always been crowned. It is now in Westminster Abbey, under the coronation chair of the sovereign of Great Britain. There was a legend, that on this same stone the patriarch Jacob laid his head when he beheld angels ascending and descending at Bethel. Where that stone was, it was believed that Scottish kings would reign. This was held to be verified when English kings of Scottish descent inherited the crown.
ROBERT BRUCE.—The struggle for Scottish independence was taken up by Robert Bruce, grandson of the Bruce who had claimed the crown. His plan to gain the throne was disclosed by John Comyn, nephew of Baliol: this Comyn young Bruce stabbed in a church at Dumfries. He was then crowned king at Scone, and summoned the Scots to his standard. The English king sent his son Edward to conquer him; but the king himself, before he could reach Scotland, died.
PARLIAMENT: THE JEWS.—Under Edward, the form of government by king, lords, and commons was firmly established. Parliament met in two distinct houses. Against his inclination he swore to the "Confirmation of the Charters," by which he engaged not to impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. The statute of mortmain has been referred to already. The clergy paid their taxes to the king when they found, that, unless they did so, the judges would not protect them. Edward had protected the Jews, who, in England as elsewhere, were often falsely accused of horrible crimes, and against whom there existed, on account of their religion, a violent prejudice. At length he yielded to the popular hatred, and banished them from the kingdom, permitting them, however, to take with them their property.
Edward II. (1307-1327).—Edward II., a weak and despicable sovereign, cared for nothing but pleasure.
He was under the influence of the son of a Gascon gentleman, Peter of Gaveston, whom, contrary to the injunction of his father, he recalled from banishment. Gaveston was made regent while the king was in France, whither he went, in 1308, to marry Isabel, daughter of Philip the Fair. After his return, the disgust of the barons at the conduct of Gaveston, and at the courses into which Edward was led by him, was such, that in 1310 they forced the king to give the government for a year to a committee of peers, by whom Gaveston was once more banished. When he came back, he was captured by the barons, and beheaded in 1312.
BRUCE: BANNOCKBURN: DEPOSITION OF EDWARD II.—After various successes, Robert Bruce laid siege to Stirling in 1314. This led to a temporary reconciliation between the king and the barons. Edward set out for Scotland with an army of a hundred thousand men. A great battle took place at Bannockburn, where Bruce, with a greatly inferior force of foot-soldiers, totally defeated the English. He had dug pits in front of his army, which he had covered with turf resting on sticks. The effect was to throw the English cavalry into confusion. Against the Despencers, father and son, the next favorites of Edward, the barons were not at first successful; but in 1326 Edward's queen, Isabel, who had joined his enemies, returned from France with young Edward, Prince of Wales, and at the head of foreign soldiers and exiles. The barons joined her: the Despencers were taken and executed. The king was driven to resign the crown. He was carried from one castle to another, and finally was secretly murdered at Berkeley Castle, by Roger Mortimer, in whose custody he had been placed.
On the suppression of the Knights Templars by Pope Clement V., their property in England was confiscated. The Temple, which was their abode in London, became afterwards the possession of two societies of lawyers, the Inner and Middle Temple.
ORIGIN OF THE WAR: EDWARD III. OF ENGLAND (1327-1377).—England and France entered on one of the longest wars of which there is any record in history. It lasted, with only a few short periods of intermission, for a hundred years. At the outset, there were two main causes of strife. First, the king of France naturally coveted the English territory around Bordeaux,—Guienne, whose people were French. Secondly, the English would not allow Flanders —whose manufacturing towns, as Ghent and Bruges, were the best customers for their wool—to pass under French control. Independently of these grounds of dispute, Edward III. laid claim to the French crown, for the reason that his mother was the sister of the last king, while Philip VI. (1328-1350), then reigning, was only his cousin. The French stood by the "Salic law," but a much stronger feeling was their determination not to be ruled by an Englishman.
Edward III. claimed the throne of France in right of his mother, Isabel, the daughter of Philip IV. The peers and barons of France, on the whole, for political reasons, decided that the crown should be given to Philip (VI.). his nephew, of the house of Valois, a younger line of the Capets. Edward rendered to him, in 1328, feudal homage for the duchy of Guienne, but took the first favorable occasion to re-assert his claim to the throne. Robert II., Count of Artois, was obliged to fly from France on a charge of having poisoned his aunt and her daughters, as a part of his unsuccessful attempt to get possession of the fiefs left to them by his grandsire. He went over to England from Brussels, and stirred up the young English king to attack Philip (1334). David Bruce, whom Edward sought to drive out of Scotland, received aid from France. Philip ordered Louis, Count of Flanders, between whom and the burghers there was no affection, to expel the English from his states. James Van Arteveld, a brewer of Ghent, convinced the people that it was better to get rid of the count, and ally themselves with the English. Edward even then hesitated about entering into the conflict, but the demands and measures of Philip showed that he was bent on war. The princes in the neighborhood of Flanders, and the emperor Louis V., to whom the Pope at Avignon was hostile, declared on the side of Edward.
The following tables (in part repeated, in a modified form, from previous tables, and here connected) will illustrate the narrative:—
CHARLES, Count of Valois (d. 1325),
younger son of PHILIP III, KING OF FRANCE. (See below.)
|
+—PHILIP VI, 1328-1350.
|
+—JOHN the Good, 1350-1364.
|
+—CHARLES V the Wise, 1364-1380.
| |
| +—CHARLES VI, 1380-1422.
| | |
| | +—CHARLES VII, 1422-1461.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS XI, 1461-1483.
| | |
| | +—CHARLES VIII, 1483-1498.
| | |
| | +—Jeanne,
| | m
| | +—Duke of Orleans, afterwards LOUIS XII, 1498-1515.
| | |
| | +—Charles, Duke of Orleans, (d. 1467)
| | |
| +—Louis, Duke of Orleans (assassinated 1407),
| founder of the House of Valois-Orleans.
|
+—Louis, Duke of Anjou, founder
| of the second Royal House of Naples.
|
+—John, Duke of Berry.
|
+—Philip, Duke of Burgundy
(d. 1404).
* * * * *
PHILIP III, 1270-1285.
|
+—PHILIP IV, 1285-1314.
| |
| +—Isabel, m. Edward II of England
| | |
| | +—Edward II of England.
| | |
| | +—Edward III of England.
| |
| +—PHILIP V, 1316-1322.
| |
| +—CHARLES IV, 1322-1328.
|
+—Charles, Count of Valois (d. 1325), m.
(1), Margaret of Naples.
|
+—PHILIP VI, 1328-1350.
EARLY EVENTS OF THE WAR.—Hostilities began in 1337. Edward entered France, and then for the first time publicly set up his claim to be king of France, quartering the lilies on his shield; and he was accepted by the Flemish as their suzerain. The first battle was on the sea near Fort Sluys (1340), where Edward won a victory, and thirty thousand Frenchmen were slain or drowned. This established the supremacy of the English on the water. The fleet of the French was made up of hired Castilian and Genoese vessels. In 1341 the conflict was renewed on account of a disputed succession in Brittany, in which the "Salic law" was this time on the English side.
Jane of Penthievre was supported by Philip; while Jane of Montfort, an intrepid woman who was protected by Edward, contended for the rights of her husband. This war, consisting of the sieges of fortresses and towns, was kept up for twenty-four years.
BATTLE OF CRÉCY: CALAIS: BRITTANY.—In 1346 the Earl of Derby made an attack in the south of France, while Edward, with his young son Edward, the Prince of Wales, landed in Normandy, which he devastated. King Edward advanced to the neighborhood of Paris; but the want of provisions caused him to change his course, and to march in the direction of Flanders. His situation now became perilous. He was followed by Philip at the head of a powerful army; and, had there been more energy and promptitude on the side of the French, the English forces might have been destroyed. Edward was barely able, by taking advantage of a ford at low tide, to cross the Somme, and to take up an advantageous position at Crécy. There he was attacked with imprudent haste by the army of the French. The chivalry of France went down before the solid array of English archers, and Edward gained an overwhelming victory. Philip's brother Charles, count of Alençon, fell, with numerous other princes and nobles, and thirty thousand soldiers (1346). In the battle, the English king's eldest son —Edward, the Black Prince as he was called from the color of his armor—was hard pressed; but the father would send no aid, saying, "Let the boy win his spurs." It was the custom to give the spurs to the full-fledged knight. After a siege, Calais, the port so important to the English, was captured by them. The deputies of the citizens, almost starved, came out with cords in their hands, to signify their willingness to be hanged. The French were driven out, and Calais was an English town for more than two centuries. France was defeated on all sides. The Scots, too, were vanquished; and David Bruce was made prisoner (1346). In Brittany the French party was prostrate. A truce between the kings was concluded for ten months.
THE "BLACK DEATH."—In the midst of these calamities, the fearful pestilence swept over France, called the "Black Death." It came from Egypt, possibly from farther east. In Florence three-fifths of the inhabitants perished by it. From Italy it passed over to Provence, and thence moved northward to Paris, spreading destruction in its path. It reached England, and there it is thought by some that one-half of the population perished (1348-1349).
ENGLISH AND FRENCH ARMIES.—At this time, when the power of France was so reduced, the king acquired Montpellier from James of Aragon, and the Dauphiné of Vienne by purchase from the last Dauphin, Humbert II., who entered a monastery. Dauphin became the title of the heir of the French crown. It was constantly evident how deep a root the royal power had struck into the soil of France. At times, when the kingdom was almost gone, the kingship survived. But, unhappily, there was no union of orders and classes. Chivalry looked with disdain upon the common people. The poor Genoese archers who had fought with the French at Crécy, and whose bow-strings were wet by a shower, were despised by the gentlemen on horseback. In the French armies, there was no effective force but the cavalry, and there was a fatal lack of subordination and discipline. In England, on the contrary, under kings with more control over the feudal aristocracy, and from the combination of lords and common people in resistance to kings, the English armies had acquired union and discipline. The bow in the hands of the English yeoman was a most effective weapon. The English infantry were more than a match for the brave and impetuous cavaliers of France. At Crécy the entire English force fought on foot. Cannon were just beginning to come into use. This brought a new advantage to the foot-soldier. But it seems probable that cannon were employed at Crécy.
BATTLE OF POITIERS: INSURRECTION IN PARIS.—Philip left his crown to his son, John (II.) of Normandy, called "the Good" (1350-1364); but the epithet (le Bon) signifies not the morally worthy, but rather, the prodigal, gay and extravagant. He was a passionate, rash, and cruel king. His relations with Charles "the Bad," king of Navarre,—who, however, was the better man of the two,—brought disasters upon France. This Charles II. of Navarre (1349-1387) was the grandson, on his mother's side, of Louis X. of France. John had withheld from him promised fiefs. Later he had thrown him into prison. Philip of Navarre, the brother of Charles, helped the English against John in Normandy. Meanwhile the Prince of Wales (the Black Prince) ravaged the provinces near Guienne. The national spirit in France was roused by the peril. The States General granted large supplies of men and money, but only on the condition that the treasure should be dispensed under their superintendence, and that they should be assembled every year. The army of the Black Prince was small, and he advanced so far that he was in imminent danger; but the attack on him at Poitiers (1356), by the vastly superior force of King John, was made with so much impetuosity and so little prudence that the French, as at Crecy, were completely defeated. Their cavalry charged up a lane, not knowing that the English archers were behind the hedges on either side. Their dead to the number of eleven thousand lay on the field. The king, and with him a large part of the nobility, were taken prisoners. John was taken to England (1357). From the moment of his capture he was treated with the utmost courtesy. The French peasantry, however, suffered greatly; and in France the name of Englishman for centuries afterwards was held in abhorrence.
INSURRECTION IN PARIS.—The incapacity of the nobles to save the kingdom called out the energies of the class counted as plebeian,—the middle class between the nobles and serfs. It was not without competent leaders, chief of whom were Robert le Coq, bishop of Laon, and councilor of Parliament; and Etienne Marcel, an able man, provost of the traders, or head of the municipality of Paris. The States General at Paris, at the instigation of such as these, required of the Dauphin the punishment of the principal officers of the king, the release of the King of Navarre, and the establishment of a council made up from the three orders, for the direction of all the important affairs of government. The States General, representing the South, at Toulouse voted a levy of men and means without conditions; but the Dauphin Charles was obliged, at the next meeting of the States General of Paris (1357), to yield to these and other additional demands. The king, however, a prisoner in England, at the Dauphin's request refused to ratify the compact. The agitators at Paris set the King of Navarre free, and urged him to assert his right to the throne. Marcel and the Parisian multitude wore the party-colored hood of red and blue, the civic colors of Paris. They killed two of the Dauphin's confidential advisers, the marshals of Champagne and Normandy. A reaction set in against Marcel, and in favor of the royal cause. A civil war was the result.
REVOLT OF THE JACQUERIE.—At this time, there burst forth an insurrection, called the Jacquerie, of the peasants of the provinces,—Jacques Bonhomme being a familiar nickname of the peasantry. It was attended with frightful cruelties: many of the feudal chateaux were destroyed, and all of their inmates killed. The land was given over to anarchy and bloodshed. Marcel made different attempts to effect a combination with Charles of Navarre; but the revolutionary leader was assassinated, and the Dauphin Charles, having destroyed opposition in Paris, made peace with the King of Navarre, who had kept up in the provinces the warfare against him. The movement of Marcel, with whatever crimes and errors belonged to it, was "a brave and loyal effort to stem anarchy, and to restore good government." By its failure, the hope of a free parliamentary government in France was dashed in pieces.
TREATY OF BRÉTIGNY (1360).—The captive king, John, made a treaty with Edward, by which he ceded to the English at least one-half of his dominions. The Dauphin assembled the States General, and repudiated the compact. Edward III., in 1359, again invaded France with an immense force. But Charles prudently avoided a general engagement, and Edward found it difficult to get food for his troops. He concluded with France, in 1360, the treaty of Brétigny, by which the whole province of Aquitaine, with several other lordships, was ceded to Edward, clear of all feudal obligations. Edward, in turn, renounced his claim to the French crown, as well as to Normandy, and to all other former possessions of the Plantagenets north of the Loire. The King was to be set at liberty on the payment of the first installment of his ransom.
DUCHY OF BURGUNDY.—There was an opportunity to repair a part of these losses. In 1361 the ducal house of Burgundy became extinct, and the fief reverted to the crown. But John gave it to his son, Philip the Bold, who became the founder of the Burgundian branch of the house of Valois. Philip married the heiress of Flanders, and thus founded the power of the house of Burgundy in the Netherlands.
DU GUESCLIN: CONTEST IN SPAIN.—The provinces of France were overrun and plundered by soldiers of both parties, under the names of routiers (men of the road) and great companies. King John returned to England, because one of his sons, left as a hostage, had fled. There his captivity was made pleasant to him, but he died soon after.
Charles V., or Charles the Wise (1364-1380), undertook to restore prosperity to the French kingdom. He reformed the coin, the debasement of which was a dire grievance to the burghers. Against the free lances in the service of Charles of Navarre, the king sent bands of mercenary soldiers under Du Guesclin, a valiant gentleman of Brittany, who became one of the principal heroes of the time. The war lasted for a year, and the King of Navarre made peace. In Brittany, Du Guesclin was taken prisoner by the English party and the adventurers who fought with them. The king secured his release by paying his ransom; and he led the companies into Spain to help the cause of Henry of Transtamare, who had a dispute for the throne of Castile with Peter the Cruel. The Black Prince supported Peter, and, for a time, with success. In 1369 Henry was established on the throne, and with him the French party. The principal benefit of this Spanish contest was the deliverance of France from the companies of freebooters.
ADVANTAGES GAINED BY THE FRENCH.—King Charles reformed the internal administration of his kingdom, and at length felt himself ready to begin again the conflict with England. Edward III. was old. The Black Prince was ill and gloomy, and his Aquitanian subjects disliked the supercilious ways of the English. Charles declared war (1369). The English landed at Calais. But the cities were defended by their strong walls; and the French army, under the Duke of Burgundy, in pursuance of the settled policy of the king, refused to meet the enemy in a pitched battle. The next year (1370) they appeared again, and once more, in 1373, both times with the same result. The Duke of Anjou reconquered the larger part of Aquitaine. Du Guesclin was made constable of the French army, and thus placed above the nobles by birth. The English fleet was destroyed by the Castilian vessels before Rochelle (1372). Du Guesclin drove the Duke of Montfort, who was protected by the English, out of Brittany. In 1375 a truce was made, which continued until the death of Edward III. (1377). Then Charles renewed the war, and was successful on every side. Most of the English possessions in France were won back. The last exploit of the Black Prince had been the sacking of Limoges (1370). After this cruel proceeding, broken in health, he returned to England.
STATE OF ENGLAND.—The Black Prince, after his return, when his father was old and feeble, did much to save the country from misrule, so that his death was deplored. The Parliament at this time was called "the Good." It turned out of office friends of John of Gaunt,—or of Ghent (the place where he was born),—the third son of Edward. They were unworthy men, whom John had caused to be appointed. At this time occurred the first instance of impeachment of the king's ministers by the Commons. When the Black Prince died, his brother regained the chief power, and his influence was mischievous. During Edward's reign, Flemish weavers were brought over to England, and the manufacture of fine woolen cloths was thus introduced.
JOHN WICKLIFFE.—In this reign the English showed a strong disposition to curtail the power of the popes in England. When Pope Urban V., in 1366, called for the payment of the arrears of King John's tribute, Parliament refused to grant it, on the ground that no one had the right to subject the kingdom to a foreigner. It was in the reign of Edward III. that John Wickliffe became prominent. He took the side of the secular or the parish clergy in their conflict with the mendicant orders,—"the Begging Friars," as they were styled. He also advocated the cause of the king against the demands of the Pope. He contended that the clergy had too much wealth and power. He adopted doctrines, at that time new, which were not behind the later Protestant, or even Puritan, opinions. He translated the Bible into English. He was protected by Edward III. and by powerful nobles, and he died in peace in his parish at Lutterworth, in 1384; but, after his death, his bones were taken up, and burned. His followers bore the nickname of Lollards, which is probably derived from a word that means to sing, and thus was equivalent to psalm-singers.
RICHARD II. (1377-1399): THE PEASANT INSURRECTION: DEPOSITION OF RICHARD.—Richard, the young son of the Black Prince, had an unhappy reign. At first he was ruled by his uncles, especially by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Four years after his accession, a great insurrection of the peasants broke out, from discontent under the yoke of villanage, and the pressure of taxes. The first leader in Essex was a priest, who took the name of Jack Straw. In the previous reign, the poor had found reason to complain bitterly of the landlords; but their lot was now even harder. When the insurgents reached Blackheath, they numbered a hundred thousand men. There a priest named John Ball harangued them on the equality of rights, from the text,—
When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman?
Young Richard managed them with so much tact, and gave them such fair promises, that they dispersed. One of their most fierce leaders, Wat Tyler, whose daughter had been insulted by a tax-gatherer, was stabbed during a parley which he was holding with the king.
There was a Gloucester party—a party led by his youngest uncle, the Duke of Gloucester—which gave Richard much trouble; but he became strong enough to send the duke to Calais, where, it was thought, he was put to death. In 1398 he banished two noblemen who had given him, at a former day, dire offense. One of them was Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; the other was Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, afterwards called Duke of Lancaster, son of John of Gaunt. When John of Gaunt died, Richard seized his lands. In 1399, when Richard was in Ireland, Bolingbroke landed, with a few men-at-arms and with Archbishop Arundel; and, being joined by the great family of Percy in the North, he obliged Richard to resign the crown. He was deposed by Parliament for misgovernment. Not long after, he was murdered. Lancaster was made king under the name of Henry IV. It was under Richard that the statute of præmunire (of 1353) was renewed, and severe penalties were imposed on all who should procure excommunications or sentences against the king or the realm.
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.—In the course of the reign of Edward III., the French language, which had come in with the Normans, ceased to be the speech of fashion; and the English, as altered by the loss of inflections and by the introduction of foreign words, came into general use. The English ceased to speak the language of those who were now held to be national enemies. In 1362 the use of English was established in the courts of law. The Old English ceased to be written or spoken correctly. The Latin still continued to be familiar to the clergy and to the learned. William Langland wrote a poem entitled the Vision of Piers Plowman (1362). Pierce the Plowman's Crede is a poem by another author. The two principal poets are Chaucer and Gower, both of whom wrote the new English in use at the court. Chaucer's great poem, the Canterbury Tales, is the latest and most remarkable of his works.
HENRY IV. (1399-1413): TWO REBELLIONS: THE LOLLARDS.-By right of birth, the crown would have fallen to Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Lionel having been a son of Edward III., older than John of Gaunt. But there was no law compelling Parliament to give the throne to the nearest of kin. So it fell to the house of Lancaster.
Henry had to confront two rebellions. One was that of the Welsh, under Owen Glendower, which he long tried to put down, and which was gradually overcome by Henry, Prince of Wales, the story of whose wild courses in his youth was perhaps exaggerated. The other rebellion was that of the powerful Northumberland family of the Percys, undertaken in behalf of Richard if he was alive,—for it was disputed whether or not he had really died,—and if not alive, in behalf of the Earl of March. The Percys joined Glendower. They were beaten in a bloody battle near Shrewsbury, in 1403, where Northumberland's son "Hotspur" (Harry Percy) was slain. While praying at the shrine of St. Edward in Westminster, the king was seized with a fit, and died in the "Jerusalem Chamber" of the Abbot. Under Henry the proceedings against heretics were sharpened; but the Commons at length, from their jealousy of the clergy, sought, although in vain, a mitigation of the statute. In the next reign, the Lollards, who were numerous, had a leader in Sir John Oldcastle, called Lord Cobham, who once escaped from the Tower, but was captured, after some years, and put to death as a traitor and heretic. Whether he aimed at a Lollard revolution or not, is uncertain. The Lollards were persecuted, not only as heretics, but also as desiring to free the serfs from their bondage to the landlords.
THE BURGUNDIANS AND ARMAGNACS.—In the last days of Charles V. of France, he tried in vain to absorb Brittany. Flanders and Languedoc revolted against him. The aspect of public affairs was clouded when Charles VI. (1380-1422), who was not twelve years old, became the successor to the throne. His uncles, the Dukes of Anjou, Berri, and Burgundy, contended for the regency. Their quarrels distracted the kingdom. A contest arose with the Flemish cities under the leadership of Philip Van Artevelde; but they were defeated by the French nobles at Roosebeke, and Arterielde was slain. This victory of the nobles over the cities was followed by the repression of the municipal leaders and lawyers in France. Two factions sprang up,—the Burgundians and the Armagnacs.
Margaret, the wife of the Duke of Burgundy, received Flanders by inheritance, on the death of her father the Count (1384). The king was beginning to free himself from the control of the factions when he suddenly went mad. Thenceforth there was a struggle in France for supremacy between the adherents of the dukes of Burgundy and the adherents of the house of Orleans. The latter came to be called Armagnacs (1410), after the Count d'Armagnac, the father-in-law of Charles, Duke of Orleans. The strength of the Burgundians was in the North and in the cities. They adhered to Urban VI., the pope at Rome, in opposition to the Avignon pope, Clement VII.; for these were the days of the papal schism. They were also friends of the house of Lancaster in England,—of Henry IV. and Henry V. The strength of the Armagnacs was in the South. At the outset, it was a party of the court and of the nobles: later it became a national party. Louis, Duke of Orleans, was treacherously assassinated by a partisan of the Burgundians (1407). This act fomented the strife.
BATTLE OF AGINCOURT: TREATY OF TROYES (1420).—It was in 1392 that the king partially lost his reason. For the rest of his life, except at rare intervals, he was either imbecile or frenzied. By the division of counsels and a series of fatalities, gigantic preparations for the invasion of England had come to naught (1386-1388). Henry V. of England (1413-1422) concluded that the best way to divert his nobles from schemes of rebellion was to make war across the Channel. Accordingly he demanded his "inheritance" according to the treaty of Brétigny, together with Normandy. On the refusal of this demand, he renewed the claim of his greatgrandfather to the crown of France, although he was not the eldest descendant of Edward III. Henry invaded France at the head of fifty thousand men. By his artillery and mines he took Harfleur, but not until after a terrible siege in which thousands of his troops perished by sickness. On his way towards Calais, with not more than nine thousand men, he found his way barred at Agincourt by the Armagnac forces, more than fifty thousand in number, comprising the chivalry of France (1415). In the great battle that ensued, the horses of the French floundered in the mud, and horse and rider were destroyed by the English bowmen. The French suffered another defeat like the defeats of Crécy and Poitiers. They lost eleven thousand men, and among them some of the noblest men in France. France was falling to pieces. Rouen was besieged by Henry, and compelled by starvation to surrender (1419). The fury of factions continued to rage. There were dreadful massacres by the mob in Paris. The Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur), was murdered in 1419 by the opposite faction. The young Duke Philip, and even the Queen of France, Isabella, were now found on the Anglo-Burgundian side. By the Treaty of Troyes, in 1420, Catherine, the daughter of Charles VI., was given in marriage to Henry V., and he was made the heir of the crown of France when the insane king, Charles VI., should die. Henry was made regent of France. The whole country north of the Loire was in his hands. The Dauphin Charles retired to the provinces beyond that river.
FRANCE IN 1422.—Both Henry and Charles VI. died in 1422. The Duke of Bedford was made regent in France, ruling in the name of his infant nephew (Henry VI.). Charles VII. (1422-1461) was proclaimed king by the Armagnacs south of the Loire. His situation was desperate, but he represented the national cause. Bedford laid siege to Orleans, the last bulwark of the royal party. The English were weakened, however, by the withdrawal of the Duke of Burgundy and his forces.
JOAN OF ARC.—When the national cause was at this low point, Providence raised up a deliverer in the person of a pure, simple-hearted, and pious maiden of Domrémy in Lorraine, seventeen years of age, Jeanne Dare by name (the name Joan of Arc being merely a mistake in orthography). The tales of suffering that she had heard deeply moved her. She felt herself called of Heaven to liberate France. She fancied that angels' voices bade her undertake this holy mission. Her own undoubting faith aroused faith in others. Commissioned by the king, she mounted a horse, and, with a banner in her hand, joined the French soldiers, whom she inspired with fresh courage. They forced the English to give up the siege of Orleans, and to march away. Other defeats of the English followed. The Maid of Orleans took Charles to Rheims, and stood by him at his coronation. The English and Burgundians rallied their strength. Joan of Arc was ill supported, and was made prisoner at Compèigne by the Burgundians. They delivered her to the English. She was subjected to grievous indignities, was condemned as a witch, and finally burned as a relapsed heretic at Rouen (1431). The last word she uttered was "Jesus." Her character was without a taint. In her soul, the spirit of religion and of patriotism burned with a pure flame. A heroine and a saint combined, she died "a victim to the ingratitude of her friends, and the brutality of her foes."
THE ENGLISH DRIVEN OUT—In 1435 the Duke of Burgundy was reconciled to Charles VII., and joined the cause of France. The generals of Charles gained possession of one after another of the provinces. During a truce of two years, Henry VI. of England (1422-1461) married Margaret of Anjou, the daughter of King René. Henry was of a gentle temper, but lacked prudence and vigor. The king of France and the dauphin began the organization of a standing army, which greatly increased the military strength of the country (1439). In 1449 the war with England was renewed. With the defeat of the English, and the death of their commander, Talbot, in 1453, the contest of a century came to an end. All that England retained across the Channel was Calais with Havre and Guines Castle. France was desolated by all this fruitless strife. Some of the most fertile portions of its territory were reduced to a desert, "given up to wolves, and traversed only by the robber and the free-lance."
REBELLION of "JACK CADE."—The peasants in England were now free from serfdom. Under Henry VI. occurred a formidable insurrection of the men of Kent, who marched to London led by John Cade, who called himself John Mortimer. They complained of bad government and extortionate taxes. One main cause of the rising was the successes of the French. The condition of the laboring class had much improved. The insurgents were defeated by the citizens, and their leader was slain. In this reign began the long "Wars of the Roses," or the contest of the houses of York and Lancaster for the throne.
Matteo I, VISCONTI (nephew of Archbishop Otto),
Lord of Milan, 1295-1332.
|
+—Stefano (d. 1327).
|
+—Matteo II,[1] 1354-1355.
|
+—Bernabo,[1] 1354-1385.
| |
| +—Catharine,
| m. (2),
| +—GIAN GALEAZZO, 1378-1402 (first duke, 1396).
| | |
| | +—GIOVANNI MARIA, 1402-1412.
| | |
| | +—FILIPPO MARIA, 1412-1447.
| | | |
| | | +—Bianca Maria.
| | | m.
| | | +—FRANCESCO SFORZA, 1450-1466
| | | | |
| | | | +—GALEAZZO MARIA, 1466-1476, m.
| | | | | Bona, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy.
| | | | | |
| | | | | +—GIAN GALEAZZO, 1476-1494.
| | | | |
| | | | +—LUDOVICO Il Moro, 1494-1500, 3, (d. 1510)
| | | | m. Beatrice d'Este.
| | | | |
| | | | +—MASSAMILLANO,[4] 1512-1515 (d. 1530)
| | | | |
| | | | +—FRANCESCO MARIA, [4], 1521-1535. m.
| | | | Christina, daughter of Christian II of Denmark (1)
| | | |
| | | Jacopo (Muzio) Attendolo di Cotignola, called Sforza.
| | |
| | +—Valentina, [2] m.
| | Louis, Duke of Orleans.
| | |
| | +—Charles, Duke of Orleans.
| | |
| | +—LOUIS XII of France,
| | Duke of Milan 1500-1512.
| |
+—Galeazzo II,[1] 1354-1378.
1 The Milanese territory was divided between the three brothers, and united on the death of Bernabo.
2 Hence the French claim to Milan.
3 Louis XII of France took Ludovico prisoner, and held Milan 1500-1512.
4 Puppet dukes. Milan being, in fact, the subject of contention between France and the Hapsburgs.
[Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.]
[D. means King of Denmark; N., King of Norway; S., King of Sweden.]
HACO IV, N. (d. 1263).
|
+—MAGNUS VI, N., 1263-1281.
|
+—ERIC II, N., 1281-1299.
|
+—HACO V, N., 1299-1320.
|
| MAGNUS I, S., 1279-1290.
| |
| +—BERGER, S., 1290-1320 (deposed; d. 1326)
| | m.
| | +—Martha.
| | |
| | +—CHRISTOPHER II, D., 1320-1340.
| | | |
| | | +—WALDEMAR III, D., 1346-1375.
| | | |
| | | +—Margaret,[2] D. N., 1387, S., 1388 (d. 1412).
| | | m. HACO VI, N. (d. 1380)
| | | |
| | | +—OLAF VI, D. 1376, N. 1380 (d. 1387).
| | |
| | +—ERIC VI, D., 1286-1320.
| | |
| | ERIC V, D., 1250-1286.
| |
| +—Eric.
| m.
+—Ingeburga
|
+—Magnus VII (II), N. S., 1320-1365 (deposed).
|
+—Euphemia. m. Albert, Duke of Mecklenburg,
| |
| +—Albert,[1] S., 1365-1388 (deposed).
| |
| +—Henry, m. Ingeburga, daughter of Waldemar III, D.
| |
| +—Mary, m. Wratislas of Pomerania.
| |
| +—ERIC, D. N. S., 1412-1439
| | (deposed; d. 1459).
| |
| +—Catharine, m. John, son of Emperor Robert.
| |
| +—CHRISTOPHER, D. N. S. (d. 1448).
| m. (1)
| Dorothea, daughter of John Alchymista,
| Margrave of Brandenburg
| m. (2)
| CHRISTIAN I,[3] D. N. S.
|
+—HACO VI, N. (d. 1380)
1 Elected to Sweden in opposition to Haco VI; deposed by Margaret.
2 Having united all three kingdoms in her own person, framed formal Union of Calmar, 1397.
3 Elected king on death of Christopher, whose widow he married; said to be descended from Eric V of Denmark.
[Abridged from George's Genealogical Tables.]
THE GREAT INTERREGNUM.—After the death of Frederick II. (1250), Germany and Italy, the two countries over which the imperial authority extended, were left free from its control. Italy was abandoned to itself, and thus to internal division. The case of Germany was analogous. During the "great interregnum," lasting for twenty-three years, the German cities, by their industry and trade, grew strong, as did the burghers in France, and in the towns in England, in this period. But in Germany the feudal control was less relaxed. This interval was a period of anarchy and trouble. William of Holland wore the title of emperor until 1256. Then the electors were bribed, and Alfonso X. of Castile, great-grandson of Frederick Barbarossa, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, younger son of King John of England, were chosen by the several factions; but their power was nominal. The four electors on the Rhine, and the dukes and counts, divided among themselves the imperial domains. The dismemberment of the duchies of Swabia and Franconia (1268), and at an earlier day (1180) of Saxony, created a multitude of petty sovereignties. The great vassals of the empire, the kings of Denmark, of Poland, of Hungary, etc., broke away from its suzerainty. There was a reign of violence. The barons sallied out of their strongholds to rob merchants and travelers. The princes, and the nobles in immediate relation to the empire, governed, each in his own territory, as they pleased. New means of protection were created, as the League of the Rhine, comprising sixty cities and the three Rhenish archbishops, and having its own assemblies; and the Hanseatic League, which has been described (p. 303). Moreover, corporations of merchants and artisans were established in the cities. In the North, where the Crusades, and war with the Slaves, had thinned the population, colonies of Flemings, Hollanders, and Frisians came in to cultivate the soil. During the long-continued disturbances after the death of Frederick II., the desire of local independence undermined monarchy. The empire never regained the vigor of which it was robbed by the interregnum.
HOUSE OF HAPSBURG.—Rudolph, Count of Hapsburg (1273-1291), was elected emperor for the reason, that, while he was a brave man, he was not powerful enough to be feared by the aristocracy. He wisely made no attempt to govern in Italy. He was supported by the Church, to which he was submissive. He devoted himself to the task of putting down disorders in Germany. Against Ottocar II., king of Bohemia, who now held also Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, and who refused to acknowledge Rudolph, the emperor twice made war successfully. In a fierce battle at the Marchfield, in 1278, Ottocar was slain. Austria, Styria, and Carniola fell into the hands of the emperor. They were given as fiefs to Rudolph's son Albert; and Carinthia to Albert's son-in-law, the Count of Tyrol. This was the foundation of the power of the house of Hapsburg. Rudolph strove with partial success to recover the crown lands, and did what he could to put a stop to private war and to robbery. Numerous strongholds of robbers he razed to the ground. His practical abandonment of Italy, his partial restoration of order in Germany, and his service to the house of Hapsburg, are the principal features of Rudolph's reign.
HENRY VII. (1308-1313): ITALY.—Adolphus of Nassau (1292-1298) was hired by Edward I. to declare war against France. His doings in Thuringia. which he tried to buy from the Landgrave Albert, led the electors to dethrone him, and to choose Albert I. (1298-1308), Duke of Austria, son of Rudolph. His nephew John, whom he tried to keep out of his inheritance, murdered him. Henry VII. (1308-1313), who was Count of Luxemburg, the next emperor, did little more than build up his family by marrying his son John to the granddaughter of King Ottocar. John was thus made king of Bohemia. In these times, when the emperors were weak, they were anxious to strengthen and enrich their own houses. Henry went to Italy to try his fortunes beyond the Alps. He was crowned in Pavia king of Italy, and in Rome emperor (1312). But the rival parties quickly rose up against him: he was excommunicated by Clement V., an ally of France, and died—it was charged, by poison mixed in the sacramental cup—in 1313. He was a man of pure and noble character, but the time had passed for Italy to be governed by a German sovereign.
CIVIL WAR: ELECTORS AT RENSE.—One party of the electors chose Frederick of Austria (1314-1330), and the other Louis of Bavaria (1314-1347). A terrible civil war, lasting for ten years, was the consequence. In a great battle near Mühldorf, the Austrians were defeated, and Frederick was captured. Louis had now to encounter the hostility of Pope John XXII. (at Avignon), who wished to give the imperial crown to Philip the Fair of France. Louis maintained that he received the throne, not from the popes, but from the electors. He was excommunicated by John, who refused to sanction the agreement of Louis and of Frederick, now set at liberty, to exercise a joint sovereignty. Louis was in Italy from 1327 to 1330, where he was crowned emperor by a pope of his own creation. All efforts of Louis to make peace with Pope John and his successor, Benedict XII., were foiled by the opposition of France. The strife which had been occasioned in Germany by this interference from abroad created such disaffection among the Germans, that the electors met at Rense, in 1338, and declared that the elected king of the Germans received his authority from the choice of the electoral princes exclusively, and was Roman emperor even without being crowned by a pope.
DEPOSITION OF LOUIS OF BAVARIA.—The imprudence of Louis in aggrandizing his family, and his assumption of an acknowledged papal right in dissolving the marriage of the heiress of Tyrol with a son of King John of Bohemia, turned the electors against him. In 1346 Pope Clement VI. declared him deposed. The electors chose in his place Charles, the Margrave of Moravia, the son of King John of Bohemia. Louis did not give up his title, but he died soon after.
CHARLES IV. (1347-1378).—Charles IV. visited Italy, and was crowned emperor (1355); but, according to a promise made to the Pope, he tarried in Rome only a part of one day. He was crowned king of Burgundy at Arles (1365). In Italy "he sold what was left of the rights of the empire, sometimes to cities, sometimes to tyrants." His principal care was for building up his own hereditary dominion, which he so enlarged that it extended, at his death, from the Baltic almost to the Danube. He fortified and adorned Prague, and established there, in 1348, the first German university.
THE GOLDEN BULL.—The great service of Charles IV. to Germany was in the grant of the charter called the Golden Bull (1356). This expressly conferred the right of electing the emperor on the SEVEN ELECTORS, who had, in fact, long exercised it. These were the archbishops of Mentz, of Trier, and of Cologne, and the four secular princes, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony, and the Margrave of Brandenburg. The electoral states were made indivisible and inalienable, and hereditary in the male line. The electors were to be sovereign within their respective territories, and their persons were declared sacred.
THE BLACK DEATH.—Germany, like the other countries, was terribly afflicted during the reign of Charles by the destructive pestilence that swept over the most of Europe (p. 319). One effect was an outbreaking of religious fervor. At this time the movement of the "Flagellants," which started in the thirteenth century, reached its height in Germany and elsewhere. They scourged and lacerated themselves for their sins, marching in processions, and inflicting their blows to the sound of music. Another result of the plague was a savage persecution of the Jews, who were falsely suspected of poisoning wells. Many thousands of them were tortured and killed.
ANARCHY IN GERMANY.—The son of Charles IV. (1378-1400), Wenceslaus, or Wenzel, was a coarse and cruel king. Under him the old disorders of the Interregnum sprang up anew. The towns had to defend themselves against the robber barons, and formed confederacies for this purpose. Private war raged all over Germany.
ACCESSION OF SIGISMUND.—Wenceslaus was deposed by the electors in 1400. But Rupert, the Count Palatine, his successor (1400-1410), was able to accomplish little, in consequence of the strife of parties. Sigismund (1410-1437), brother of Wenceslaus, margrave of Brandenburg, and, in right of his wife, king of Hungary, was chosen emperor, first by a part, and then by all, of the electors. The most important events of this period were the Council of Constance (1414-1418) and the war with the Hussites.
JOHN HUSS.—The principal end for which the Council of Constance was called was the healing of the schism in the Church,—in consequence of which there were three rival popes,—and the securing of ecclesiastical reforms. But at this council John Huss, an eminent Bohemian preacher, was tried for heresy. The doctrines of Wickliffe had penetrated into Bohemia; and a strong party, of which Huss was the principal leader, had sprung up in favor of innovations, doctrinal and practical, one of which was the giving of the cup in the sacrament to the laity. Huss made a great stir by his attack upon abuses in the Church. Under a safe-conduct from Sigismund, he journeyed to Constance. There he was tried, condemned as a heretic, and burnt at the stake (1415). Jerome of Prague, another reformer, was dealt with in the same way by the council (1416).
HUSSITE WAR.—The indignation of the followers of Huss was such that a great revolt broke out in Bohemia. The leader was a brave man, Ziska. The imperial troops, after the coronation of Sigismund as king of Bohemia, were defeated, and driven out. The Hussite soldiers ravaged the neighboring countries. The council of Basel (1431-1449) concluded a treaty with the more moderate portion of the Hussites, in which concessions were made to them. The Taborites, the more fanatical portion, were at length defeated and crushed.
SWITZERLAND.—Switzerland, originally a part of the kingdom of Arles, had been ceded, with this kingdom, to the German Empire in 1033. Within it, was established a lay and ecclesiastical feudalism. In the twelfth century the cities—Zürich, Basel, Berne, and Freiburg—began to be centers of trade, and gained municipal privileges. The three mountain cantons—Uri, Schweitz, and Unterwalden—cherished the spirit of freedom. The counts of Hapsburg, after the beginning of the thirteenth century, exercised a certain indefinite jurisdiction in the land. They endeavored to transform this into an actual sovereignty. Two of the cantons received charters placing them in an immediate relation to the empire. After the death of Rudolph I., the three cantons above named united in a league. Out of this the Swiss Confederacy gradually grew up. There were struggles to cast off foreign control; but the story of William Tell, and other legends of the sort, are certainly fabulous. Albert of Austria left to his successor in the duchy the task of subduing the rebellion. The Austrians were completely defeated at Morgarten, "the Marathon of Switzerland" (1315). The Swiss Confederacy was enlarged by the addition of Lucerne (1332), Zürich and Glarus (1351), Zug (1352), and of the city of Berne in 1353. The battle of Sempach (1386) brought another great defeat upon the Austrians. There, if we may believe an ancient song, a Swiss hero, Arnold of Winkelried, grasped as many of the spear-points as he could reach, as a sheaf in his arms, and devoted himself to death, opening thus a path in which his followers rushed to victory. Once more the Swiss triumphed at Näfels (1388). From that time they were left to the enjoyment of their freedom.
GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES: FREEDOM IN THE CITIES.—The inveterate foes of Italy were foreign interference and domestic faction. After the death of Frederick II., the war of the popes against his successors lasted for seventeen years. After the defeat of Manfred (1266), Conradin, the last of the Hohenstaufens, died on the scaffold at Naples. Charles of Anjou lost Sicily through the rebellion of the Sicilian Vespers (1282); and dominion in that island, separated from Naples, passed to the house of Aragon. The papal states, after the election of Rudolph of Hapsburg, became a distinct sovereignty of the pontiffs. The bitter strife of the Guelfs and Ghibellines went on in the Italian cities. The Genoese, who were Guelfic, defeated the Pisans in 1284; and "Pisa, which had ruined Amalfi, was now ruined by Genoa." Florence, which was Guelfic, grew in strength. Genoa and Venice became rivals in the contest for the control of the Mediterranean. In Florence, new factions, the Neri and Bianchi (Blacks and Whites), appeared; the Neri being violent Guelfs, and the Bianchi being at first moderate Guelfs and then Ghibellines. Pope Boniface VIII. invited into Italy Charles of Valois. He was admitted to Florence (1301), and gave the supremacy there to the Guelfic side. The coming of the Emperor Henry VII. into Italy (1310) was marked by a temporary, but the last, revival of imperial feeling. The connection of the popes with the French houses of Anjou and Valois led to the "Babylonian Exile" at Avignon, during which Italy was comparatively free, both from imperial and papal control. During the period of the civil wars, while there was nominally a conflict between the party of the pope and the party of the emperor, the Guelfs were devoted to the destruction of feudalism, and to the building-up of commerce and republican institutions; while the Ghibellines, dreading anarchy, resisted the incoming of the new order of things. It was in this period that Dante produced his immortal poem, which sprang out of the midst of the contest of Guelf and Ghibelline (p. 307). Dante was himself a Ghibelline and an imperialist. In the course of these conflicts, the plebeian class, before without power, is advanced. Older families of nobility die out, or are reduced in influence. New families rise to prominence and power. The burghers band together in arts or guilds; and out of these, in their corporate character, the governments of the cities are formed. "Ancients," and "priors," the heads of the "arts," supersede the consuls. The "podesta" is more and more limited to a judicial function. In some of the Guelf cities, there is "a gonfalonier of justice," to curb the nobility. In Florence, there were also twenty subordinate gonfaloniers.
The final triumph of Guelfs and of republicanism in Florence was in 1253. The body of the citizens established their sovereignty. When, in 1266, citizenship was confined to those who were enrolled in the guilds, the nobles, or Grandi, were wholly excluded from the government. This led them to drop their titles and dignities in order to enroll themselves in these industrial societies. The feuds of factions, especially of the "Whites" and "Blacks," sprang up next. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, strife arose between the "Lesser Arts," or craftsmen whose trades were subordinate to the "Greater Arts," and these last. The mob in Florence drove the "Signory," or chief magistrates, out of the public palace. This was the "Tumult of the Ciompi,"—Ciompi signifying wool-carders, who gave their name to the whole faction. Afterwards, of their own accord, they gave back the government to the priors of the Greater Arts. The effect of these disturbances was to reduce all classes to a level. The way was open for families, like the Albizzi and Medici, to build up a virtual control by wealth and personal qualities.
THE GENERALS IN THE CITIES.—In the cities, there were "captains of the people," who carried on war,—leaders of the Guelfs or Ghibellines, as either might be uppermost. They were persons who were skilled in arms: these were often nobles who had been merged in the body of citizens. In this way, there arose in the cities of Northern Italy ruling houses or dynasties; as the Della Scala in Verona, the Polenta at Ravenna, etc. In Tuscany, where the commercial power of Florence was so great, the communes as yet kept themselves free from hereditary rulers; yet, from time to time, their liberties were exposed to attack from successful generals.
THE TYRANTS.—At the beginning of the fourteenth century, as the fury of the civil wars declined, the cities were left more and more under the rule of masters called "tyrants." Tyranny, as of old, was a term for absolute authority, however it might be wielded. The visits of the emperors Henry VII., and Louis IV. of Bavaria, and of John of Bohemia, son of Henry VII., had no important political effect, except to bring increased power to the Ghibelline despots. Thus, after the interference of Louis IV. (1327), the Visconti established their power in Milan. But the changes in Italy after this epoch gave to the Ghibellines no permanent advantage over their adversaries. The leader of the Guelfs for a long time was Robert, king of Naples (1309-1343).
THE CLASSES OF DESPOTS.—The methods by which the Emperor Frederic II. governed in Italy, and which he had partly learned from the Saracens in Sicily, furnished an example which the Italian despots followed later. He was imitated in his system of taxation, in his creation of monopolies, in the luxury and magnificence of his court, and in his patronage of polite culture. His vicar in the North of Italy, Ezzelino da Romano (1194-1259), who was captain, in the Ghibelline interest, in Verona, Padua, and other cities, was guilty of massacres and all sorts of cruelties, the story of which exercised a horrible fascination over others who came after. At last he was 'hunted down' by Venice and a league of cities, and captured; but he refused to take food, tore his bandages from his wounds, and died under the ban of the Church. The despots of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been divided by Mr. Symonds into six classes. The first class had a certain hereditary right from the previous exercise of lordship, as the house of Este in Ferrara. The second class, as the Visconti family in Milan, had been vicars of the empire. The third class were captains, or podestas, chosen by the burghers to their office, but abusing it to enslave the cities. Most of the tyrants of Lombardy got their power in this way. The fourth class is made up of the Condottieri, like Francesco Sforza at Milan. The fifth class includes the nephews or sons of popes, and is of later origin, like the Borgia of Romagna. Their governments had less stability. The sixth class is that of eminent citizens, like the Medici at Florence and the Bentivogli of Bologna. These acquired undue authority by wealth, sometimes by personal qualities and noble descent. Among those who are called "despots" were individuals of worth, moderation, and culture. The records of many of them are filled with tragic scenes of violence and crime. To maintain their hated rule, they were impelled to the practice of barbarities hardly ever surpassed. (J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol. i. chap, ii.)
CONDOTTIERI.—With the end of the civil wars, there appear "the companies of adventure," or mercenary troops. The burghers, having put down the nobility and achieved their independence, lay aside their arms. They are busy in manufactures and trade. The despots and the republics prefer to hire foreign adventurers, the "free companies," who were a curse to Italy. Their occupation, which was a profitable one, was taken up by natives. These were the condottieri. Their leaders introduced cavalry and more skillful methods of fighting. But the battles were bloodless games of strategy, and military energy declined. At the same time intrigue and state-craft were the instruments of political aggrandizement. One of these new leaders was Sforza Attendolo, whose son became Duke of Milan.
FIVE STATES IN ITALY.—In the middle of the fifteenth century, we find, as the political result of the changes of the preceding century and a half, five principal communities in Italy. These powers are the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the republic of Venice, and the principality of the Pope. A brief sketch will be given of each of these states down to 1447, when Nicholas V. reëstablished the papacy in its strength at Rome, after the exile at Avignon (1305), and the ecclesiastical convulsions that followed it.
LOWER ITALY.—Robert the Wise (of Anjou) (1309-1343), the successor of Charles II. of Naples and the champion of the Guelfs, could not extend his power over Sicily, where Frederick II. (1296-1337), the son of Peter of Aragon, reigned. Robert's granddaughter, Joan I., after a career of crime and misfortune, was strangled in prison by Charles Durazzo, the last male descendant of the house of Anjou in Lower Italy (1382), who seized on the government. Joan II., the last heir of Durazzo (1414-1435), first adopted Alfonso V. of Aragon, and then Louis III. of Anjou and his brother Rene. Alfonso, who inherited the crown of Sicily, united both kingdoms (1435), after a war with Rene and the Visconti of Milan. By this contest, Italy was divided into two parties, composed of the respective adherents of the houses of Anjou and Aragon, The rights of Rene were to revert later to the crown of France, and to serve as a ground for new wars. For twenty-three years Alfonso reigned wisely and prosperously in Southern Italy. He was a patron of letters, and promoted peace among the Italian states.
THE MILANESE: SFORZA.—Another great power was growing up in the North. The greatness of the Visconti family dates from John, Archbishop of Milan, who reigned there, and died in 1354. Gian Galeazzo Visconti became sole master of Milan in 1385, and extended his dominion over Lombardy. He bought of the Emperor Wenceslaus the ducal title. Twenty-six cities, with their territories, were subject to him. But at Galeazzo's death, his state fell to pieces. The condottieri, whom he had kept under, broke loose from control; and in 1450, one of them, Francesco Sforza, with the help of the Venetians, seized on the supreme power, which his family continued to hold for fifty years.
VENICE.—Venice, in the fourteenth century, was as strong as any Italian state. Its constitution was of gradual growth. The doge, elected by the people, divided power in 1032 with a senate; and in 1172 the Grand Council was organized. This council by degrees absorbed the powers of government, which thus became an aristocracy. In 1297 the Senate became hereditary in a few families. In 1311 the powerful Council of Ten was constituted. For a long period Venice was not ambitious of power in Italy, but was satisfied with her commerce with the East. Her contest with Genoa began in 1352, and lasted for thirty years. In the war of Chioggia,—so called from a town twenty-five miles south of Venice,—the Venetians were defeated by Luciano Doria in a sea-fight on the Adriatic. He blockaded Venice; but Doria, in turn, was blockaded in Chioggia by the Venetians, and forced to surrender. After reducing the naval power of Genoa, they added Verona, Vicenza, and Padua to their territories (1410). Under Francesco Foscari, who was doge from 1423 to 1457, Venice took an active part in Italian affairs.
FLORENCE: THE MEDICI.—In Florence, the Medici family gained an influence which gave them a practical control of the government. In 1378 Salvestro de Medici signalized himself by a successful resistance to an oligarchical faction composed partly of the old nobility. The brilliant period in the history of Florence begins with this triumph of the democracy. Pisa was bought from the Duke of Milan, and forced to submit to Florentine rule (1406). John de Medici, a very successful merchant, was twice chosen gonfalonier (1421). His son Cosmo I., who was born in 1389, was also a merchant, possessed of great wealth. He attained to the leading offices in the state, having overcome the Albizzi family, at whose instigation he was for a while banished. Cosmo ruled under the republican forms, but with not less authority on that account. He was distinguished for his patronage of art and letters. By his varied services to Florence, he earned the title of "Father of his Country," which was given him by a public decree.
THE ROMAN PRINCIPALITY: RIENZI.—After the popes took up their abode in Avignon, in the first half of the fourteenth century, Rome was distracted by the feuds of leading families who built for themselves strongholds in the city. In 1347 the Romans, fired by the enthusiast Rienzi, who sought to restore the old Roman liberty, undertook to set up a government after the ancient model. Rienzi was chosen tribune. He found much favor in other cities of Italy. But his head was turned by the seeming realization of his dreams. He was driven out of Italy by the cardinals and the nobles. He returned afterwards, sent by Pope Innocent VI., to aid in winning back Rome to subjection to the Holy See. But his power was gone. He disgusted the people with his pomps and shows, and, while trying to escape in disguise, was put to death (1354). Cardinal Albornoz succeeded in reuniting the dissevered parts of the papal kingdom. But in the period of the Schism (1378-1417), in the cities old dynasties were revived, and new ones arose; towns and territories were ceded to nobles as fiefs; and a degree of freedom almost amounting to independence was conceded to old republics, as Rome, Perugia, and Bologna. It was the work of Pope Nicholas V. and his successors (from 1477) to regain and cement anew the fragments of the papal principality.
LITERATURE AND ART.—In this period, in the midst of political agitation in Italy, there was a brilliant development in the departments of literature and art. The major part of Dante's life (1265-1321) falls within the thirteenth century. Petrarch (1304-1374), Boccaccio (1313-1375), a master in Italian prose, and Dante, are the founders of Italian literature. They are followed by an era of study and culture, rather than of original production. In the arts, Venice and Pisa first became eminent. The church of St. Mark was built at Venice, in the Byzantine style, in 1071. At about the same time the famous cathedral at Pisa was begun; which was followed, in the twelfth century, by the Baptistery and the Leaning Tower. The Campo Santo, or cemetery, was built in 1278. In the thirteenth century, when architectural industry was so active, numerous high brick towers were built in Florence for purposes of defense. Some of them remain "to recall the bloody feuds of the irreconcilable factions of the nobility. In these conflicts, the strife was carried on from tower to tower, from house to house: streets were barricaded with heavy chains, and homes made desolate with fire and sword." Churches and great public buildings were constructed in this period. At the end of the thirteenth century the church of Santa Croce was built at Florence; and in the century following, Brunelleschi, the reviver of classical art in Italy, placed the great cupola on the Cathedral. The Gothic cathedral of Milan, with its wilderness of statues, was begun in 1346. Cimabue, who died about 1302, and Giotto, who died about 1337, laid the foundations of the modern Italian schools of painting.
TRADE AND COMMERCE.—The seaports, Venice and Genoa, were centers of a flourishing commerce, extending to the far East and to the coasts of Spain and France. The interior cities—Milan with its two hundred thousand inhabitants, Verona, Florence—were centers of manufactures and of trade. The Italians were the first bankers in Europe. The bank of Venice was established in 1171, and the bank of Genoa, although it was projected earlier, was founded in 1407. The financial dealings of Italian merchants spread over all Europe.
MORALITY.—The one thing lacking in Italy was a broader spirit of patriotism and a higher tone of morality. Advance in civilization was attended with corruption of morals.
HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY.—Resistance to the Arabs in Spain began in the northern mountainous region of Cantabria and Asturia, which even the West Goths had not wholly subdued, although Asturia was called Gothia. Asturia, a Christian principality (732), expanded into the kingdom called Leon (916), of which Castile was an eastern county. East of Leon, there grew up the kingdom of Navarre, mostly on the southern, but partly on the northern side of the Pyrenees. On the death of Sancho the Great, it was broken up (1035). At about the same time the Ommiad caliphate was broken up into small kingdoms (1031). After the death of Sancho, or early in the eleventh century, we find in Northern Spain, beginning on the west and moving eastward, the kingdom of Leon, the beginnings of the kingdom of Castile, the reduced kingdom of Navarre, the beginnings of the kingdom of Aragon, and, between Aragon and the Mediterranean, Christian states which had been comprised in the Spanish March over which the Franks had ruled. The two states which were destined to attain to the chief importance were Castile and Aragon. Of these, Castile was eventually to be to Spain what France was to all Gaul. Ultimately the union of Castile and Aragon gave rise to the great Spanish monarchy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The four kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Navarre, after the death of Sancho, as time went on, were joined and disjoined among themselves in many different ways. Castile and Leon were finally united in 1230. Portugal, lying on the ocean, was partly recovered from the Arabs towards the close of the eleventh century, and was a county of Leon and Castile until, in 1139, it became a kingdom. From this time Castile, Aragon, and Portugal were the three antagonists of Moslem rule. Each of these kingdoms advanced. Portugal spread especially along the Atlantic coast; Aragon, along the coast of the Mediterranean; Castile, the principal power, spread in the interior, and included by far the greater part of what is now Spain. In the latter part of the thirteenth century the Moslems were confined to the kingdom of Granada in the South, which was conquered by Castile and Aragon (1492), whose sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, were united in marriage. Their kingdoms were united in 1516. In the latter part of the Middle Ages, Aragon, from its situation on the eastern coast, played an important part in the politics of Europe. Castile and Portugal led the way in maritime exploration.
THE MOORS.—It has been already related (p. 282), that, after the fall of the Ommiad caliphate, African Mohammedans came over to the help of their Spanish brethren. These Moors did not supplant the Arabic speech or culture. The two principal invasions of the Moors were the invasion by the Almoravides (1086-110), and that by the Almohades (1146).
ARAGON: NAVARRE.—The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile existed for centuries side by side. Aragon sought to extend its conquests along the eastern coast; Castile, to enlarge itself toward the south. James I., or James the Conqueror (1213-1276), joined the Moslem state of Valencia, by conquest, to his kingdom of Aragon, to which Catalonia had already been added. The union of these peoples developed a national character of a definite type. In its pride of birth and of blood, its tenacious clinging to traditional rights, and in its esteem of military prowess before intellectual culture, it resembled the old Spartan temper. Peter III.,(1276-1285), the son of James I., united with the three states Sicily, which, though it became a separate kingdom, gave to the house of Aragon its influence in Southern Italy. Nearly the whole of the fourteenth century was taken up by Aragon in the acquisition of Sardinia, which the Pope had ceded, and in the endless wars, connected with this matter, which it waged with the Genoese. In 1410 the ruling house of Barcelona became extinct. In the revolutions that followed, Navarre and Aragon were united under John II., second son of Ferdinand I., king of Aragon. John, by his marriage with Blanche of Navarre, shared her father's throne with her after his death. He was guilty of the crime of poisoning his own son Don Carlos, Prince of Vianne. John was the father of Ferdinand "the Catholic," under whose scepter the kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Navarre were brought together.
CASTILE.—Ferdinand III. (St. Ferdinand) (1214-1252), in warfare with the Moors extended the kingdom of Castile and Leon over Cordova, Seville, and Cadiz. His son Alfonso X., or Alfonso the Wise (1252-1284), cultivated astronomy and astrology, was fond of music and poetry, enlarged the University of Salamanca, gave a code of laws to his kingdom, and caused historical books to be written; but he wasted his treasures in pomp and luxury, and in ambitious designs upon the German imperial crown. He allowed the Merinides, new swarms of African Saracens, to spread in the South of Spain. Alfonso XI. (1312-1350), after a stormy contest with the nobles during his minority, distinguished himself by the victory of Tarifa over the Moors (1340), and the taking of the city of Algeciras (1344). His enemies respected him; and when he died of the plague, in his camp before Gibraltar, the king of Granada went into mourning (1350). The reign of Peter the Cruel (1350-1369) was filled up with perfidies and crimes. The league of the nobles against him only incited him to fresh barbarities. He committed the most atrocious murders, sometimes with his own hand. Protected by the Black Prince, he was at first victorious against Henry of Transtamare his rival; and Du Guesclin was defeated in the battle of Najara in 1367. Afterwards Peter was obliged to surrender, and was killed by the dagger of Henry in a personal encounter. The power of the nobility in Castile had so increased during the civil troubles that Henry III. (1390-1406) had to sell his cloak to procure for himself a dinner. Roused by this humiliation to assert his authority, he succeeded with the help of the Cortes in humbling the nobility; but John II. (1406-1454) was compelled by the most powerful lords, after a protracted contest, to strike off the head of an unworthy favorite, Alvaro de Luna, under whose despotic control he had placed the government (1454). There was a worse state of anarchy under Henry IV., John's successor (1454-1474).
CONSTITUTIONS OF ARAGON AND CASTILE.—The political institutions of Aragon and Castile are specially worthy of note. The kings of Aragon were very much restricted in their authority by the Cortes, or general assembly, composed of the higher and lower classes of nobles, the clergy, and the cities, which by their trade and manufactures had risen to wealth and power. With the Cortes was lodged the right to make laws and to lay taxes. At Saragassa in 1287, it was likewise ordained that they should enjoy certain important privileges. The concurrence of the estates was to be required in the choice of the king's counselors; and in case the king without the warrant of a judgment of the highest judicial officer, the justiciary, and of the estates, should adjudge to punishment any member of the body, they should have the right to elect another king. These "privileges" were lost under Peter IV. (1336-1387), but the old rights were confirmed. To the justiciary was given the power to determine all conflicts of the estates with the king or with one another. His influence increased as time went on. He was the first magistrate in the kingdom.
In Castile, as early as 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted into the Cortes. We find the cities, at the end of the thirteenth century, forming a confederation, called a "fraternity," against the nobles. Their deputies at that time had more power in the assemblies than the nobles and clergy. But the power of the nobles increased, especially from the accession of Henry of Transtamare. In the overthrow of Alvaro de Luna, their triumph was complete: they proved themselves to be stronger than the king.
THE CASTILIANS.—The Spanish Mohammedans were superior in refinement to their Christian adversaries. The latter learned much from their enemies, without losing the patriotic and religious ardor which was fostered by the popular minstrelsy, and by the romantic exploits and encounters with the "infidels." The result was the peculiar spirit of Castilian chivalry. The early development of popular government in Castile increased the feeling of personal independence. Outside of Italy, no cities of Europe in the Middle Ages were so rich and flourishing as the cities of Castile, Materials of commerce were afforded by the famous breed of sheep, and by the products of the soil and of manufactures. The nobles gained great wealth, and had vast estates in the country. They held court as petty sovereigns: Alvaro de Luna had twenty thousand vassals. They were inured to war, they were haughty and overbearing, and complaints of their oppressions were frequent on the part of the lower orders. The Castilian ecclesiastics were often lax in their morals. The higher prelates were possessed of great riches and authority. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the people in Castile had more power, compared with the power of the sovereign, than in any other European country. But the representation of the commons was exclusively from the cities, and not, as in England, largely from the landed proprietors.
THE ARAGONESE.—The extraordinary authority exercised by the justiciary, or justice, of Aragon was perhaps the most remarkable feature of its constitution. Dwelling on the ocean, the Aragonese built up a naval power. Barcelona, after its union with Aragon, was the seat of a flourishing commerce, and framed the first written code of maritime law now extant. Its municipal officers were merchants and mechanics. Membership in the guilds was sought by nobles, as rendering them eligible to the magistracy. The burghers became proud and independent. The Catalans did not hesitate to assert their rights against encroachments of the kings. In 1430 the University of Barcelona was founded. "After the genuine race of troubadours had passed away," says Mr. Prescott, "the Provencal or Limousin verse was carried to its highest excellence by the poets of Valencia" (Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Introduction).
PORTUGAL: COMMERCE AND NAVIGATION.—About 1095 Alfonso VI., king of Castile and Leon, gave the territory between the Minho and the Douro to his son-in-law, Henry of Burgundy, who assumed the title of Count of Portugal. His son and successor, Alfonso I., who defeated the Moors at Ourique in 1139, was hailed as king by his army, and later was confirmed in the title by the Pope (1185). He was acknowledged as independent by the king of Castile. In a diet at Laimego, he gave an excellent constitution and body of laws to his people (1143). Soon after, he conquered Lisbon, and made it his capital. His son, Sancho I. (1185-1211), was distinguished both for his victories over the Moors and for his encouragement of tillage and of farm-laborers. Until we reach the fifteenth century, Portuguese history is occupied with wars with the Moors and the Castilians, contests of the kings with the nobles, and struggles between rival aspirants for the throne, and between the sovereigns on the one hand and the clergy and the popes on the other. Under Dionysius III. (1279-1325) there began a new era, in which the Portuguese became eminent for industry and learning, and in commerce and navigation. He founded the University of Lisbon. Alfonso IV. (1325-1357) continued on the same path. But he caused Ines de Castro, who had been secretly married to his son, to be murdered (1354); a crime which the son, Peter I. (1357-1367), after his accession, avenged by causing the hearts of the murderers to be torn out. John I. (1385-1433) repelled a great invasion of the Castilians, in a battle near Lisbon, and became at first regent and then king. He was the founder of a new family. By him Ceuta in Africa was captured from the Moors. Madeira was discovered (1419), and by the burning of the forests was prepared for the cultivation of sugar-cane and the vine. In 1432 the Portuguese occupied the Azores. A most active interest in voyages of discovery was taken by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), fourth son of King John I. and of Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt.
THE BALTIC LANDS.—There are three divisions of Europe which neither Charlemagne's Empire nor the Eastern Empire included. The first is Spain, which had been comprised in the old Roman Empire. The second is Great Britain and the adjacent islands. Only a portion of Britain was held as a province by old Rome. The third is the two Scandinavian peninsulas,—Denmark, and Norway and Sweden, with the Slavonic lands to the east and south, which may be said to have had a common relation to the Baltic. The Scandinavians had their period of foreign conquest and settlement, but their settlements abroad remained in no connection with the countries whence they came. Sweden was cut off from the ocean. "The history of Sweden"—as Mr. Freeman, to whom we owe a lucid exposition of this subject, has pointed out—"mainly consists in the growth and the loss of her dominion in the Baltic lands out of her own peninsula. It is only in quite modern times that the union of the crowns, though not of the kingdoms, of Sweden and Norway, has created a power wholly peninsular and equally Baltic and oceanic." The Germans and Scandinavians spread their dominion over the Aryan and non-Aryan tribes on the south and east of the Baltic. Finland, inhabited by a Turanian or Scythic people whose language is akin to that of the Hungarians, was long under Swedish dominion. Now Finland and the east of the Baltic are in Russia, while the southern and south-eastern shore of the Baltic is German. Russia, in modern days, having no oceanic character like Great Britain and Spain, has expanded her dominion westward to the Baltic, but mainly to the east over Central Asia. She has built up a continental, instead of a maritime and colonial, empire.
CONVERSION OF SCANDINAVIA.—In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, the two Scandinavian peninsulas are known only through the piratical expeditions which they send forth upon the two adjacent seas. By the way of the North Sea, the Northmen reached France, England, Greenland, and America; by the way of the Baltic, Russia. The conversion of Denmark to Christianity was completed in the eleventh century, under Canute; that of Norway in the tenth, and of Sweden in the eleventh. After the foreign settlements were made, and with the introduction of the gospel, piracy ceased, and civilization began (p. 239).
DENMARK.—After Canute VI. (1182), Waldemar II., the Victorious, was the prominent personage in Danish history. He conquered Holstein and Pomerania,—in fact, every thing north of the Elbe and the Elde. In 1219 he overran Esthonia, in a crusade for the forcible conversion of the pagans, when the Danish standard, the Dannebrog,—a white cross on a blood-red field,—began to be used. On his return, he was treacherously captured, and with his son was kept in prison in Mecklenburg for three years, by Henry, Count of Schwerin. Waldemar was defeated in 1227, in the war undertaken to recover the conquests which he had given up as the price of his release. He was the author of a code of laws.
UNION OF CROWNS.—Waldemar III. (1340-1375) regained the conquests of Waldemar II. This brought on a general war, in which the Hanseatic League, as well as Sweden, were among his antagonists (1363). Denmark, having control of the entrance to the Baltic, and exacting tolls of vessels, was a second time involved in war with that great mercantile confederacy and its allies, and was worsted in the conflict (1372). Waldemar's second daughter, Margaret, married Hakon VI., King of Norway. Hakon's son Olaf was a child at his father's death, and the regency was held by his mother. Olaf (1376-1387) was elected by the Estates king of Denmark. His mother, now regent in both countries, became queen in both after Olaf's death. In 1388 Margaret accepted the crown of Sweden; the Swedes having revolted against the king, Albert, who was defeated and captured at Falkoeping (1389).
SWEDEN.—War existed for centuries between the Swedes and the Goths, the inhabitants of the southern part of the peninsula. Each race contended for supremacy. Political union began with Waldemar (1250-1275), son of Birger Jarl (Earl Birger). Stockholm was founded in 1255. Private wars and judicial combats were suppressed, commerce was encouraged, and the condition of women improved. Large duchies were established, afterwards a source of discord. Magnus I. (1279-1290) was surnamed Ladulas, or Barnlock, for protecting the granaries of the peasants from the rapacious nobles. His reign was succeeded by war between his sons. As the result of a popular revolt in 1319, Magnus Smek, an infant, became king, and during the regency succeeded, by right of his mother, to the crown of Norway, where he (1350) placed on the throne his son Hakon. But when Magnus attempted to rule without the senate, he was deposed, and Albert of Mecklenburg was elected king (1365). But the nobles were supreme: in 1388 they deposed Albert, and gave the crown to Margaret of Norway and Denmark. Albert was held a prisoner for six years, and then renounced his claim to the throne.
NORWAY.—Magnus III. (1095-1103), called from his Scottish dress Barefoot, united the Hebrides and Orcades into a kingdom for his son Sigurd, and invaded Iceland, where he died. Sigurd inherited the spirit of Harold Fairhair (860-about 933), through whom Norway had been made a united kingdom. He made a voyage to Jerusalem through the Mediterranean, and was a renowned crusader. After his death (1130), there were fierce contests for the throne, the more fierce as illegitimate sons had the same right in law as those born in wedlock. In 1152 a papal legate established a hierarchy in Norway, which interfered in the struggle. Conflicts arose between the clerical party and the national party, in which the latter at length gained the day. Under Hakon VI., Iceland was conquered (1260). Magnus VI. (1263-1280) brought in an era of quiet, without stifling popular freedom. The cities engaged actively in manufactures and commerce. Magnus strengthened and organized the military and naval force. By him the Hebrides were ceded to Scotland. Under Eric (1280-1299), called Priest-hater, there was a struggle to curb the power of the clergy and nobles, in which the king was aided by the peasants. He was worsted in the conflict with the Hanse towns, and compelled to join their League. The accession of Magnus Smek, the son of his daughter, to the throne of Norway (1319), led eventually to the Union of Calmar (1397), in which Sweden, Norway, and Denmark were brought together.
"The situation of Norway, during the Middle Ages, might be shortly described as an absolute monarchy resting almost directly on one of the most democratic states of society in Europe." The greater families, by the partition of their estates, became a part of the class of small land-owners. Between them and the king there was no intermediate class.
AFTER THE UNION OF CALMAR.—After the death of Margaret, who governed the united kingdoms after the union, Eric XIII. of Pomerania succeeded. The union was shaken by the revolt of Schleswig and of Holstein, and was dissolved on the death of Christopher of Bavaria (1448), who had been chosen king. The Swedes broke off, and made Charles Canutson king, under the name of Charles VIII. Denmark and Norway remained united; and under Christian I. of the house of Oldenburg, whom they made king, Schleswig and Holstein were again attached to Denmark (1459).
THE SLAVONIC TRIBES.—The settlement of the Hungarians (Magyars) in Europe had the effect to divide the Slavonic tribes into three general groups. The northern Slaves were separated from the Slaves south of the Danube,—the inhabitants of Servia, Croatia, Dalmatia, etc. The north-western Slaves bordered on the Western Empire. The states of Bohemia and Poland grew up among them. On the east of this group of Slaves were the Russians. Both Poland and Russia became independent kingdoms. In the course of history, a part of the north Slavonic lands, those which are represented by Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and Saxony, were Germanized. Lands in the south-west, as Bohemia and Moravia, remained predominantly Slavonic in speech. A central region formed the kingdom of Poland. On the east were the Slavonic tribes which were the nucleus of modern Russia.
LITHUANIANS AND PRUSSIANS.—Both Poland and Russia were originally cut off from the Baltic by other races. Such were the non-Aryan Fins in Esthonia (Esthland) and Livonia (Livland). Such, also, were the Aryans of the Lettic branch, of whom the Lithuanians and the Prussians were the principal divisions. The Lithuanians formed at one time a strong state. The Prussians finally gave their name to the Teutonic kingdom in which they were absorbed.
THE POLES.—The Poles derive their name from a word meaning plains. They were inhabitants of the plains. They were the strongest of a group of tribes dwelling between the Oder and the Vistula, and holding the coast between their mouths. Between them and the sea, on the east of the Vistula, were the Prussians.
POLAND: ITS CONSTITUTION.—In the tenth century the Lechs, or Poles, on the Vistula, had acquired considerable power, and had a center at Gnesen, which remained the metropolis of Poland. There are legends of a first duke, Piast by name. A dynasty which bore his name continued in Poland until 1370; in Silesia, until 1675. Miecislas I. was converted to Christianity by his wife, a Bohemian princess. He did homage to the Emperor Otto I. (978). Boleslav I. (992) aspired to the regal dignity, and had himself crowned as king by his bishops. Gregory VII. excommunicated him, deprived him of the title of king, and laid Poland under an interdict. Boleslav III., the Victorious (1102-1138), subdued the Pomeranians, and compelled them to receive Christianity. He divided his kingdom among his four sons. Silesia became an independent duchy. A long crusade was carried on against the Prussians, a heathen people, who attacked the Poles, by the "Brethren of the soldiers of Christ," and the "Teutonic knights," two orders which were united (about 1226). The Teutonic knights at length became the enemies of the Poles. The savage Lithuanians assailed them on the north. From the anarchy that reigned, Poland was rescued by Casimir III., the Great (1333-1370), who defeated the Russians, and carried his eastern boundary as far as the Dnieper. Prior to this time, Poland was an important kingdom. Casimir framed a code of written laws for his people, and gave an impulse to commerce. But in order to secure the election of his nephew, Louis king of Hungary (1370-1382), he had to increase the powers and privileges of the nobles. The accession of Louis terminated the long rivalry of Poland and Hungary. He, like Casimir, died without children. The nobles made Jagellon, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, his successor (1386), who took the name of Vladislav II. Under a series of conquering princes, Lithuania had extended its dominion over the neighboring Russian lands, and become a strong state. Vladislav was chosen on the condition that he should espouse the daughter of the last king, and, with his nation, embrace Christianity. This event doubled the territory of Poland. The Teutonic Knights, who ruled from the Oder to the Gulf of Finland, were now overcome. The treaty of Thorn (1466) confined their dominion to Eastern Prussia. The misfortune of Poland was its political constitution. Although the monarchy was not yet completely elective, but hereditary in the house of Jagellon, the election of every king had to be sanctioned by the nobles. They alone took part in the diet, and held the offices and honors. There was no burgher class, no "third estate." Every man who owned and was able to equip a horse was counted as a noble. The burden of taxation fell on the peasants.
NATURAL FEATURES OF RUSSIA.—Russia in Europe comprises at present more than half the territory of that entire continent. Yet it has but a small share of seaboard, and of this a large part is frozen in winter. The surface of Russia is of a piece with the boundless plateaus of Northern and Central Asia. It has been defined as the "Europe of plains, in opposition to the Europe of mountains." The mountains of Russia are chiefly on its boundaries. It is a country subject to extremes of heat and cold. From the scarcity of stone, all buildings were formerly of wood, and hence its towns were all combustible. The rivers of Russia have been of immense importance in its history. "The whole history of this country is the history of its three great rivers, and is divided into three periods,—that of the Dnieper with Kiev, that of the Volga with Moscow, and that of the Neva with Novgorod in the eighth century, and St. Petersburg in the eighteenth."
RUSSIANS AND POLES.—The Russian Slaves in the ninth century occupied but a small part of what is now Russia. There was probably little difference then between them and the Poles; but the one people were molded by the Greek Church and Greek civilization, the other by the Latin Church and by the collective influences of Western Europe.
RUSSIAN HISTORY.—The Northmen under Rurik had founded their dominion in Russia. Novgorod was their center. Thence they pushed their conquests to the south. Their descendants made Kiev, on the Dnieper, their capital. In Russia, as elsewhere, the Scandinavians quickly blended with their native subjects. Under Vladimir I. (980-1015), who was converted to Greek Christianity, with his people, and Iaroslaf I. (1019-1051), they attained to considerable power; but the custom of the sovereigns to divide their dominions among their sons, broke up their territory into a multitude of petty principalities. The result was a monotonous series of fierce contests, without any substantial result. In the midst of the bloody and profitless civil wars occurred the great invasion of the Mongols, who destroyed the principality of Kiev, and made that of Vladimir tributary. For two centuries the Russians continued under the yoke of the "Golden Horde," which the Mongols established on the Volga. They were obliged to pay tribute, and the Russian princes at their accession had to swear fealty to the khan on the banks of the river Amoor. At the time of the Mongol conquest, Novgorod was the center of Russian dominion. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, Moscow became a new center of Russian power. From Moscow comes the name Muscovy. "Muscovy was to Russia what France in the older sense was to the whole land which came to bear that name." In the fourteenth century, while Lithuania and Poland were absorbing by conquest the territories of earlier or Western Russia, the Duchy of Moscow was building up a new Russia in the East, out of which grew the Russia of to-day. Ivan I., regarded as the founder of the Russian monarchy, made Moscow his capital in 1328. Most of the other princes were subject to him. Demetrius (or Dimtri) I. gained two great victories over the Mongol horde (1378 and 1380); but in 1382 they burned Moscow, and slew twenty-four thousand of its inhabitants. It was not until the reign of Ivan III., Ivan the Great (1462-1505), that Novgorod submitted to Moscow, and Russia was wholly delivered from the control and influence of the Mongols.
THE ARPAD DYNASTY.—The chiefs of the Turanian Magyars, about 889, elected Arpad as successor of the leader under whom they had crossed the Carpathian Mountains. They overran Hungary and Transylvania, and terrified Europe by their invasions (p. 249). After their defeats by the emperors Henry I. and Otto the Great (p. 261), they confined themselves to their own country. The first king, Stephen,—St. Stephen,—was crowned, with the consent of Pope Sylvester II., in the year 1000. He divided the land into counties, organized the Church, and founded convents and schools. He conferred on the bishops high offices. He established a national council, composed of the lords temporal and spiritual, and of the knights, out of which sprung the diets. Ladislaus I. conquered Croatia (1089), and a part of the "Red Russian" land of Galicia (1093). Coloman, "the Learned," a brave and able man, annexed Dalmatia, which he wrested from the Venetians (1102). In the reign of Andrew II. (1205-1235), the "Golden Bull" was extorted by the nobles, which conferred on them extraordinary rights and privileges, including exemption from arrest prior to trial and conviction, and the control of the diet over appointments to office. It even authorized armed resistance on their part to tyrannical measures of the king,—a right that was not abrogated until 1687. Hungary was devastated by the great Tartar invasion (1241-42) (p. 283). The kings of Hungary supported the cause of Rudolph of Austria against Ottocar of Bohemia (p. 332).
INVASIONS OF THE TURKS.—The last king of the Arpad dynasty died in 1301. There was a division of parties in the choice of a successor. Pope Boniface VIII. and the clergy supported the claims of Count Charles Robert of Anjou, who was related to the former reigning family. Under the son of Charles Robert, Louis, who also succeeded Casimir III. as king of Poland (1370), Hungary became a very powerful state. Galicia was regained, Moldavia and Bulgaria were conquered. After the death of Louis, his daughter Maria reigned from 1386 conjointly with Sigismund, afterwards emperor, and king of Bohemia. He established his supremacy over Bosnia. From this time the invasions of the Turks begin. There had been a party in favor of raising to the throne Vladislaus, king of Poland; and after the death of Sigismund's successor, Albert II. of Austria (1437), and the death of the queen, he gained the crown (1442). He was slain at Varna, in the great battle in which the Hungarians were vanquished by the Turks (1444). John Hunyady, who had several times defeated the Turks, and who escaped on the field of Varna, was made for the time "governor;" but on the release of the son of Albert, Ladislaus Posthumus, who had been kept from the throne by the Emperor Frederick III., he was recognized as king (1452). Hun-yady was made general-in-chief. Frederick had also retained in his hands the crown, which had been intrusted to his care, and which Hungarians have always regarded with extreme veneration. A little later, great advantages were gained over the Turks, to be lost again in the sixteenth century.
OSMAN: MURAD I.—Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Osman (or Ottoman) Turks, warlike nomad hordes, in order to escape from the Mongols, moved from the region east of the Caspian Sea, and conquered in Asia Minor the remnant of the kingdom of the Seljukians (p. 270). Impelled by fanaticism and the desire of booty, Ottoman (or Osman), their leader, advanced into Bithynia, and took Pruse, or Broussa, one of the most important cities of Asia Minor. The Greeks, with their Catalonian auxiliaries, were not able to dislodge him from his new possession. The Byzantine court was disabled from making an energetic effort for this end, by the partisan rancor, and mingled lethargy and cruelty, which characterized the old age of the Greek Empire. Nicomedia, Nicoea, and Ilium were conquered by the Sultan (or Padishah). Murad I. (1361-1389) founded the corps of janizaries, composed of select Christian youth chosen from the captives for their beauty and vigor. These became the most effective soldiers,—sometimes dangerous, however, to the sultans themselves. Adrianople was taken by Murad, and made the seat of his authority. The Christian principalities of Thrace, and the ancient but depopulated cities founded by the Greeks and Romans, were overrun. The Servians and Bulgarians made a stand against the fierce Ottoman warriors, but were beaten in the battle of Kosovo, where _Murad_was slain.
BAJAZET.—Bajazet, the son and successor of Murad, outdid his predecessor in his martial prowess. He conquered Macedonia and Thessaly, and Greece to the southern end of Peloponnesus. The Emperor Sigismund and John of Burgundy, with one hundred thousand men, were utterly defeated in the sanguinary battle of Nicopolis (1396). Sigismund escaped by sea; the French counts and knights had to be redeemed from captivity with a large ransom; and ten thousand prisoners of lower rank were slaughtered by Bajazet. Bosnia was now in the hands of the victor. Constantinople had to pay tribute, and seemed likely to become his prey, when a temporary respite was obtained for it by the coming of a host even more powerful than that of Bajazet.
MONGOLIAN INVASION.—Timur, or Tamerlane, a descendant of Genghis Khan (p. 283), revived the fallen Tartar kingdom. At the head of his wandering Tartars, which grew into an army, he left Samarcand, where he had caused himself to be proclaimed sovereign, and, in a rapid career of conquest, made himself master of the countries from the Wall of China to the Mediterranean, and from the boundaries of Egypt to Moscow. Everywhere his path was marked with blood and with the ruins of the places which he destroyed. At Ispahan, in Persia, seventy thousand persons were killed. At Delhi, one hundred thousand captives were slain, that his relative, the "Great Mogul," might reign in security. It was his delight to pile up at the gates of cities pyramids of twenty or thirty thousand heads. Later (1401), at Bagdad, he erected such a pyramid of ninety thousand heads. He gained a great victory over the "Golden Horde" in Russia (p. 283), conquered the unsubdued parts of Persia, entered Bagdad, Bassorah, and Mosul, vanquished the khan of Kaptchak, and penetrated Russia in his devastating progress, as far as Moscow (1396). Then followed the conquest of Hindustan.
TAMERLANE AND BAJAZET.—The two powerful monarchs, Tamerlane and Bajazet, now measured their strength in combat with one another. Trembling ambassadors of the Greek emperor, and of certain Seljukian princes, had waited on Tamerlane in Gengia at the foot of the Caucasus. On the 16th of June, 1402, the two armies—four hundred thousand Turks, and eight hundred thousand Mongols, if one may credit the reports—met at Ancyra. The Ottomans were defeated, and Bajazet was taken prisoner. Led into the presence of Tamerlane, he found the Mongol quietly playing chess with his son. Asia Minor submitted to the conqueror, who penetrated as far as Smyrna. An old man, he was looking towards China as another field for invasion, when he died (1405). Bajazet died soon after his defeat.
TURKISH CONQUESTS: THE GREEKS AND LATINS.—The grandson of Bajazet, Murad II. (1421-1451), took up anew his projects of conquest. The empire of Tamerlane quickly fell to pieces. His course had been like that of a hurricane, terrible in its work of destruction, but soon at an end. The Byzantine dominion was soon confined to Constantinople and small districts adjacent. On all sides the Ottoman power was supreme. The Greek emperor, John VII. (Palaeologus), now endeavored, in imitation of previous attempts, to bring about a union of the Greek and Latin churches, and thus remove a principal obstacle to the obtaining of military help from the West. He went to Italy, attended by the patriarch and many bishops. After long debates and conferences on the abstruse points of doctrinal difference, a verbal agreement was reached between the two parties (1439). But the result was received with so much disfavor and indignation in Constantinople, that the effort to bring the sundered churches together came to naught. The Pope, however, stirred up the Christian princes to engage in war against the Turk. The defeat of Vladislav, king of Hungary, and of Hunyady, at Varna (1444), caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at Kosovo, four years later.
FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.—Murad II. was succeeded by his ambitious and unmerciful son, Mohammed II. (1451-1481), who determined that Constantinople should be his capital. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese Justiniani. The Emperor Constantine XII. worshiped according to the Roman rites; while his court observed the Greek forms, and spurned a union with the hated Latin Christians, whose help the emperor was to the end anxious to obtain. The city was stoutly defended for fifty-three days; and when it could be held no longer against the furious assault of the Turks, the gallant Constantine, casting aside his golden armor, fell, bravely fighting with the defenders on the ramparts (May 29, 1453). Constantinople became the capital of the Turks. The crescent supplanted the cross, and the Church of St. Sophia was turned into a mosque.
TURKISH GOVERNMENT.—The Sultan, or padischah, among the Turks is absolute master, and proprietor of the soil. There is no order of nobles, and there are no higher classes except the priests (imams) and the religious orders (dervishes). In the seraglio of the Sultan, with its palaces and gardens, the harem is separated from the other apartments. The grand vizier presides over the council of ministers (divan). The provinces are governed by pashas with large powers. Beneath them is a gradation of inferior rulers in the subdivisions of the provinces. The mufti with his subordinate associates is a high authority on questions of religion and law.
TURKISH LITERATURE.—The literature of the Ottoman Turks is in merit below the literature of other Mohammedan peoples. It lacks originality, being based on Persian and partly on Arabic models.
CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—We have seen great changes gradually taking place in the Middle Ages. One is the centralizing of political authority by the subjection of the local rulers, or lords, to the will of the king. Another is the enfranchisement of the serfs, and the growing power and self-respect of a middle class. The invention of gunpowder took away the superiority of the mail-clad and mounted warrior. The peasant on the battle-field was a match for the knight.
CLERGYY AND LAITY.—There was a change from the time when the clergy were the sole possessors of knowledge, and the exclusive guides of opinion. In the lay part of society, there was an awaking of intellectual activity and a spirit of self-assertion.
A brief sketch of important ecclesiastical changes, some of which have been adverted to, will be here in place.
POPES IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.—From Gregory VII. to Boniface VIII., or from near the end of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the highest authority was claimed and exercised by the popes. Frederick Barbarossa, the greatest of the German emperors, held the stirrup of Hadrian IV., and humbled himself before Alexander III. Innocent III. compared the authority of popes, in contrast with that of kings, to the sun in relation to the moon. He excommunicated Philip Augustus of France, John of England, and other monarchs. He claimed the right to refuse to crown the emperor if he should judge him not worthy of the imperial office. The papacy continued to exert these lofty prerogatives until Boniface VIII. He asserted that "the two swords," the symbols of both secular and spiritual rule, were given to St. Peter and to his successors: the temporal authority must therefore be subject to the spiritual. The body of canon law was framed in accordance with these views. It embraced the right of the Pope to depose kings and princes. To the sovereign pontiff was accorded the right to dispense from Church laws. With the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the different countries, the Pope, as the supreme tribunal in all matters affecting the clergy and covered by the canon law, gained a vast increase of judicial prerogatives.
THE BABYLONIAN EXILE: THE GREAT SCHISM.—During the residence of the popes at Avignon, there was great complaint on account of the dependence of the papacy on France, as well as on account of the heavy taxes levied for the support of the pontifical court, and of the immorality which at times prevailed in it. Gregory XI., to the joy of all good men, returned to Rome (1376). But at his death, two years later, a majority of the cardinals elected an Italian, Urban VI., in his place. The adherents of the French party made a protest, and chose the Cardinal of Geneva, under the name of Clement VII. England, Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Holland, and almost all Italy, acknowledged Urban. France, Spain, Scotland, Savoy, and Lorraine obeyed Clement. This great schism of the West created sorrow and alarm among well-disposed Christian people. It tended strongly to diminish the reverence felt for the papal office, and to weaken its influence.
THE REFORMING COUNCILS.—The first important effort to terminate the division was made by the University of Paris. Its rector, Nicolas de Clemangis, was prominent in the movement. Gerson and other eminent scholars and ecclesiastics took part in it. Three great councils were held; the first at Pisa (1409), the second at Constance (1414), and the third at Basle (1431). At these assemblies, the French theologians proceeded upon the "Gallican theory" of the constitution of the Church, according to which supreme authority was held to reside in a general council,—not in the Pope, but in the collective episcopate. At the Council of Constance, where it is a significant fact that the votes were taken by nations, there were gathered not only a throng of prelates and inferior clergy, but also the Emperor Sigismund, and a multitude of princes, nobles, and spectators of every rank. "The whole world," it was said, "was there." Three popes, each of whom claimed to be legitimate, were deposed; and under the auspices of the council, which affirmed its own sovereign authority, another pope, Martin V., was elected in the room of them. The results of the two councils of Pisa and Constance, as regards the reformation of the Church "in head and members," disappointed the hopes of those who were disaffected with the existing state of things. The Council of Basle exhibited the same spirit as that of Constance, and passed various measures in the interest of national churches, for the restriction of papal prerogatives, and for practical reforms. The council, however, broke into two parts; and the hopes connected with it were likewise, to a great extent, frustrated. In 1438 the French synod of Bourges issued "the Pragmatic Sanction," containing a strong assertion of the rights and immunities of national churches,—a document which gave occasion to much controversy down to its repeal under King Francis I.
Had it been practicable for good men in the fifteenth century to unite in wholesome measures for promoting the purity and unity of the Church, the religious revolutions of the sixteenth might have been postponed, if not avoided.
THE TANG DYNASTY (618-907).—The confusion in China, after the establishment of the three kingdoms, was brought to an end by the Sui dynasty, which, however, was of short duration. Between the Hans and the new epoch beginning with the T'angs, diplomatic intercourse was begun with Japan; Christianity was introduced by the Nestorians; a new impulse was given to the spread of Buddhism; the first traces of the art of printing are found; and the Yang-tse and the Yellow Rivers were connected by a canal.
EVENTS IN THIS PERIOD.—Under the T'angs, the empire was united, peaceful, and prosperous. One of the most remarkable occurrences was the usurpation (649) and successful reign of a woman, the Empress Wu. Her policy was wise, and her generals were victorious. The Emperor Hiuen Tsung had a long reign (713-756), and was an ardent patron of literature, but in his later years fell into immoral ways, as was seen in the character of the poems written under his patronage. Under this dynasty, there were productions in poetry of an excellence never surpassed in China. Buddhism, although resisted by the Confucianists and Taouists, gained ground. A bone of Buddha was brought into China with great pomp and ceremony. Early in the reign of the T'angs, Mohammedanism first appeared in China. In the transition period before the accession of the next dynasty (900-960), the art of printing came more into use. The practice of cramping women's feet is said by some to have originated at this time.
THE SUNG DYNASTY (960-1280).—In the early part of this era, China was prosperous. But the Tartars began their invasions; and it was finally agreed that one of their tribes, which had helped to drive out another, should retain its conquests in the North. These Tartar conquerors, the Kins, were invaded by the Mongol Tartars under Genghis Khan (1213). After a long struggle, both the Kins and the Sungs were conquered by the Mongols, and the empire of Kublai Khan (1259-1294), the ruler of nearly all Asia except Hindustan and Arabia, was established. Under the Sungs, a system of military drill for all the citizens was ordained. Literature flourished; Buddhism and Taouism concluded to live in peace with one another; and the system of competitive examinations and literary degrees was more fully developed. After the complete conquest of China, the dominion of Kublai Khan lasted for about a century. The celebrated Venetian traveler, Marco Polo, visited his court. In this period, mathematics was more studied, and romances were first written. Three out of the "Four Wonderful Books," which are leading novels, were then composed. The Grand Canal was finished by Kublai Khan, and thus Peking was connected with Southern China. His great naval expedition against Japan failed.
THE MING DYNASTY (1368-1650).—Hung-wu, the son of a Chinese laborer, shook off the Mongol yoke, and founded a new dynasty with its capital at Nanking; whence it was afterwards transferred by the third emperor, Yung-lo (1403-1425), to Peking. He conquered and annexed Cochin China and Tonquin, and even portions of Tartary. The Tartars continued their attack; and in 1450 Ching-tung, the emperor, was taken prisoner, and held until he was released in consequence of a Chinese victory.
CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT.—In the seventh century A.D., there began changes in Japan which resulted in a dual government, and eventually in a feudal system which continued until recent times. The Mikados retired from personal contact with their subjects; and the power by degrees fell into the hands of the families related to the Mikado, and combined into clans. Military control was exercised by the generals (Shoguns), and towards the end of the eighth century devolved on the two rival clans of Gen and Hei, or Taira and Minamoto. About the same time (770-780) the agricultural class became distinct from the military, and were compelled to labor hard for their support. One family, the Fujiwara, by degrees absorbed the civil offices. They gradually sank into luxury. From the middle to the end of the twelfth century, there was terrible civil war between the Taira clan and the Minamoto clan, in which the former were destroyed. The military power passed from one family to another; but a main fact is that the Shoguns acquired such a control as the "mayors of the palace" had possessed among the Franks. The Mikados lost all real power, and the Shoguns or Tycoons had the actual government in their hands. In recent times (1868) a revolution occurred which restored to the Mikado the power which had belonged to him in the ancient times, before the changes just related took place.
CIVIL WAR: FEUDALISM.—The final struggle of the two clans, the Hei or Taira, and the Gen or Minamoto, was in the naval battle of Dannoura, in 1185, which was followed by the extermination of the Taira. Yoritomo, the victor, was known as the Shogun after 1192. The supremacy of his clan gave way in 1219 to that of their adherents, the Hôjô family, who ruled the Shogun and the emperor both. The invasion of the Mongol Tartars failed, their great fleet being destroyed by a typhoon (1281). The Hôjô rule terminated, after a period of anarchy and civil war, in 1333. The "war of the chrysanthemums"—so called from the imperial emblem, the chrysanthemum—was between two rival Mikados, one in the North, and the other in the South (1336-1392). There ensued a period of confusion and internal war, lasting for nearly two centuries. Gradually there was developed a system of feudalism, in which the daimios, or lords of larger or smaller principalities, owned a dependence, either close or more loose, on the Shogun. But feudalism was not fully established until the days of the Tokugama dynasty, early in the seventeenth century.
MOHAMMEDAN STATES.—During the Middle Ages, India was invaded by a succession of Mohammedan conquerors. The first invasions were in the seventh and the early part of the eighth centuries. A temporary lodgment was effected in the province of Sind, on the north-west, in 711; but the Moslems were driven out by the Hindus in 750. The next invader was the Afghan sultan, Mahmud of Ghazim, a Turk, who is said to have led his armies seventeen times into India. From his time the Punjab, except for a brief interval, has been a Mohammedan province. The last of his line of rulers, Bahram, was conquered by the Afghan Allah-ud-din of Ghor (1152). Bahram's son fled to Lahore, but the Ghoride dynasty soon absorbed his dominion. One of the Ghoride rulers, Mohammed Ghori, the Shahab-ud-din of the Mohammedan writers, spread his dominion so that it reached from the Indus to the Brahmaputra. After his death, Kutab-ud-din, who had been a Turkish slave, became the founder of the "slave" dynasty (1206-1290), whose capital was Delhi. Allah-ud-din, by whom he was assassinated (1294), had a brilliant reign of twenty years, and conquered Deccan and Guzerat. Of the Togluk dynasty, which gained the throne in 1321, Mohammed Togluk (1325-1351) is said to have had the "reputation of one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature." Desiring to remove the seat of empire to the Deccan, he compelled the inhabitants of Delhi to leave their old home, and to make the journey of seven hundred miles.
TAMERLANE.—Revolts in India made the triumph of Timour (Tamerlane) easy (1398). The Mongol leader sacked Delhi, and made a full display of his unrivaled ferocity. A half century of anarchy followed this invasion.
LITERATURE.—On Mediaeval History: The General Subject. (See list of works on Universal History, p. 16.) GIBBON'S Decline and Fall, etc.; "THE STUDENTS' GIBBON" (Smith, 1 vol.); FREEMAN, General Sketch of European History, and Historical Geography of Europe; DURUY, Histoire du Moyen Age, etc. (11th edition, 1882); Hallam. View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Generale (vols. i.-iii.); Cunningham, Western Civilization (vol. ii); Lavisse, Political History of Europe; Dunham, History of Europe during the Middle Ages (4 vols.); BRYCE, The Holy Roman Empire; Putz and Arnold, Mediaeval History; E. A. FREEMAN, Historical Essays (series 1 and 3).
Works on Church History. The Church Histories of GIESELER, NEANDER;
MILMAN, History of Latin Christianity; ALZOG [a Roman
Catholic], Manual, etc. (3 vols. 1874-78); Hardwick (vol. i.,
Middle Ages); Students' History of the Church;
STANLEY'S Eastern Church; Fisher, History of the Christian
Church.
On Portions of the Mediaeval Period. Froissart, Chronicles, etc.; CURTEIS, History of the Roman Empire [395-800]; R. W. CHURCH, The Beginning of the Middle Ages; A. Thierry, Histoire d'Attila, etc., St. Jerome, etc., St. Jean Chrysostome, etc.; Church, Life of Anselm; MORISON, Life and Times of St. Bernard; Gfrörer, Pabst Gregorius VII. u. sein Zeitalter (1859); Bury, The Later Roman Empire (2 vols.); Oman, The Dark Ages (476-918); TOUT, The Empire and the Papacy (918-1272); Emerton, Mediaeval Europe (800-1300); Pears, The Fall of Constantinople; Sergeant, The Franks; MULLINGER, The Schools of Charles the Great, and the Restoration of Education in the 9th Century (1877); MONTALEMBERT, The Monks of the West (7 vols.); Sartorius, Gesch. des hanseatischen Bundes (3 vols.); Mombert, Charlemagne; Sabatier, Life of Francis of Assisi; Hasse, Leben Anselm; West, Alcuin; Hodgkin, Theodoric the Goth.
General Character of the Period. ROBERTSON, A View of the Progress of Society in Europe from the Subversion of the Roman Empire, etc. (Introduction to the History of Charles V.); Kingsley, C., The Roman and the Teuton: a Series of Lectures, etc.; SULLIVAN, Historical Causes and Effects; from the Fall of the Roman Empire A.D. 476 to 1517; Ozanam, A. F., History of Civilization in the Fifth Century; LAURENT, Études, etc. (vol vii.); Sir James Stephen, Ecclesiastical Essays; Adams, Civilization during the Middle Ages. Scott's novels,—Ivanhoe, The Talisman, Anne of Geierstein: they are historically much less correct pictures than his romances which relate to Scotland.
Particular Aspects of the Period. SAVIGNY, Gesch. d. römischen
Rechts im Mittelalter (7 vols.); Sismondi, Literature in the
South of Europe; Hallam, Introduction to the Study of
Literature, etc.; Geffchen, Church and State (2 vols.);
GUIZOT, History of the Origin of Representative Government in
Europe; Hecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages;
J. E. THOROLD ROGERS, A History of Agriculture and Prices in
England [1259-1793] (4 vols., 1866); Amos, Roman Civil
Law; Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages; Gross,
The Guild Merchant; Oman, Art of War; VIOLLET-LE-DUC,
Annals of a Fortress; H. C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal
Celibacy, History of the Inquisition (3 vols.), and
Superstition and Force; LACROIX, Works on the Middle
Ages, richly illustrated (5 vols., London, 1880); Gautier,
Chivalry; Cornish, Chivalry; BULFINCH, Age of
Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur; Legends of Charlemagne, or
Romance of the Middle Ages (2 vols.); COX AND JONES, Popular
Romances of the Middle Ages; NASSE, On the Agricultural
Community of the Middle Ages (1871); Roth,
Gesch. d. Beneficialwesens, etc.; Secretan, Essai sur la
Feodalité; Smith, T., English Guilds (1870); WILDA, Das
Gildenwesen im Mittelalter (1831); Seignobos, The Feudal
Regime.
Works on the Crusades. G. W. COX, The Crusades (1878); also,
art. Crusades in the Encycl. Brit.; Michaud, History
of the Crusades (3 vols.); VON SYBEL, The History and
Literature of the Crusades; Mills, A History of the
Crusades, etc. (2 vols.); Heeren, in Vermischte historische
Schriften (3 vols.); Procter's History of the Crusades;
Gray's Children's Crusade; Archer and Kingsford, The
Crusades.
For works on Mohammedanism and the Arabic kingdom, see p. 232.
The works here mentioned respecting the several countries either relate to their entire history, or to their history prior to the close of the Middle Ages.
I. ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.—GREEN'S History of the English
People (4 vols.), and Short History of England (1 vol.);
the "STUDENTS' HUME"; the histories of BRIGHT, Knight, LINGARD,
Hume, GUIZOT, Traill, Social England (6 vols., two editions);
GAIRDNER, Outline, etc.; Turner's History of the
Anglo-Saxons; Palgrave's Rise and Progress of the English
Commonwealth; Palgrave's History of Normandy and of
England; FREEMAN'S History of the Norman Conquest (6
vols.), and History of William Rufus; Green, The Making of
England, and The Conquest of England; Ramsay,
Foundations of England, Angevin Empire, Lancaster and York;
STUBBS, The Early Plantagenets; LONGMAN'S History of
Edward III.; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and
Commerce; Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of
England; Seebohm, English Village Community; Life of
Wickliffe, by LECHLER, by LOSERTH, by WILSON, by Trevelyan.
Kemble's The Saxons in England; STUBBS'S Constitutional
History of England in its Origin and Development (3 vols.);
STUBBS'S Select Charters; CREASY'S Rise and Progress of
the English Constitution; THOMPSON'S Essay on Magna
Charta; Bisset, History of the Struggle for Parliamentary
Government in England (1877); TASWELL-LANGMEAD'S English
Constitutional History, etc.; FREEMAN'S Growth of the English
Constitution, etc.; Bagehot, The English Constitution;
Macy, The English Constitution.
SCOTLAND.—P. H. Brown, History of Scotland (2 vols.); Miss
Macarthur, History of Scotland (1 vol.); E. M. Robertson,
Scotland under her Early Kings (2 vols.).
IRELAND.—C. G. Walpole, The Kingdom of Ireland; Morris,
Ireland.
II. FRANCE.—General histories by Crowe (5 vols.); DURUY (2 vols.); GUIZOT (to 1789, 5 vols.; 1789-1848, 3 vols.); and Outlines of the History of France (1 vol.); Bonnechose (to 1848); JERVIS (Hassall edition); MARTIN (17 vols.); KITCHIN, LACOMBE, MICHELET (17 vols.); Lavisse, Histoire de France; Adams, Growth of the French Nation; Grant, The French Monarchy; Wallon's St. Louis et son Temps (2 vols.); Sismondi, The French under the Carlovingians (1 vol.), France under the Feudal System (1 vol.); BARANTE'S Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne de la Maison de Valois, 1364-1477; WALLON'S Jeanne d'Arc (2 vols.); Lowell's Joan of Arc; Jameson's Life and Times of Du Guesclin.
COULANGES' Histoire des Institutions politiques de l'Ancienne France (1877); Viollet, Institutions politiques de la France (3 vols.); Luchaire, Manuel des Institutions Françaises; Esmein, Histoire du Droit Français; GUIZOT'S History of Civilization in France (3 vols.), and Essai sur l'Histoire de France; THIERRY'S The Formation and Progress of the Third Estate in France; Sir James Stephens's Lectures on the History of France.
III. GERMANY.—Henderson, A Short History of Germany (2 vols.); Histories by C. T. LEWIS (founded on D. Müller), Kohlrausch; Kaufman, Deutsche Geschichte; Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte (6 vols.); Schröder, Lehrbuch der d. Rechtsgeschichte; Richter, Annalen.
GEISEBRECHT'S Geschichte d. deutschen Kaiserzeit (4 vols.);
VON RAUMER'S Geschichte der Hohenstaufen und ihrer Zeit (6
vols.).
Coxe's History of the House of Austria; KRONES'S Handbuch
d. Geschichte Osterreichs (3 vols.); Marlath's Geschichte
Osterreichs.
ARNOLD, Ansiedelungun und Wanderungen deutscher Stämme (1875); also, Deutsche Urzeit (1879); Ozanam, Les Germains avant le Christianisme (1872); SOHM, Die altdeutsche Reichs und Gerichtsverfassung; MAURER'S histories of German local institutions (the Marks, the Villages, the Cities); WAITZ, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte (8 vols.), Wirth, Die Geschichte der Deutschen (1853); SUGENHEIM, Geschichte d. deutschen Volkes und seiner Kultur, etc.
IV. ITALY.—Cantu, Histoire des Italiens (12 vols., 1859);
HUNT'S History of Italy (in Freeman's Series); Butt's
History of Italy (2 vols.); LEO'S Geschichte von
Italien (5 vols.); SISMONDI'S Histoire des Republiques
Italiennes du Moyen Age (10 vols.); SPALDING'S Italy and the
Italians; Boscoe and Morell, Compendium of Italian
History.
Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (2 vols.); TESTA, History
of the War of Frederic I. against the Communes of Lombardy;
HEYD, Geschichte des Levantehandels im Mittelalter (2 vols.);
C. HEGEL, Gesckichte der Städteverfassung von Italien, etc.
Daru, Histoire de la Republique de Venise (9 vols.); BROWN, Venice: an Historical Sketch; Ranke, Zur Venitianer Geschichte; Machiavelli's History of Florence; Napier's Florentine History (6 vols.); PERRENS, Histoire de Florence (4 vols.); REUMONT'S Lorenzo the Magnificent (2 vols.); Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; TROLLOPE'S History of Florence; Campbell's Life of Petrarch; GREGOROVIUS' History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages (8 v., from fifth to sixteenth century); Gallenga, History of Piedmont (3 vols.); Amari, History of the War of the Sicilian Vespers (3 vols.); Malleson, Studies from Genoese History (1 vol.); Oliphant, Makers of Florence, etc.; SYMONDS, Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe; TAINE, Florence and Venice, and Rome and Naples; Freeman, Historical and Architectural Studies (chiefly Italian, 1 vol.).
V. RUSSIA.—Bell's History of Russia (3 vols.); Howorth's
History of the Mongols; KARAMSIN, Histoire de l'Empire de
Russie (11 vols.); Histories of Russia, by Kelly, Lamartine,
Levesque; RAMBAUD, History of Russia (2 vols., 1879);
RALSTON, Early Russian History.
VI. POLAND.—Histories of Poland, by DUNHAM (12mo), Fletcher,
JOACHIM (2 vols.), RÖPELL AND CARO.
VII. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.—Lembke und Schäfer, Geschichte von Spanien (3 vols.); MARIANA, The General History of Spain; DUNHAM, History of Spain and Portugal; CRAWFORD, Portugal, Old and New; Burke, History of Spain (2 vols.); Stevens's Portugal; TICKNOR'S History of Spanish Literature (3 vols.); Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (introductory chapter).
VIII. SWITZERLAND.—History of Switzerland, in LARDNER'S CYCLOPEDIA (1832); Histories of Switzerland, by MORIN (5 vols.); J. Müller; Zschokke; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler in Sage und Geschichte (1877).
IX. SCANDINAVIA.—DUNHAM'S History of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway (3 vols.); Dahlmann's Geschichte von Danemark bis zur Reformation (with Norway and Iceland, 3 vols.); Histories of Sweden, by Fryxell, GEIJER AND CARLSON (5 vols.); Laing's History of Norway; MALLET'S Northern Antiquities; MAURER'S History of Iceland; RINK'S Danish Greenland; Sinding's Scandinavia; WHEATON'S History of the Northmen; Worsaac's Danes and Northmen in Great Britain.
X. OTTOMAN TURKS.—HAMMER-PURGSTALL'S Geschichte des osmanischen
Reiches (10 vols.); CREASY'S History of the Ottoman Turks;
FREEMAN, The Ottoman Power in Europe (1877); ZINKEISEN,
Geschichte d. osmanisch. Reiches in Europa (7 vols.).
XI. CHINA, JAPAN, AND INDIA.—(See lists on pp. 25, 32.) Dickson,
Japan, etc. (vol. i., 1869); Griffis, The Micado's
Empire (1876).
XII. BIBLIOGRAPHIES.—In addition to Adams, Manual; Sonnenschein, The Best Books and A Reader's Guide; Gross, Sources and Literature of English History (to 1485); Gardiner and Mullinger, English History for Students; Monod, Bibliographie de l'Histoire de France; Dahlmann-Waitz, Quellenkunde, der Deutschen Geschichte; lists in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale.
Modern history as a whole, in contrast with mediæval, is marked by several plainly defined characteristics. They are such as appear, however, in a less developed form, in the latter part of the Middle Ages.
1. In the recent centuries, there has been an increased tendency to consolidate smaller states into larger kingdoms.
2. There has been a gradual secularizing of politics. Governments have more and more cast off ecclesiastical control.
3. As another side of this last movement, political unity in Europe has superseded ecclesiastical unity. The bond of union among nations, in the room of being membership in one great ecclesiastical commonwealth, became political: it came to be membership in a loosely defined confederacy of nations, held together by treaties or by a tacit agreement in certain accepted rules of public law and outlines of policy.
4. In this system, one main principle is the balance of power. This means that any one state may be prevented from enlarging its bounds to such an extent as to endanger its neighbors. We have seen the action of such a principle among the ancient states of Greece. Even in the Middle Ages, as regards Italy, the popes endeavored to keep up an equilibrium. They supported the Norman kingdom in Southern Italy, or the Lombard leagues in the North, as a counterpoise to the German emperors. In the sixteenth century, there were formed combinations to check the power of Charles V., king of Spain and emperor of Germany, and afterwards to restrain his successor on the Spanish throne, Philip II. In the seventeenth century, there were like combinations against Louis XIV. of France, and, over a century later, against the first Napoleon.
5. The vast influence and control of Europe, by discovery, colonization, and commerce, in other quarters of the globe, is a striking feature of modern times.
6. With the increase of commerce and the growing power of the middle classes, there has arisen the "industrial age." Interests connected with production and trade, and with the material side of civilization, have come into great prominence.
7. Both the pursuits of men, and culture, have become far more diversified than was the case in the Middle Ages.
8. The influence of Christianity in its ethical relations—as an instrument of political and social reform, and a motive to philanthropy—has become more active and conspicuous.
PERIOD I. FROM THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE TO THE REFORMATION (1453-1517):
CHARACTER OF THIS PERIOD.—In this period monarchy, especially in France, England, and Spain, acquires new strength and extension. The period includes the reigns of three kings who did much to help forward this change: Louis XI. of France, Henry VII. of England, and Ferdinand the Catholic of Spain. The Italian wars begin with the French invasion of Italy: the rivalship of the kingdoms, and the struggles pertaining to the balance of power, are thus initiated. In this period fall new inventions which have altered the character of civilization, and great geographical discoveries, of which the discovery of the New World is the chief. It is the epoch, moreover, of the Renaissance, or the re-awakening of learning and art. There is a new era in culture. All these movements and changes foretoken greater revolutions in the age that was to follow.
CHARLES VII. AND THE NOBLES.—The result of the hundred-years' war was the acquisition of Aquitaine by the French crown. Aquitaine was incorporated in France. Southern Gaul and Northern Gaul were now one. During the last years of Charles VII., his kingdom was comparatively peaceful. Its prosperity revived. A new sort of feudalism had sprung up in the room of the old noblesse, whose power had been crushed. The new nobility was made up of relatives of the royal family, as the Dukes of Burgundy, Berry, Bourbon, and the house of Anjou. On the east of France was Burgundy, which had expanded into a great European power. "The duchy of Burgundy, with the county of Charolois, and the counties of Flanders and Artois, were joined under a common ruler with endless imperial fiefs in the Low Countries, and with the imperial county of Burgundy." The Burgundian boundary was on the south of the Somme, and little more than fifty miles north of Paris. The Burgundian dukes were constantly striving to bring it still nearer. On the east and south, the house of Anjou held the duchy of Bar and Provence, besides other possessions. On the south, too, was the province of Dauphiny; and on the west the strong, half-independent duchy of Brétagne, or Brittany. Charles had a standing quarrel with his son Louis, who early showed his power to inspire dread, but gave no signs of the policy which he triumphantly pursued, after he became king, of putting down feudal insubordination. His young wife Margaret, daughter of James I. of Scotland, was twelve years old when he, a boy of thirteen, was married to her. He aroused such terror and aversion in her mind that she died at twenty-one of a broken heart. Louis—to whom, much to his disgust, Dauphiny instead of Normandy was given to rule—abetted the great lords in their resistance to his father's authority; and, when threatened with coercion, fled to Brussels, to the court of his father's cousin, Philip of Burgundy, where he was kindly entertained. Charles VII., who knew the traits of his son, said, "As for my cousin of Burgundy, he harbors a fox that will one day eat up his chickens." Even then the relations of Louis and Charles, Count of Charolois, the heir of Burgundy, were cool and unsympathetic. The king occupied Dauphiny, and in 1457 it was fully incorporated in France. The rulers of France and Burgundy, taken up with their own schemes of territorial gain, turned a deaf ear to the calls of Pope Pius II. for a crusade against the Turks. It has been said that most of the kings of the house of Valois were either bad or mad. The indolent and heartless Charles VII. would seem to have been both. In his last days he suspected that the Dauphin's plots were aided by persons about himself, and that his food was poisoned. He refused to eat, and died in 1461.
CHARACTER OF LOUIS XI.—Louis XI. (1461-1483) showed himself a master of "statecraft," or the cunning, diplomatic management which pursued its ends stealthily, held no engagements sacred, and was deterred by no scruples of conscience from whatever perfidy was thought requisite to attain the objects in view. Louis was one of the earliest examples of the kingcraft which in the succeeding age was deemed a gift to be coveted by princes. It was an art in which the Italians were masters; and its secrets were set forth, somewhat later than the time of Louis, in "The Prince" of Machiavelli, a work in which that eminent statesman and historian describes the means by which despots may entrap and crush their enemies. Whether he meant to afford aid to tyrants, or aid to their subjects through an exposure of the tricks of their rulers, the "Machiavellian" spirit designates the policy of intrigue that prevailed all through the sixteenth century, and infected even some of the best of the public men of that age. Louis was mean-looking, shabby in his dress, with a cunning aspect; in his whole deportment and character, in sharp contrast with the chivalrous princes, Philip and Charles of Burgundy. If he was vindictive, he was perhaps not more cruel than others; but he was ungenial, regarding men as his tools. He took pleasure in the society of his provosts or hangmen,—Tristan l'Hermite and Olivier le Daim. He often ordered men to execution without so much as the form of a trial. There was in him a vein of superstition. He was punctilious in his devotions. He would not swear a false oath over the cross of St. Loup of Angers, because he thought that death would be the penalty. He did not quail before an enemy in battle; yet such was his alarm at the prospect of death, that he collected about him relics and charms, magicians and hermits, to help him prolong his days.
STRIFE WITH THE NOBLES.—The first years of Louis's reign (1461-1467) were passed in a struggle with the great lords whom he was determined to subdue. At the beginning his measures for this end were imprudent. They combined against him in the League of the Public Weal in 1464. Their force was so great that he stood in imminent peril. He counted on the support of Paris, and was trying to reach that city when the hostile armies encountered one another at Montlhéry (1465). It was an absurd battle, where at night both parties thought themselves beaten. The king secured his place of refuge. He deemed it prudent to make peace on the terms demanded by the Count of Charolois, and the other nobles. This treaty of Conflans (1465) he caused the Parliament of Paris to refuse to ratify or register. He had trusted to his ability to regain what he might surrender. The strife between the Duke of Brittany and the king's brother Charles, now made Duke of Normandy, enabled Louis soon to recover Normandy.
CHARLES THE BOLD, AND LOUIS.—The death of Philip made his son, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Charles was in the prime of life, of a chivalrous temper, courteous and polished, fond of reading and music, as well as of knightly sports, and with his head full of dreams of ambition. With certain noble qualities, his pride was excessive, his temper not only hot but obstinate, and, as he grew older, he became more overbearing and cruel. He was the most powerful prince in Europe. The most of his lands were German. In the early part of his reign he pursued the same scheme as that which was at the root of the League of the Public Weal. He aimed to hem in Louis, and to build up his own power in the direction of France. He allied himself, in 1466, with the House of York, then uppermost in England. An English force was sent to Calais in 1467. Threatened by this coalition of adversaries, Louis hastened to attack Brittany, and forced its duke to conclude a separate peace. Trusting too much to his powers of negotiation, and yielding to the treacherous advice of Cardinal Balue, one of his chief counselors, the king determined to go in person to confer with Charles of Burgundy. He soon learned that his safe-conduct was of little value. At Peronne, he found himself in the midst of enemies, and in reality a prisoner. While there, Liège was in revolt, as Charles ascertained, at the king's instigation. The wrathful duke could be appeased only by agreeing to every thing that he required. Louis had to undergo the humiliation of attending Charles and his army, and of basely taking part in the vengeance inflicted on the city which he had himself stirred up to revolt. He was glad to escape with his life. After his return, he ordered Balue to be put in an iron cage, where he was kept for ten years,—a mode of punishment of Balue's own invention. Louis repudiated the treaty of Peronne, under the advice of a body of Notables, all of whom he had nominated and summoned. A new league was organized against him; but the king by his wariness, and by his promptitude in attacking Brittany, gained advantages, so that a truce was concluded with the Burgundian duke in 1472. Philip de Commines, at that time a companion and counselor of Charles, left his service for that of Louis. To his Memoirs we owe most instructive and interesting details respecting these princes, and the manners and occurrences of the time.
CHARLES THE BOLD, AND THE SWISS.—From this time Charles turned his attention eastward, and devoted himself to building up a great principality on the Rhine, which might open the way for his succession to the empire. It seemed to be his plan to bring together the old kingdom of Lotharingia and that of the Burgundies. He found no sympathy in his schemes from the emperor Frederick III. The great barrier in Charles's way was the freedom-loving spirit of the inhabitants of the Swiss mountains. Availing himself of a plausible pretext, he endeavored to get possession of Cologne by first laying siege to Neuss, which lies below it. Wasting his strength in the unsuccessful attempt to capture this place, he failed to make a junction of his forces with the English troops who landed in France under his ally, King Edward IV. The English king was persuaded to make a truce with France by the wily Louis, who was constantly on the watch for any mistakes or mishaps of his impetuous Burgundian adversary. The cruelty of Charles to the Swiss inhabitants of Granson, who had surrendered, brought upon him an attack of their exasperated countrymen near that place (1476). The Burgundians were routed; and the duke's camp, with all its treasures, including his sword, the plate of his chapel, and precious stones of inestimable value, fell into the hands of the hardy mountaineers, who knew nothing of the worth of these things. The next year the Duke once more flung his reckless valor against the strength of the Swiss infantry, and barely escaped from an utter defeat at Morat. Made desperate by misfortune, he risked another battle near Nanci, in 1477, at the head of an inferior force, composed partly of treacherous mercenaries, and was vanquished and slain. He had intended to make Nanci his capital; but his body was found near by in a swamp, stripped of its clothing, frozen, and covered with wounds.
EXTENSION OF FRANCE.—Louis XI could hardly stifle expressions of joy at the news of the death of his hated and formidable rival. While Charles had been busy in Germany, Louis had taken the opportunity to put down, one by one, the great nobles who had shown themselves ill-affected. He secured to France Roussillon and the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. It was now his purpose to lay hold of as many as possible of the possessions of the late duke. Mary, the daughter of Charles the Bold, the heiress of Burgundy, gave her hand in marriage to Maximilian of Austria, an event which carried after it the most important consequences. The result of the conflicts of Louis and Maximilian was the Peace of Arras (1482), which left in the hands of France the towns on the Somme, and the great Burgundian duchy. For a time Maximilian, as holder of the French fiefs of Flanders and Artois, was a vassal of the French king. On the death of King René, in 1480, and the extinction of the house of Anjou, Louis annexed the three great districts of Anjou, Maine, and Provence, the last of which was a fief of the empire.
LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XI.—In his last days, old King Louis, in wretched health, tortured with the fear of death, and in constant dread of plots to destroy him, shut himself up in the castle of Plessis-les-Tours, which he strongly fortified, and manned with guards who were instructed to shoot all who approached without leave. He kept up his activity in management, and in truth devised schemes for the advantage of his realm. His selfish and malignant temper brought to him one unexpected joy from the sudden death of Mary of Burgundy (1482), from which, however, France did not reap the advantages which he expected. He died in 1483, at the age of sixty-one. He, more than any other, was the founder of the French monarchy in the later form. He centralized the administration of the government. He fought against feudalism, old and new. He strengthened, however, local authority where it did not interfere with the power of the king. In matters of internal government he was often just and wise.
CHARLES VIII. (1483-1496): ANNE OF BEAUJEU.—Charles VIII. at the death of his father was only fourteen years old. But in his older sister, Anne of Beaujeu, the wife of Peter of Bourbon, he had an energetic guide who for ten years virtually managed public affairs. She proved too strong for the opposition of the royal princes, of the nobility, and of the States General. The nobles turned for support to Richard III. of England. Anne strengthened with men and money Henry of Richmond, the rival and conqueror of Richard. The Duke of Brittany, with his allies, the Duke of Orleans, the Prince of Orange, and others, was defeated in a hardly contested battle in 1488, which was followed by a treaty advantageous to France. The crowning achievement of Anne of Beaujeu was the marriage of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII. This was accomplished although she had already been married by proxy to Maximilian, while Charles was pledged to marry Margaret, the emperor's daughter. If Anne of Brittany should outlive Charles, she engaged to marry his successor. This second marriage actually took place: she became the wife of Louis XII. Brittany was thus incorporated in France. The Italian expeditions, the great events in the reign of Charles VIII., will be related hereafter.
WAR OF THE ROSES: THE HOUSE OF YORK.—The crown in England had come to be considered as the property of a family, to which the legitimate heir had a sacred claim. The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) grew out of family rivalries. It was a fight among nobles. But other reasons were not without influence. The party of York (whose badge was the white rose) was the popular party, which had its strength in Kent and in the trading cities. It went for reform of government. The party of Lancaster (whose badge was the red rose) was the more conservative party, having its strength among the barons of the North. Richard, Duke of York, thought that he had a better claim to the English crown than Henry VI., because his ancestor, Lionel, was an older son of Edward III. than John of Gaunt, the ancestor of Henry. The king was insane at times, and Richard was made Protector or Regent of Parliament. But Henry, becoming better, drove him from his presence. He organized an insurrection, but was defeated in a battle at Wakefield by the troops of the strong-hearted queen. He was crowned with a wreath of grass, and then beheaded. His brave son, Rutland, was killed as he fled. But Richard's eldest son, Edward—Edward IV. (1461-1483)—supported by the powerful Earl of Warwick, "the king-maker," defeated the queen at Towton, took possession of the throne, and imprisoned Henry VI., who had fallen into imbecility. Edward was popular because he kept order. But the favors which he lavished on the Woodvilles, relatives of his Lancastrian wife Elizabeth, enabled the opposing party, to which Warwick deserted, to get the upper hand (1470); and Edward fled to Holland. But he soon returned, and won the battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury (1471). Henry VI. was secretly murdered in the Tower. The house of York was now in the ascendant. A quarrel between the king and his ambitious brother Clarence, who had married Warwick's daughter, led to the trial and condemnation of Clarence, who was put to death in the Tower. It was during the reign of Edward IV. that Caxton set up the first printing-press in England. After Edward his brother reigned, Richard III. (1483-1485), a brave but merciless man, who made his way to the throne by the death of the two young princes Edward and Richard, whose murder in the Tower he is with good reason supposed to have procured. He had pretended that Edward IV. had never been lawfully married to their mother. Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, descended by his mother from John of Gaunt, aided by France, landed in Wales, and won a victory at Bosworth over the adherents of the white rose,—a victory which gave him a kingdom and a crown. Thus the house of Lancaster in the person of Henry VII. (1485-1509), gained the throne. He married Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Edward IV., and so the two hostile houses were united. He was the first of the TUDOR kings.
CHARACTER OF THE CIVIL WARS.—The Wars of the Roses are, in certain respects, peculiar. They extended over a long period, but did not include more than three years of actual fighting. The battles were fierce, and the combatants unsparing in the treatment of their foes. Yet the population of the country did not diminish. Business and the administration of justice went on as usual. Trade began to be held in high esteem, and traders to amass wealth. The number of journeymen and day-laborers increased, and there was a disposition to break through the guild laws.
EFFECTS OF THE CIVIL WARS.—The most striking result of the civil wars was the strengthening of the power of the king. Not more than thirty of the old nobles survived. Laws were made forbidding the nobles to keep armed "retainers;" and against "maintenance," or the custom of nobles to promise to support, in their quarrels or law-cases, men who adhered to them. The court of the Star Chamber was set up to prevent these abuses. It was turned into an instrument of tyranny in the hands of the kings. Henry VII. extorted from the rich, "benevolences," or gifts solicited by the king, which the law authorized him to collect as a tax. He contrived to get money in such ways, and thus to carry forward the government without Parliament, which met only once during the last thirteen years of his reign. Royal power, in relation to the nobles, was further exalted by the introduction of cannon into warfare, which only the king possessed. Two pretenders to the throne, Lambert Simnel (1487), and Perkin Warbeck (1492), were raised up; but the efforts made to dethrone Henry proved abortive. He kept watch over his enemies at home and abroad, and punished all resistance to his authority. Circumstances enabled the founder of the Tudor line to exalt the power of the king over the heads of both the nobles and the commons.
FERDINAND OF ARAGON (1479-15l6).—The union of Aragon and Castile, by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (1474-1504), was nominal, as each sovereign reigned independently in his own dominion. But both sovereigns were bent on the same end,—that of subjecting the powerful grandees and feudal lords to their authority. In this policy they found efficient helpers in the shrewd and loyal counselor Mendoza, Cardinal and Archbishop of Toledo, and in Ximenes, who combined the qualities of a prelate of strict orthodoxy with those of a profound and energetic statesman. To bring both nobles and clergy into subservience to the crown, was their great aim; and for this end the sagacious Ferdinand procured from the Pope the privilege of filling the bishoprics and the grand masterships of the military orders. He deprived the nobles of their judicial functions, which he committed to impartial and severe tribunals of his own creation. He re-organized and strengthened the Holy Hermanadad, or militia of the cities, and thus had at his service against the grandees a standing military force. He used the nobles and the cities to keep one another in check. Over both stood the Inquisition,—a tribunal established against the Moors and the Jews who had made an outward profession of Christianity, but which under Torquemada, who had been confessor of the queen, became a terror to all Spain. The king had the power to name the Grand Inquisitor and all the judges; and he thus acquired in this institution not only a fearful weapon against heretics of every description, but also a political instrument for the subjugation of the nobles and the clergy. By this alliance of the throne and the altar, the despotic power of Ferdinand had the firmest prop.
CONQUEST OF GRANADA.—After a ten-years' bloody war, the Moorish kingdom of Granada was conquered. The capital, with the famous castle of Alhambra, was captured (1492). The dethroned Moorish king, Boabdil, robbed of his possessions, sailed to Africa, where he fell in battle. By the terms of their surrender, the Moors were to have the free exercise of their religion. But the promise was not kept. Choice was given to the Moslems to become Christians, or to emigrate. Many left to wage war elsewhere against their Spanish persecutors, either as corsairs in Africa, or as bands of robbers in Sierra Nevada. The professed converts were goaded by cruel treatment into repeated insurrections. It was a fierce war of races and religions. The frightful sufferings of the Moors, under the pressure of this double fanaticism, form a long and gloomy chapter of Spanish history. The dismal tale continues until the cruel expulsion from the kingdom of nearly a million of this unhappy people by Philip III., in 1609.
FERDINAND, REGENT OF CASTILE.—Most of the children of Ferdinand and Isabella died young. Their daughter Joanna married Philip of Burgundy, son of Maximilian and Mary; but he died in 1506, at the age of twenty-eight. They had been recognized as the rulers of Castile. But the mind of Joanna, who had always been eccentric, became disordered, so that the government devolved on Ferdinand, her father. He placed her in the castle at Tordesillas, where the remainder of her life, which continued forty-seven years longer, was spent. Ferdinand was, in form, constituted by the Cortes (1510), regent of the kingdom in the name of his daughter, and as guardian of her son (Charles). Ferdinand administered the government with wisdom and moderation. As there were no children by his second marriage with Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII. of France, the succession of Joanna's son remained secure. Ferdinand availed himself of the disturbances in France to annex to Castile the portion of Navarre lying on the south of the Pyrenees.
FREDERICK III. (1440-1493).—While England, France, and Spain were organizing monarchy, Italy and Germany kept up the anarchical condition of the Middle Ages. Hence these countries, first Italy and then Germany, became enticing fields of conquest for other nations. Frederick III. was the last emperor crowned at Rome (1452), and only one other emperor after him was crowned by the Pope. Frederick reigned longer than any other German king before or after him. He lacked energy, neglected the empire, and busied himself in enlarging his Austrian domains, which he erected into an archduchy (1453). When he sought to interfere with the German princes, they set him at defiance. He did little more than remain an indolent spectator of the conflict in which the Swiss overthrew Charles the Bold. The great danger to Europe was now from the Turks. Christendom was defended by the Poles and the Hungarians. Frederick left the Hungarians, under the gallant John Hunyady, without his help, to drive them, in 1456, from Belgrade. He tried to obtain the Bohemian and Hungarian crowns; but Podiebrad, a Utraquist nobleman, was made king of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus succeeded Hunyady, his father, on the throne of Hungary. By the death of Albert, the brother of Frederick, to whom the emperor had been compelled to give up Vienna, he became master of all the Austrian lands except Tyrol. He was bent on getting the Hungarian crown; but Vienna was taken by Matthias, in 1485, and the emperor had to fly for his life. A great confederation, composed of princes, nobles, and cities, was made in Swabia, for repressing private war, and did much good in South Germany. The western part of Prussia was taken from the Teutonic Knights by the Peace of Thorn, in 1466, and annexed to Poland by Casimir IV.
Maximilian I. (1493-15l9).—Maximilian I. was a restless prince, eager for adventure. Although not crowned, he was authorized by Pope Julius II. to style himself "Emperor Elect." In his reign, efforts, only in part successful, were made to secure peace and order in Germany. At the Diet of Worms in 1495, a perpetual public peace, or prohibition of private feuds, was proclaimed; and a court called the Imperial Chamber, the judges of which, except the president, were appointed by the states, was constituted to adjust controversies among them. The benefits of this arrangement were partly defeated by the Aulic Council, an Austrian tribunal established by Maximilian for his own domains, but which interfered in matters properly belonging to the Chamber. Germany was also divided into circles, or districts, for governmental purposes. In 1499 Maximilian endeavored, without success, to coerce the Swiss League into submission to the Imperial Chamber, and to punish it for helping the French in their Italian invasion. Although he was brave, cultured, and eloquent, he lacked perseverance, and not a few of his numerous projects failed. The most fortunate event in his life, as regards the aggrandizement of his house, was his marriage to Mary of Burgundy (1477). His grandson Ferdinand married the sister of Louis II., the last king of Bohemia of the Polish line, who was also king of Hungary; and by the election of Ferdinand to be his successor (1526), both these countries were added to the vast possessions of the Austrian family. To Maximilian's doings in Italy, we shall soon refer.
GERMAN CITIES.—From the middle of the thirteenth century there was a rapid growth of German cities, and an advance of the trading-classes. The cities gained a large measure of self-government, and were prosperous little republics. They were centers of commerce and wealth, and often exercised power much beyond their own precincts, which were well defended by ditches, walls, and towers. The old Gothic town-halls in Aix, Nuremburg, Cologne, etc., are monuments of municipal thrift and dignity. Their churches and convents grew rich, and schools with numerous pupils were connected with them. Dwellings became more comfortable and attractive. All branches of art and manufacture flourished. The city nobles and the guilds had their banquets. In the church festivals all the people took part. The German cities, such as Mayence, Worms, Strasburg, Lübeck, Augsburg, excited the admiration even of Italian visitors.
Giovanni d' Medici, d. 1429.
|
+—COSMO ("Father of his Country"), d. 1464.
| |
| +—PIERO, d. 1469.
| |
| +—LORENZO (the Magnificent), d. 1492.
| | |
| | +—Maddelena.
| | |
| | +—PIERO d. 1503
| | | |
| | | +—LORENZO II, Duke of Urbino, d. 1510.
| | | |
| | | +—Catharine, m. Henry II of France.
| | | |
| | | +—ALESSANDRO, First Duke of Florence, 1531-1537.
| | |
| | +—GIOVANNI (Pope Leo X), d. 1521.
| | |
| | +—GIULIANO, Duke of Nemours, d. 1516.
| | |
| | +—Ippolito (Cardinal), d. 1535.
| |
| +—GIULIANO, killed by Pozzi 1478.
| |
| +—Giulio (Pope Clement VII), d. 1534.
|
+—LORENZO, d. 1440.
|
+—Piero Francesco, d. 1474.
|
+—Giuliano, d. 1498.
|
+—Giovanni (the Invincible), d. 1526.
|
+—COSIMO I, First Grand Duke of Tuscany, 1537-1574.
|
+—FRANCESCO, 1574-1587, m. Joanna,
| daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I.
| |
| +—Mary m. Henry IV of France.
|
+—FERDINAND I, 1587-1600, m. Christina,
daughter of Charles II of Lorraine.
|
+—COSIMO II, 1609-1621, m. Mary Magdalen,
sister of Emperor Ferdinand II.
|
+—FERDINAND II, 1621-1670.
|
+—COSIMO III, 1670-1723.
|
+—JOHN GASTON, 1723-1737.
CONDITION OF ITALY.—Italy, at the epoch of the French invasions, was the most prosperous as well as the most enlightened and civilized country in Europe. Its opulent and splendid cities were the admiration of all visitors from the less favored countries of the North. But national unity was wanting. The country was made up of discordant states. Venice was ambitious of conquest; and the pontiffs in this period, to the grief of all true friends of religion, were absorbed in Italian politics, being eager to carve out principalities for their relatives. Italy was exposed to two perils. On the one hand, it was menaced by the Ottoman Turks; not to speak of the kings of France and Spain, who were rival aspirants for control in the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, voyages of discovery were threatening to open new highways of commerce to supersede the old routes of traffic through its maritime cities.
MILAN.—The fall of Constantinople produced a momentary union in Italy. At Lodi, in 1454, the principal states took an oath of perpetual concord,—Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan; Cosmo de Medici, to whom Florence had given the name of "Father of his Country;" Alfonso V. the Magnanimous, king of Naples and Sicily; the Popes Calixtus III. and Pius II. (1458-1464). But conflicts soon arose among them. An abortive attempt was made by John of Calabria to deprive Ferdinand of Naples of his inheritance (1462). In 1478 there was a coalition against Florence; in 1482, a coalition against Venice. The Turks made the best use of these quarrels, and captured Otranto (1480), killing or enslaving twelve thousand Christians. The idea of the ancients that tyrannicide is a virtue, whether the master be good or bad, was caught up, and gave rise to conspiracies. At Milan, in 1476, the cruel Duke Galeazzo Maria was assassinated by three young men, near the Church of St. Stephen. Giovanni Galeazzo, his son, a minor, married a daughter of the king of Naples. But his uncle, Ludovico il Moro, had seized on power, and ruled in the name of Giovanni (1480). He imprisoned Giovanni and his young wife; and being threatened by the king of Naples, who had for an ally Peter de Medici, he formed an alliance with the Pope and the Venetians; and, not confiding in them, he invited Charles VIII. of France to invade the kingdom of Naples. Genoa fell under the yoke of Ludovico, who was invested with it by Charles VIII. as a fief of France.
VENICE.—Venice, which up to the fall of Constantinople had been the strongest of the Italian states, forgot its duties and its dangers in relation to the Turks, in order to aggrandize itself in Italy. It could not avoid war with them, which broke out in 1464. The Turks took Negropont and Scutari, passed the Piave, and the fires kindled by their troops could be seen from Venice. The city made a shameful treaty with them, paying them a large sum (1479). But four years after, it conquered Cyprus, which it did not scruple to demand the privilege of holding as a fief of the Sultan of Egypt. The great power of Venice at this time was a cause of alarm to all the other states; but their first combination against it in 1482, in defense of the Duke of Ferrara, was of no effect. In 1454 the government of Venice was placed practically in the hands of three "inquisitors", who exercised despotic power under the old forms, and, by such means as secret trials and executions, maintained internal order and quiet at the cost of liberty. Its soldiers were condottieri, under foreign leaders, whom it watched with the utmost jealousy.
FLORENCE.—Cosmo de Medici had continued to be a man of the people. But the members of his family who followed him, while they copied his munificence and public spirit, behaved more as princes. Against Peter I. plots were formed by the nobles, but were baffled (1465). Jerome Riario, a nephew of Pope Sixtus IV., strove with papal help to conquer for himself a principality in the Romagna. The Florentines protested against it as a breach of the treaty of Lodi. Hence Riario took part in the conspiracy of the Pazzi against the lives of Lorenzo and Julian, sons of Cosmo. They were attacked in the cathedral of Florence by the assassins, during the celebration of mass; Julian was killed, but Lorenzo escaped. The Archbishop of Pisa, one of the accomplices, was hung from his palace window in his pontifical robes. The Pope excommunicated the Medici, and all the Italian states plunged into war. The capture of Otranto at this time by the Turks frightened the princes. Lorenzo de Medici repaired in person to Naples to negotiate with Ferdinand, the Pope's ally, and peace was concluded. Lorenzo earned the name of "The Magnificent" by his lavish patronage of literature and art.
SAVONAROLA.—Against the rule of Lorenzo, one voice was raised, that of the Dominican monk Jerome Savonarola, a preacher of fervid eloquence, who aimed in his harangues, not only to move individuals to repentance, but to bring about a thorough amendment of public morals, and a political reform in the direction of liberty. In his discourses, however, he lashed the ecclesiastical corruptions of the time, not sparing those highest in power. There were two parties, that of the young nobles,—the arribiati, or "enraged;" and that of the people,—the frateschi, or friends of the monks. Savonarola proclaimed that a great punishment was impending over Italy. He predicted the invasion from north of the Alps.
FLORENCE IN THE AGE OF LORENZO.—Florence in the time of Lorenzo presented striking points of resemblance to Athens in its most flourishing days. In some respects, the two communities were quite unlike. Florence was not a conquering power, and had no extensive dominion. Civil and military life were distinct from one another: the Italian had come to rely more upon diplomacy than upon arms, and his wealth and mercantile connections made him anxious to avoid war. In Florence, moreover, trade and the mechanic arts were in high repute; industry was widely diffused, and was held in honor. But in equality and pride of citizenship, in versatility of talent and intellectual activity, in artistic genius and in appreciation of the products of art, in refinement of manners, cheerfulness of temper, and a joyous social life, the Florentines in the fifteenth century compare well with the Athenians in the age of Pericles. In Florence, the burgess or citizen had attained to the standing to which in other countries he only aspired. Nobility of blood was counted as of some worth; but where there was not wealth or intellect with it, it was held in comparatively low esteem. Prosperous merchants, men of genius and education, and skillful artisans were on a level with the best. Men of noble extraction engaged in business. The commonwealth conferred knighthood on the deserving, according to the practice of sovereign princes. Persons of the highest social standing did not disdain to labor in their shops and counting-houses. Frugal in their domestic life, the Florentines strove to maintain habits of frugality by strict sumptuary laws. Limits were set to indulgence in finery, food, etc. The population of Florence somewhat exceeded one hundred thousand. In the neighborhood of the city, there was a multitude of attractive, richly furnished villas and country-houses. Among the industries in which the busy population was engaged in 1472, a chronicler enumerates eighty-three rich and splendid warehouses of the silk-merchants' guild, thirty-three great banks, and forty-four goldsmiths' and jewellers' shops. The houses of the rich were furnished with elegance, and decorated with beautiful works of art. There was a great contrast between the simplicity of ordinary domestic life, especially as regards provisions for the table, and the splendor displayed on public occasions, or when guests were to be hospitably entertained. The effect of literary culture was seen in the tone of conversation. It is remarkable that the great sculptors were all goldsmiths, and came out of the workshop. A new generation of painters had a like practical training. In those days, there was a union of manual skill with imagination. The art of the goldsmith preceded and outstripped all the others. In such a society, there was naturally a great relish for public festivals, both sacred and secular. Everywhere in Italy the Mysteries, or religious plays, exhibiting events of scriptural history, were in vogue; brilliant pantomimes were enjoyed, and the festivities of the yearly carnival were keenly relished. In the government of Florence, the liberty of the citizens was mainly confined to the choosing of their magistrates. Once in office, they ruled with arbitrary power. There was no liberty of the press, nor was there freedom of discussion in the public councils. It was a community where, with all its cultivation and elegance, morality was at a low ebb. Lorenzo himself, although "he had all the qualities of poet and statesman, connoisseur and patron of learning, citizen and prince," nevertheless "could not keep himself from the epicureanism of the time," and was infected with its weaknesses and vices. "These joyous and refined civilizations," writes M. Taine, "based on a worship of pleasure and intellectuality,—Greece of the fourth century, Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth,—were not enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. After sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness, he wanders away in the direction of license and egotism; the degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilettant."
THE POPES.—The Popes, Nicholas V. (1447-1455), a protector of scholars and a cultivated man, and Pius II. (1458-1464),
OTHMAN, 1307-1325. | +—ORCHAN, 1325-1359. | | | +—AMURATH I, 1359-1389. | | | +—BAJEZET I, 1389-1402. | | | +—Soliman, 1402-1410. | | | +—Musa, 1410-1413. | | | +—Issa. | | | +—MOHAMMED I, 1413-1421. | | | +—AMURATH II, 1421-1451. | | | +—MOHAMMED II, 1451-1481. | | | +—BAJEZET II, 1481-1512. | | | | | +—SELIM I, 1512-1520. | | | | | +—SOLIMAN I, 1520-1566. | | | | | +—SELIM II, 1566-1574. | | | | | +—AMURATH III, 1574-1595. | | | | | +—MOHAMMED III, 1595-1603. | | | | | +—ACHMET I, 1603-1617. | | | | | | | +—OTHMAN II, 1618-1622. | | | | | | | +—AMURATH IV, 1623-1640. | | | | | | | +—IBRAHIM, 1640-1649, deposed. | | | | | | | +—MOHAMMED IV, | | | | 1649-1687, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +—MUSTAPHA II, | | | | | 1695-1703, deposed. | | | | | | | | | | | +—MAHMOUD I, | | | | | | 1730-1754. | | | | | | | | | | | +—OTHMAN III, | | | | | 1754-1757. | | | | | | | | | +—ACHMET III, | | | | 1703-1730, deposed. | | | | | | | | | +—MUSTAPHA III, | | | | | 1757-1774. | | | | | | | | | | | +—SELIM III, | | | | | 1789-1807, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +—ABUL HAMID I, | | | | 1774-1789. | | | | | | | | | +—MUSTAPHA IV, | | | | | 1807-1808, | | | | | deposed. | | | | | | | | | +—MAHMOUD II, | | | | 1808-1839. | | | | | | | | | +—ABDUL MEDJID, | | | | | 1839-1861. | | | | | | | | | | | +—MURAD V | | | | | | (June 4, | | | | | | 1876- | | | | | | Aug. 31, | | | | | | 1876). | | | | | | | | | | | +—ABDUL | | | | | HAMID II | | | | | (Aug. 31, | | | | | 1876—). | | | | | | | | | +—ABDUL AZIZ, | | | | 1861-1876. | | | | | | | +—SOLIMAN II, | | | | 1687-1691. | | | | | | | +—ACHMET II, | | | 1691-1695. | | | | | +—MUSTAPHA I, | | 1617-1618, 1622-1623. | +—Djem. | +—Alaeddin.
[Mainly from George's Genealogical Tables.]
zealously but in vain exhorted to crusades against the Turk. Paul II. (1464-1471) pursued the same course; but after him, for a half-century, there ensued the deplorable era when the pontiffs were more busied with other interests than with those pertaining to the weal of Christianity. The pontificates of Sixtus IV. (1471-1484), Innocent VIII. (1484-1492), and especially of Alexander VI. (1492-1503), the second pope of the Borgia family, present a lamentable picture of worldly schemes and of "nepotism," as the projects for the temporal advancement of their relatives were termed. The Roman principality was the prey of petty tyrants, and the theater of wars, and of assassinations perpetrated by the knife or with poison. Alexander VI. succeeded in subduing or destroying all these petty lords. He was seconded in these endeavors by his son Cæsar Borgia, brave, accomplished, and fascinating, but a monster of treachery and cruelty. No deed was savage or base enough to cost him any remorse. Hardly had he acquired the Romagna, when Pope Alexander died. Although his death was due to Roman fever, legend speedily ascribed it to poison. His son was betrayed, was imprisoned for a time by Ferdinand the Catholic, and, while he was in the service of the King of Navarre, was slain before the castle of Viana.
NAPLES.—In Naples, Ferdinand I., who was established on his throne by the defeat of his competitors in 1462, provoked a revolt of his barons by his tyranny, invited them to a festival to celebrate a reconciliation with them, and caused them to be seized at the table, and then to be put to death. He treated the people with equal injustice and cruelty. He allowed the Turks to take Otranto (1480), and the Venetians to take Gallipoli and Policastro (1484).
WEAKNESS OF ITALY.—Italy, at the close of the fifteenth century, with all its proficiency in art and letters, and its superiority in the comforts and elegances of life, was a prey to anarchy. This was especially true after the death of Lorenzo de Medici. Diplomacy had become a school of fraud. Battles had come to be, in general, bloodless; but either perfidy, or prison and the dagger, were the familiar instruments of warfare. The country from its beauty, its wealth, and its factious state, was an alluring prize to foreign invaders.
THEIR CONQUESTS.—The empire of Mohammed II. (1451-1481) extended from the walls of Belgrade, on the Danube, to the middle of Asia Minor. To the east was the Seljukian principality of Caramania in the center of Asia Minor, and, when that was finally overthrown (1486), Persia, whose hostility was inflamed by differences of sect. The conquest of the Greek Empire was achieved by Mohammed. Matthias Corvinus (1458-1493), the successor of Hunyady, was the greatest of the kings of Hungary, and defended the line of the Danube against the Turkish assaults. For twenty-three years Scanderbeg, the intrepid Prince of Albania, repulsed all the attacks of the Moslems. It was not until ten years after his death (1467) that his principal stronghold was surrendered to the invaders. The attacks on the Venetians have already been mentioned, as well as the capture of Otranto. Bajazet II. was more inclined to study than to war: his brother Djem, who tried to supplant him, passed as a prisoner into the hands of Pope Alexander VI. An annual tribute was paid by the Sultan for keeping him from coming back to Turkey; and when, at last, he was released, rumor declared that he had been poisoned. Selim I. (1512-1520) entered anew on the path of conquest. He defeated the Persians, and made the Tigris his eastern boundary. He annexed to his empire Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. The Sultan now became the commander of the faithful, the inheritor of the prophetic as well as military leadership. The conquest of Alexandria by Selim (1517) inflicted a mortal blow on the commerce of Venice, by intercepting its communication with the Orient. The despotic domination of Selim stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates, and from the Adriatic to the cataracts of the Nile. Such was the empire which the Ottoman conqueror handed down to his son, Soliman I. the Magnificent (1520-1566). Mohammed II. and Selim were the two conquerors by whom the Ottoman Empire was built up. Each of them combined with an iron will and revolting cruelty a taste for science and poetry, and the genius of a ruler. They take rank among the most eminent tyrants in Asiatic history. While they were spreading their dominion far and wide, the popes and the sovereigns of the West did nothing more effectual than to debate upon the means of confronting so great a danger.
IVAN III, Vassilievitch, 1462-1505, m.
Sophia, daughter of Thomas Palaeologus,
brother of Emperor Constantine XIII.
|
+—BASIL IV, 1505-1533.
|
+—IVAN IV,[1] 1533-1584,
| m.
| +—Anastasia
| |
| | HOUSE OF ROMANOFF
| |
| +—Nicetas.
| |
| +—Mary [4] (Marta the Nun), m.
| Theodore (Philaret the Metropolitan).
| |
| +—MICHAEL, 1613-1645.
| |
| +—ALEXIS, 1645-1676.
| |
| +—THEODORE, 1676-1682.
| |
| +—IVAN V, 1682-1689, resigned; d. 1696.
| | |
| | +—ANNA, 1730-1740.
| | |
| | +—Catharine m. Charles Leopold,
| | Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
| | |
| | +—Anna, m. Antony Ulric, son of
| | Ferdinand Albert II,
| | of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel.
| | |
| | +—IVAN VI, 1740-1741, deposed.
| |
| +—PETER I (the Great) 1689-1725, m.
| (1), Eudocia;
| |
| +—Alexis, executed 1718. m.
| Charlotte, d. of Lewis Rudolph,
| Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel
| |
| +—PETER II, 1727-1730.
|
| (2), CATHARINE I, 1725-1727.
| |
| +—Anna, d. 1738, m.
| | Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp.
| | |
| | +—PETER III, January-July, 1762
| | (deposed, and died soon after) m.
| | CATHERINE II of Anhalt, 1762-1796.
| | |
| | +—PAUL, 1796-1801.
| | |
| | +—ALEXANDER I, 1801-1825.
| | |
| | +—NICHOLAS, 1825-1855, m.
| | Charlotte, daughter of Frederick
| | William III of Prussia.
| | |
| | +—ALEXANDER II, 1855-1881, m.
| | Mary of Hesse Darmstadt.
| | |
| | +—ALEXANDER III, 1881- m.
| | Mary (Dagmar), daughter
| | of Christian IX of Denmark
| |
| +—ELIZABETH, 1741-1762.
|
+—THEODORE, 1584-1598.
m.
+—Irene,[2]
|
+—BORIS, Godounof, [3] 1598-1605.
1 First Czar. 2 Declined the crown on Theodore's death, which was seized by her brother. 3 Succeeded by an imposter pretending to be Demetrius, son of Ivan IV, who reigned for one year; then Basil V, 1606-1610; then chaos until 1613. 4 Said to be a descendent of the old royal house.
[Mainly from George's Genealogical Tables.]
RUSSIA: IVAN III.—For two centuries Russia paid tribute to the Tartar conquerors in the South, the "Golden Horde" (p. 283). The liberator of his people from this yoke was Ivan III.,—Ivan the Great,—(1462-1505). In the period when the nations of the West were becoming organized, Russia escaped from its servitude, and made some beginnings of intellectual progress. Ivan was a cold and calculating man, who preferred to negotiate rather than to fight; but he inflicted savage punishments, and even "his glance caused women to faint." He was able to subdue the rich trading-city of Novgorod (1478), which had been connected with the Hanseatic League, and where a party endeavored to bring to pass a union with Poland. He conquered unknown frozen districts in the North, and smaller princedoms, including Tver, in the interior. The empire of the Horde was so broken up that Ivan achieved an almost bloodless triumph, which made Russia free. In wars with Lithuania, Western Russia was reconquered up to the Soja. Ivan married Sophia Palæologus, a niece of the last Christian emperor of the East. She taught him "to penetrate the secret of autocracy." Numerous Greek emigrants of different arts and professions came to Moscow. Ivan took for the new arms of Russia the two-headed eagle of the Byzantine Cæsars, and thenceforward Russia looked on herself as the heir of the Eastern Empire. The Russian metropolitan, called afterwards Patriarch, was now elected by Russian bishops. Moscow became "the metropolis of orthodoxy," and as such the protector of Greek Christians in the East. Ivan laid out in the city the fortified inclosure styled the Kremlin. He brought into the country German and Italian mechanics. It was he who founded the greatness of Russia. Vassali Ivanovitch (1505-1533), his son, continued the struggle with Lithuania, and acquired Smolensk (1514). He exchanged embassies with most of the sovereigns of the West.
IVAN IV. (1533-1584).—Ivan IV., Ivan the Terrible, first took the title of Czar, since attached to "the Autocrat of all the Russias." It was the name that was given, in the Slavonian books which he read, to the ancient kings and emperors of the East and of Rome. Moscow was now to be a third Rome, the successor of Constantinople. Ivan conquered the Tartar principalities of Kazan and Astrakhan in the South, and extended his dominion to the Caucasus. The Volga, through its entire course, was now a Russian river. He brought German mechanics into Russia, established printing-presses, and made a commercial treaty with Queen Elizabeth, whom he invited to an alliance against Poland and Sweden. It was in this reign (1581-1582) that a brigand chief, Irmak by name (a Cossack, in the service of the Czar), crossed the Urals with a few hundred followers, and made the conquest of the vast region of Siberia, then under the dominion of the Tartars. Ivan sent thither bishops and priests. He had to cede Livonia to the Swedes, who, with their allies were too strong to be overcome. In Russia, he put down the aristocracy, and crushed all resistance to his personal rule. Whatever tyranny and cruelty this result cost, it prevented Russia from becoming an anarchic kingdom like Poland. Ivan, by forming the national guard of streltsi or strelitz, laid the foundation of a standing army. In his personal conduct, brutal and sensual practices alternated with exercises of piety. In a fit of wrath, he struck his son Ivan a fatal blow, and in consequence was overwhelmed with sorrow. After a short reign of his second son, Feodor (1584-1598), who was weak in mind and body, the throne was usurped by one of the aristocracy, the able and ambitious regent, Boris Godounof (1598-1605).
THE COSSACKS.—These were brought into subjection by Ivan IV. and his successors. They were robber hordes of mixed origin, partly Tartar and partly Russian. Their abodes were near the rapids of the Dnieper, and on the Don, and at the foot of the Caucasus. They were fierce warriors, and did a great service to Russia in subduing the wild nomad tribes on the north and east of the regions where the Cossacks dwelt.
TIMES OF TROUBLE.—After the death of Boris Godounof, two pretenders, one after the other, each assuming to be Demetrius, the younger son of Ivan,—a son who had been put to death,— seized on power. This was rendered possible by the mutual strife of Russian factions, and by the help afforded to the impostors by the Poles. Sigismund III., king of Poland, openly espoused the cause of the second Demetrius. Moscow was forced to surrender (1610); and the czar whom the nobles had enthroned, Basil V., died in a Polish prison. These events gave rise to a lasting enmity between the two Slavonic nations. In 1611 the Poles were driven out by a national rising, which led to the elevation to the throne of Michael Romanoff (1613-1645), the founder of the present dynasty of czars. Peace was concluded with Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, and with the Poles. Commercial treaties were made with foreign nations. In Russia there was a great increase of internal prosperity.
SERFDOM IN RUSSIA.—The lower classes in Russia consisted of three divisions: 1. Slaves, captives taken in war, who were bought and sold. 2. The inscribed peasants, who were attached to the soil and became serfs. They belonged to the commune, or village, which held the land, and as a unit paid to the lord his dues. They made up the bulk of the rural population. The peasant was an arbitrary master, a little czar in his own family. 3. The free laborers, who could change their masters, but who soon fell into the rank of serfs. While the higher classes in Russia advanced, the condition of the rustics for several centuries continued to grow worse.
RUSSIAN SOCIETY.—The great nobles kept in their castles a host of servants. These were slaves, subject to the caprices of their master. Russian women were kept in seclusion. There was an Asiatic stamp imprinted on civil and social life. "Thanks to the general ignorance, there was no intellectual life in Russia: thanks to the seclusion of women, there was no society." By degrees intercourse with Western Europe was destined to soften, in some particulars, the harsh outlines of this picture.
EFFECT OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY.—The establishment of absolute monarchy in Western Europe placed the resources of the nations at the service of their respective kings. The desire of national aggrandizement led to great European wars, which took the place of the feudal conflicts of a former day. These wars began with the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., king of France.
MOTIVES OF THE INVASION.—To this unwise enterprise Charles VIII. was impelled by a romantic dream of conquest, which was not to be limited to the Italian peninsula. He intended to attack the Turks afterward, and to establish once more, under his protection, a Latin kingdom at Jerusalem. His counselors could not dissuade him from the hazardous undertaking. In order to set his hands free, he made treaties that were disadvantageous to France with Henry VII., Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic. He was invited to cross the Alps by Ludovico il Moro (p. 374), by the Neapolitan barons, by all the enemies of Pope Alexander VI. The special ground of the invasion was the claim of the French king, through the house of Anjou, to the throne of Naples. In 1494 Charles crossed the Alps with a large army, and, with the support of Ludovico, advanced from Milan, through Florence and Rome to Naples. When he was crowned he wore the imperial insignia as if pretending to the Empire of the East also. The rapid progress of the French power alarmed the Pope and the other princes, including Ludovico himself, who was afraid that the king might cast a covetous eye on his own principality. A formidable league was formed against Charles, including, besides the Italian princes, Ferdinand, Maximilian, and Henry VII. of England. It was the first European combination against France. Charles left eleven thousand men under Gilbert de Montpensier, at Naples; and after being exposed to much peril, although he won a victory at Fornovo (1495), he made his way back to France. Ferdinand II., aided by Spanish troops, expelled the French from Naples; and the remnant of their garrisons, after the death of Montpensier, was led back to France. The conquests of Charles were lost as speedily as they were gained. His great expedition proved a failure.
DEATH OF SAVONAROLA.—Civil strife continued in the Italian states. Savonarola had been excommunicated by Alexander VI. The combination of parties against him was too strong to be overcome by his supporters, and he was put to death in 1498.
LOUIS XII. (1498-1515): HIS FIRST ITALIAN WAR.—On the death of Charles VIII., who left no male children, the crown reverted to his nearest relative, Louis of Orleans. He entered once more on the aggressive enterprise begun by his predecessor. He laid claim not only to the rights of Charles VIII. at Naples, but also claimed Milan through his grandmother Valentine Visconti. In alliance with Venice, and with Florence to which he promised Pisa, then in revolt against the detested Florentine supremacy, and with the support of Cæsar Borgia, he entered Italy, and defeated Ludovico il Moro at Novara (1500). Ludovico had before been driven out of Milan by the French, but had regained the city. He was imprisoned in France; and on his release twelve years afterward, he died from joy. Louis bargained with Ferdinand the Catholic to divide with him the Neapolitan kingdom. Ferdinand, the king of Naples, was thus dethroned. But Ferdinand of Spain was as treacherous in his dealing with Louis as he had been in relation to his Neapolitan namesake; and the kingdom fell into the hands of Gonsalvo de Cordova, the Spanish general.
THE SECOND ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.—Anxious for revenge, Louis sent two armies over the Pyrenees, which failed of success, and a third army into Italy under La Trémoille, which was defeated by Gonsalvo, notwithstanding the gallantry of Bayard, the pattern of chivalry, the French knight "without fear and without reproach."
THE THIRD ITALIAN WAR OF LOUIS.—The third Italian war of Louis began in 1507, and lasted eight years. It includes the history of the League of Cambray, and also of the anti-French League subsequently formed. France was barely saved from great calamities in consequence of foolish treaties, three in number, made at Blois in 1504. The party of the queen, Anne of Brittany, secured the betrothal of Claude, the child of Louis XII., to Charles of Austria, afterwards Charles V., the son of Philip, with the promise of Burgundy and Brittany as her dowry. The arrangement was repudiated by the estates of France (1506). Claude was betrothed to Francis of Angoulême, the king's nearest male relative, and the heir of the French crown. On the marriage of Ferdinand to Germaine of Foix, Louis agreed to give up his claims on Naples. The sufferings of Italy had redounded to the advantage of Venice. Among her other gains, she had annexed certain towns in the Romagna which fell into anarchy at the expulsion of Cæsar Borgia. The energetic Pope, Julius II., organized a combination, the celebrated League of Cambray (1508), between himself, the Emperor Maximilian, the kings of France and of Aragon: its object was the humbling of Venice, and the division of her mainland possessions among the partners in the League.
HENRY VII, 1485-1509, m. Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV. | +—Margaret, m. James IV of Scotland. | | | +—James V. | | | +—Mary, Queen of Scots. | | | +—JAMES I, 1603-1625, m. | Anne, daughter of Frederick II of Denmark. | | | +—3, CHARLES I, 1625-1649, m. | | Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France. | | | | | +—CHARLES II, 1660-1685, m. | | | Catharine, daughter of John IV of Portugal. | | | | | +—Mary, m. William II, Prince of Orange. | | | | | | | +—WILLIAM III, 1688-1702. | | | m. | | | +—MARY, d. 1694 | | | | | | +—JAMES II, 1685-1688 (deposed, d. 1701), | | m. Anne Hyde, daughter of Earl of Clarendon. | | | | | +—ANNE, 1702-1714, m. | | George, son of Frederick III of Denmark. | | | +—2, Elizabeth, m. Frederick V, Elector Palatine. | | | +—Sophia, m. Ernest Augustus, | Elector of Hanover. | | | +—GEORGE I, succeeded 1714. | +—HENRY VIII, 1509-1547, m., | 1. Catharine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella; | 2, Anne Boleyn; | 3. Jane Seymour; | 4. Anne, sister of William, Duke of Cleves; | 5. Catharine Howard; | 6. Catharine Parr. | | | +—3, EDWARD VI, 1547-1553. | | | +—1, MARY, 1553-1558, m. Philip II of Spain. | | | +—2, ELIZABETH, 1558-1603. | +—Mary, m. 1, Louis XII of France; 2, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. | +—Frances, m. Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk. | +—Jane (m. Guilford Dudley), executed 1554.
A fine army of Louis, composed of French, Lombards, and Swiss, crossed the Adda, and routed the Venetians, who abandoned all their towns outside of Venice. Each of the other confederate powers now seized the places which it desired. France, mistress of Milan, was at the height of her power. The Venetians, however, retook Padua from the emperor. The Pope made peace with them, and, fired with the spirit of Italian patriotism, organized a new league for the expulsion of the French—"the barbarians," as he called them—from the country. Old man as he was, he took the field himself in the dead of winter. He was defeated, and went to Rome. Louis convoked a council at Pisa, which was to depose Julius. A Holy League was formed between the Pope, Venice, Ferdinand of Aragon, and Henry VIII. of England. The arms of the French under Gaston of Foix, the young duke of Nemours, were for a while successful. Ravenna was in their hands. But Gaston fell at the moment of victory. The Swiss came down, and established Maximilian Sforza at Milan. Leo X., of the house of Medici, and hostile to France, was chosen Pope (1513). The French troops were defeated by the Swiss near Novara, and driven beyond the Alps. France was attacked on the north by the English, with Maximilian, who had joined the League in 1513: and Bayard was taken captive. James IV. of Scotland, who had made a diversion in favor of France, was beaten and slain at Flodden Field (1513). The eastern borders of France were attacked by the Swiss Leagues, who, aided by Austrians, penetrated as far as Dijon. They were bought off by La Trémoille the French commander, by a large payment of money, and by still more lavish promises. France concluded peace with the Pope, the emperor, and the king of Aragon (1514), and in the next year with Henry VIII., whose sister, Mary, Louis XII. married, a few months after the death of Anne of Brittany. He abandoned his pretensions to the Milanese, in favor of his younger daughter Renée, the wife of Hercules II., the duke of Ferrara. Louis died (1515), shortly after his marriage. The policy of the belligerent pontiff, Julius II., had triumphed. The French were expelled from Italy, but the Spaniards were left all the stronger.
The events just narrated bring us into the midst of the struggles and ambitions of ruling houses, diplomatic intercourse among states, and international wars. These are distinguishing features of modern times.
We have glanced at the new life of Europe in its political manifestations. We have now to view this new life in other relations: we have to inquire how it acted as a stimulus to intellectual effort in different directions.
The term Renaissance is frequently applied at present not only to the "new birth" of art and letters, but to all the characteristics, taken together, of the period of transition from the Middle Ages to modern life. The transformation in the structure and policy of states, the passion for discovery, the dawn of a more scientific method of observing man and nature, the movement towards more freedom of intellect and of conscience, are part and parcel of one comprehensive change,—a change which even now has not reached its goal. It was not so much "the arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance," that created the new epoch: it was "the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which enabled mankind at that moment to make use of them."
INVENTIONS: GUNPOWDER.—In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there were brought into practical use several inventions most important in their results to civilization. Of these the principal were gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing by movable types. Gunpowder was not first made by Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the Chinese, among the Indians in the East as early as Alexander the Great, and among the Arabs. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can be spared.
THE COMPASS.—The properties of the magnetic needle were not first applied to navigation, as has been thought, by Flavio Gioja, but long before his time, as early as the twelfth century, the compass came into general use. Navigation was no longer confined to the Mediterranean and to maritime coasts. The sailor could push out into the ocean without losing himself on its boundless waste.
PRINTING.—Printing, which had been done to some extent by wooden blocks, was probably first done with movable types (about 1450) by John Gutenberg, who was born at Meniz, but who lived long at Strasburg. He was furnished with capital by an associate, Faust, and worked in company with a skillful copyist of manuscripts, Schöffer. Gutenberg brought the art to such perfection, that in 1456 a complete Latin Bible was printed. Within a short time, printing-presses were set up in all the principal cities of Germany and Italy. As an essential concomitant, linen and cotton paper came into vogue in the room of the costly parchment. Books were no longer confined to the rich. Despite the censorship of the press, thought traveled from city to city and from land to land. It was a sign of a new era, that Maximilian in Germany and Louis XI. in France founded a postal system.
NEW ROUTE TO INDIA.—The discovery by the Portuguese of the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira (1419-1420), of the Canary Islands and of the Azores, was followed by their discovery of the coast of Upper Guinea, with its gold-dust, ivory, and gums (1445). The Pope, to whom was accorded the right to dispose of the heathen and of newly discovered lands, granted to the Portuguese the possession of these regions, and of whatever discoveries they should make as far as India. From Lower Guinea (Congo), Bartholomew Diaz reached the southern point of Africa (1486), which King John II. named the Cape of Good Hope. Then, under Emanuel the Great (1495-1521), Vasco da Gama found the way to East India, round the Cape, by sailing over the Indian Ocean to the coast of Malabar, and into the harbor of Calicut (1498). The Portuguese encountered the resistance of the Mohammedans to their settlement; but by their valor and persistency, especially by the agency of their leaders Almeida and the brave Albuquerque, their trading-posts were established on the coast.
DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.—The grand achievement in maritime exploration in this age was the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, a native of Genoa. The conviction that India could be reached by sailing in a westerly direction took possession of his mind. Having sought in vain for the patronage of John II. of Portugal, and having sent his brother Bartholomew to apply for aid from Henry VII. of England, he was at length furnished with three ships by Queen Isabella of Castile, to whom Granada had just submitted (1492). Columbus was to have the station of grand admiral and viceroy over the lands to be discovered, with a tenth part of the incomes to be drawn from them, and the rank of a nobleman for himself and his posterity. The story of an open mutiny on his vessels does not rest on sufficient proof: that there were alarm and discontent among the sailors, may well be believed. On the 11th of October, Columbus thought that he discovered a light in the distance. At two o'clock in the morning of Oct. 12, a sailor on the Pinta espied the dim outline of the beach, and shouted, "Land, land!" It was an island called Guanahani, named by Columbus, in honor of Jesus, San Salvador. Its beauty and productiveness excited admiration; but neither here nor on the large islands of Cuba (or Juana) and Hayti (Hispaniola), which were discovered soon after, were there found the gold and precious stones which the navigators and their patrons at home so eagerly desired. Columbus built a fort on the island of Hispaniola, and founded a colony. The name of West Indies was applied to the new lands. Columbus lived and died in the belief that the region which he discovered belonged to India. Of an intermediate continent, and of an ocean beyond it, he did not dream. The Pope granted to Ferdinand and Isabella all the newly discovered regions of America, from a line stretching one hundred leagues west of the Azores. Afterwards Ferdinand allowed to the king of Portugal that the line should run three hundred and seventy, instead of one hundred, leagues west of these islands. In two subsequent voyages (1493-1496, 1498-1500), Columbus discovered Jamaica and the Little Antilles, the Caribbean Islands, and finally the mainland at the mouths of the Orinoco (1498). In 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian captain living in England, while in quest of a north-west passage to India, touched at Cape Breton, and followed the coast of North America southward for a distance of nine hundred miles. Shortly after, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine, employed first by Spain and then by Portugal, explored in several voyages the coast of South America. The circumstance that his full descriptions were published (1504) caused the name of America, first at the suggestion of the printer, to be attached to the new world.
LATER VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS.—On his return from his first voyage, Columbus was received with distinguished honors by the Spanish sovereigns. But he suffered from plots caused by envy, both on the islands and at court. Once he was sent home in fetters by Bobadilla, a commissioner appointed by Ferdinand. He was exonerated from blame, but the promises which had been made to him were not fulfilled. A fourth voyage was not attended by the success in discovery which he had hoped for, and the last two years of his life were weary and sad. Isabella had died; and in 1506 the great explorer, who with all his other virtues combined a sincere piety, followed her to the tomb.
THE PACIFIC.—The spirit of adventure, the hunger for wealth and especially for the precious metals, and zeal for the conversion of the heathen, were the motives which combined in different proportions to set on foot exploring and conquering expeditions to the unknown regions of the West. The exploration of the North-American coast, begun by John Cabot (perhaps also by his son), and the Portuguese Cortereal (1501), continued from Labrador to Florida. In 1513 Balboa, a Spaniard at Darien, fought his way to a height on the Isthmus of Panama, whence he descried the Pacific Ocean. Descending to the shore, and riding into the water up to his thighs, in the name of the king he took possession of the sea. In 1520 Magellan, a Portuguese captain, sailed round the southern cape of America, and over the ocean to which he gave the name of Pacific. He made his way to the East Indies, but was killed on one of the Philippine Islands, leaving it to his companions to finish the voyage around the globe. A little later the Spaniards added first Mexico, and then Peru, to their dominions.
CONQUEST OF MEXICO.—The Spanish conqueror of Mexico, the land of the Aztecs, was Hernando Cortes (1485-1547). The principal king in that country was Montezuma, whose empire was extensive, with numerous cities, and with no inconsiderable advancement in arts and industry. From Santiago, in 1519, Cortes conducted an expedition composed of seven hundred Spaniards, founded Vera Cruz, where he left a small garrison, subdued the tribe of Tlascalans who joined him, and was received by Montezuma into the city of Mexico. Cortes made him a prisoner in his own palace, and seized his capital. The firearms and the horses of the Spaniards struck the natives with dismay. Nevertheless, they made a stout resistance. To add to the difficulties of the shrewd and valiant leader, a Spanish force was sent from the West Indies, under Narvaez, to supplant him. This force he defeated, and captured their chief. In 1520 Cortes gained over the Mexicans, at Otumba, a victory which was decisive in its consequences. The city of Mexico was recaptured (1521); for Montezuma had been slain by his own people, and the Spaniards driven out. Guatimozin, the new king, was taken prisoner and put to death, and the country was subdued. Cortes put an end to the horrid religious rites of the Mexicans, which included human sacrifices. Becoming an object of jealousy and dread at home, he was recalled (1528). Afterwards he visited the peninsula of California, and ruled for a time in Mexico, but with diminished authority.
CONQUEST OF PERU.—The conquest of Peru was effected by Francisco Pizarro, and Almagro, both illiterate adventurers, equally daring with Cortes, but more cruel and unscrupulous. The Peruvians were of a mild character, prosperous, and not uncivilized, and without the savage religious system of the Mexicans. They had their walled cities and their spacious temples. The empire of the Incas, as the rulers were called, was distracted by a civil war between two brothers, who shared the kingdom. Pizarro captured one of them, Atahualpa, and basely put him to death after he had provided the ransom agreed upon, amounting to more than $17,500,000 in gold (1533). Pizarro founded Lima, near the sea-coast (1535). Almagro and Pizarro fell out with each other, and the former was defeated and beheaded. The land and its inhabitants were allotted among the conquerors as the spoils of victory. The horrible oppression of the people excited insurrections. At length Charles V. sent out Pedro de la Gasca as viceroy (1541), at a time when Gonzalo Pizarro, the last of the family, held sway. Gonzalo perished on the gallows. Gasca reduced the government to an orderly system.
THE AMAZON.—Orellena, an officer of Pizarro, in 1541 first descended the river Amazon to the Atlantic. His fabulous descriptions of an imaginary El Dorado, whose capital with its dazzling treasures he pretended to have seen, inflamed other explorers, and prompted to new enterprises. The cupidity of the Spaniards, and their eagerness for knightly warfare, made the New World, with its floral beauty and mineral riches, a most enticing field for adventure. To devout missionaries, to the monastic orders especially, the new regions were not less inviting. They followed in the wake of the Spanish conquerors and viceroys.
REVIVAL OF LEARNING.—The stirring period of invention and of maritime discovery was also the period of "the revival of learning." Italy was the main center and source of this intellectual movement, which gradually spread over the other countries of Western Europe. There was a thirst for a wider range of study and of culture than the predominantly theological writings and training of the Middle Ages afforded. The minds of men turned for stimulus and nutriment to the ancient classical authors. Petrarch, the Italian poet (1304-1374), did much to foster this new spirit. In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like Chrysoloras and Bessarion, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of Constantinople increased this influx of Greek learning. The new studies were fostered by the Italian princes, who vied with one another in their zeal for collecting the precious literary treasures of antiquity, and in the liberal patronage of the students of classical literature. The manuscripts of the Latin writers, preserved in the monasteries of the West, were likewise eagerly sought for. The most eminent of the patrons of learning were the Medici of Florence. Cosmo founded a library and a Platonic academy. All the writings of Plato were translated by one of that philosopher's admiring disciples, Marsilius Ficinus. Dictionaries and grammars, versions and commentaries, for instruction in classical learning, were multiplied. These, with the ancient poets, philosophers, and orators themselves, were diffused far and wide by means of the new art of printing, and from presses, of which the Aldine—that of Aldus Minutius—at Venice was the most famous. "By the side of the Church, which had hitherto held the countries of the West together (though it was unable to do so much longer) there arose a new spiritual influence, which, spreading itself abroad from Italy, became the breath of life for all the more instructed minds in Europe."
CONTEST OF THE NEW AND THE OLD CULTURE.—In Germany, the new learning gained a firm foothold. But there, as elsewhere, the Humanists, as its devotees were called, had a battle to fight with the votaries of the mediæval type of culture, who, largely on theological grounds, objected to the new culture, and were stigmatized as "obscurantists." In Italy, the study of the ancient heathen writers had engendered, or at least been accompanied by, much religious skepticism and indifference. This, however, was not the case in Germany. But the champions of the scholastic method and system, in which logic and divinity, as handled by the schoolmen, were the principal thing, were strenuously averse to the linguistic and literary studies which threatened to supplant them. The advocates of the new studies derided the lack of learning, the barbarous style, and fine-spun distinctions of the schoolmen, who had once been the intellectual masters. The disciples of Aristotle and of the schoolmen still had a strong hold in Paris, Cologne, and other universities. But certain universities, like Tübingen and Heidelberg, let in the humanistic studies. In 1502 Frederick, the elector of Saxony, founded a university at Wittenberg, in which from the outset they were prominent. In England, the cause of learning found ardent encouragement, and had able representatives in such men as Colet, dean of St. Paul's, who founded St. Paul's School at his own expense; and in Thomas More, the author of Utopia, afterwards lord chancelor under Henry VIII.
REUCHLIN: ULRICH VON HUTTEN.—A leader of humanism in Germany was John Reuchlin (1455-1522), an erudite scholar, who studied Greek at Paris and Basel, mingled with Politian, Pica de Mirandola, and other famous scholars at Florence, and wrote a Hebrew as well as a Greek grammar. This distinguished humanist became involved in a controversy with the Dominicans of Cologne, who wished to burn all the Hebrew literature except the Old Testament. The Humanists all rallied in support of their chief, to whom heresy was imputed, and their success in this wide-spread conflict helped forward their cause. Ulrich von Hutten, one of the young knights who belonged to the literary school, and others of the same class, made effective use, against their illiterate antagonists, of the weapons of satire and ridicule.
ERASMUS.—The prince of the Humanists was Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536). No literary man has ever enjoyed a wider fame during his own lifetime. He was not less resplendent for his wit than for his learning. Latin was then the vehicle of intercourse among the educated. In that tongue the books of Erasmus were written, and they were eagerly read in all the civilized countries. He studied theology in Paris; lived for a number of years in England, where, in company with More and Colet, he fostered the new studies; and finally took up his abode at Basel. In early youth, against his will, he had been for a while an inmate of a cloister. The idleness, ignorance, self-indulgence, and artificial austerities, which frequently belonged to the degenerate monasticism of the day, furnished him with engaging themes of satire. But in his Praise of Folly, and in his Colloquies, the two most diverting of his productions, he lashes the foibles and sins of many other classes, among whom kings and popes are not spared. By such works as his editions of the Church Fathers, and his edition of the Greek Testament, as well as by his multifarious correspondence, he exerted a powerful influence in behalf of culture. If he incurred the hostility of the conservative Churchmen, he still adhered to the Roman communion, and won unbounded applause from the advocates of liberal studies and of practical religious reforms.
LITERATURE IN ITALY.—The first effect of the revival of letters in Italy was to check original production in literature. The charm of the ancient authors who were brought out of their tombs, the belles-lettres studies, and the criticism awakened by them, naturally had this effect for a time. Italy had two great authors in the vernacular, the poet Ariosto (1474-1533), and Machiavelli: it had, besides, one famous historian, Guicciardini (1482-1540).
RENAISSANCE OF ART.—This period was not simply an era of grand exploration and discovery, and of the new birth of letters: it was the brilliant dawn of a new era in art. Sculpture and painting broke loose from their subordination to Church architecture. Painting, especially, attained to a far richer development.
ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.—In architecture and sculpture, the influence of the antique styles was potent. Under the auspices of Brunelleschi (1377-1446), the Pitti Palace and other edifices of a like kind had been erected at Florence. At Rome, Bramante (who died in 1515), and, in particular, Michael Angelo (1475-1564), who was a master in the three arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and a poet as well, were most influential. The great Florentine artist Ghiberti (1378-1455), in the bronze gates of the Baptistery, exhibited the perfection of bas-relief. The highest power of Michael Angelo, as a sculptor, is seen in his statue of Moses at Rome, and in the sepulchers of Julian and Lorenzo de Medici at Florence. A student of his works, Cellini (1500-1571) is one of the men of genius of that day, who, like his master, was eminently successful in different branches of art. In the same period, there were sculptors of high talent in Germany, especially at Nuremberg, where Adam Kraft (1429-1507), and Peter Vischer (1435-1529), whose skill is seen in the bronze tomb of Sebaldus, in the church of that saint, are the most eminent. After the death of Michael Angelo, in Italy there was a decline in the style of sculpture, which became less noble and more affected.
PAINTING IN ITALY.—The ancients had less influence on the schools of painting than on sculpture. In painting, as we have seen, Giotto (1266-1337), a contemporary of the poet Dante, and Cimabue (who died about 1302), had led the way. The art of perspective was mastered; and real life, more or less idealized, was the subject of delineation. In Italy, there arose various distinct styles or schools. The Florentine school reached its height of attainment in the majestic works of Michael Angelo, the frescos of the Sistine Chapel at Rome. The Roman school is best seen in the stanzas of the Vatican, by Raphael (1483-1520), and in the ideal harmony and beauty of his Madonnas. Prior to Michael Angelo and Raphael, there was the symbolic religious art of the Umbrian painters. Of these, the chief was Fra Angelico (1387-1455), the devout monk who transferred to the canvas the tenderness and fervor of his own gentle spirit. The Venetian school, with its richness of color, has left splendid examples of its power in the portraits of Titian (1477-1576), the works of Paul Veronese (who died in 1588), and the more passionate products of the pencil of Tintoretto (who died in 1594). The Lombard school has for its representatives the older contemporary of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who combines perfection of outward form with deep spirituality, and by whom The Last Supper was painted on the wall of the cloister at Milan; and Correggio (1494-1534), whose play of tender sensibility, and skill in the contrasts of light and shade in color, are exhibited in The Night, or Worship of the Magi (at Dresden), and in his frescos at Parma. The school of Bologna, founded by the three Caracci, numbers in its ranks Guido Rent (1575-1642), gifted with imagination and sensibility, and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), who depicted the more wild and somber aspects of nature and of life.
MICHAEL ANGELO AND RAPHAEL.—The two foremost names in the history of Italian art are Michael Angelo and Raphael. "If there is one man who is a more striking representative of the Renaissance than any of his contemporaries, it is Michael Angelo. In him character is on a par with genius. His life of almost a century, and marvelously active, is spotless. As an artist, we can not believe that he can be surpassed. He unites in his wondrous individuality the two master faculties, which are, so to speak, the poles of human nature, whose combination in the same individual creates the sovereign greatness of the Tuscan school,—invention and judgment,—a vast and fiery imagination, directed by a method precise, firm, and safe." Raphael lacks the grandeur and the many-sided capacity of the great master by whom he was much influenced. Raphael "had a nature which converted every thing to beauty." He produced in a short life an astonishing number of works of unequal merit; but to all of them he imparted a peculiar charm, derived from "an instinct for beauty, which was his true genius."
PAINTING IN THE NETHERLANDS.—In the Netherlands, a school of painting arose under the brothers Van Eyck (1366-1426, 1386-1440). One of them, John, was the first artist to paint in oil. At a later day, a class of painters, of whom Rubens (1577-1640) is the most distinguished, followed more the track of the ancients and of the Italian school. These belonged to Flanders and Brabant; while in Holland a school sprang up of a more original and independent cast, in which genius of the highest order was manifested in the person of Rembrandt (1607-1669), its most eminent master.
PAINTING IN GERMANY AND FRANCE.—In Germany, a school marked by peculiarities of its own was represented by Hans Holbein (who died in 1543), and by Albert Dürer the Nuremberg artist (1471-1528). In Spain, Murillo (1617-1682) combined inspiration with technical skill, and stands on a level with the renowned Italians. Velasquez (1599-1660), an artist of extraordinary power, is most distinguished for his portraits. The French artists mostly followed the Italian styles. Claude Lorraine (1600-1682) was the painter of landscapes that are luminous in sunlight and atmosphere. In England, the humorous Hogarth (1697-1764) was much later.
MUSIC.—Music shared in the prosperity of the sister arts. The interest awakened in its improvement paved the way in Italy for Palestrina (1514-1594), whose genius and labors constitute an epoch. In Germany, Luther became one of the most efficient promoters of musical culture in connection with public worship. The great German composers, Bach (1685-1750) and Händel (1685-1759), belong to a subsequent period: they are, however, in some degree the fruit of seed sown earlier.
LITERATURE.—For works on general history, see p. 16. For general histories of particular countries, see p. 359.
On Modern Times. Dyer's History of Modern Europe; Duruy's History of Modern Times [1453-1789]; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Générale, Vol. IV.; The Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I.: The Renaissance; Heeren, Political System of Europe; Historical Treatises (1 vol.); Heeren u. Ukert, Geschichte der europäisch. Staaten (76 vols. 1829 75); T. ARNOLD'S Lectures on Modern History; Michelet's Modern History (1 vol.), Yonge's Three Centuries of Modern History.
On the Age of the Renaissance. Symonds's Renaissance in Italy (5 vols.); BURCKHARDT'S The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy (2 vols.); REUMONT'S Lorenzo de' Medici (2 vols); Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici; VILLARI'S Machiavelli and his Times; Machiavelli, History of Florence; Oliphant, Makers of Florence: Dante', Giotto, Savonarola, and their city (1 vol.); Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des classischen alterthums (1859); Lanzi, History of Painting (3 vols.); Vasari, Lives of Painters, Sculptors, and Architects; Crowe and Cavalcasselle, History of Painting in North Italy [1300-1500] (2 vols., 1871); Crowe, Handbook of Painting: the German, Flemish and Dutch Schools (2 parts, 1874); Eastlake, Handbook of Painting, the Italian Schools (based on Kugler, 2 parts, 1874); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, Life of Titian (2 vols.); Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists (14 vols.); Mrs. Jameson, Lives of Italian Painters; Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo (2 vols.); Crowe and Cavalcasselle, Life and Works of Raphael; Fergusson, History of Modern Styles of Architecture; RUGE'S Geschichte d. Zeitalters d. Entdeckungen (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); GEIGER'S Renaissance und Humanismus in Italien und Deutschland (1 vol. in Oncken's Series); Lives of Erasmus, by Le Clerc, Jortin, Knight, Burigny (2 vols.), Froude, Emerton, Drummond (2 vols.); Lives of Columbus, by Irving, Major (1847), Harrisse (1884), Markham (1892), Winsor; PRESCOTT'S History of Ferdinand and Isabella, History of the Conquest of Mexico, and History of the Conquest of Peru; Robertson, History of America; Beazly, Dawn of Modern Geography (2 vols.); Fiske, Discovery of America (2 vols.); Payne, America (2 vols.); Scebohm's Oxford Reformers; Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch; Creighton, History of the Papacy during the Reformation (Vols. I.-IV.); Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages (3 vols.); Janssen, History of the German People at the Close of the Middle Ages (8 vols.); Whitcomb, Source Books of the Italian and German Renaissance; Grant, The French Monarchy (2 vols.); Johnson, European History in the Sixteenth Century.
The general stir in men's minds, as indicated in the revival of learning and in remarkable inventions and discoveries, was equally manifest in great debates and changes in religion. One important element and fruit of the Renaissance is here seen. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the nations of Western Europe were all united in one Church, of which the Pope was the acknowledged head. There were differences as to the extent of his proper authority; sects had sprung up at different times; and there had arisen leaders, like Wickliffe and Huss, at war with the prevailing system. Ecclesiastical sedition, however, had been mostly quelled. Yet there existed a great amount of outspoken and latent discontent. First, complaints were loud against maladministration in Church affairs. There were extortions and other abuses that excited disaffection. Secondly, the authority exercised by the Pope was charged with being inconsistent with the rights of civil rulers and of national churches. Thirdly, disputes sprang up, both in regard to various practices deemed objectionable, like prayers for the dead, and the invocation of saints, and also concerning important doctrines, like the doctrine of the mass or the Lord's Supper, and the part that belongs to faith in the Christian method of salvation. Out of this ferment arose what is called the Protestant Reformation. The Teutonic nations generally broke off from the Church of Rome, and renounced their allegiance to the Pope. The Latin or Romanic nations, for the most part, still adhered to him. As the common idea was that there should be uniformity of belief and worship in a state, civil wars arose on the question which form of belief should dominate. Germany was desolated for thirty years by a terrible struggle. Yet, in all the conflicts between kingdoms and states in this period, it was plain that political motives, or the desire of national aggrandizement, were commonly strong enough to override religious differences.
When there was some great interest of a political or dynastic sort at stake, those that differed in religion most widely would frequently assist one another. It is in this period that we see Spain, under Charles V. and Philip II., reach the acme of its power, and then sink into comparative weakness.
BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION.—The Reformation began in Germany, where there was a great deal of discontent with the way in which the Church was governed and managed, and on account of the large amounts of money carried out of the country on various grounds for ecclesiastical uses at Rome. The leader of the movement, Martin Luther, was the son of a poor miner, and was born at Eisleben in 1483. He was an Augustinian monk, and had been made professor of theology, and preacher at Wittenberg, by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise (1508). Luther was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers, and a hard student, of a genial and joyous nature, yet not without a deep vein of reflection, tending even to melancholy. He had a strong will, and was vigorous and vehement in controversy. He had been afflicted with profound religious anxieties; but in the study of St. Paul and St. Augustine, and after much inward wrestling, he emerged from them into a state of mental peace. The immediate occasion of disturbance, the spark that kindled the flame, was the sale of indulgences in Saxony by a Dominican monk named Tetzel. Indulgences were the remission, total or partial, of penances, and, in theory, always presupposed repentance; but, as the business was managed in Germany at that time, it amounted in the popular apprehension to a sale of absolution from guilt, or to the ransom of deceased friends from purgatory for money. These gross abuses were painful to sincere friends of religion. In 1517 Luther posted on the door of the church at Wittenberg his celebrated ninety-five theses. It was customary in those days for public debates to take place in universities, where, as in jousts and tournaments among knights, scholars offered to defend propositions in theology and philosophy against all comers. Such were the "theses" of Luther on indulgences. The public mind was in such a state that a great commotion was kindled by them. Conflict spread; and the name of Luther became famous as a stanch antagonist of ecclesiastical abuses, and a fearless champion of reform. The Elector, a religious man, calm and cautious in his temper, was friendly to Luther, often sought to curb him, but stretched over him the shield of his protection.
LUTHER AND LEO X.—Pope Leo X; was of the house of Medici, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He had been made nominally a cardinal at the age of thirteen, and had advanced to the highest station in the Church. He was much absorbed in matters pertaining to learning and art, and in political affairs, and at first looked upon this Saxon disturbance as a mere squabble of monks. He attempted ineffectually to bring Luther to submission and quietness, first through his legate Cajetan, a scholarly Italian, who met him at Augsburg (1518), and then by a second messenger, Miltitz (1519), a Saxon by birth. A turning-point in Luther's course was a public disputation at Leipsic, before Duke George; for ducal Saxony was hostile to him. With Luther, on that occasion, was Philip Melanchthon, the young professor of Greek at Wittenberg, who was a great scholar, and a man of mild and amiable spirit. He became a very effective and noted auxiliary of the reformer, and acquired the honorary title of "preceptor of Germany." In the Leipsic debate, when Luther was opposed by the Catholic champion Eck, and by others, his own views in opposition to the papacy became more distinct and decided. He soon disputed the right of the Pope to make laws, to canonize, etc., denied the doctrine of purgatory, and avowed his sympathy with Huss. He issued a stirring Address to the Christian Nobles of the German Nation. In 1520 he was excommunicated by the Pope, but the elector paid no regard to the papal bull. Luther himself went so far as publicly to burn it at the gates of the town, in the presence of an assembly of students and others gathered to witness the scene. Both parties had now taken the extreme step: there was now open war between them. Jurists, who were aggrieved by the interference of ecclesiastical with civil courts, supported Luther. So the Humanists who had defended Reuch-lin, among whom were the youthful literary class of which Ulrich von Hutten was one, became his allies. Many among the inferior clergy and the monastic orders sympathized with him.
CONDITION OF GERMANY.—It was now for the Empire to decide between Luther and the Pope. The efforts to create a better political system under Maximilian had proved in the main abortive. There was strife between the princes and the knights, as well as between princes and bishops. The cities complained bitterly of oppressive taxation and of lawless depredations. There was widespread disaffection, threatening open revolt, among the peasants. Maximilian had been thwarted politically by the popes. At first he was glad to hear of Luther's rebellion. He said to Frederick the Wise, "Let the Wittenberg monk be taken good care of: we may some day want him." In the latter part of his reign his interests drew him nearer to Rome.
ELECTION OF CHARLES V.—On the death of Maximilian (1519), as the Elector Frederick would not take the imperial crown, there were two rival candidates,—Francis I., the king of France, and Charles I., of Spain, the grandson of Maximilian. Francis was a gallant and showy personage, but it was feared that he would be despotic; and the electors made choice of Charles. The extent of Charles's hereditary dominions in Germany, and the greatness of his power, would make him, it was thought, the best defender of the empire against the Turks. The electors, at his choice, bound him in a "capitulation" to respect the authority of the Diet, and not to bring foreign troops into the country. Charles was the inheritor of Austria and the Low Countries, the crowns of Castile and Aragon, of Navarre, of Naples and Sicily, together with the territories of Spain in the New World; and now he was at the head of the Holy Roman Empire. The concentration of so much power in a single hand could not but provoke alarm in all other potentates. The great rival of Charles was Francis I., and the main prize in the contest was dominion in Italy. Charles was a sagacious prince; from his Spanish education, strongly attached to the Roman-Catholic system, and, in virtue of the imperial office, the protector of the Church. Yet with him political considerations, during most of his life, were uppermost. He made the mistake of not appreciating the strength that lay in the convictions at the root of the Protestant movement. He over-estimated the power of political combinations.
DIET OF WORMS.—Charles V. first came into Germany in 1521, and met the Diet of the empire at Worms. There Luther appeared under the protection of a safe-conduct. He manifested his wonted courage; and in the presence of the emperor, and of the august assembly, he refused to retract his opinions, planting himself on the authority of the Scriptures, and declining to submit to the verdicts of Pope or council. After he had left Worms, a sentence of outlawry was passed against him. Charles at that moment was bent on the re-conquest of Milan, which the French had taken; and the Pope was friendly to his undertaking, although Leo X. had been opposed to Charles's election.
FRANCIS I.—Francis I. (1515-1547) aimed to complete the work begun by his predecessors, and to make the French monarchy absolute. By a concordat with the Pope (1516), the choice of bishops and abbots was given into the king's hand, while the Pope was to receive the annates, or the first year's revenue of all such benefices. Francis continued the practice of selling judicial places begun under Louis XII.. He was bent on maintaining the unity of France, and, as a condition, the Catholic system. But he was always ready to help the Protestants in Germany when he could thereby weaken Charles. For the same end, he was even ready to join hands with the Turk.
RIVALRY OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS.—Charles claimed the old imperial territories of Milan and Genoa. He claimed, also, a portion of Southern France,—the duchy of Burgundy, which he did not allow that Louis XI. had the right to confiscate. Francis claimed Naples in virtue of the rights of the house of Anjou; also Spanish Navarre, which Ferdinand of Aragon had seized, and the suzerainty of Flanders and Artois. He had gained a brilliant victory over the Swiss at the battle of Marignano, in 1515, and reconquered Milan. He concluded a treaty of peace with the Swiss,—the treaty of Freiburg (1516), which gave to the king, in return for a yearly pension, the liberty to levy troops in Switzerland. This treaty continued until the French Revolution.
FIRST WAR OF CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1521-1526).—Hostilities between Francis and Charles commenced in Italy in 1521. The French were driven from Milan in 1522, which was again placed in the hands of Francesco Sforza; and the emperor was soon master of all Northern Italy. England and the Pope sided with Charles; and on the death of Leo X., a former tutor of the emperor was made his successor, under the name Adrian VI. (1522). The most eminent and the richest man in France, next to the king, Charles of Bourbon, constable of the kingdom, joined the enemies of Francis. He complained of grievances consequent on the enmity of Louisa of Savoy, the mother of the king, and attempted, with the aid of the emperor and Henry VIII., to create a kingdom for himself in South-eastern France. But the national spirit in France was too strong for such a scheme of dismemberment and foreign conquest to succeed, and all that Charles gained in the end was one brave general. In the winter of 1524-25 Francis crossed the Alps at the head of a brilliant army, and recaptured Milan; but he was defeated and taken prisoner at Pavia, and the French army was almost destroyed. Charles was able to dictate terms to his captive. It was stipulated in the Peace of Madrid (1526), that Francis should renounce all claim to Milan, Genoa, and Naples, and to the suzerainty of Flanders and Artois, cede the duchy of Burgundy, and deliver his sons as hostages, terms which could not be fulfilled.
LUTHER AT THE WARTBURG.—We have now to glance at the events in Germany during the absence of Charles V. Luther, although under the ban of the empire, was in no immediate peril while he staid in Saxony. The elector, however, thought it prudent to place him in the castle of the Wartburg, where he could have a safe and quiet asylum. There he began his translation of the Bible, which, apart from its religious influence, from the vigor and racy quality of its style made an epoch in the literary history of the German people. It was a work of great labor. "The language used by Luther in both the Old and New Testaments did not exist before in so pure, powerful, and genuine a form." While Luther was engaged in this work, a radical movement broke out at Wittenberg, of which Carlstadt, one of his supporters, was the principal leader. He was for carrying changes in worship to such an extreme, and for introducing them so abruptly, that the greatest disorder was threatened. Against the wish of the elector, Luther left his retreat, and by his discourses and personal presence quieted the disturbance.
PROGRESS AND REACTION.—No attempt was made to carry out the Worms decree. The reason was that the influential classes were so much in sympathy with Luther's cause. The Imperial Chamber, which ruled in the emperor's absence, would do nothing against him. Its committee refused to carry out the decree; and a list of "one hundred grievances" was sent to Pope Adrian VI., of which the German nation had reason to complain (1523). Events, however, soon occurred that were unfavorable in their effect on the Lutheran movement. The knights banded together in large numbers, under Franz van Sickingen, and tried by force of arms to reduce the power of the princes. Luther showed no favor to their plans and doings; but, as their leaders had applauded him, a reaction against innovations, including changes in doctrine, was the natural consequence. Pope Adrian VI. was earnestly desirous of practical reforms; but his successor, Clement VII. (1523-1534), was of the house of Medici, and a man of the world, like Leo X. An alliance was made by the Catholic princes and bishops of South Germany at Ratisbon in 1524, to do away with certain abuses, but to prevent the spread of the new doctrine.
THE PEASANTS' WAR.—In 1524 a great revolt of the peasants broke out, and the next year it became general. They were groaning under intolerable burdens of taxation, and other forms of oppression. They demanded liberty in church affairs, and for the preaching of the new doctrine, and release from feudal tyranny. Luther felt and said that they were wronged grievously; but when they took up arms, he, and with him the great middle class which he led, took sides strongly against them. The revolt was put down, and its authors inhumanly punished. For a time the peasants had wonderful success. Napoleon wondered that Charles V. did not seize the occasion to make Germany a united empire. Then seemed to be a time when the princes could have been stripped of their power. One of the foremost leaders of the rebellion was Thomas Münzer. On the defeat of the peasants, he was captured and beheaded.
SECOND WAR BETWEEN CHARLES AND FRANCIS (1527-1529).—In the Peace of Madrid, Charles and Francis had agreed to proceed against the Turks and against the heretics. But, after the release of Francis, he repudiated the concessions before mentioned (p. 400), which were made, he alleged, under coercion; and with Clement VII. he formed a conspiracy against the emperor. The Diet of Spires, in 1526, decided to leave each of the component parts of the empire, until the meeting of a general council, to decide for itself as to the course to be taken in the matter of religion and in respect to the edict of Worms. In 1527 a German army, largely composed of Lutherans, led by Constable Bourbon and George Frundsberg, stormed and captured Rome. The Pope made an alliance with Henry VIII. A French army under Lautrec appeared at Naples, but it was so weakened by a fearful pestilence that it was easily destroyed. The Pope concluded peace with Charles in 1529. The emperor promised to exterminate heresy. In the Peace of Cambray, Francis renounced his claims on Italy, Flanders, and Artois: Charles engaged for the present not to press his claims upon Burgundy, and set free the French princes.
TO THE PEACE OF NUREMBERG (1532).—The Diet of Spires in 1529 reversed the policy of tacit toleration. It passed an edict forbidding the progress of the Reformation in the states which had not accepted it, and allowing in the reformed states full liberty of worship to the adherents of the old confession. The protest by the Lutheran princes and cities, against the decree of the Diet, gave the name of Protestants to their party. The successful defense of Vienna against an immense army of the Turks under Soliman delivered Charles for the moment from anxiety in that quarter. A theological controversy between the Lutheran and the Swiss reformers, on the Lord's Supper, made a division of feeling between them. A conference of the two parties at Marburg, in which Luther and Melanchthon met Zwingli and his associates, brought no agreement. Every thing was propitious for an effort at coercion; and this was resolved upon at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, where the emperor was present in person, and where Melanchthon presented the celebrated Protestant Confession of Faith. The threats against the Protestant princes induced them to form the League of Smalcald for mutual defense. But it was found impracticable to carry out the measures of repression against the Lutherans. Bavaria was jealous of the house of Hapsburg, and opposed to the plan of the emperor to make his brother, Ferdinand of Austria, his successor. The Turks under Soliman were threatening. France and Denmark were ready to help the Protestants. Accordingly the Peace of Nuremberg was concluded in 1532, in which religious affairs were to be left as they were, and both parties were to combine against the common enemy of Christendom.
THE SWISS REFORMATION: ZWINGLI.—The founder of Protestantism in Switzerland was Ulrich Zwingli. He was born in 1484. His father was the leading man in a mountain village. The son, at Vienna and at Basel, became a proficient in the humanist studies. He read the Greek authors and the Bible in the original. A curate first at Glarus, and then at Einsiedeln, he became pastor at Zurich. As early as 1518 he preached against the sale of indulgences. He was a scholarly man, bluff and kindly in his ways, and an impressive orator. The Swiss were corrupted by their employment as mercenary soldiers, hired by France, by the Pope, or by the emperor. Of the demoralizing influence of this practice, Zwingli became deeply convinced; and his exertions as a Church reformer were mingled with a patriotic zeal for the moral and political regeneration of Switzerland. Mainly by his influence, Zurich separated from the jurisdiction of the bishop of Constance, and became Protestant in 1524. The example of Zurich was followed by Berne (1528) and by Basel (1529). Zwingli agreed with Luther on the two main points of the sole authority of the Scriptures, and the doctrine of salvation by faith alone; but on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper he went farther in his dissent from the Church of Rome. This made Luther and his followers stand aloof when cordial fellowship was proposed between the two parties.
CIVIL STRIFE: DEATH OF ZWINGLI.—The aim of Zwingli was to establish a republican constitution in the several cantons, and also in the confederation as a body, where the five Forest Cantons had an undue share of power. These adhered to the old Church. In Berne the oligarchic party was supplanted by the republican, reforming party,—an event of decisive importance. As the irritation increased between the Forest Cantons and the cities, the former entered into a league with Ferdinand of Austria, and the cities leaned for support on the German states in sympathy with their opinions. A treaty was made (1529), but each side accused the other of breaking it. At length war began: Berne failed to come to the help of Zurich. Each city wished to be the metropolis of the reformed confederation. The forces of Zurich were vanquished at Cappel, where Zwingli himself, who was on the field in the capacity of a chaplain, was slain (1531). By the peace of Cappel in 1531, Protestantism was not coerced, but a check was put upon its progress. Neither party was strong enough to subdue the other.
PROTESTANTISM IN SCANDINAVIA.—In the Scandinavian countries, monarchical power was built up by means of the Reformation. The union of Calmar (1397) under Queen Margaret, between Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, had been a dynastic union. The several peoples were not united in feeling. The sovereign, moreover, had his power limited by a strong feudal nobility, and by a rich Church impatient of control. First the Church was overcome by means of Protestantism, and then the nobles.
THE REFORMATION IN DENMARK—On the accession of Christian I. of Oldenburg (1448-1481), the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig became connected with Denmark in a personal union. His grandson, Christian II. (1513-1523), did not rule the duchies, which were governed by Frederic I., who afterwards succeeded Christian II. as king of Denmark. Christian II. was bent on putting down the aristocracy, lay and clerical, but lacked the moral qualities necessary to success in so difficult a task. He at first favored Protestantism from political motives. He hoped to bring the Swedes into subjection by the aid of the Danes, and then to subdue the Danish nobility. In Sweden the nobles practically ruled; and the regency was in the hands of the Stures, who befriended the common people, and were opposed by the other nobles and the clergy. Christian made use of these divisions, and of the help of German and French troops, to get possession of Stockholm (1520). He took the Catholic side. But his perfidy, and the massacre of eminent Swedes,—known as the Massacre of Stockholm,—excited an inextinguishable hatred against Denmark. The Danish nobles feared the same sort of treatment. The king's attempts at reform offended them without pleasing the peasants, and a revolution took place which dethroned him. Duke Frederic of Schleswig was made king (1523): the duchies and Denmark were again together. Frederic swore not to introduce the Reformation, nor to attack Catholicism. But he was an ardent Lutheran. The new doctrine had come into the land, and was spreading. The nobles, who coveted the possessions of the Church, espoused it. At the Diet of Odensee, in 1527, toleration was granted to Lutheranism. On Frederic's death, in 1533, an effort of the bishops to restore the exclusive domination of the old system of religion was defeated. Christian III. was made king; and at a Diet at Copenhagen in 1536, the Reformation was legalized, and the Lutheran system, with bishops or superintendents, was established.
THE REFORMATION IN SWEDEN.—After the massacre of Stockholm, Denmark was detested by the Swedes. A great political revolution occurred, which involved also a religious revolution. The author of the change, and the real founder of the Swedish monarchy, was Gustavus Vasa, a young Swede of noble family, who had been held as a captive in Copenhagen, but had escaped and returned to his country. He was of imposing presence, prudent yet daring, and with a natural gift of eloquence. Amid great dangers and sufferings, such as tradition ascribed to King Alfred of England, he succeeded, at the head of a force gathered to him in the province of Dâlecarlia, in gaining the most important places in the country, and was proclaimed king in 1523. He was not deeply interested in the religious controversy, although he favored Lutheranism; but he made it his steady aim to break down the clerical aristocracy, to weaken the nobles, and to organize a strong and prosperous monarchy. He proceeded carefully: but the peasants, who had been his warmest supporters, were strongly attached to the old Church; and the opposition to his measures from all quarters was such that at the Diet of Westeräs, in 1527, he took the bold step of offering to lay down the crown. At this Diet he had assembled representatives of the citizens and peasants, as well as the clergy and nobles. He proposed to pay an enormous debt which was due to Lübeck, by using the colossal wealth of the Church for this purpose, and to shake off the monopoly of trade which the Hanse towns enjoyed. Finding himself withstood, he renounced the throne. The distraction and tumults which followed his act of relinquishing the crown were such that a great party of the nobles joined him. Three days after his abdication, he was recalled to the throne: the clergy submitted abjectly, and the Church was no longer a power in the state, or possessed of wealth. Trade was released from its bondage to Lübeck and the other towns; commerce was opened with foreign countries; and a market was provided for iron, the main product of the country. The nobles were held in subjection. The Lutheran doctrine made very rapid progress, and became dominant.
ENGLAND: HENRY VIII. AND LUTHER.—In England, as in France, there were earnest desires for church reform, partly aroused by such serious-minded humanists as Colet, More, and Erasmus. Even Cardinal Wolsey sympathized with this movement, and intended to endow colleges and bishoprics out of the confiscated wealth of the more useless monasteries. What might have been a slow development of religious thought was transformed by the requirements of the king's own policy. Of all the Tudor princes none had a more obstinate and tyrannical will than Henry VIII. The advantages derived from the effect of the civil wars, which had reduced the strength and numbers of the nobility, and the natural English jealousy, always shown, of foreign and papal supremacy, enabled Henry to break off the connection of England with Rome; while, at the same time, he resisted Protestantism and persecuted its adherents. Proud of his theological acquirements, he appeared, in 1522, as an author against Luther, in a book in defense of the Seven Sacraments, for which he received from the Pope the title of Defender of the Faith. The vituperative character of Luther's answer confirmed him in his hatred of the new doctrine. "When God," said the blunt Saxon reformer, "wants a fool, he turns a king into a theological writer."
THE DIVORCE QUESTION.—What made the breach between Henry VIII. and the papacy was the question of the king's divorce. He had been married in his twelfth year to Catherine of Aragon, the aunt of Charles V. and the widow of Henry's deceased brother Arthur (who had been married to her in 1501, when he was fifteen years old, and had died the next year). A dispensation permitting the marriage of Henry had been granted by Pope Julius II. How far Henry's passion for Anne Boleyn, whom he desired to wed, was at the root of his scruples respecting the validity of his marriage, it may not be easy to decide. His application to Clement VII. for a separation reached the Pope after the Peace of Madrid, when there was a desire to lessen the power of the emperor. Cardinal Wolsey, the favorite counselor of Henry, who himself aspired to the papal office, was obliged to help on the cause of his imperious master. But whatever disposition there was at Rome to gratify Henry, there was no inclination to hurry the proceedings. There were long delays in England, whither a papal legate, Campeggio, had been sent to investigate and determine the cause. In 1529 the legates decided that the case must be determined at Rome. This the queen had before demanded in vain. Aside from other objections to the divorce, Clement VII. was now at peace with Charles V., whom it was undesirable to offend. The incensed king took the matter into his own hands. Wolsey, having been one of the legates, was deprived of all his dignities: he was charged with treason, his strength melted away on his fall from the heights of power, and he died a broken-spirited man.
SEPARATION OF ENGLAND FROM ROME.—Henry now gave free rein to the spirit of opposition in Parliament to Rome. He took for his principal minister, who became vicegerent in ecclesiastical affairs, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell, unlike Wolsey, was hostile to the temporal power of Rome. He made Thomas Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, who was inclined toward Protestant views, but, though sincere in his beliefs, was a man of pliant temper, indisposed to resist the king's will, preferring to bow to a storm, and to wait for it to pass by. By Cranmer the divorce was decreed, but this was after the marriage with Anne Boleyn had taken place. Henry was excommunicated by the Pope. Acts of Parliament abolished the Pope's, and established the king's, supremacy in the Church of England. In 1536 the cloisters were abolished. Their property was confiscated, and fell to a large extent into the hands of the nobles and the gentry. This measure bound them to the policy of the sovereign. The mitered abbots were expelled from the House of Lords, which left the preponderance of power with the lay nobles. The hierarchy bowed to the will of the king.
THE TWO PARTIES.—There were two parties in England among the upholders of the king's supremacy. There were the Protestants by conviction, who were for spreading the new doctrine. This had already taken root and spread in the universities, and in some other places in the country. The new literary culture had paved the way for it. In the North, there were still left many Lollards, disciples of Wickliffe. Cromwell, Cranmer, and one of the bishops, Latimer, were prominent leaders of this party. Against them were the adherents of the Catholic theology, such as Gardiner, Tunstal of Durham, and other bishops. At first the king inclined towards the first of these two parties. One of his most important acts was the ordering of a translation of the Bible into English, a copy of which was to be placed in every church. But a popular rebellion in 1536 was followed by a change of ecclesiastical policy. The Six Articles were passed, asserting the Roman Catholic doctrines, and punishing those who denied transubstantiation with death. The queen, Anne Boleyn, who was an adherent of the Protestant side, was executed on the charge of infidelity to her marriage vows (1536). A few years later Cromwell was sent to the scaffold because the king no longer approved of his policy and, seeing how unpopular he had become, used him as a scapegoat (1540). Lutheran bishops were thrown into the Tower: Cranmer alone was shielded by the king's personal favor, and by his own prudence. This system of a national church, of which the king, and not the Pope, was the head, where the doctrine was Roman Catholic, and the great ecclesiastical officers were appointed, like civil officers, by the monarch, was the creation of Henry VIII. His strong will was able to keep down the conflicting parties. Despite his sensuality and cruelty, he was a popular sovereign. One of his principal crimes was the execution of Sir Thomas More for refusing to take the oath of supremacy because this contained an affirmation of the invalidity of the king's marriage with Catherine. More was one of the noblest men in England, a man who combined vigor with gentleness. He was willing to swear that the children of Anne were lawful heirs to the throne, because Parliament, he believed, could regulate the succession; but this did not satisfy the tyrannical monarch. In the latter portion of his reign he grew more suspicious, willful, and cruel.
THE PARTIES IN GERMANY, 1532-1542.—For ten years after the Peace of Nuremberg, the Protestants in Germany were left unmolested. The menacing attitude of the Turks, and the occupations of the emperor in Italy and in other lands, rendered it impossible to interfere with them. Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, a chivalrous Protestant prince, led the way in the armed restoration of Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who had been driven out of his dominion. Thus a Protestant prince was established in the heart of Southern Germany (1534). In Westphalia, a fanatical branch of the Anabaptist sect at Münster, with whom the Lutherans did not sympathize, was broken up by the neighboring Catholic princes. The overthrow of the power of Lübeck and of the Hanseatic League did not check the advance of Lutheranism. It continued to make great progress in different directions. The Smalcald League was extended. A league of the Catholic states was formed at Nuremberg in 1538. During three years (1538-1541) efforts were made by the emperor to secure peace and union. Of these the Conference and Diet of Ratisbon in 1541 is the most remarkable. The Protestants and Catholics could not agree upon statements of doctrine; but the necessity of getting Protestant help against the Turks compelled Charles to sanction the Peace of Nuremberg, and to make to the Lutherans other important concessions. This arrangement the emperor regarded as only a temporary truce. Among the conquests of Protestantism after the Peace of Nuremberg, and prior to 1544, were Brandenburg and Ducal Saxony, whose rulers adopted the new doctrine. It was spreading in Austria, in Bavaria, and in other states. Duke Henry of Brunswick fell into conflict with the Smalcaldic League, and was conquered, so that his principality became Protestant. Even the ecclesiastical elector of Cologne was taking steps towards joining the Protestant side. This would have given to the Lutherans a majority in the electoral college. The bishoprics with temporal power were numerous in Germany. If they were secularized, the old religious system would be deprived of a principal support.
THE SMALCALDIC WAR.—Charles V. was now secretly resolved to coerce the Protestants in Germany, and silently made his preparations for war. Before hostilities commenced, Luther died (1546). The emperor concluded the Peace of Crespy, after a fourth war with Francis I. It was a part of the agreement, that they should act jointly against the heretics. But as Francis in the last two wars against the emperor (1536-1538, 1542-1544) had taken for allies the Turks under Soliman, it could not be predicted how long he would abide by his engagements. For the present, Charles was safe in this quarter. He now took pains to shut the eyes of the Protestant princes to their danger. The Smalcaldic League was over-confident of its strength. Its members were discordant among themselves. Of the two chief leaders, the elector of Saxony, John Frederic, was a slow and unskillful general; and Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, a brave and capable soldier, could not take command over an elector. Above all, Maurice, the Duke of Saxony, was in the midst of a quarrel with his relative, the elector, and coveted a part of his territories. Maurice was an able and adroit man, a Protestant, but without the earnest religious convictions that belonged to the electors and to that generation of princes which was passing away. Maurice was won by the emperor, through promises of enrichment and favor, and pledges not to interfere with religion in his principality. Charles might have been prevented from bringing in foreign troops from the Netherlands and from Italy, but the military conduct of the elector was feeble and indecisive. He was defeated and captured in 1547 at Mühlberg, and the surrender of the Landgrave Philip soon followed. The Protestant cause was prostrate. The clever Maurice had his reward: the electoral office was transferred to him; he obtained a goodly portion of the elector's territory.
THE RESULT: THE INTERIM.—Charles was victorious, and apparently master of Germany. The country was occupied by his forces as far north as the Elbe. He was engaged in the work of pacification and of confirming his authority. In 1548 he issued the Interim of Augsburg, in which concessions were made to both parties, which proved satisfactory to neither. Skillful as the emperor was in diplomacy, he always showed weakness in dealing with the religious question. He proceeded to force the new measure on the refractory cities in the South. In the North it had little effect. Maurice modified it in his own dominion. When Charles seemed to himself to be on the eve of a complete triumph, he was deserted by the allies on whom he counted,—Rome, France, and the princes, especially Maurice.
BREACH OF CHARLES WITH ROME.—The emperor's assuming to regulate the affairs of religion was regarded with disfavor at Rome. There had been a constant call for a general council to adjust the religious controversies. Rome, from fear of imperial influence, and for other reasons, had opposed the measure. At length, in 1545, the famous Council of Trent assembled. The emperor wanted that body to begin with measures for the reformation of abuses. He looked for co-operation in his scheme for uniting the parties in Germany. But the council took another path: it began with anathemas against the heretical doctrines. Charles found himself at variance with the policy of Rome, at the moment when he was trying to bring Germany to submission.
DISAFFECTION OF MAURICE.—The emperor's course in Germany produced general alarm. He separated the Netherlands from the jurisdiction of the empire, but settled the succession in the government in the house of Hapsburg. He drove the Diet into other measures which looked towards the acquiring of military supremacy for himself in Germany. He violated his pledges respecting the two captive princes. Philip of Hesse, the father-in-law of Maurice, he treated with great severity and indignity. Threats were thrown out by the counselors of Charles against the other princes, and even against Maurice, who complained of the treatment of Philip, and was sore under the load of unpopularity that rested on him on account of his warfare against his co-religionists, by whom he was considered another Judas.
THE PEACE OF AUGSBURG.—Maurice laid his plans with secrecy and with masterly skill. He secured the coöperation of other German princes. He concluded an alliance with Henry II. of France. He arranged with Magdeburg, which he had been besieging, to make it a place of refuge if there should be need of an asylum. When all was ready, without having excited any suspicion on the part of Charles, he suddenly took the field, marched southward with an army that increased as he advanced, crossed the Alps, and forced the emperor, tormented with the gout, to fly hastily from Innsbruck (1552). The captive princes were released. It was decided that Germany was not to be ruled by Spanish soldiery. The dream of imperial domination vanished. The Protestants were promised by Ferdinand of Austria, in the name of his brother, toleration, and equality of rights. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, the Religious Peace was concluded. Every prince was to be allowed to choose between the Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession, and the religion of the prince was to be that of the land over which he reigned: that is, each government was to choose the creed for its subjects. Ferdinand put in the "ecclesiastical reservation," which provided that if the head of an ecclesiastical state should become a Lutheran, he should resign his benefice. He also declared that the Lutheran subjects of ecclesiastical princes were not to be disturbed. The "reservation" was to please the Catholics: the additional provision was to meet the wishes of the Protestants. Neither stood on the same basis as the other part of the treaty.
From Maurice the electoral dignity descended in the Albertine line of Saxon princes. The Ernestine line retained Weimar, Gotha, etc.
CALVIN.—Second in reputation to Luther only, among the founders of Protestantism, is John Calvin. He was a Frenchman, born in 1509, and was consequently a child when the Saxon Reformation began. He was keen and logical in his mental habit, with a great organizing capacity, naturally of a retiring temper, yet fearless, and endued with extraordinary intensity and firmness of will. A more finished scholar than Luther, he lacked his geniality and tenderness, and his imaginative power. Calvin first studied for the priesthood at Paris; but when his father determined to make him a jurist, he studied law at Orleans and Bourges. Espousing the Protestant doctrines, he was obliged to fly from Paris, and, when still young, published his Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he expounded the Protestant creed in a systematic although fervid way. In his type of theology, he laid much stress on the sovereignty of God, and predestination; and taught a view of the Lord's Supper not so far from that of the old Church as the doctrine of Zwingli, but farther removed from it than was the doctrine of Luther.
THE GENEVAN GOVERNMENT.—In 1536, reluctantly yielding to the exhortations of Farel, a French preacher of the Protestant doctrine at Geneva, Calvin established himself in that city. Geneva was a fragment of the old kingdom of Burgundy. The dukes of Savoy claimed a temporal authority in the city, which was subject to its bishop. The authority of the dukes was overthrown by a revolution, and power passed from the bishop into the hands of the people (1533). The change was effected with the aid of Berne and Freiburg. There had been two parties in Geneva,—the party of the "Confederates," who were for striking hands with the Swiss, and the party of the "Mamelukes," adherents of the dukes. The civil was followed by an ecclesiastical revolution. Protestantism, with the aid of Berne, was legally established (1535). Geneva was a prosperous, gay, and dissolute city. Farel, a popular orator of striking power, unsparing in denunciation, found the people impatient of the restraints that the new religious system which they had adopted laid upon them. The regulations as to doctrine, worship, and discipline, which Calvin and his associates proceeded to introduce, were so distasteful, that the preachers were expelled by the Council and by the Assembly of Citizens from the place. After he had been absent three years, Calvin, in consequence of the increase of disorder and vice, and the distraction occasioned by contending factions, was recalled, and remained in Geneva until his death. He became the virtual lawgiver of the city. He framed a system of ecclesiastical and civil government. It was an ecclesiastical state, in which orthodoxy of belief, and purity of conduct, were not only inculcated by systematic teaching, but enforced by stringent enactments. Offenses comparatively trivial were punished by strict and severe penalties. To the system of church discipline, stretching over the life of every individual, and carried out by the civil magistrates in alliance with the pastors, there was much opposition, which led to outbreakings of violent resistance. But the supporters of Calvin were reinforced by numerous Protestant refugees from France. The improvement of the city in morals and in public order was signal. In the end, Calvin, who was as firm as a rock, triumphed over all opposition. Geneva became a place of resort for exiles and students from various countries. By his writings and correspondence, Calvin's influence spread far and wide. In the affairs of the French Protestants, in particular, his influence was predominant.
SERVETUS.—The Reformers were not, any more than their adversaries, advocates of liberty in religious beliefs and professions. A melancholy example of the prevailing idea, that it was the duty of the civil authority to inflict penalties upon heresy, is the case of Michael Servetus. A Spaniard by birth, with a remarkable aptitude for natural science and medicine, adventurous and fickle, he had published books in which doctrines received by both the great divisions of the Church, especially the doctrine of the Trinity, were assailed. He escaped out of the hands of the Catholics, and came to Geneva. There he was tried for heresy and blasphemy, and was burned at the stake (1553). This was at a time when Calvin was in the midst of his contest with the "Libertines," the party actuated by hostility to him. They appear to have stood behind Servetus in his defiant attitude towards the Genevan authorities.
INFLUENCE OF CALVINISM.—The personal influence of Calvin was directly exerted upon the more cultured and educated. His religious system has wielded a great power, not only on this class, but also over the common people in different countries. Calvinism was never awed by monarchical authority. Like the Church of Rome, it always refused to subordinate the Church and religion to the civil power. It numbered among its votaries many men of dauntless courage and of unbending fidelity to their principles.
THE CATHOLIC REACTION.—The first effectual resistance to the spread of Protestant opinions was made in Italy. In that country, there was opposition to the papacy from those who saw in it an instrument of political disunion, and also from some who were aggrieved by ecclesiastical abuses. The prevailing feeling, however, was that of pride in the papacy, which, in other countries, was attacked as an Italian institution. The humanist learning had done much to undermine belief in the old religious system. In the train of the new studies, came much indifference and infidelity. The books of the Protestant leaders, however, were widely circulated. There were not a few sincere converts to the new doctrine in the cities; but they were chiefly confined to the educated class, and to persons in high station. It took no root among the common people. After the time of the Medici popes, a new spirit of faith and devotion awoke in circles earnestly devoted to the papacy and to the Church. There was at Rome an "Oratory of Divine Love,"—a group of persons who met together for mutual edification. In this class were some, like Contarini, afterwards a cardinal, who were not wholly without sympathy with the Lutheran doctrine as to faith and justification; but out of the same class came others who led in the great Catholic Reaction, which, while it aimed at a rigid reform in morals, was inflexibly hostile to all innovations in doctrine, and was bent on regaining for the Church the ground that had been lost.
THE COUNCIL OF TRENT: CARAFFA.—The Council of Trent was governed in its conclusions by this Catholic reactionary and reforming party. It allowed no curtailing of the prerogatives of the Pope. On points of doctrine in dispute within the pale of the Church, it adopted formulas which the different schools might accept. Practical reforms, for example in respect to the education of the clergy, were adopted; but dogma and teaching were to remain unaltered. Cardinal Caraffa, the most energetic mover in the Catholic reform and restoration, became Pope, under the name of Paul IV. (1555-1559).
THE ORDER OF JESUS.—The Council of Trent, by providing a clear definition of doctrine, cemented unity, and was the first great bulwark raised against Protestantism. Another means of defense, and of attack as well, was provided in new orders, especially the order of Jesuits. This was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish soldier of noble birth, who mingled with the spirit of chivalry a strong devotional sentiment. It was the temper of mediæval knighthood, which still lingered in Spain. Wounded at the siege of Pampeluna, and disabled from war, he had visions of a spiritual knighthood; out of which grew the Society of Jesus, which was sanctioned by Pope Paul III. in 1540. Its members took the monastic vows. They went through a rigorous spiritual drill. They were bound to unquestioning obedience to the Pope. The organization was strict, like that of an army; each province having a provincial at its head, with a general over all. To him all the members were absolutely subject. All other ties were renounced: to serve the Church and the order, was the one supreme obligation.
INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS.—The influence of the Jesuit order was manifold. It was active in preaching, and in hearing confessions. It made the education of youth a great part of its business. Its members found their way into high stations in Church and State: they were in the cabinets of princes. From the beginning, they showed an ardent zeal in missionary labors among the heathen in distant lands, and for the reconquest of countries won by the Protestants.
THE INQUISITION.—Under the auspices of Cardinal Caraffa (Paul IV.), the Inquisition was introduced into Italy (1542), and exerted the utmost vigilance and severity in crushing out the new faith. One of its instruments was the censorship of the press. So thorough was this work, that of the little book on the Benefits of Christ's Death, which had an immense circulation, it has been possible in recent years to find but two or three copies. The "Index" of prohibited books was established. The result of these measures was, that Protestantism was suppressed in Italy, and the type of Catholicism that was partially sympathetic with certain doctrinal features of the Saxon Reform likewise vanished.
CHARACTER OF PHILIP II.—In 1555 Charles V., enfeebled by his lifelong enemy, the gout, resigned his crowns, and devolved on his son, Philip II., the government of the Netherlands, together with the rest of his dominions in Spain, Italy, and America. The closing part of his life, the emperor passed in the secluded convent of Yuste, in Spain, where, notwithstanding the time spent by him in religious exercises, and in his favorite diversion of experimenting with clocks and watches, he remained an attentive observer of public affairs. Political and religious absolutism was the main article in Philip's creed. He was more thoroughly a Spaniard in his tone and temper than his father, who was born in the Netherlands, and always loved the people there, as he was loved by them. Philip was cold and forbidding in his manners. He was shy, as well as haughty, in his deportment to those who approached him. To re-establish everywhere the old religion by the unrelenting exercise of force, was his fixed purpose. Only one thing did he value more; and that was his own power, which he would not suffer Church or clergy to curb or invade. He had few ideas, but was an adept in concealment and treachery. A man of untiring industry, he was a plodder without insight. He lived to see the vast strength which fell to him as a legacy slip out of his hands, and to see Spain sink to a condition of comparative weakness. Charles V. had consolidated his dominion in that country by putting down democratic insurrections. This he had done by military force and the arm of the Inquisition. What Charles had left undone in this line, Philip completed. He quelled the resistance of the Aragonese, and reduced them to submission. Spain swarmed with civil and ecclesiastical officials. The new religious doctrine, which assumed the same type as in Italy, was stifled. The monarch displayed his zeal by personal attendance at the autos da fe, the great public ceremonials for the execution of heretics, where the victims of his intolerance perished. A system of brutal military administration was adopted in the colonies.
STATE OF THE LOW COUNTRIES.—Philip undertook to treat the Netherlands as a Spanish province, and to break down the spirit of local independence. The people of the Low Countries were industrious, intelligent, prosperous, spirited. Each of the seventeen provinces had its own constitution. In the North, it was more democratic; in Flanders and Brabant, there was a landed aristocracy. In all parts of the country, there were local privileges and cherished rights. The population numbered three millions. Antwerp, with its hundred thousand inhabitants, had more trade than any other European city. The Reformation, first in the Lutheran but later in the Calvinistic form, had numerous adherents in the Netherlands, whom severe edicts of Charles V., under which large numbers were put to death, did not extirpate.
TYRANNY OF PHILIP.—Philip did not select for his regent in the Netherlands one of the aristocracy of the country. Of this class was Count Egmont, a nobleman of brilliant courage and attractive manners. William, Prince of Orange, united with far more self-control the sagacity of a statesman. He was destined to be the formidable antagonist of Spanish tyranny, and the liberator of Holland. Philip passed by the nobles, whom he distrusted and disliked, and appointed as regent the illegitimate daughter of Charles V., Margaret of Parma (1559-1567); placing at her side, as her principal adviser, the astute Granvelle, the Bishop of Arras, one of his devoted servants, who was made cardinal in 1561. Three nobles, William of Orange, and the Counts Egmont and Horn, were in the council. The power was in Granvelle's hands. There was soon a breach between him and the nobles. Two measures of Philip created disaffection. He was slow in withdrawing the hated Spanish soldiers; he increased the number of bishops, a cherished scheme of Charles V. Moreover, he renewed and proceeded to enforce edicts, embracing minute provisions of a most rigorous character, against the property and lives of the Protestants, although the Inquisition had lost public favor. The terror and indignation of the people found expression through the nobles. They left the council. At length Granvelle had to be withdrawn from the country (1564). Egmont went to Spain to procure a mitigation of the king's policy, but found on his return that he had been duped by false promises. The young nobility formed an agreement called the Compromise, to withstand the king's system, at first by legal means (1566). They were contemptuously called "beggars" by the regent, and themselves adopted the name. The king professed a willingness to make some concessions: he was only gaining time for measures of a different sort. In the same year a storm of iconoclasm burst out: the Calvinists made reprisals for what they had suffered; they vented their zeal against what they called "idolatry," by sacking the churches, and by destroying paintings and images, and other symbols and implements of worship. Orange penetrated the designs of Philip, and retired to Nassau. Egmont, more credulous and confiding, remained.
ALVA'S RULE.—Philip now sent into the Netherlands the Duke of Alva, an officer of considerable military capacity, cold, arrogant, and merciless in his temper. His force consisted of ten thousand men. A tribunal was erected by him, called the "Council of Blood." Egmont and Horn were executed at Brussels (1568). Great numbers of executions of men and women, of all ranks, who were accused of some sort of insubordination, or some manifestation of heresy, followed. William of Orange was active in devising means of deliverance. The first marked success was the capture of Briel by the "sea-beggars," inhabitants of the coasts of Holland and Zealand, under their admiral, William de la Mark. The barbarities and extortion of Alva by degrees aroused universal and intense hatred. Holland and Zealand threw off Alva's rule, and made William their stadtholder. The nominal connection with Spain was still kept up. The massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572) cut off William from the help which he expected from the French. It was felt, however, that Alva had failed in his attempt to subjugate the people, and he was withdrawn from the country by Philip (1573).
THE UTRECHT UNION.—From the capture of Briel may be dated the beginning of the long and arduous struggle which resulted in the building-up of the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces, and the ultimate prostration of the power of Spain. The hero of the struggle was William of Orange. The successor of Alva, Requesens, was really more dangerous than Alva, because he was more magnanimous, and therefore excited less antagonism. In 1574 occurred the memorable siege of Leyden by the Spanish forces. That city, when reduced to the last extremity, was saved by letting in the sea and by inundating the neighboring plains, which compelled the Spaniards to flee in dismay. As a memorial of the heroic defense of the place, the University of Leyden was founded. A new Protestant state was growing up in the North, under the guidance of William. In the South, where Catholicism prevailed, Requesens was more successful. But when he died, in 1576, a frightful revolt of his soldiers, who were loosed from restraint, in the cities, moved all Netherlands to unite, in the Pacification of Ghent, against the Spanish dominion. Don John of Austria, a brilliant and manly soldier, who had defeated the Turks at Lepanto, was the next regent (1576-1578). He made large concessions: these were welcome in the South, and weakened the Union. Alexander of Parma (1578, 1579), his successor, was the ablest general of the time. The Catholic South was at variance with the Protestant North. In 1579, there was formed between the seven provinces in the North the Utrecht Union, the germ of the Dutch Republic. Philip proclaimed William an outlaw, and set a price on his head. After six ineffectual attempts at assassination, this heroic leader, the idol of his countrymen, was fatally shot, in his own house (1584). His work as a deliverer of his people was mainly accomplished. When the Utrecht Union was formed, the greater part of the Catholic provinces in the South entered into an arrangement with Parma. Brabant and Flanders were recovered to Spain. The attention of Philip had to be mainly given to the affairs of France and England during the remainder of his life.
FRANCIS I.: HENRY II.—In France, the old faith had strong support in the Sorbonne, the influential theological faculty of the University of Paris, and in the Parliament. The new culture, the influx of Italian scholars and Italian influences, produced a party averse to the former style of education, and, to some extent, unfriendly to the old opinions. The Lutheran doctrines were first introduced; but it was Calvinism which prevailed among the French converts to Protestantism, and acquired a strong hold in the middle and higher classes, although the preponderance of numbers in the country was always on the Catholic side. Francis I. was a friend of the new learning. His sister Margaret, Queen of Navarre, who was of a mystical turn, was favorably inclined to the new doctrines, and befriended preachers who were of the same spirit. The king did the same until after the battle of Pavia, when he helped on the persecution of them; for his conduct was governed by the interest of the hour, and by political motives. It was doubtful what course he would finally take amid the conflict of parties; but his motto was, "One king, one code, one creed." He would put down the new doctrine at home, and sustain it by force, if expedient, abroad. Henry II., who acceded to the throne in 1547, unlike his father had no personal sympathy with Protestantism. The Huguenots, as the Calvinists were called, were led to the stake, and their books burned. Yet in 1558 they had two thousand places of worship in France: they soon held a general synod at Paris, and organized themselves (1559). That same year, when, in the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis, Henry had given up all his conquests except the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and Calais, he suddenly died from a wound in the eye, accidentally inflicted in a tilt.
CATHERINE DE MEDICI: THE TWO PARTIES.—The widow of Henry II. was Catherine de Medici, to whom he had been married from political considerations. She was a woman of talents, full of ambition which had hitherto found no field for its exercise, trained from infancy in an atmosphere of deceit, and void of moral principle. Her aim was to rule by keeping up an ascendency over her sons, and by holding in check whatever party threatened to be dominant. For this end she did not scruple to accustom her children to debauchery, and to resort to whatever other means, however false and however cruel, to effect her purposes. She proved to be the curse of the house of Valois, and the evil genius of France. Francis II. was a boy of sixteen, and legally of age; but his mother expected to manage the government. She was thwarted by the control over him exercised by the family of Guise, sons of Claude of Guise, a wealthy and prominent nobleman of Lorraine, who had distinguished himself at Marignano, and in later contests against Charles V. Francis, the Duke of Guise, had defended Metz, and had taken Calais. Charles, the Cardinal of Lorraine, was the king's confessor. Their sister had married James V. of Scotland. Her daughter, Mary Stuart, a charming young girl, was married to Francis II., who was infirm in mind and body, and easily managed by his wife and her uncles. The great nobles of France, especially the Bourbons, sprung in a collateral line from Louis IX., Montmorency, and his three nephews, among them a man of extraordinary ability and worth, the Admiral Coligny, looked on the Guises as upstarts. The Bourbons and the nobles allied to them were, some from sincere conviction and some from policy, adherents of Calvinism. Thus the Protestants in France became a political party, as well as a religious body, and a party with anti-monarchical tendencies. Anthony of Bourbon, a weak and vacillating person, had married Jeanne d'Albret, the heiress of Béarn and Navarre, a heroic woman and an earnest Protestant, the mother of Henry IV. His brother Louis, Prince of Condé, a brave, impetuous soldier, whose wife, the niece of the Grand Constable Montmorency, was a strict Protestant, joined that side.
CONSPIRACY OF AMBOISE.—La Rénaudie, a Protestant nobleman who was determined to avenge the execution of a brother, contrived the Conspiracy of Amboise (1560) in order to dispossess the Guises of their power by force. The plan was discovered, and a savage revenge was taken upon the conspirators. A great number of innocent persons, who had no share in the plot, were put to death. The Estates were summoned to Orleans, and the occasion was to be seized for extirpating heresy throughout the kingdom. Condé was under arrest, and charged with high treason. Just then, on Dec. 5, 1560, the young king died.
CHARLES IX.: EDICT OF ST. GERMAIN.—The coveted opportunity of the queen-mother had come. Charles IX. (1560-1574) was only ten years old. She assumed the practical guardianship over him, and with it a virtual regency. The plan of the Guises had failed, and they had to give way. There were now two parties in the council. The States-general were called together in 1561, and a great religious colloquy was held before a brilliant concourse at Poissy, where Theodore Beza, an eloquent and polished scholar and a man of high birth, pleaded the cause of the Calvinists. In 1562 the Edict of January was issued, which gave up the policy that had been pursued for forty years, of extirpating religious dissent. A very restricted toleration was given to Protestants: they could hold their meetings outside of the walls of cities, unarmed, and in the daytime. Calvin and his followers expected the largest results from this measure of liberty. Catherine wished for peace, without a rupture with the Pope and Philip II.
CIVIL WAR.—It was impossible to prevent outbreakings of violence against the hated dissenters. The Guises and their associates were resolved not to allow toleration. The event that occasioned war was the massacre of Vassy. On the 1st of March, 1562, the soldiers of the Duke of Guise, who was passing through the town, attacked some Huguenots who were worshiping in a barn at the village of Vassy. A large number were slain, and some houses plundered, in spite of the Duke's efforts to check his troops. The civil wars, so begun, closed only with the accession of Henry IV. to the throne. France was a prey to religious and political fanaticism. Other nations mingled in the frightful contest, and the country was well-nigh robbed of its independence. At first, there was petty warfare at Paris, Sens, and other places. The Huguenots destroyed altars and censers, monuments of art and sepulchers, which, as they thought, ministered to idolatry. Rouen was captured by the Catholics and sacked. At Dreux (1562) the Protestants were defeated; but in 1563 Guise, the leader of their adversaries, was assassinated by a Huguenot nobleman. The charge that Coligny had a part in the deed was false; but he was considered responsible for it, and vengeance was kept in store by the family of the slain chief. The Edict of Amboise (1563) was favorable to the Protestant nobles, but less favorable to the smaller gentry and to the towns. Paris, from which Calvinist worship was excluded, became more and more a stronghold of the Catholic party. Another war ended in the Peace of Longjumeau (1568), which was essentially the same as the Edict of Amboise. Philip II. and the Duke of Alva spared no effort to induce France to set about the extermination of the heretics. In the third war, the Huguenots were beaten at Jarnac, where Condé fell, leaving his name to his son Henry, a youth of seventeen (1569). The same year they were defeated again at Moncontour. La Rochelle was a place of safety to the Protestants, who were strong in the wise leadership of Coligny. There the Queen of Navarre held her court. Thence the Huguenot cavalry with the young princes Condé, and Henry of Navarre, her son, sallied forth and traversed France.
ENGLAND OR SPAIN.—The ambition of Philip alarmed the French. His complex schemes, if carried out, would involve the reduction of their country under Spanish control. He wanted to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, then a prisoner of Elizabeth, to marry her to his half-brother, Don John, and to marry his sister to Charles IX. The court, in 1570, agreed to the Peace of St. Germain, which, for the security of the Huguenots, placed four fortified towns in their possession. Thus France became a kingdom divided against itself. England, as well as France, looked with alarm upon the ambitious projects of Philip II., who was now in union with Venice and with the Pope, and had beaten the Turks at Lepanto. It was proposed to marry the brother of Charles IX., the Duke of Anjou, to Queen Elizabeth; and when this negotiation was broken off, it was proposed that the Duke of Alençon, a younger brother, should marry her. Catherine de Medici fell in with this anti-Spanish policy. It was agreed that her youngest daughter, Margaret of Valois, should become the wife of Henry of Navarre. The policy favored by the Huguenots was in the ascendant. Their leaders were invited to Paris to be present at the nuptials. Coligny came, with Henry of Navarre, Condé, and a large number of their adherents. There was no place where the animosity against them was so rancorous.
THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW.—The massacre of St. Bartholomew was devised by Catherine de Medici, who brought to her aid the Duchess of Nemours, widow of Francis of Guise and mother of Henry of Guise, Anjou (afterwards Henry III.), and Italian counselors who were no strangers to plots of assassination. The motive of the queen-mother was her dread of the ascendency which she saw that Coligny was gaining over the morbid mind of the king, in whom the Huguenot veteran had inspired esteem, and had stirred up a desire to enter into the proposed war against Philip II. in the Netherlands. On the 22d of August (1572), a shot was fired at Coligny, from a window of a house, by an adherent of the Guises. He was wounded, but not killed. Charles was incensed. At a visit made to the wounded chief, the king was warned by him, as Catherine quickly learned, against her pernicious influence in the government. Thereupon she arranged with her confederates for a general slaughter of the Huguenots, and almost coerced the half-frantic and irresolute king to acquiesce in the plan. Perhaps, in gathering them into the city, she had foreseen the possible expediency of a change of policy, and that such a crime as she now undertook to perpetrate might be found desirable. In the night of the 24th of August, at a concerted signal, the fanatical enemies of the Huguenots were let loose, and fell upon their victims. Several thousands, including Coligny, were murdered. Couriers were sent through the country, and like bloody scenes were enacted in many other cities and towns. Navarre and Condé, to save their lives, professed conformity to the Catholic Church. If these atrocious events excited joy in the mind of Philip II., and of the numerous intolerant party of which he was the head, they were regarded with horror and execration elsewhere, among the Catholic as well as the Protestant nations.
THE POLITIQUES: THE LEAGUE: HENRY III.—The queen-mother did not even now forsake her general policy. She stood aloof from the combinations of Philip. A new party, the Politiques, or liberal Catholics, in favor of toleration, arose. Henry III. (1574-1589) was incompetent to govern a country torn by factions, with an exhausted treasury, and a people groaning under the burdens of taxation. By his double dealing he lost the confidence of both the religious parties. In May, 1576, he agreed to allow the religious freedom which the Huguenots and Politiques demanded. But he had to reckon with the Catholic League which was organized under Henry of Guise. In 1584 Henry of Navarre was left the next heir to the throne. The League, with Spain and Rome, resolved that he should not reign. Together with Condé, he was excommunicated. In the war of he "three Henrys," he was supported by England, and by troops from Germany and Switzerland. Henry III., finding that Henry of Guise was virtual master, and that the States-general at Blois (1588) reduced the royal power to the lowest point, caused Guise and his brother, the Cardinal of Lorraine, to be assassinated. Excommunicated, and detested by the adherents of the League, the king took refuge in the camp of Henry of Navarre, where he was killed by a fanatical priest (1589).
ABJURATION AND ACCESSION OF HENRY IV.—The Duke of Mayenne, brother of the slain Guises, was at the head of the government provisionally established by the League. Philip II. was intriguing to bring the Catholic nations under his sway. There was discord in the League, from the jealousy of Philip on the part of Mayenne. Henry, a dashing soldier, gained a brilliant victory at Ivry in 1590. The grand obstacle in his way to the throne was his adhesion to Protestantism. A Calvinist by birth and education, but without profound religious convictions, a gallant and sagacious man, but loose in his morals, he yielded, for the sake of giving peace to France, to the persuasions addressed to him, and, from motives of expediency, conformed to the Catholic Church. The nation was now easily won to his cause.
REIGN OF HENRY IV.—When Henry IV. gained his throne, the country was in a most wretched condition. In the desolating wars, population had fallen off. Everywhere there were poverty and lawlessness. Yet war with Spain was inevitable. In this war, Henry was the victor; and the Peace of Vervins restored the Spanish conquests, and the conquests made by Savoy, to France (1598). The idea of Henry's foreign policy, which was that of weakening the power of Spain and of the house of Hapsburg, was afterwards taken up by a powerful statesman, Richelieu, and fully realized. In the Edict of Nantes (1598), the king secured to the Huguenots the measure of religious liberty for which they had contended. Fortified cities were still left in their hands. Security was obtained by the Calvinists, but they became a defensive party with no prospect of further progress. Order and prosperity were restored to the kingdom. In all his measures, the king was largely guided by a most competent minister, Sully. But the useful reign of Henry IV. was cut short by the dagger of an assassin, Ravaillac (1610). For fifteen years confusion prevailed in France, and a contest of factions, until Richelieu took up the threads of policy which had fallen from Henry's hand.
ORIGIN OF THE WAR.—In Germany, more than in any other country, the Reformation had sprung from the hearts of the people. Its progress would have been far greater had it not been retarded by political obstacles, and by divisions among Protestants themselves. Germany, to be sure, was not disunited by the Reformation: it was disunited before. But now strong states existed on its borders,—France, even Denmark and Sweden,—which might profit by its internal conflicts. The Peace of Augsburg, unsatisfactory as it was to both parties, availed to prevent open strife as long as Ferdinand I. (1556-1564) and Maximilian II. (1564-1576) held the imperial office. The latter, especially, favored toleration, and did not sympathize with the fanaticism of the Spanish branch of his family. He condemned the cruelties of Alva and the massacre of St. Bartholomew. With the accession of Rudolph II., a change took place. He had been brought up in Spain. The Catholic counter-reformation was now making its advance. The order of the _Jesuits _was putting forth great and successful exertions to win back lost ground. There were out-breakings of violence between the two religious parties. A Catholic procession was insulted in Donauwörth, a free city of the empire. The city was put under the ban by the emperor; the Bavarian Duke marched against it, and incorporated it in his own territory (1607). On both sides, complaints were made of the infraction of the Peace of Augsburg. The Donauwörth affair led to the formation of the Evangelical Union, a league into which, however, all the Protestant states did not enter. The Catholic League, under the Leadership of Maximilian of Bavaria, was firmly knit together and full of energy.
FIRST STAGE IN THE WAR (to 1629).
THE BOHEMIAN STRUGGLE.—The Bohemians revolted against Ferdinand II. in 1618, when their religious liberties were violated, and shortly after (1619) refused to acknowledge him as their king. He was a narrow and fanatical, though not by nature a cruel, ruler. He gave himself up to the control of the Catholic League. The two branches of the Hapsburg family—the Austrian and Spanish—were now in full accord with each other. The Bohemians gave their crown to Frederick V., the Elector Palatine, the son-in-law of James I. of England. Bohemia was invaded by Ferdinand, aided by the League, and abandoned to fire and sword. The terrible scenes of the Hussite struggle were re-enacted. In the protracted wars that ensued, it was estimated that the Bohemian population was reduced from about four millions to between seven and eight hundred thousand! The Palatinate was conquered and devastated. The electoral dignity was transferred to the Duke of Bavaria. At last, in 1625, England, Holland, and Denmark intervened in behalf of the fugitive Elector Palatine. Christian IV. of Denmark was defeated, and the intervention failed. The power gained by Maximilian, the Bavarian Duke, made his interests separate, in important particulars, from those of Ferdinand. Ferdinand was able to release himself from the virtual control of Maximilian and the League, through Wallenstein, a general of extraordinary ability. He was a Bohemian noble, proud, ambitious, and wealthy. He raised an army, and made it support itself by pillage. The unspeakable miseries of Germany, in this prolonged struggle, were due largely to the composition of the armies, which were made up of hirelings of different nations, whose trade was war, and who were let loose on an unprotected population. Captured cities were given up to the unbridled passions of a fierce and greedy soldiery. Germany, traversed for a whole generation by these organized bands of marauders, was in many places reduced almost to a desert.
EDICT OF RESTITUTION.—Victory attended the arms of Wallenstein, and of Tilly, a brutal commander, the general of the League. The territory of the Dukes of Mecklenburg was given to Wallenstein as a reward (1629). He was anxious to conquer the German towns on the Baltic. Stralsund offered a stubborn resistance, which he could not overcome. The League moved Ferdinand to the adoption of the Edict of Restitution (1629), which put far off the hope of peace. This edict enforced the parts of the Peace of Augsburg which were odious to the Protestants, especially the Ecclesiastical Reservation (p. 410), and abrogated the provisions of an opposite tenor. It was evident that the real aim was the entire extinction of Protestantism. The League, moreover, induced the emperor to remove Wallenstein, of whom they were jealous. The effect of these measures was to rouse the most lukewarm of the Protestant princes, including the electors of Brandenburg and Saxony, to a sense of the common danger. It was plain that Wallenstein was a sacrifice to the League, and to the ambition of Maximilian of Bavaria.
In the second act of this long drama, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden is the hero. His reign is marked by the rise of his country to the height of its power.
EVENTS IN SWEDEN: CAREER OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.—Gustavus Vasa made the mistake of undertaking to divide power among his four sons. There was a vein of eccentricity, amounting sometimes to insanity, in the family. Eric XIV. was hasty and jealous, imprisoned his brother John, and committed reckless crimes. In 1569 he was himself confined, and nine years after was secretly put to death. John and another brother, Charles of Südermanland, now reigned together. John was favorable to the Roman-Catholic Church, and offended his Protestant subjects by efforts at union and compromise. Moreover, he unwisely made concessions to the nobles, and increased the burdens of the peasants. Finally, he wanted to make his son Sigismund king of Poland, a country which, from its anarchical constitution, was on the road to ruin. Poland was a Catholic land; and, in order to get the crown, Sigismund avowed himself a Catholic. Charles, a strict Lutheran, drew to his side all who were hostile to John's spirit and policy. On the death of the latter (1592), Duke Charles came into collision with Sigismund and with the nobles, whose power depended on his concessions; and he gained the victory over them (1598). In 1604 the Diet gave him the crown, which he wore for seven years. He had to contend against faction, and to withstand the attacks of Denmark and of Russia. In the midst of these troubles he died, and was succeeded by his son Gustavus Adolphus, then less than eighteen years of age (1611-1632). He was a well-educated prince, early familiar with war, a devoted patriot, and, although tolerant in his temper, was a sincere Protestant, after the type of the old Saxon electors. For eighteen years after his accession, it had been his aim to control the Baltic. This had brought him into conflict with Denmark, Poland, and Russia. His interposition in the German war, a step which was full of peril to himself, was regarded by Brandenburg and Saxony with jealousy and repugnance. But when the savage troops of Tilly (1631) sacked and burned Magdeburg, the neutral party was driven to side with Sweden. Gustavus defeated Tilly, and the advance of his army in the South of Germany prostrated the power of the League. The princes regarded the Swedish king with suspicion: the cities regarded him with cordiality. Whether along with his sagacious and just intentions he connected his own elevation to the rank of King of Rome, and emperor, must be left uncertain. Ferdinand was obliged to call back Wallenstein. The battle of Lützen, in 1632, was a great defeat of Wallenstein, and a grand victory for the Swedes; but it cost them the life of their king.
HENRY IV, 1589-1610, (2), m. Mary, daughter of Francis, Grand Duke of Tuscany | +—LOUIS XIII, 1610-1643, m. | Anne, daughter of Philip III of Spain. | | | +—LOUIS XIV, 1643-1715, m. Maria Theresa, | | daughter of Philip IV of Spain. | | | | | +—Louis, Dauphin, d. 1711, m. Maria Anna, | | | daughter of Ferdinand Maria, Elector of Bavaria. | | | | | | | +—Louis, Duke of Burgundy, d. 1712, m. | | | Mary Adelaide, daughter of Victor Amadeus II of Savoy. | | | | | | | +—LOUIS XV, 1715-1774, m. | | | Mary, daughter of Stanislas Leczinsky, King of Poland. | | | | | | | +—Louis, Dauphin, d. 1765, m | | | Maria Josepha, daughter of Frederick Augustus II | | | of Poland and Saxony. | | | | | | | +—LOUIS XVI, 1774-1792 (deposed, executed 1793), | | | | m. Marie Antoinette, daughter of | | | | Emperor Francis I. | | | | | | | +—Louis, Count of Provence (LOUIS XVIII), | | | | 1814-1824. | | | | | | | +—Charles, Count of Artois (CHARLES X), 1824-1830 | | | (deposed),m Maria Theresa, daughter | | | of Victor Amadeus III of Savoy. | | | | | +—Francoise (Mademoiselle de Blois), | | m. | | +—Philip, regent, _d._1723. | | | | | | | +—Louis, d. 1752. | | | | | | | +—Louis Philippe, d. 1785. | | | | | | | +—Louis Philippe (Egalite), executed 1793. | | | | | | | +—LOUIS PHILIPPE, 1830-1848 (deposed), m. | | | Maria Amelia, daughter of | | | Ferdinand I of Two Sicilies. | | | | | (2), Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Lewis, Elector Palatine. | | (1), Henrietta Maria. | +—Philip, m. | +—Henrietta Maria m. Charles I of England.
FRANCE AFTER HENRY IV.—After the death of Gustavus, in the new phase of the war, the influence of Richelieu, the great minister of France, becomes more and more dominant. Germany was in the end doomed to eat the bitter fruits of civil war, such as spring from foreign interference, even when it comes in the form of help. Henry IV. had died when he was on the point of directing the power of France, as of old, against the house of Hapsburg. The country now fell back for a series of years to a state akin to that under the kings who preceded him, although it was saved from a long civil war. Louis XIII. (1610-1643) was a child; and the queen, Mary de Medici, who was the regent, an Italian woman, with no earnest principles, deprived of the counsels of Sully, lavished the resources of the crown upon nobles, who were greedy of place and pelf. At the assembly of the States-general in 1614, nobles, clergy, and the third estate were loud in reciprocal accusations. The queen fell under the influence of the Concinis, an Italian waiting-maid and her husband, the latter of whom she made a marquis and a marshal of France. She leagued herself in various ways with Spain. As the king grew older, a party rallied about him, and the marshal was assassinated (1617). From that time Louis was under the influence of a favorite, the Duke de Luynes, a native Frenchman, with whom the nobles were in sympathy. The duke died in 1621. Then Richelieu, Bishop of Lucon (made a cardinal in 1622), a statesman of extraordinary genius, began his active career in politics, and after 1624 guided the policy of France, as a sort of Mayor of the Palace. Louis XIII. was not personally fond of him, but felt the need of him. Richelieu's aim, as regards the government of France, was to consolidate the monarchy by bringing the aristocracy into subjection to the king. Under him began the process of centralization, the system of officers appointed and paid by the government, which was fully developed after the great revolution. He accomplished the overthrow of the Huguenots as a political organization, a state within the state. In 1628 Rochelle, the last of their towns, fell into his hands. He was determined to make the civil authority supreme. He resisted interference with its rights on the part of the Church. The nobles were reduced to obedience by the infliction of severe punishments. The common people were kept under. But the domestic government of Richelieu made it possible for the selfish and ruinous policy of Louis XIV. to arise. The key of his foreign policy was hostility to Austria and Spain, to both branches of the Hapsburgs. Before he took active measures against them, he had to procure quiet in France, and to provide himself with money and troops.
INTERVENTION OF RICHELIEU.—The pretext of Richelieu for taking part in the German war was the alleged ambitious aim of the Hapsburgs to destroy the independence of other nations. He helped Gustavus with money; but the Swedish king would neither allow him to take territory, nor to dictate the method of prosecuting the contest. It was agreed that the Catholic religion as such should not be attacked. Oxenstiern, the Swedish chancelor, in the Heilbronn Treaty (1633) adhered to the same policy.
DEATH OF WALLENSTEIN.—Wallenstein had now become dangerous to the emperor. He negotiated with the Protestants, the Swedes, and the French, possibly to confront the emperor with the accomplished fact of peace and to claim as a reward the Palatinate or the Kingdom of Bohemia. Deprived of his command and declared a traitor, he was assassinated by some of his officers (1634).
END OF THE WAR.—The imperial victory of Nordlingen (1634) made the active assistance of France necessary. But it was not until the death of Bernard of Weimar, the foremost general of the Germans (1639), that Richelieu found himself at the goal of his efforts. The armies opposed to the emperor were now under the control of the French. The character of the war had changed. Protestant states were fighting on the imperial side: the old theological issues were largely forgotten. Yet the Court of Vienna still clung to the Edict of Restitution (p. 424) for eight long years, during which the confused, frightful warfare was kept up. At last the military reverses of the emperor, Ferdinand III. (1637-1657), who, unlike his father, was not indisposed to peace, wrung from him a consent to the necessary conditions.
EFFECTS OF THE WAR.—The barbarities of this long war are indescribable. The unarmed people were treated with brutal ferocity. The population of Germany is said to have diminished in thirty years from twenty to fifty per cent. The population of one city, Augsburg, fell from eighty to eighteen thousand. There were four hundred thousand people in Würtemberg: in 1641 only forty-eight thousand were left. In fertile districts, the destruction of the crops had caused great numbers to perish by famine. It is only in recent years that the number of horned cattle in Germany has come to equal what it was in 1618. Cities, villages, castles, and dwellings innumerable, had been burned to the ground.
THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA.—The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, was a great European settlement. It was agreed, that in Germany, whatever might be the faith of the prince, the religion of each state was to be Catholic or Protestant, according to its position in 1624, which was fixed upon as the "normal year." In the imperial administration, the two religions were to be substantially equal. Religious freedom and civil equality were extended to the Calvinists. The empire was reduced to a shadow by giving to the Diet the power to decide in all important matters, and by the permission given to its members to make alliances with one another and with foreign powers, with the futile proviso that no prejudice should come thereby to the empire or the emperor. The independence of Holland and Switzerland was acknowledged. Sweden obtained the territory about the Baltic, in addition to other important places, and became a member of the German Diet. Among the acquisitions of France were the three bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, and the landgraviate of Upper and Lower Alsace. Thus France gained access to the Rhine. Sweden and France, by becoming guarantors of the peace, obtained the right to interfere in the internal affairs of Germany.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE TREATY.—By this treaty, what was left of central authority in Germany was destroyed: the empire existed only in name; the mediæval union of empire and papacy was at an end. Valuable German territories were given up to ambitious neighbors. France had extended her bounds, and disciplined her troops. Sweden had gained what Gustavus had coveted, and, for the time, was a power of the first class. Spain and Austria were both disabled, and reduced in rank.
REIGN OF EDWARD VI. (1547-1553).—Henry VIII., with Parliament, had determined the order of succession, giving precedence to Edward, his son by Jane Seymour, over the two princesses, Mary, the daughter of Catherine, and Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Edward VI., who was but ten years old at his accession, was weak in body, but was a most remarkable instance of intellectual precocity. The government now espoused the Protestant side. Somerset, the king's uncle, was at the head of the regency. The Six Articles (p. 407) were repealed. Protestant theologians from the Continent were taken into the counsels of the English prelates, Cranmer and Ridley. Under the leadership of Cranmer, the Book of Common Prayer was framed, and the Articles, or creed, composed. The clergy were allowed to marry. The Anglican Protestant Church was fully organized, but the progress in the Protestant direction was rather too rapid for the sense of the nation. Somerset, who was fertile in schemes and a good soldier, invaded Scotland in order to enforce the fulfilling of the treaty which had promised the young Princess Mary of Scotland to Edward in marriage. He defeated the Scots at Pinkie, near Edinburgh; but the project as to the marriage failed. Mary was sent by the Scots to France, there to become the wife of Francis II. Land belonging to the Church was seized by Somerset to make room for Somerset House. A Catholic rebellion in Cornwall and Devonshire, provoked by the Protector's course, was suppressed with difficulty. The opposition to him on various grounds, which was led by the Duke of Northumberland, finally brought the Protector to the scaffold. But Northumberland proved to be less worthy to hold the protectorate than he, and labored to aggrandize his relatives. He was one of the nobles who made use of Protestantism as a means of enriching themselves. He persuaded the young king, when he was near his end, to settle the crown, contrary to what Parliament had determined, on Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland's daughter-in-law, a descendant of Henry's sister.
THE REIGN OF MARY.—Notwithstanding the Protector's selfish scheme, Mary succeeded to the throne without serious difficulty. Northumberland was beheaded as a traitor. An insurrection under Wyat was put down, and led to the execution of the unfortunate and innocent Lady Jane Grey. From her birth and all the circumstances of her life, Mary was in cordial sympathy with the Church of Rome and with Spain. She proceeded as rapidly as her more prudent advisers, including her kinsman Philip II., would allow, to restore the Catholic system. The married clergy were excluded from their places, and the Prayer-Book was abolished. The point where Parliament showed most hesitation was in reference to the royal supremacy. The nobles were afraid of losing their fields and houses, which had belonged to the Church. It was stipulated that the abbey lands, which were now held by the nobles and gentry as well as by the crown, should not be given up. Personally, Mary was inclined to any measure which obligation to the Catholic religion might dictate. Contrary to the general wish of her subjects, she married Philip II. Rigorous measures of repression were adopted against the Protestants. A large number of persons, eminent for talents and learning, were put to death on the charge of heresy. Among them were the three bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, who were burned at the stake at Oxford (1556). Gardiner, Bonner, and the rigid advocates of persecution, had full sway. These severe measures were not popular; and, although the queen was not in her natural temper cruel, they have given her the name of the "Bloody Mary." Each party used coercion when it had the upper hand. A great number of the Protestant clergy fled to the Continent. Mary sided with Spain against France, and, greatly to the disgust of the English, lost Calais (1558). Pope Paul IV. was disposed to press upon England the extreme demands of the Catholic Reaction. He was, moreover, hostile to the Spanish-Austrian house. There was great fear respecting the confiscated Church property: her own share in it, the queen persuaded Parliament to allow her to surrender. Cardinal Pole, a moderate man, no longer guided her policy. He was deprived of the office of papal legate. General discontent prevailed in the kingdom. The queen herself was dispirited, and her life ended in anxiety and sorrow.
CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH (1558-1603).—The nation welcomed Elizabeth to the throne. Her will was as imperious as that of her father. Her character was not without marked faults and foibles. She was vain, unwisely parsimonious, petulant, and overbearing, and evinced that want of truthfulness which was too common among rulers and statesmen at that period. But she had regal virtues,—high courage, devotion to the public good, for which she had the strength to sacrifice personal inclinations, together with the wisdom to choose astute counselors and to adhere to them. Her title to the throne was disputed. She had to contend against powerful and subtle adversaries. Her defense lay in the mutual jealousy of France and Spain, and in the determination of Englishmen not to be ruled by foreigners. Her reign was long and glorious.
HER RELIGIOUS POSITION.—In her doctrine, Elizabeth was a moderate Lutheran, not bitterly averse to the Church of Rome, but, in accordance with the prevalent English feeling which Henry VIII. represented, clinging to the royal supremacy. The Protestant system, with the Prayer-Book, and the hierarchy dependent on the sovereign, was now restored.
PROTESTANTISM IN SCOTLAND.—In case Elizabeth's claim to the crown were overthrown, the next heir would be Mary, Queen of Scots. Her grandmother was the eldest sister of Henry VIII. Her claim to the English crown was a standing menace to Elizabeth. When Mary's father, James V., died (1542), she was only a few days old. Her mother, Mary of Guise, became regent. The Reformation had then begun to gain adherents in Scotland. On the accession of Elizabeth, at a time when the religious wars in France were about to begin, the Scottish regent undertook repressive measures of increased rigor. The principal agent in turning Scotland to the Protestant side was John Knox, an intrepid preacher, honest, and rough in his ways, deeply imbued with the spirit of Calvinism, and free from every vestige of superstitious deference for human potentates. He returned from the Continent in 1555. Many of the turbulent nobles, partly from conviction and partly from covetousness, adopted the new opinions. More and more, however, Knox gained a hold upon the common people. His preaching was effective: one of its natural consequences was an outburst of iconoclasm. Even Philip II. was willing to have the nobles helped in the contest with the regent, Scotland being the ally of France. The queen-regent died in 1560. The Presbyterians now had full control, and Calvinistic Protestantism was legally established as the religion of the country.
THE QUEEN OF SCOTS.—Such was the situation when Mary, the young widow of Francis II., came back to Scotland to assume her crown. A zealous Catholic, she undertook to rule a turbulent people among whom the most austere type of Protestantism was the legal and cherished faith. She had personal charms which Elizabeth lacked, but as a sovereign she was wanting in the public virtue which belonged to her rival. Mary was quick-witted and full of energy; but she had been brought up in the court of Catherine de Medici, in an atmosphere of duplicity and lax morals. She had the vices of the Stuarts,—an extravagant idea of the sacred prerogatives of kings, a disregard of popular rights, a willingness to break engagements. Her levity, even if it had been kept within bounds, would have been offensive to her Calvinistic subjects. She had at heart the restoration of the Catholic system. In Knox she found a vigilant and fearless antagonist, with so much support among the nobles and the common people that her attempts at coercion, like her blandishments, proved powerless. Contrary to the wishes and plans of Elizabeth, she married Darnley, a Scottish nobleman (1565), whom, not without reason, she soon learned to despise. Her half-brother Murray, a very able man, and the other Protestant nobles, had been opposed to the match. She allowed herself an innocent, but unseemly, intimacy with an Italian musician, Rizzio. With the connivance of her husband, he was dragged out of her supper-room at Holyrood, and brutally murdered by Ruthven and other conspirators. In 1567, the house in which Darnley was sleeping, close by Edinburgh, was blown up with gunpowder, and he was killed. Whether Mary was privy to the murder, or not, is a point still in dispute. Certain it is that she gave her hand in marriage to Bothwell, the prime author of the crime. A revolt of her subjects followed. She was compelled to abdicate: Murray was made regent, and her infant son, James VI., was crowned at Stirling (1567). Escaping from confinement at Lochleven, she was defeated at Langside, and obliged to fly to England for protection.
EXECUTION OF MARY.—Elizabeth had no liking for the new religious system in Scotland. She hated the necessity of aiding rebels against their sovereign. But there was no alternative. In 1569 the defeat of the Huguenots in France was followed by a Catholic rebellion in the North of England. Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope Pius V. There was a determination to dethrone her, and to hand over her crown to Mary. The drift of events was towards a conflict of England with Spain. The Duke of Norfolk, a leader in conspiracy and rebellion, who acted in concert with Philip and with Mary, was brought to the scaffold (1572). Elizabeth secretly aided the revolted subjects of Philip in the Netherlands, as Philip encouraged the malcontents in England and Ireland. The Queen of Scots was the center of the hopes of the enemies of England and of Elizabeth. When her complicity in the conspiracy of Babington, which involved a Spanish invasion and the dethronement and death of Elizabeth, was proved, Mary, after having been a captive for nineteen years, was condemned to death, and executed (1587) at Fotheringay Castle.
THE SPANISH ARMADA.—In 1585 Elizabeth openly sent troops to the Netherlands under the command of her favorite, Leicester. The contest with Spain was kept up on the sea by bold English mariners, who captured the Spanish treasure-ships, and harassed the Spanish colonies. It was a period of maritime adventure, when men like Frobisher, Hawkins, and Raleigh made themselves famous, and when Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world. In the course of this voyage, Drake had seized from the Spanish vessels, and from the settlements on the coast of Peru and Chili, a vast amount of silver and gold. When it was known that Philip was preparing to invade England, Drake sailed into the harbor of Cadiz, and destroyed the ships and stores there (1587). He burned every Spanish vessel that he could find. He boasted on his return that he had "singed the king of Spain's beard." Philip made ready a mighty naval expedition, the "Invincible Armada," for the conquest of England. The fame of it resounded through Europe. A Spanish force in the Netherlands, under Parma, was to coöperate with it. In England, there were preparations to meet the attack. Catholics and Protestants were united for the defense of the kingdom. At Tilbury, Queen Elizabeth reviewed her troops on horseback, saying to them in a spirited speech, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too." The tempest, aiding the valor of the English seamen, dispersed the great fleet. No landing was effected, and the grand enterprise proved a complete failure. Only fifty-four out of the one hundred and fifty vessels succeeded in making their way back to Spain.
MONOPOLIES.—The queen knew how to yield to the people when she saw that they were determined upon a measure. This she did near the close of her reign, when the Commons called upon her to put an end to the monopolies which she had been in the habit of granting to individuals whom she specially liked.
THE EARL OF ESSEX.—The queen had her personal favorites. Among them, Robert Dudley, whom she made the Earl of Leicester, was the one of whom she was most fond. She esteemed him much above his merits. Another of her favorites was the young Earl of Essex, who was vain and ambitious. He went in 1596 with Lord Howard in an expedition which took and plundered Cadiz. Then he was sent to Ireland in command of an army. He failed, and came back to England without leave. He made a foolish attempt at insurrection, was tried for treason, and convicted; and Elizabeth reluctantly signed the warrant for his execution (1601).
CONQUEST OF IRELAND.—After the return of Essex from Ireland, where he had done nothing well, Lord Mountjoy was sent to conquer Tyrone, the Desmonds, and other Irish chiefs. It was a long and fierce contest. He succeeded in subduing the country; but the effect of his conquest was a terrible famine in the North, where the food had been destroyed. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, all Ireland was subject to England.
THE PURITANS.—Uniformity in the forms of religious worship was ordained by law in England, and the queen was bent on enforcing it. A Court of High Commission was established to punish heresy and nonconformity. This policy early brought on a conflict, not only with the Roman Catholics, but also with the large and growing class of Protestants who were called "Puritans." These wished to carry the Reformation farther than it had been carried by the Tudors in England, and to make the English Church more like the Calvinistic churches in Scotland and on the Continent. They disliked surplices and other vestments worn by the clergy, which they pronounced "badges of popery," the sign of the cross used in baptism, and like customs retained in the Church as established by law. Many of them became opposed to the whole prelatical organization. They did not admit the supremacy of the sovereign, as Elizabeth claimed it, in things having to do with the Church and religion. Many of the Puritans conformed to the existing system of Church government and worship, but under a protest and with the hope of seeing it changed. Others were nonconformists; that is, they did not formally break off from the English Church, but avoided taking part in the forms of worship of which they disapproved. This class was numerous. A third and smaller class, the "Independents," separated from the Established Church, and disbelieved in national churches, or a national organization of religion, altogether. They formed religious societies of their own. Thus English Protestants were divided among themselves. Upon both Puritans and Roman Catholics—upon the latter, partly on political grounds—severe penalties were inflicted. Churchman and Puritan, while they agreed substantially in theology, stood at variance in regard to Church government and modes of worship.
JAMES I.—James VI. of Scotland, and I. of England, was the son of Mary Stuart and Darnley. Scotland and England were now united under one king. He was not wanting in acquirements, and plumed himself on his knowledge of theology. A conceited pedant, he was impatient of dissent from his opinions. In Scotland, among insubordinate nobles and the ministers of the Kirk,—who on one occasion went so far as to pull his sleeve when they addressed to him their rebukes,—he had hardly tasted the sweets of regal power. The deference with which the English clergy treated him deepened his attachment to their Church. He had high notions of the divine right of kings. "No bishop, no king," was his favorite maxim. Early, in the Hampton Court Conference between the bishops and the Puritans, over which James presided, he showed his antipathy to the Puritans. It may be here stated, that a suggestion there made led to the making of the Authorized Version of the Bible, for which previous translations, especially the translation of Tyndale, furnished the basis. The king's severity to the Catholics was the occasion of the "Gunpowder Plot," a project that failed, for blowing up the Parliament House by means of powder placed under it, to which one Guy Fawkes was to apply the match (1605).
IRELAND.—The Earl of Tyrone, an Irish chief, fell into a dispute with the English authorities, and, with another Irish earl, fled to Spain. The best of their lands in Ulster were given to English and Scotch colonists. Only what was left of the land was granted to the Irish, many of whom were dispossessed of their homes. The Ulster colonies were industrious and prosperous; but among the natives, seeds of lasting enmity were sown by this injustice.
JAMES'S FOREIGN POLICY.—The nation became imbittered against the king. One grievance was the sale not only of patents of nobility, but also of monopolies to companies or individuals. This was a continuance of an old abuse. The trial and conviction of Lord Bacon, the Lord Chancelor, who was impeached on the charge of receiving presents which were intended to influence his decisions as a judge, was one evidence of the corruption of the times, and of the displeasure occasioned by it. Instead of aiding his son-in-law, Frederick V., the Elector Palatine, whose dominions had been seized by a Spanish army sent to aid his enemies, James busied himself with schemes for marrying his son Charles to the Infanta, or Princess, Maria of Spain, the sister of Philip IV. As a part of his truckling to Spain, he caused Sir Walter Raleigh to be executed. Raleigh, who had no love for Spain, had long been kept in the Tower on the charge of treason; but the king, who wanted gold, had permitted him to go on a voyage to South America to seek for it. There, without his fault, some of his men had a collision with the Spaniards, up the Orinoco. Not having procured any treasure, he was disposed to attack Spanish ships; but the captains with him would not consent. On his return to England, he was again thrown into prison, and brought to the block. At length the marriage treaty with Spain, to the joy of the nation, was broken off. Charles, it was agreed, should marry Henrietta Maria, the sister of Louis XIII., the king of France. The king came to a better understanding with Parliament, which had constantly opposed his policy and withstood his arrogant assumption of absolute authority.
CHARLES I. (1625-1649).—Charles I. in dignity of person far excelled his father. He had more skill and more courage; but he had the same theory of arbitrary government, and acted as if insincerity and the breaking of promises were excusable in defense of it. His strife with Parliament began at once. They would not grant supplies of money without a redress of grievances and the removal of Buckingham, the king's favorite. War had begun with Spain before the close of the last reign. An expedition was now sent to Cadiz, but it accomplished nothing. Buckingham was impeached; but before the trial ended, the king dissolved Parliament. A year later he went to war with France. He was then obliged (1628) to grant to his third Parliament their Petition of Right, which condemned his recent illegal doings,—arbitrary taxes and imprisonment, the billeting of soldiers on householders, proceedings of martial law. A few months later Buckingham was assassinated by one John Felton at Portsmouth. Certain taxes called tonnage and poundage, Charles continued to levy by his own authority. A patriotic leader and a prominent speaker in the House of Commons was Sir John Eliot. The king dissolved Parliament (1629), and sent Eliot and two other members of the House to prison. No other Parliament was summoned for eleven years. The king aimed to establish an absolute system of rule such as Richelieu had built up in France. Two ministers were employed by him in furthering this policy. One was a layman, Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who exercised almost unlimited power in the northern counties. The other was William Laud, Bishop of London and then Archbishop of Canterbury (1633), who undertook to force the Puritans to conform to all the observances of the Church. Two courts—the High Commission, before which the clergy were brought; and the Star Chamber, which was made up from the king's council—were the instruments for carrying out this tyranny. Grievous and shameful punishments were inflicted on the victims of it.
JOHN HAMPDEN.—There was need of a fleet. Charles, without asking any grant from Parliament, undertook to levy a tax called "ship-money" in every shire. John Hampden, a country gentleman, refused to pay it. The judges gave a verdict against him, but he won great applause from patriotic Englishmen.
BEGINNING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.—In 1637 Charles embarked in the foolish enterprise of endeavoring to force the English liturgy upon Scotland. This called out the Solemn League and Covenant of the Scots for the defense of Presbyterianism. For eleven years the king had governed without a Parliament, but he needed money. The "Short Parliament" was assembled; but, as it refused to obey the king, it was quickly dissolved. The invasion of the Scots in 1640 made it necessary for Charles to assemble that body known as the Long Parliament, one of the most memorable of all legislative assemblies. Strafford and Laud were impeached. Strafford, by a bill of attainder passed by both Houses, was condemned and executed (1641). It was enacted that the present Parliament should not be dissolved or prorogued without its own consent,—an act which Charles reluctantly sanctioned. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. A great Irish insurrection broke out in Ulster. It has already been related how Henry VIII. established in Ireland his ecclesiastical system; how, during Elizabeth's reign, there was fierce and incessant war with the Desmonds, and other Anglo-Irish families, who resisted Protestantism; and how James I., robbing many Irish of their lands, planted in Ulster numerous English and Scotch Protestant settlers. These were now massacred in great numbers by the Irish, who almost succeeded in seizing Dublin. Parliament would not trust Charles with an army to use in Ireland, fearing that the troops would be used by him to defend his arbitrary government at home. The king came to the House of Commons with a body of armed men, and made an abortive attempt to seize five members on the charge of resisting his authority, among whom were John Hampden, and John Pym, who was one of the most influential orators on the popular side. A bill was passed excluding the bishops from the House of Lords, where a majority were for the king. To this Charles consented, but he refused to allow Parliament to control the militia.
The CIVIL WAR: SUCCESS OF CROMWELL.—In July, 1642, Parliament appointed a Committee of Public Safety, and called out the militia. Soon Charles raised the royal standard at Nottingham. In the civil war, on one side were the Royalists, who were familiarly styled cavaliers (that is, horsemen, or gentlemen), and on the other were the Parliamentarians, who were nicknamed Roundheads, for the reason that the Puritans did not follow the fashion of allowing their hair to fall in tresses on the shoulders.
The Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary general, fought an indecisive battle with the king at Edgehill. Charles then made Oxford his headquarters. Early in the war, two men of spotless character fell,—Hampden, on the popular side (1643), and Lord Falkland (1643), who, not without hesitation, had joined the Royalists. The cavalry of Charles, under a gallant but rash leader, Prince Rupert, son of the Electress Palatine, and grandson of James I., was specially effective. Charles made peace with the Irish insurgents in order to get their help in fighting Parliament. Parliament united with the Scots in the Solemn League and Covenant, by which there was to be uniformity in religion in England, Ireland, and Scotland.
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS.—Presbyterianism was now made the legal system; and about two thousand beneficed clergymen in England, who refused to subscribe to the Covenant, were deprived of their livings. The Westminster Assembly met in 1643, and organized a church system without bishops and without the liturgy. But Parliament did not give up its own supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs. There was no "General Assembly" to rule the Church, as in Scotland. Another party, the Independents, were gaining strength, and by degrees getting control in the army. Of their number was Oliver Cromwell, a gentleman of Huntingdonshire, who had been a member of the House of Commons, where he spoke for the first time in 1629.
CROMWELL: NASEBY.—By many of his adversaries, and by numerous writers since that day, Cromwell has been considered a hypocrite in religion, actuated by personal ambition. The Puritan poet, John Milton, who became his secretary after he acquired supreme power, gives to him the warmest praise for integrity and piety, as well as for genius and valor. Of his religious earnestness after the Puritan type, and of his sincere patriotism, there is at present much less doubt. As to the transcendent ability and sagacity that lay beneath a rugged exterior, there has never been any question. He raised and trained a regiment of Puritan troops, called the "Ironsides," who were well-nigh invincible in battle, but whose camp was a "conventicle" for prayer and praise. With their help, the Royalists were defeated at Marston Moor (1644). The army was now modeled anew by the Independents. The Self-denying Ordinance excluded members of Parliament from military command. Cromwell was made an exception. He came to the front, with no other general except Fairfax, who had replaced Essex, above him. Laud was condemned for high treason by an ordinance of Parliament, and beheaded (1645). The Royalist army experienced a crushing defeat at Naseby in June of the same year.
TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF CHARLES.—Charles surrendered to the army of the Scots before Newark (1646); and by them he was delivered for a ransom, in the form of an indemnity for war expenses, to their English allies. The king hoped much from the growing discord between the Presbyterians, who favored an accommodation with him if they could preserve their ecclesiastical system; and the Independents, who controlled the army, and were in favor of toleration, and of obtaining more guaranties of liberty against regal usurpation. In June, 1647, the army took the king out of the hands of Parliament, into their own custody. He negotiated with all parties, and was trusted by none. In 1648 he agreed, in a secret treaty with the Scots, to restore Presbyterianism. There were Royalist risings in different parts of England, which Cromwell suppressed. He defeated at Preston Pans a Scotch army, led into England by the Duke of Hamilton to help Charles. Cromwell's army were now determined to baffle the plans of the Parliamentary majority. Col. Pride, with a regiment of foot, excluded from the House of Commons about a hundred members. This measure, dictated by a council of officers, was called Pride's Purge. The Commons closed the House of Lords, and constituted a High Court of Justice for the trial of the king. He refused to acknowledge the tribunal, and behaved with calmness and dignity to the end. He was condemned, and beheaded on a scaffold before his own palace at Whitehall, Jan. 30, 1649. By one party he was execrated as a tyrant, whose life was a constant danger to freedom. By the other party he was revered as a martyr. His two eldest sons were Charles, born in 1630, and James, born in 1633.
THE COMMONWEALTH.—The monarchy was now abolished; and England was a free commonwealth, governed by the House of Commons. A council of state, under the presidency of Bradshaw, who had presided at the trial of the king, was appointed to carry on the government. In Ireland, a rebellion in behalf of young Charles, son of the late king, was organized by Butler, Marquis of Ormond (1649). In nine months Cromwell subdued it, treating the insurgents with unsparing severity. There was a savage massacre of the garrisons at Drogheda and Wexford. The massacre at Drogheda was by his orders. Soldiers of Parliament were settled in Munster, Leinster, and Ulster. The country was reduced to complete subjection. In 1650 Charles landed in Scotland, subscribed to the Covenant, and was proclaimed king. Cromwell fought the Scots at Dunbar, and totally routed them. Returning to England, he overtook Charles and his army at Worcester, and defeated them (1651). Cromwell called this victory "a crowning mercy." Charles escaped in disguise, and, after strange perils and adventures, landed in Normandy.
WAR WITH HOLLAND.—England, under its new government, engaged in a contest for dominion on the sea. The new order of things, contrary to the expectation of Cromwell, was regarded with hostility in Holland, where the Orange family were in power. In 1651 the English Navigation Act, requiring all goods from abroad to be brought in, either in English ships, or in ships of the countries on the Continent in which the imported wares were produced, struck a heavy blow at Dutch commerce. War followed, in which the great Dutch admirals, Van Tromp, De Ruyter, De Witt, found more than a match in the English commander, Blake. The terms of peace were dictated by Cromwell, and Holland had to attach itself to his policy (1654).
THE LORD PROTECTOR.—There was a growing discord between the unworthy remnant of the Parliament—now called the "Rump Parliament"—and the army. In 1653 Cromwell used his military force to dissolve the assembly. By the "Little Parliament" which he called together, he was constituted Lord Protector, with a Council of State composed of twenty-five members. Later he declined the title of king, out of respect to the feelings and prejudices of his party. But he reigned in state, and exercised regal functions. His attempts to restore the old forms of parliamentary government, in an orderly form, with two houses, were baffled by difficulties beyond control. He insisted on a large degree of toleration, so long as "religion was not made a pretense for arms and blood."
CROMWELL'S GOVERNMENT.—Under the Protector, England once more took the proud and commanding place in Europe which she had not held since the death of Elizabeth. Cromwell made his power to be everywhere respected. Blake chastised the pirates of the Barbary States, and punished the Duke of Tuscany for attacks on English commerce. In 1655 Jamaica was wrested from Spain; and, two years after, Blake burned the Spanish treasure-ships in the harbor of Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe. Cromwell efficiently protected the adherents of the Protestant faith in Piedmont, and wherever they were subjected to persecution. In the last year of his life, in conjunction with the French, he took Dunkirk from the Spaniards.
POWER OF CROMWELL.—Cromwell's power was not diminished in his closing years. Macaulay, who pronounces him the greatest prince that ever ruled England, says of him, "It is certain that he was to the last honored by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British Isles, and dreaded by all foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp such as England had never before seen; and that he was succeeded by his son, Richard as quietly as any king had ever been succeeded by any Prince of Wales." (1658).
The talents of Cromwell, and the vigor of his administration, deeply impressed those who heartily disliked him. A strong illustration of this fact is presented in the character of the Protector as depicted by Lord Clarendon, in the History of the Great Rebellion; and by the poet Cowley in his essay or Discourse.
The European nations kept up their religious and political rivalship in exploring and colonizing the New World.
FRENCH EXPLORERS.—The French and English sent their fishermen to the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. French fishermen from Breton gave its name to Cape Breton. Francis I. sent out Verrazano, an Italian sailor, who is thought to have cruised along the coast of North America from Cape Fear northward (1524). Later, Jacques Cartier explored the St. Lawrence as far as the site of Montreal (1535); other expeditions followed, and thus was founded the claim of the French to that region.
SPANISH EXPLORERS.—The Spaniards brought negroes from the coast of Africa to the West Indies, to take the place of the Indians; and thus the slave-trade and negro slavery were established. They gave the name of Florida to a vast region stretching from the Atlantic to Mexico, and from the Gulf of Mexico to an undefined limit in the North. From Tampa Bay, in what we now call Florida, they sent into this unexplored region an expedition under Narvaez (1528); and afterwards, on the same track, another party led by Hernando de Soto (1539), which made its way to the Mississippi near the present site of Vicksburg. Tempted by tales of rich cities, Coronado led an army to the conquest of the pueblos of the south-west. He penetrated as far as the boundary of the present Nebraska.
CONTEST IN FLORIDA.—The great Huguenot leader, Coligny, made three attempts to found Huguenot settlements in America. He wanted to provide for them an asylum, and to extend the power of France. One company went to Brazil, and failed; a second perished at Port Royal in Florida; a third (1564) built Fort Caroline on the shores of the St. John. This last company was mercilessly slaughtered by Menendez, the leader of a Spanish expedition which founded St. Augustine (1565), the oldest town in the United States. The act was avenged by the massacre of the Spanish settlers at Fort Caroline, by Dominique de Gourgues and the French company that came over with him.
ENGLISH VOYAGES.—The English, full of zeal for maritime discovery, tried to find a north-west passage to Asia. This was attempted by Martin Frobisher, a sea-captain, from whom Frobisher's Strait takes its name. After him followed John Davis, who gave his name also to a strait. As the English grew stronger and bolder on the water, they ceased to avoid a contest with Spain. In 1577 Sir Francis Drake set out from the harbor of Plymouth on his voyage around the globe. The defeat of the Spanish Armada occurred in 1588; and after that the English felt themselves to be stronger than their old adversary.
GILBERT AND RALEIGH.—Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1583, took possession of Newfoundland in the name of the queen of England. Walter Raleigh, his half-brother, on his voyage in 1584, visited Roanoke Island, and named the whole country between the French and the Spanish possessions, Virginia, in honor of "the Virgin Queen," Elizabeth. A colony which he sent out to Roanoke (1585) failed, and a second settlement had no better result. Bartholomew Gosnold landed on Cape Cod, and cruised along the neighboring coast (1602).
THE FRENCH IN CANADA.—In 1603 Champlain, a French gentleman, sailed to Canada, whither the fur-trade enticed explorers. A few years later he founded Quebec (1608), and explored the country as far as Lake Huron. The Jesuit missionaries commenced their efforts to convert the Indian tribes, in which they evinced an almost unparalleled fortitude and perseverance. The Huron and Algonquin Indians helped Champlain gain a victory over the hostile and warlike Iroquois, who afterwards hated the French. The French occupants of the country of the St. Lawrence devoted themselves too exclusively to trading, and too little to the tilling of the ground and to the forming of a community.
THE DUTCH SETTLEMENTS.—The Dutch were as eager as the other maritime powers to find a passage to India. In 1609 an English captain in their service, Henry Hudson, balked in this endeavor, sailed up the river now called by his name. The next year, being in the service of an English company, he discovered Hudson's Bay. Amsterdam traders established themselves on the island of Manhattan (an Indian name); which led to the formation of the New Netherlands Company, by whom a fort (Orange) was built at the place afterwards called Albany (1615). The West India Company followed (1621), with authority over New Netherlands, as the country was called. The powerful land-owners were styled patroons. Their territory reached to Delaware Bay; and they had a trading-post on the Connecticut, on the site of the present city of Hartford.
In 1637 the Swedes made a settlement at the mouth of the Delaware
River, but in 1655 they were subdued by the Dutch.
SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA.—The Virginia Company, divided into two branches,—the London Company, having control in the South, and the Plymouth Company, having control in the North,—received its patent of privileges from James I. (1606). A settlement by the Plymouth Company on the Kennebec River (1607)—the Popham Colony—was given up. In 1607 Jamestown in Virginia, as the name Virginia is now applied, was settled. A majority of the first colonists were gentlemen not wonted to labor. The military leader was Capt. John Smith, whose life, according to his own account, was spared by Powhatan, an Indian chief. Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas married Rolfe, an Englishman. The Jamestown colony seemed likely to become extinct, when, in 1610, Lord Delaware arrived with fresh supplies and colonists. He was the first of a series of governors who ruled with almost unlimited authority. But the colony grew to be more independent, and in sympathy with the popular party in England. In 1619 the House of Burgesses first met, which brought in government by the people. At this time negroes began to be imported from Africa, and sold as slaves.
THE PILGRIM SETTLEMENT.—The first permanent settlement in New England was made at Plymouth in 1620, by a company of English Christians, who landed from the "Mayflower." They were Puritans of that class called "Independents," who had separated from the English Church, and did not believe in any national church organization. The emigrants left Leyden, in Holland, where they had lived for some time in exile, and where the remainder of their congregation remained under the guidance of a learned and able pastor, John Robinson. In the harbor of Provincetown, they agreed to a compact of government. Their civil polity was republican; their church polity was Congregational. They endured with heroic and pious fortitude the severities of the first winter, when half of their number died. Their military leader was Capt. Miles Standish. In their dealings with the Indians, they were equally just and brave.
SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS.—Somewhat different in its origin and character from the "Pilgrim" settlement at Plymouth, was the other Puritan settlement of Massachusetts. The emigrants to Massachusetts were not separatists from the Church of England, but more conservative Puritans who desired, however, many ecclesiastical changes which they could not obtain at home. Both classes of settlers, transferred to New England, found no difficulty in agreeing in religious matters; for when left free, they desired about the same things. But at Plymouth there was more toleration for religious dissent than in the later colony. In 1629 certain London merchants formed a corporation called "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England," and received a charter directly from Charles I. They sent out John Endicott to be governor of a settlement already formed at Salem. Charles had dissolved Parliament, and was beginning the experiment of absolutism. The new company was strengthened by the accession of a large number of Puritan gentlemen who were anxious to emigrate. They resolved to transfer the company and its government to the shores of America. John Winthrop was chosen governor, and in 1630 landed at Charlestown with a large body of settlers. Winthrop and his associates soon removed to the peninsula of Boston. The new colony was well provided with artisans. Soon ships began to be built. In 1636 a college, named in 1639, in honor of a benefactor, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge. At first all the voters met together to choose their rulers and frame their laws. As the towns increased in number, a General Court, or legislative assembly, was established by the colony, in which each town was represented. Each town had its church, and only church-members voted. The General Court superintended the affairs of both town and church. The political troubles in England stimulated emigration. Within ten years, about twenty thousand Englishmen, mainly Puritans, crossed the Atlantic, and took up their abode in New England. In the ecclesiastical system each church was self-governing, except as the General Court was over all. There were no bishops, and the liturgy was dispensed with in worship.
SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT.—After the Dutch had built a trading-post on the site of Hartford, people from Plymouth formed a settlement at Windsor, on the Connecticut, six miles above. From Boston and its neighborhood, there was a migration which settled Hartford. In 1637 the three towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford became the distinct colony of Connecticut. A colony led by the younger John Winthrop, under a patent given to Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brook, drove away the Dutch from the mouth of the Connecticut, and settled Saybrook (1635). This colony was afterwards united with the Connecticut colony. A third colony was established at New Haven (1638), which had an independent existence until 1662.
SETTLEMENT OF RHODE ISLAND, OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND OF MAINE.—Roger Williams, a minister who was not allowed to live in Massachusetts, on account of his differences with the magistrates, was the founder of Rhode Island (1636). He held that the State should leave matters of religious opinion and worship to the conscience of the individual, and confine government to secular concerns. This was not the view of the Puritans generally; and the incoming of dissenters from their religious and political system made them afraid that the colony would be broken up, or fall into disorder. Williams, in most of his qualities a noble man, obtained a patent for his government, which was framed in accordance with his liberal ideas. On lands granted by the Plymouth Company to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, settlements were made in New Hampshire and in Maine (1623). A line between the two was drawn in 1631; Gorges taking the territory on the east of the Piscataqua River, and Capt. John Mason taking the remainder.
VIRGINIA.—After 1624 the king appointed the governor in Virginia, which, however, had its own assembly. The colony grew rapidly, its chief export being tobacco. The people lived on their estates or plantations, employing indented servants and negro slaves.
MARYLAND.—Maryland was founded by George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, to whom Charles I. granted a charter (1632). The first settlement was made by Calvert's sons, after his death. They planted a colony near the mouth of the Potomac. The Calverts sent out both Puritans and Roman Catholics, and secured the safety of the adherents of their own faith by the grant of toleration to the Protestants. Under Cromwell, a Puritan governor was appointed by Lord Baltimore (1649). There were boundary disputes with Virginia; and Clayborne, a Puritan and a Virginian, at one time got control of the government, which the Calverts regained under Charles II. (1660).
NEW ENGLAND: NEW YORK.—During the war between king and Parliament in England, the Puritan colonies were in sympathy with the popular party, but were cautious in their avowals. They took great pains to prevent the king, and later the Parliament under the Commonwealth, from taking away their self-government. The English navigation acts, which forbade them to use foreign ships for their trade and forced them to send nearly all their products to English ports, were a grievance to them. The rivalries of the English and the Dutch gave the colonists a chance to expel the Dutch from Connecticut. Charles II. at length conquered New Netherland, and ceded this territory to his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. New Amsterdam became New York, and Fort Orange became Albany. In 1674 the country was formally ceded to England by Holland.
THE INDIANS.—When America was discovered, Mexico, Central America, and Peru were empires, to a considerable degree civilized. Relics taken from the mounds of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys indicate, also, that races somewhat advanced in culture had once dwelt in those regions. The most of both continents was inhabited by very numerous tribes of Indians, who were savages, with the ordinary virtues and vices of savage life. They were brave and patient, but indolent, treacherous, and implacable. There was an immense variety of dialects among them, yet there are traces of a common original unity of language. The tribes had no fixed boundaries, but roamed over extensive hunting-grounds. The Iroquois, or the Six Nations, occupied central New York from the Hudson to the Genesee. The Algonquins were spread over nearly all the rest of the country on the east of the Mississippi River, and north of North Carolina. The Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws were in the South.
THE WHITES AND THE RED MEN.—It was fortunate for the settlers of New England, that, before their arrival, the Indians had been much reduced in numbers by pestilence. Sometimes they were treated wisely and humanely, and efforts were made by noble men like John Eliot (1604-1690), who has been called "the Apostle to the Indians," to teach and civilize them. But this spirit was not always shown by the whites, and wrongs done by an individual are avenged by savages upon his race. The first important conflict between the English and the Indians was the Pequot War (1636), when the English, helped by the Narragansetts, who were under the influence of Roger Williams, crushed the Pequots, who were a dangerous tribe. A league between the New-England colonies, for mutual counsel and aid, followed (1643). Into this league, Massachusetts would not allow Rhode Island, whose constitution was disliked, to be admitted. There were to be two commissioners to represent each colony in common meetings.
ASTRONOMY.—In this period wonderful progress was made in astronomy. Copernicus, a German or Polish priest (1473-1543), detected the error of the Ptolemaic system, which made not the sun, but the earth, the center of the solar system. Thus a revolution was made in that science. Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer (1546-1601), was a most accurate and indefatigable observer, although he did not adopt the Copernican theory. His pupil Kepler (1571-1630) discovered those great principles respecting the orbits and motions of the planets, which are called the "Laws of Kepler." Galileo (1564-1642), the Italian scientist, in addition to important discoveries in mechanics, with the telescopes, which his ingenuity had constructed, discerned the moons of Jupiter, and made other striking discoveries in the heavens. In promulgating the Copernican doctrine, he incurred the displeasure of ecclesiastics, and was driven by the Inquisition to renounce his opinion. It was reserved for Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) to discover the law of gravitation.
JURISPRUDENCE.—In jurisprudence, the Roman law was more and more studied in universities. In political science, Bodin, a learned Frenchman (1530-1596), wrote a work on the State, advocating a strong monarchy. In the Netherlands, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a great jurist and scholar, was one of the principal founders of the science of International Law. An eminent expounder of natural and international law in Germany was Pufendorf (1632-1694).
HISTORICAL WRITINGS.—In history, Sleidan, a German (1506-1556), and later a learned statesman, Seckendorf (1626-1692), wrote histories of the Reformation. De Thou, a Frenchman (1553-1617), wrote a valuable history of his own times. Grotius described the war for independence in the Netherlands. Church history, on the Protestant side, was written by a company of authors called the Magdeburg Centuriators; and on the Catholic side, in the Annals of Baronius (who died in 1607). In the Tower of London, Sir Walter Raleigh employed himself in writing a History of the World, remarkable, if not for its researches, for passages of noble eloquence. In Italy, historians followed in the path opened by Machiavelli, through his Discourses on Livy and his Florentine History. Davila (1576-1631) composed a narrative of the Civil Wars in France, and the Cardinal Bentivoglio wrote the history of the Civil War in the Netherlands. Sarpi, a keen Venetian, of much independence of thought, related the history of the Council of Trent, which was followed by a history of the same Council by the more orthodox Pallavicini. In Spain, there was at least one historian of superior value, Mariana, who composed a history of his own country.
MEDICINE.—Medicine felt the benefit of the revival of learning. Hippocrates and Galen were studied, and were translated into Latin. Paracelsus, a German physician (1493-1541), besides broaching various theories more or less visionary, advanced the science on the chemical side, introducing certain mineral remedies. Vesalius, a native of Brussels (1514-1564), who became chief physician of Charles V. and Philip II., dissected the human body, and produced the first comprehensive and systematic view of anatomy. In the sixteenth century clinical instruction was introduced into hospitals. Harvey, an English physician (1578-1657), discovered the circulation of the blood. In the seventeenth century activity in medical study was shown by the rise of various discordant systems.
PHILOSOPHY.—In philosophy, Aristotle continued to be the master in the most conservative schools, where the old ways of thinking were cherished. His ethical doctrines were especially attacked by Luther. Giordano Bruno, an Italian, not without genius, promulgated a theory of pantheism, which identified the Deity with the world. He wandered from land to land, was a vehement assailant of received religious views, and was burned at the stake at Rome (1600). In some gifted minds, the conflict of doctrinal systems, and the influence of the Renaissance, engendered skepticism. Montaigne (1533-1592), the genial essayist on men and manners, the Plutarch of France, is an example of this class. The opposition to Aristotle and to the schoolmen found a great leader in the English philosopher, Francis Bacon (1561-1626). The influence of Lord Bacon was more in stimulating to the use of the inductive method, the method of observation, than in any special value belonging to the rules laid down for it. He pointed out the path of fruitful investigation. Hobbes (1588-1679), an English writer, propounded, in his Leviathan (1651) and in other writings, his theory of the absolute authority of the king, and the related doctrine that right is founded on the necessity of "a common power," if the desires are to be gratified, and if endless destructive contention is to be avoided. From the epoch of Bacon, the natural and physical sciences acquire a new importance. In metaphysical science, the modern epoch dates from Descartes (1596-1650), born in France, who insisted that philosophy must assume nothing, but must start with the proposition, "I think, therefore I am." Before, philosophy had been "the handmaid of theology." It had taken for granted a body of beliefs respecting God, man, and the world. Descartes was a theist. Spinoza (1632-1677), of Jewish extraction, born in Holland, is the founder of modern pantheism. He taught that there is but one substance; that God and the world—the totality of things—are the manifestation of one impersonal being.
LITERATURE IN ITALY.—In Italy, among many authors in different departments of poetry, Tasso (1544-1595), the author of the epic Jerusalem Delivered, is the most eminent. In it, the classic and the romantic styles are combined; the spirit of the Middle Ages blends with the unity and harmony of Homer and Virgil. In the seventeenth century, under the hard Spanish rule, the literary spirit in Italy was chilled.
LITERATURE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.—In Spain, it was poetry and the drama that chiefly flourished. Other sorts of literary activity were stifled with the extinction of liberty. Lope de Vega (1562-1635), one of the most facile and marvelous of all poets, the author of twenty-two hundred dramas,—was the precursor of a school. After him came Calderon (1600-1681), who carried the Spanish drama to its perfection. Early in the seventeenth century Cervantes published the classic tale of Don Quixote, "to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry," an end which he accomplished. Mariana's (1536-1623) vivid and interesting History of Spain was continued in a less attractive style by Sandoval. Herrera (1549-1625) composed a General History of the Indies. Other works relating to the New World and the Spanish conquests were written. In the production of proverbs, the Spanish mind is without a rival. Not the least of the bad effects of the despotic system of Philip II. was the decay of literature.
The most celebrated writer of Portugal is the poet Camoens (1524-1579), who, in his epic the Lusiad, has treated of the glorious events in the history of his country, giving special prominence to the discovery by Vasco da Gama of the passage to India.
LITERATURE IN FRANCE.—In France, with the exception of Montaigne, it was Rabelais (1495-1553), a physician, philosopher, and humorist, who, notwithstanding his profanity and obscenity, was the most popular author of his day, and who well represents the tone of the Renaissance in that country. Ronsard (1524-1585), an imitator of the Latins and Greeks, was the favorite poet of Mary, Queen of Scots. In the first half of the seventeenth century the light literature of the French is ruled by fashion, and is void of serious feeling. In this time the literary societies of France take their rise. Madame de Rambouillet (1588-1665), a lady of Italian birth, set the example in establishing such reunions. She made her hotel a resort for writers and politicians. Being an invalid, she kept her bed, which was placed in an alcove of the salon where she received her visitors.
LITERATURE IN ENGLAND.—In England, in the age of Elizabeth, there is a galaxy of great authors in prose and verse. The events and debates of the Reformation, the voyages and geographical discoveries of the period, gave a powerful quickening to thought and imagination. The Renaissance culture, which made familiar the stories of Greek and Roman mythology, and the romantic tales and poetry of Italy and Spain, was potent in its effect. Some of the numerous theological writers, as Bishop Hall (1574-1656), Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), and Richard Hooker (1553-1600), have gained a high place in general literature. Bacon, apart from his philosophical writings, towers above almost all his contemporaries in the field of letters. The chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote the pastoral romance of Arcadia. Burton (1576-1640), the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Sir Thomas Brown, who published (1642) the Religio Medici (the religion of a physician) and, at a later date, the Urn Burial, are quaint and original authors. The merit of Shakspeare (1564-1616) is so exalted and unique that he almost eclipses even the greatest names. The English drama did not heed what are called the classic unities of time and place, which limit the action of a play to a brief duration and a contracted area. Other celebrated dramatic writers are Beaumont (1586-1615) and Fletcher (1579-1625), who wrote many plays jointly; Ben Jonson (1574-1637), and Massinger (1584-1640). The imaginative poetry which is not dramatic, in this period, begins with Spenser (1553-1599), whose Faërie Queene is a poem of chivalry; and it ends with Milton (1608-1674), the Puritan poet, imbued with the culture of the Renaissance, whose majesty and beauty place him almost on a level, at least in the esteem of readers of the English race, with Dante. Among the religious poets is George Herbert (1593-1635). One of the most famous of the lyric authors was the last of them, Cowley (1618-1667).
LITERATURE IN GERMANY.—In Germany, the great literary product of this period was Luther's translation of the Bible. The immediate effect of the controversy in religion was not favorable to the cause of letters. Attention was engrossed by theological inquiries and discussion. But in most of the countries, in the department of theology, preachers and writers of much ability and learning appeared on both sides of the controversy. Biblical study and historical researches were of necessity fostered by the exigencies of religious debate.
THE JESUIT MISSIONS.—The Ming dynasty continued in power in China until 1644. About the middle of the sixteenth century the Portuguese came to the island of Macao, and commercial relations began between China and Europe. They brought opium into China, which had previously been imported overland from India. In 1583 Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary, began his labors in China. He and his associates had great success. His knowledge of the book language was most remarkable. The concessions of the Jesuit fathers to the Chinese in matters of ritual excited much opposition in the Church. But for this dissension among the different Catholic orders, the Roman Catholic faith, which had gained very numerous converts, would have spread far more widely.
THE MANCHU CONQUEST.—There were notable literary achievements in this period, one of which was an encyclopedia in more than twenty-two thousand books. Four copies were made: only one, a damaged copy, now remains. The great political event of the time was the seizure of the throne by the Manchu Tartars (1644), who came in as auxiliaries against a rebellion, but have worn the crown until now. The shaved head and the long cue are customs introduced by the Tartar conquerors. Certain privileges, and certain habits to which the natives clung, as the mode of dress for women, and the compression of their feet, were retained by express stipulation.
FEUDAL SYSTEM.—In 1603 Iyéyasu, an eminent general, founded the Tokugawa dynasty, which continued until the resignation of the last Shôgun (or Tycoon) in 1867. The rulers of that line held their court at Yedo, which grew into a flourishing city. The long period of anarchy and bloodshed that had preceded, was brought to an end. Iyéyasu laid the foundation of a feudal system which his grandson Iyémitsu (1623-1650) completed. Japan was divided into fiefs, each under a daimiô for its chief, who enjoyed a large degree of independence. The people consisted of four classes: (1) the military families, who had the right to wear two swords, the clansmen of the great nobles; (2) the farming class; (3) the artisans; (4) the tradesmen.
CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN.—Christianity was preached in Japan by Xavier, a successful Jesuit missionary, in 1583. Other Jesuit preachers followed. A multitude of converts were made. But on account of immoralities of Europeans, and the dread of foreign political domination, the government engaged in a series of severe persecutions. In 1614 an edict proscribed Christianity. A portion of the peasants who were converts were so oppressed, that they revolted (1637). The result was an act of terrible cruelty,—the massacre of all Christians; so that none remained openly to profess the Christian faith.
THE MUGHAL EMPIRE.—In the latter half of the fourteenth and in the fifteenth centuries, the most of India was ruled by distinct Mohammedan dynasties. The dominion of the Afghan dynasty at Delhi was thus greatly reduced. In 1525 the Mughal (Mogul) Empire was founded by Babar, a descendant of Tamerlane. Babar invaded India, and defeated the Sultan of Delhi in the battle of Paniput. The new empire was not permanently established until his grandson Akbar (1556-1605), in a series of conquests, spread his dominion over all India north of the Vindhyar mountains. Not until the reign of Aurungzeb (1658-1707), was the Deccan subdued. After 1600 the Portuguese no longer had the monopoly of the foreign trade: the Dutch and English became their rivals.
LITERATURE.—See lists of works on general history, p. 16; on modern
history, p. 395; on the history of particular countries, p. 359.
General Works on the Period. De Thou's History of his own
Times; ROBERTSON'S History of Charles V. (Prescott's ed.);
Von Raumer's Gesch. Europas seit d. Ende d, 15 tu Jahrk, (8
vols).; Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the
Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries; RANKE'S series
of works on this period,—the History of the Popes, and the
Histories of Germany, France, and England; Histories of the
Reformation by D'Aubigné, Döllinger (Roman Catholic), Spalding (Roman
Catholic), Fisher, HAUSSER, Hardwick, Stebbing; Laurent, La
Reforme; Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Genérale (iv. and
v.); Seebohm's Era of Protestant Revolution; Works of Janssen,
Pastor, Creighton.
On the German and Swiss Reformation: Waddington's History,
etc.; Hagenhach, Vorlesungen, etc.; Lives of Luther, by
Meurer, Michelet, Beard, KÖSTLIN; Lives of Zwingh, by CHRISTOFFEL,
MORIKOFER; Lives of Calvin, by HENRY, Dyer, Kampschulte (Roman
Catholic).
Reformation in France. Works by Soldan, Von Polenz, Smiles, Browning;
BAIRD'S works on Huguenots; Perkins, France under Richelieu
and Mazarin (2 vols.); Hanotaux, Richelieu (2 vols.).
The Revolt of the Netherlands. Blok's History of the Netherlands (3 vols.), etc.; MOTLEY'S Rise of the Dutch Republic, and History of the United Netherlands; PRESCOTT'S History of Philip II.; TH. JUSTE, Hist, de la Rèvol. des Pays-Bas, etc. (2 vols).
The Reformation in England. The Histories of Macaulay. Lingard, Froude, Burnet's History of the Reformation in England. S. R. Gardiner's History of England (1603 to 1656); Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion; a series of works on this period by GUIZOT; Neal's History of the Puritans; Gairdner, History of the English Church from Henry VIII. to Mary; selections of documents by Prothero and by Gardiner; Lives of Cromwell, by CARLYLE, by Forster, Gardiner, Harrison, Firth; Strype's Lives of the Leading Reformers—Cranmer, etc.
On the Reformation in Scotland. BURTON'S History of Scotland;
Robertson's History of Scotland; McCrie's Life of John
Knox; W. M. TAYLOR, Life of John Knox.
On the Thirty Years' War. GINDELY'S History, etc.; Gardiner,
The Thirty Years' War; Life of Gustavus Adolphus.
For more extended lists, see Adams's Manual, etc.; and
Fisher's The Reformation (Appendix). For list of works on
colonization in America, see the list at the end of Period III.
PERIOD III. FROM THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. (1648-1789)
CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD.—One feature of this period is the efforts made by the nations to improve their condition, especially to increase the thrift and to raise the standing of the middle class. An illustration is what is called the "mercantile system" in France. Along with this change, there is progress in the direction of greater breadth in education and culture. In both of these movements, rulers and peoples cooperate. Monarchical power, upheld by standing armies, reaches its climax. The result is internal order, coupled with tyranny. Great wars were carried on, mostly contests for succession to thrones. The outcome was an equilibrium in the European state system, dependent on the relations of five great powers.
FIRST SECTION OF THE PERIOD.—In the first half of the period, the East and the West of Europe are slightly connected. In the West, France gains the preponderance over Austria, until, by the Spanish war of succession, England restores the balance. In the East, Sweden is in the van, until, in the great Northern war (1700-1721), Russia becomes predominant.
SECOND SECTION OF THE PERIOD.—In the second half of the period, the East and the West of Europe are brought together in one state system, in particular by the rise of the power of Prussia.
CHIEF EVENTS.—The fall of Sweden and the rise of Russia and Prussia are political events of capital importance. The maritime supremacy of England, with the loss by England of the American colonies, is another leading fact. In the closing part of the period appear the intellectual and political signs of the great Revolution which broke out in France near the end of the eighteenth century.
LOUIS XIV.: MAZARIN.—The great minister Richelieu died in 1642. "Abroad, though a cardinal of the Church, he arrested the Catholic reaction, freed Northern from Southern Europe, and made toleration possible; at home, out of the broken fragments of her liberties and her national prosperity, he paved the way for the glory of France." He paved the way, also, for the despotism of her kings. He had been feared and hated by king and people, but had been obeyed by both. A few months later Louis XIII., a sovereign without either marked virtues or vices, followed him (1643). Louis XIV. (1643-1715) was then only five years old; and Mazarin, the heir of Richelieu's power, stood at the helm until his death (1661). To this Italian statesman, ambitious of power and wealth, but astute, and, like Richelieu, devoted to France, the queen, Anne of Austria, willingly left the management of the government. The rebellion of the Fronde (1648-1653) was a rising of the nobles to throw off the yoke laid on them by Richelieu. They were helped by the discontent of parliament and people with the oppressive taxation. In Paris, there was a rising of the populace, who built barricades; but the revolt was quelled. Its leaders, Conti, the Cardinal de Retz, and the great Condé, a famous soldier, were compelled to fly from the country. Mazarin, who had been obliged to fly to Cologne, returned in triumph. After that, resistance to the absolute monarch ceased,—the monarch whose theory of government was expressed in the assertion, "I am the State" (l'etat c'est moi). In the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), Spain gave in marriage to Louis, the Infanta Maria Theresa, the daughter of Philip IV., and ceded to France important places in the Netherlands. Maria renounced all claims on her inheritance, for herself and her issue, in consideration of a dowry of five hundred thousand crowns to be paid by Spain. Shortly after, Mazarin, who had negotiated the treaty, in full possession of his exalted authority and the incalculable treasures which he had amassed, died.
LOUIS XIV. AND HIS OFFICERS.—Louis XIV. was now his own master. His appetite for power was united with a relish for pomp and splendor, which led him to make Versailles, the seat of his court, as splendid as architectural skill and lavish expenditure could render it, and to make France the model in art, literature, manners, and modes of life, for all Europe. With sensual propensities he mingled a religious or superstitious vein, so that from time to time he sought to compound for his vices by the persecution of the Huguenots. He was the central figure in the European life of his time. Taking care that his own personal authority should not be in the least impaired, he made Colbert controller-general, to whom was given charge of the finances of the kingdom. Louvois was made the minister of war. Colbert not only provided the money for the costly wars, the luxurious palaces, and the gorgeous festivities of his master, but constructed canals, fostered manufactures, and built up the French marine. Louvois, with equal success, organized the military forces in a way that was copied by other European states. Able generals—Turenne, Condé, and Luxemburg—were in command. The nobles who held the offices, military as well as civil, vied with one another in their obsequious devotion to the "great king." Vauban, the most skillful engineer of the age, erected impregnable fortifications in the border towns that were seized by conquest. In the arts of diplomacy, the French ambassadors were equally superior. The monarch was sustained by the national pride of the people, and by their ambition to dominate in Europe.
ATTACK ON THE NETHERLANDS.—Louis had already purchased of the English Dunkirk,—which was shamefully sold to him by Charles II.,—when Philip IV. of Spain died (1665). He now claimed parts of the Netherlands as being an inheritance of his queen, according to an old law of those provinces. He conquered the county of Burgundy, or Franche Comté, and various places in that country. Holland, afraid that he might push his conquests farther, formed the Triple Alliance with England and Sweden. In the Treaty of Aachen (Aix), Louis gave up to the Spaniards Franche Comté, but retained the captured cities in the Netherlands (1668), which Vauban proceeded to fortify.
ATTACK ON HOLLAND.—The next attack of Louis was upon Holland. Holland and the Spanish Netherlands were at variance in religion, as well as in their political systems, and rivals in trade and industry. The first minister of the emperor, Leopold., was in the pay of Louis. Sweden, in the minority of Charles XI., was in the hands of the Swedish nobles. England had now joined Louis, who, in return for help in the Netherlands, was to furnish subsidies to assist Charles II. in establishing Catholicism in his realm. In Holland, there was a division between the republicans, of whom the grand pensionary, John de Witt, was the chief, and the adherents of the house of Orange.
THE WAR: THE PEACE OF NIMWEGEN.—Louis, having first seized Lorraine,—whose duke had allied himself to the United Provinces,—accompanied by his famous generals, Condé, Turenne, and Vauban, put himself at the head of an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, which crossed the Rhine, and advanced to the neighborhood of the capital of Holland. The Orange party charged the blame of the failure to defend the land on their adversaries, whom they accused of treachery. De Witt and his brother, Cornelius, were killed in the streets of Hague. William III., the Prince of Orange (1672-1702), assumed power. Gröningen held out against the French troops. Storms on the sea and on the land aided the patriotic defenders of their country. The "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, Frederic William, lent them help. At length the German emperor was driven by the French aggressions to join actively in the war, on the side of the Dutch. The English Parliament (1674) forced Charles II. to conclude peace with them. In the battle of Sasbach, Turenne fell (1675). Sweden took the side of France, and invaded the elector's territory; but the elector's victory at Fehrbellin (1675) laid the foundation of the greatness of Prussia. William III. kept the field against the great generals of France, and married the daughter of James, the Duke of York, the brother of Charles II. In bringing the war to an end, Louis, by shrewd diplomacy, settled with the United Provinces first. By the Peace of Nimwegen (1678 and 1679), Holland received back its whole territory; France kept most of her new conquests in the Netherlands, with the county of Burgundy, the city of Besançon, and some imperial towns in Alsace not ceded in the Peace of Westphalia; the emperor lost to France Freiburg in the Breisgau. The elector, left to shift for himself, was forced to give back his profitable conquests to Sweden (1679).
EFFECT OF THE WAR.—In the war with Holland, Louis had shown his military strength, and his skill in making and breaking alliances. He had made progress towards the goal of his ambition, which was to act as dictator in the European family of states. To the end of the century, France stood on the pinnacle of power and apparent prosperity.
CONDITION OF FRANCE.—Manufactures flourished to an astonishing degree. France became a naval power with a large fleet and with all its services better organized than those of the contemporary English marine. Colbert finished the canal between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Colonies were founded in St. Domingo, Cayenne, Madagascar. Canada was increasing in strength. A uniform, strict judicial system was established. Restless nobles were cowed, and the common people thus drawn to the monarch.
THE FRENCH COURT.—In his court, the king established elaborate forms of etiquette, and made himself almost an object of worship. The nobility swarmed about him, and sought advancement from his favor. Festivals and shows of all sorts—plays, ballets, banquets, dazzling fireworks—were the costly diversion of the gay throngs of courtiers, male and female, in that court, where sensuality was thinly veiled by ceremonious politeness and punctilious religious observances. Poets, artists, and scholars were liberally patronized, and joined in the common adulation offered to the sovereign. Stately edifices were built, great libraries gathered; academies of art and of science, an astronomical observatory, and the botanic garden for the promotion of the study of natural history, were founded. The palace at Versailles, with its statues, fountains, and gardens, furnished a pattern which all the rest of Europe aspired to copy. Every thing there wore an artificial stamp, from the trimming of the trees to the etiquette of the ballroom. But there was a splendor and a fascination which caused the French fashions, the French language and literature, with the levity and immorality which traveled in their company, to spread in the higher circles of the other European countries.
THE GALLICAN CHURCH.—Louis XIV. desired, without any rupture with Rome, to take to himself a power in ecclesiastical affairs like that assumed in England by Henry VIII. Under the pontificate of Innocent XI., the assembly of the French clergy passed four propositions asserting the rights of the national Gallican Church, and limiting the Pope's prerogative (1682). The king had for his ecclesiastical champion the able and eloquent Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux. Subsequently, under Innocent XII., Louis, afraid of a schism and anxious to procure other advantages, yielded up the four obnoxious propositions.
JANSENISM.—The controversy raised by the Jansenists was an important event in the history of France. They took their name from Jansenius, who had been Bishop of Ypres, an ardent disciple of St. Augustine's theology. They strenuously opposed the theology and moral maxims of the powerful Jesuit order. Their leaders, St. Cyran, Pascal, Arnauld, Nicole, and others, were called Port Royalists, from their relation to a cloister at Port Royal, where some of them resided. They were men of literary and philosophical genius, as well as theologians and devotees. Blaise Pascal wrote the "Provincial Letters," a satirical and polemical work against the Jesuit doctrines. This has always been deemed in style a masterpiece of French prose. His posthumous Thoughts is a profound and suggestive fragment on the evidences of religion. In the heated controversy that arose, the Jansenist leaders were for a more limited definition of the Pope's authority in deciding questions of doctrine. The French court at length took the side of the Jesuits. In 1713 the Pope's bull against the Moral Reflections of Quesnel, a Jansenist author, was a heavy blow at his party. Finally, the Jansenists were proscribed by the king, and the cloister at Port Royal leveled to the ground. The Jansenist influence made a part of the tendencies to liberalism that led to the Revolution at the close of the century.
THE HUGUENOTS.—After Mazarin's death, the king fell under the influence of a party hostile to the Huguenots. Louvois fostered this feeling in him, as did Madame de Maintenon, whom he had secretly married, and by whom he was influenced through life. As he grew older, he sought to appease a guilty conscience by inflicting tortures on religious dissenters. He issued edicts of the most cruel character. He adopted the atrocious scheme of the dragonade, or the billeting of soldiers, over whom there was no restraint, in Huguenot families. In the course of three years, fifty thousand families, industrious and virtuous people, had fled the country. In 1685 the Edict of Nantes, the charter of Protestant rights, was revoked. Emigration was forbidden; yet not far from a quarter of a million of refugees escaped, to enrich by their skill and labor the Protestant countries where they found an asylum. Many of the refugees were received by the Elector Frederick, and helped to build up Berlin, then a small city of twelve thousand inhabitants. France was not only in a degree impoverished by those who fled, but, also, by the much larger number who remained to be harassed and ruined by the foolish and brutal bigotry of their ruler.
The loss to France by the exile of the Huguenots was incalculable. "Here were the thriftiest, the bravest, the most intelligent of Frenchmen, the very flower of the race; some of their best and purest blood, some of their fairest and most virtuous women, all their picked artisans. In war, in diplomacy, in literature, in production of wealth, these refugees gave what they took from France to her enemies; for they carried with them that bitter sense of wrong which made them henceforth foremost among those enemies, the forlorn hope of every attack on their ancient fatherland. Large numbers of officers, and those among the ablest, emigrated; among them pre-eminent Marshal Schomberg, 'the best general in Europe.' The fleet especially suffered: the best of the sailors emigrated; the ships were almost unmanned. The seamen carried tidings of their country's madness to the ends of the earth: as Voltaire says, 'the French were as widely dispersed as the Jews.' Not only in industry, but in thought and mental activity, there was a terrible loss. From this time literature in France loses all spring and power."
In England, the Huguenot exiles quickened manufactures; in Holland, commerce; in Brandenburg, they made a new era in agriculture. Moreover, from this time the policy of Brandenburg was changed: the hostility to the emperor and the house of Austria gave way. An antagonism to France arose: "a process begun by the Great Elector, carried on by Frederick the Great, and brought to a triumphant close in our own days, dates from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes."
THE COST OF NATIONAL UNITY IN FRANCE.—From the beginning of the Reformation, the problem for the nations to solve was, how to combine religious freedom with national unity. The intolerance of the Spanish branch of the Hapsburgs deprived them of Holland, and broke down their power. This effort to secure uniformity of belief was shattered. A like effort in Germany resulted in the Thirty Years' War, and the utter loss of the national unity which it aimed to restore. The civil wars in France, aiming at the same result, uniformity of belief, ended in an accommodation between the parties, secured by Henry IV. in the Edict of Nantes. There was a partial sacrifice of national unity. This was reestablished by the policy of Richelieu and the acts of Louis XIV., but at a fearful cost. The loss of the Huguenot emigrants; the loss of character, with the loss of the spirit of independence, in the nobles of France; the full sway of a monarchical despotism,—this was the price paid for national unity.
AGGRESSIONS OF LOUIS.—The readiness of the European states to accept the provisions of the Nimwegen Treaty emboldened Louis to further outrages and aggressions. Germany, split into a multitude of sovereignties, and for the most part inactive as if a paralysis lay upon her, was a tempting prey to the spoiler. He claimed that all the places which had stood in a feudal relation to the places acquired by France in the Westphalian and Nimwegen treaties, should become dependencies of France. He constituted Reunions, or courts of his own, to decide what these places were, and enforced their decrees with his troops (1679). He went so far, in a time of peace, as to seize and wrest from the German Empire the city of Strasburg, to establish his domination there, and to introduce the Catholic worship, in the room of the Protestant, in the minster (1681). Instead of heeding the warning of the Prince of Orange, the empire concluded with Louis the truce of Regensburg, by which he was suffered to retain these conquests. He evinced his arrogance in making a quarrel with Genoa, in bombarding the city, and in forcing the doge to come to Versailles and beg for peace (1684).
HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA.—The Emperor Leopold was busy in the eastern part of his dominions. The success of the Turks, who gained possession of Lower Hungary, called out a more energetic resistance; but a victory gained by the imperial general, Montecuculi, at St. Gothard, on the Raab (1664), only resulted in a truce. The Austrian government, guided by the minister, Lobkowitz, used the opportunity to rob the Hungarians of their liberties and rights. Political tyranny and religious persecution went hand in hand. Protestant preachers were sold as galley-slaves. Tököly, an Hungarian nobleman, led in a revolt, and invoked the help of the Turks. In 1683 the Turks laid siege to Vienna, which was saved by a great victory gained under its walls by a united German and Polish army; the hero in the conflict being John Sobieski, king of Poland. The German princes and Venice now united in the prosecution of the war. The conquest of Hungary from the Turks enabled Leopold to destroy Hungarian independence. After their defeat by Charles of Lorraine at Mohacs (1687), the Diet of Pressburg conferred on the male Austrian line the crown of Hungary, and abandoned its old privilege of resisting unconstitutional ordinances (1687). A great victory gained over the Turks by Prince Eugene at Zenta was followed by the Peace of Carlowitz, which gave Hungary and Transylvania to Austria, Morea to Venice, and Azof to Russia. Tököly died in exile.
THE RESTORATION IN ENGLAND (1660).—Richard Cromwell quietly succeeded to the Protectorate. But the officers of the army recalled the "Rump" Parliament, the survivors of the Long Parliament. After eight months Richard gave up his office. The "Rump" was soon in a quarrel again with the army, and was expelled by its chief, Lambert. Monk, the commander of the English troops in Scotland, refused to recognize the government set up by the officers in London. The fleet declared itself on the side of Parliament. Lambert was forsaken, and Monk entered London (1660). A new Parliament or Convention was convoked, which included the Upper House. The restoration of Charles II. was now effected by means of the combined influence of the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and through the agency of Monk. Charles, in his Declaration from Breda, prior to his return, promised "liberty to tender consciences." This and subsequent pledges were falsified: he had the Stuart infirmity of breaking his engagements. With an easy good-nature and complaisant manners, he was void of moral principle, and in his conduct an open profligate. At heart he was a Roman Catholic, and simply from motives of expediency deferred the avowal of his belief to his death-bed. The army was disbanded. Vengeance was taken on such of the "regicides," the judges of Charles I., as could be caught, and on the bodies of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw. The Cavalier party had now every thing their own way. The Episcopal system was reestablished, and a stringent Act of Uniformity was passed. Two thousand Presbyterian ministers were turned out of their parishes. If there was at any time indulgence to the nonconformists, it was only for the sake of the Roman Catholics. John Bunyan, the author of "Pilgrim's Progress," was kept in prison for more than twelve years. The sale of Dunkirk to France (1662) awakened general indignation.
THE "YEAR OF WONDERS:" THE CONDUCT OF CHARLES.—The year 1665 was marked as the year of the Great Plague in London, where the narrow and dirty streets admitted little fresh air. It was estimated that not less than one hundred thousand people perished. In less than a year after the plague ceased, there occurred the Great Fire in London (Sept., 1666), which burned for three days, and laid London in ashes from the Tower to the Temple, and from the Thames to Smithfield. St. Paul's, the largest cathedral in England, was consumed, and was replaced by the present church of the same name, planned by Sir Christopher Wren. The king showed an unexpected energy in trying to stay the progress of the flames. But neither public calamities, nor the sorrow and indignation of all good men, including his most loyal and attached adherents, could check the shameless profligacy of his palace-life. The diaries of Evelyn and of Pepys, both of whom were familiar with the court, picture the disgraceful depravation of morals, which was stimulated by the king's example. But the nation was even more aggrieved by his conduct in respect to foreign nations. In a war with Holland, arising out of commercial rivalry, the English had the mortification of seeing the Thames blockaded by the Dutch fleet (1667). Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Charles's principal adviser, whose daughter married the Duke of York, was driven from office, and went into exile to escape a trial. The Triple Alliance against Louis (p. 453) was gratifying to the people; but in the Treaty of Dover (1670), Charles engaged to declare himself a Roman Catholic as soon as he could do so with prudence, and promised to join his cousin, Louis XIV., against Holland, and to aid him in his schemes; in return for which he was to receive a large subsidy from Louis, a pension during the war, and armed help in case of an insurrection in England.
THE "CABAL" MINISTRY.—A cabinet, as we now term it,—a small number of persons,—had, before this reign, begun to exercise the functions which belonged of old to the King's Council. At this time, the cabal ministry—so called from the first letters of the names, which together made the word—was in power. In 1672 war with Holland was declared, and was kept up for two years.
DECLARATION OF INDULGENCE.—When Charles began this second Dutch war, he issued orders for the suspension of the laws against the Catholics and Dissenters. His design was to weaken the Church of England. The anger of Parliament and of the people at this usurpation obliged him to recall the declaration.
THE TEST ACT.—Parliament, in 1673, passed an act which shut out all
Dissenters from office. This act the king did not venture to reject;
although the effect of it was to oblige his brother James, the
Duke of York, to resign his office of lord high admiral.
DANBY'S MINISTRY.—The cabal ministry was gradually broken up; and Shaftesbury, an able minister, went over to the other side. The Earl of Danby became the chief minister. He was in agreement with the House of Commons. He favored the marriage which united Mary, the daughter of the Duke of York, to William, Prince of Orange.
THE "POPISH PLOT" (1678).—The already exasperated nation was infuriated by an alleged "Popish Plot" for the subverting of the government, and for the murder of the king and of all Protestants. Titus Oates, a perjurer, was the main witness. Many innocent Roman Catholics were put to death. This pretended plot led to stringent measures shutting out papists from office. Halifax, an able man who called himself "a trimmer," because he did not always stay on one side or with one party, opposed a bill that would have excluded the king's brother from the succession, and it failed.
HABEAS CORPUS ACT.—In 1679 the Habeas Corpus Act was passed, providing effectually against the arbitrary imprisonment of subjects. Persons arrested must be brought to trial, or proved in open court to be legally confined.
PARTIES: RUSSELL AND SIDNEY.—At this time the party names of Whig and Tory came into vogue. Insurgent Presbyterians in Scotland had been called "Whigs," a Scotch word meaning whey, or sour milk. The nickname was now applied to Shaftesbury's adherents, opponents of the court, who wished to exclude the Duke of York from the throne on account of his being a Catholic. Tories, also a nickname, the designation of the supporters of the court, meant originally Romanist outlaws, or robbers, in the bogs of Ireland. Many of the Whigs began to devise plans of insurrection, from hatred of Charles's arbitrary system of government. Some of them were disposed to put forward Monmouth, the eldest of Charles's illegitimate sons, and a favorite of the common people. The "Rye-House Plot" for the assassination of the king and his brother was the occasion of the trial and execution of two eminent patriots,—William, Lord Russell, and Algernon Sidney, a warm advocate of republican government. Both, it is believed, were unjustly condemned. The Duke of York assumed once more the office of admiral. Charles, before his death, received the sacrament from a priest of the Church of Rome (1685).
JAMES II. (1685-1688): MONMOUTH'S REBELLION.—A few months after James's accession, the Duke of Monmouth landed in England; but his effort to get the crown failed. His forces, mostly made up of peasants, were defeated at Sedgemoor; and he perished on the scaffold. Vengeance was taken upon all concerned in the revolt; and Chief Justice Jeffreys, for his brutal conduct in the "Bloody Assizes," in which, savage as he was, he nevertheless became rich by the sale of pardons, was rewarded with the office of lord chancelor.
JAMES'S ARBITRARY GOVERNMENT.—James paid no heed to his promise to defend the Church of England. Of a slow and obstinate mind, he could not yield to the advice of moderate Roman Catholics, and of the Pope, Innocent XI.; but set out, by such means as dispensing with the laws, to restore the old religion, and at the same time to extinguish civil liberty. He turned out the judges who did not please him. He created a new Ecclesiastical Commission, for the coercion of the clergy, with the notorious Jeffreys at its head. After having treated with great cruelty the Protestant dissenters, he unlawfully issued a Declaration of Indulgence (1687) in their favor, in order to get their support for his schemes in behalf of his own religion. He turned out the fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford, for refusing to appoint a Catholic for their president. He sent seven bishops to the Tower in 1688, who had signed a petition against the order requiring a second Declaration of Indulgence to be read in the churches. Popular sympathy was strongly with the accused, and the news of their acquittal was received in the streets of London with shouts of joy.
REVOLUTION OF 1688: WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1694).—The birth of a Prince of Wales by his second wife, Mary of Modena, increased the disaffection of the English people. His two daughters by his first wife—Mary and Anne—were married to Protestants; Mary, to William, Prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, and Anne to George, Prince of Denmark. By a combination of parties hostile to the king, William was invited to take the English throne. James was blind to the signs of the approaching danger, and to the warnings of Louis XIV. of France. When it was too late, he attempted in vain to disarm the conspiracy by concessions. William landed in safety at Torbay. He was joined by persons of rank. Lord Churchill, afterwards the celebrated Duke of Marlborough, left the royal force of which he had the command, and went over to him. The king's daughter, Anne, fled to the insurgents in the North. William was quite willing that James should leave the kingdom, and purposely caused him to be negligently guarded by Dutch soldiers. He fled to France, never to return. Parliament declared the throne to be, on divers grounds, vacant, and promulgated a Declaration of Right affirming the ancient rights and liberties of England. It offered the crown to William and Mary, who accepted it (1689). A few months later, the estates of Scotland bestowed upon them the crown of that country. Presbyterianism was made the established form of religion there. The union of the kingdoms was consummated under their successor, Anne, when Scotland began to be represented in the English Parliament.
THE MASSACRE OF GLENCOE.—A Highland chief, MacIan of Glencoe, with many of his followers, was treacherously slaughtered by order of Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, who governed Scotland, and had obtained by misrepresentation from William leave to extirpate that "set of thieves," as he had called them.
WILLIAM IN IRELAND.—The sovereignty of Ireland passed, with that of England, to William and Mary. There James II., supported by France, made a stout resistance. It was a conflict of the Irish Catholics, together with the descendants of the Norman-English settlers, comprising together about a million of people, against the English and Scottish colonists, not far from two hundred thousand in number. The latter, with steadfast courage, sustained a siege in Londonderry until the city was relieved by ships from England. Many of the inhabitants had perished from hunger. The victory of William at Boyne (1690), where Schomberg, his brave general, a Huguenot French marshal, fell, decided the contest. William led his troops in person through the Boyne River, with his sword in his left hand, since his right arm was disabled by a wound. James was a spectator of the fight at a safe distance.
ENGLISH LIBERTY.—In William's reign, liberty in England was fortified by the Bill of Rights, containing a series of safeguards against regal usurpation. Papists were made ineligible to the throne. The Toleration Act afforded to Protestant dissenters a large measure of protection and freedom. The press was made free from censorship (1695), and newspapers began to be published. Provision was made for the fair trial of persons indicted for treason. The Act of Settlement (1701) settled the crown, if there should be no heirs of Anne or of William, upon the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, the daughter of Elizabeth of Bohemia, and granddaughter of James I., and on her heirs, being Protestants.
THE GRAND ALLIANCE: TO THE PEACE OF RYSWICK.—The next war which Louis XIV. began was that of the succession in the territory of the Palatinate, which he claimed, on the extinction of the male line of electors, for Elizabeth Charlotte, the gifted and excellent sister of the deceased Elector Charles, and the wife of the Duke of Orleans, the king's brother.
The table which follows will show the nature of this claim:—
FREDERIC, V, 1610-1632, Elector and King of Bohemia, m.
Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England.
|
+—CHARLES LEWIS, 1649-1680.
| |
| +—CHARLES, 1680-1685.
| |
| +—Elizabeth, m. Philip, Duke of Orleans, d. 1701.
|
+—Sophia, m. Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover.
|
+—George I of England.
Philip, Duke of Orleans, was the only brother of Louis XIV. From him descended King Louis Philippe (1830-1848).
Another reason that Louis had for war was his determination to secure the archbishopric of Cologne for the bishop of Strasburg, a candidate of his own. In 1686 the League of Augsburg had been formed by the emperor with Sweden, Spain, Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, for defense against France. The Grand Alliance, in which England and Holland were included, was now made (1689). In the year before, by the advice of Louvois, the French had deliberately devastated the Palatinate, demolishing buildings, and burning cities and villages without mercy. The ruins of the Castle of Heidelberg are a monument of this worse than vandal incursion, the pretext for which was a desire to prevent the invasion of France. In the war the English and Dutch fleets, under Admiral Russell, defeated the French, and burned their ships, at the battle of La Hogue (1692). This battle was a turning-point in naval history: "as at Lepanto," says Ranke, where the Turks were defeated (1571), "so at La Hogue, the mastery of the sea passed from one side to the other." But in the Netherlands, where William III., the soul of the League, steadfastly kept the field, after being defeated by Luxemburg; in Italy, where the Duke of Savoy was opposed by the Marshal Catinat; and in a naval battle between the English and French at Lagos Bay,—the French commanders were successful. In 1695 William's troops besieged and captured the town of Namur. At length Louis was moved by the exhaustion of his treasury, and the stagnation of industry in France, to conclude the Peace of Ryswick with England, Spain, and Holland (1697). The Duke of Savoy had been detached from the alliance. Most of the conquests on both sides were restored. William III. was acknowledged to be king of England. In the treaty with the emperor, France retained Strasburg. William was a man of sterling worth, but he was a Dutchman, and was cold in his manners. The plots of the Jacobites, as the adherents of James were called, did more than any thing else to make him popular with his subjects.
OCCASION OF THE WAR.—The death of Charles II. of Spain (1700) was followed by the War of the Spanish Succession. The desire of Louis to have his hands free in the event of Charles's death had influenced him in making the Treaty of Rysivick. Charles had no children. It had been agreed in treaties, to which France was a party, that the Spanish monarchy should not be united either to Austria or to France; and that Archduke Charles, second son of the Emperor Leopold I., should have Spain and the Indies. But Charles II. of Spain left a will making Louis's second grandson, Philip Duke of Anjou, the heir of all his dominions, with the condition annexed that the crowns of France and Spain should not be united. Instigated by dynastic ambition, Louis made up his mind to break the previous agreements, and seize the inheritance for Philip. Philip V. thus became king of Spain. On the death of James II. (1701), Louis recognized his son James, called "the Pretender," as king of Great Britain. This act, as a violation of the Treaty of Ryswick, and as an arrogant intermeddling on the part of a foreign ruler, excited the wrath of the English people, and inclined them to war. The Grand Alliance against France (1701) included the Empire, England, Holland, Brandenburg (or Prussia), and afterwards Portugal and Savoy (1703). France was supported by the electors of Bavaria and Cologne, and at first by Savoy. William III. died in 1702, and was succeeded by Anne, the sister of his deceased wife, and the second daughter of James II.
The following table will help to make clear the several claims to the
Spanish succession:—
Philip III, King of Spain, 1598-1621.
|
+—Maria Anna, m. Emperor Ferdinand III.
| |
| +—Leopold I, m. (3) Eleanor, daughter of Elector Palatine.
| | |
| | +—Joseph I, d. 1711.
| | |
| | +—Charles VI.[2]
| |
| +—Anna Maria
| m.
+—PHILIP IV (1621-1665)
| |
| +—CHARLES II, 1665-1700.
| |
| +—Margaret Theresa m. Leopold I
| | |
| | +—Maria Antonia m. Maximilian of Bavaria
| | |
| | +—Joseph Ferdinand, [1] Electoral Prince of Bavaria.
| |
| +—(1) Maria Theresa.
| m.
| +—Louis XIV
| | |
| | +—Louis, the Dauphin.
| | |
| | +—Philip of Anjou [2] (PHILIP V of Spain), d. 1746.
| |
+—Anne. m. Louis XIII of France
1 Recognized as heir of Charles II of Spain until his death.
2 Rival claimants for the Spanish crown after Charles II, the elder brother of each having resigned his pretensions.
EVENTS OF THE WAR.—In this war, there were displayed the military talents of two great generals,—the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy. Marlborough had two glaring faults, He was avaricious, and, like other prominent public men in England at that day, was double-faced. After deserting the service of James for that of William, he still kept up at times a correspondence with the exiled house. He was a man of stately and winning presence, a careful commander, in battle cool and self-possessed. At the council board, he had the art of quietly composing differences by winning all to an adhesion to his own views. It is said of him, that he "never committed a rash act, and never missed an opportunity for striking an effective blow." Eugene, on his father's side, sprang from the house of Savoy. His mother was a niece of Mazarin. He was brought up at the court of Louis XIV.; but when the king repeatedly refused him a commission in the army, he entered the service of Austria, was employed in campaigns against the Turks, and rose to the highest distinction. Flattering offers from Louis XIV. he indignantly rejected. His career as a soldier was long and brilliant. The personal sympathy of Eugene and Marlborough with each other was one important cause of their success. Eugene was first sent to Italy. There he drove Catinat, the French general, back on Milan, and captured his successor in command, Villeroi (1702). After a drawn battle between Eugene and Vendome (1702), a commander of much more skill than his predecessor, the French had the advantage in Italy. In 1703, Eugene came to Germany, and Marlborough invaded the Spanish Netherlands. In 1704 Marlborough carried out the plan of a grand campaign which he had devised. He crossed the Rhine at Cologne, moved southward, captured Donauwörth, and drove the Bavarians across the Danube. The united forces of Marlborough and Eugene defeated the French and Bavarian armies at Blenheim (or Hochstädt), on the left bank of the river, with great slaughter. There were captured fifteen thousand French soldiers, with their general Tallard. This victory raised Marlborough's reputation, already great on account of his masterly conduct of his army, to the highest point. He was made a duke by Queen Anne, and a prince of the Empire by Leopold. In Spain, the English captured Gibraltar. Charles of Austria (who had assumed the title of Charles III. of Spain) conquered Madrid (1706), but held it for only a short time. The country generally favored Philip; the arms of Vendome were triumphant; and Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia had to submit to Castilian laws as the penalty of their adhesion to the Austrian cause. In 1706 Marlborough vanquished Villeroi at Ramillies, a village in the Netherlands, in a great battle in which the French army was routed, and their banners and war material captured. The Netherlands submitted to Austria. At Turin, Eugene gained a victory over an army of eighty thousand men; and the fame of this modest and unpretending, but brave and skillful leader was now on a level with that of the English general. Lombardy submitted to Charles III., and the French were excluded from Italy. Another victory of the two commanders at Oudenarde (1708) over Vendome and the Duke of Burgundy, broke down the hopes of Louis, and moved him to offer the largest concessions, which embraced the giving up of Strasburg and of Spain. But the allies, flushed with success, went so far as to demand that he should aid in driving his grandson out of Spain. This roused France, as well as Louis himself, to another grand effort. At Malplaquet, in a bloody conflict, the French were again defeated by Marlborough and Eugene.
TO THE PEACE OF UTRECHT.—Circumstances now favored the vanquished and humbled king of France. The Whig ministry in England, which the victories of Marlborough had kept in office, fell from power (1710); and its enemies, and the enemies of Marlborough, were anxious to weaken him. Anne dismissed from her service the Duchess of Marlborough, a haughty woman of a violent temper. Harley, Earl of Oxford, and St. John, afterwards Viscount Bolingbroke, became the queen's principal ministers. They wished to end the war. The Emperor Joseph (1705-1711), who had succeeded Leopold I., died; so that Charles, if he had acquired Spain, would have restored the vast monarchy of Charles V., and brought in a new source of jealousy and alarm. Negotiations for peace began. Marlborough, who had been guilty of traitorous conduct, was removed from his command, and deprived of all his offices (1712). In 1713 the Peace of Utrecht was concluded between England and France, in which Holland, Prussia, Savoy, and Portugal soon joined. It was followed by the Peace of Rastadt and Baden with the emperor (1714). Spain and Spanish America were left to Philip V., the Bourbon king, with the proviso that the crowns of France and Spain should never be united. France ceded to England Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson Bay Territory. Spain ceded to England Gibraltar and Minorca. The Elector of Brandenburg was recognized as King of Prussia. Savoy received the island of Sicily, which was exchanged seven years later for Sardinia, and for the title of king for the duke. Holland gained certain "barrier" fortresses on its border. Austria received the appanages of the Spanish monarchy,—the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sardinia, and Milan, but not Sicily. The emperor did not recognize the Bourbons in Spain.
LAST DAYS OF LOUIS XIV.—In the next year after the peace, Louis XIV. died. Within two years (1710-1712) he had lost his son, his grandson the Duke of Burgundy (whom the pious Fenélon had trained), his wife, and his eldest great-grandson, and, two years later (1714), his third grandson, the Duke of Berry. He left France overwhelmed with debt, its resources exhausted, its credit gone, its maritime power prostrate; a land covered with poverty and wretchedness. This was the reward of lawless pride and ambition in a monarch who owed his strength, however, to the sympathy and subservience of the nation.
LAW'S BANK.—During the minority of Louis XV. (1715-1774) Philip, Duke of Orleans, was regent, a man of extraordinary talents, but addicted to shameful debauchery. The opportunity for effective reform was neglected. The most influential minister was Cardinal Dubois, likewise a man of unprincipled character. The state was really bankrupt, when a Scottish adventurer and gambler, John Law, possessed of unusual financial talents, but infected with the economical errors of the time, offered to rescue the national finances by means of a bank, which he was allowed to found, the notes of which were to serve as currency. Almost all the coined money flowed into its coffers; its notes went everywhere in the kingdom, and were taken for government dues; it combined with its business "the Mississippi scheme," or the control of the trade, and almost the sovereignty, in the Mississippi region; it absorbed the privileges of the different companies for trading with the East; finally it took charge of the national mint and the issue of coin, and of the taxation of the kingdom, and it assumed the national debt. The temporary success of the gigantic financial scheme turned the heads of the people, and a fever of speculation ran through all ranks. The crash came, the shares in the bank sunk in value, the notes depreciated; and, in the wrath which ensued upon the general bankruptcy, Law, who had been honored and courted by the high and the low, fled from the kingdom. He died in poverty at Venice. The state alone was a gainer by having escaped from a great part of its indebtedness.
ITALY.—Before the middle of the eighteenth century, the Spanish Bourbons again had possession of Naples and Sicily, besides other smaller Italian states. Austria, besides holding Milan, was the virtual ruler of Tuscany.
SPAIN IN ITALY.—Philip V. was afflicted with a mental derangement peculiar to his family. The government was managed by the ambitious queen, Elizabeth of Parma, and the intriguing Italian, Alberoni, the minister in whom she confided. He sought to get back the Italian states lost by the Peace of Utrecht. But Sardinia and Sicily were restored when he was overthrown, through the fear excited by the Quadruple Alliance of France, England, Austria, and Holland (1718). Later, the queen succeeded in obtaining the kingdom of Naples and Sicily for her oldest son, Don Carlos, under the name of Charles III. Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla, she gained for her second son, Philip (1735). When Charles succeeded to the Spanish throne (1759-1788), he left Naples and Sicily to his third son, Ferdinand.
AUSTRIA IN ITALY.—The house of Savoy steadily advanced in power. By the Peace of Ryswick, Victor Amadeus II. (1675-1730), secured important places previously gained. He became "King of Sardinia" (1720). By him the University of Turin was founded, and the administration of justice much improved. His next two successors carried forward this good work. Venice lost Morea to the Turks, but retained Corfu and her conquests in Dalmatia (1718). Liberty was gone, and there was decay and conscious weakness in the once powerful republic. Genoa was coveted by Savoy, Austria, and France. The consequent struggles are the material of Genoese history for a long period. Corsica was oppressed, and Genoa called on France to lend help in suppressing its revolt (1736). The Corsicans especially, under Paoli, defended themselves with such energy that France found its work of subjugation hard and slow (1755). The island was ceded to France by Genoa(1768). Milan, with Mantua, was Austrian, after the Peace of Utrecht (1713). Tuscany under Ferdinand II. (1628-1670) bestowed its treasure on Austria and Spain, and fell under the sway of ecclesiastics. Under Cosmo III. (1670-1723), the process of decline went on. After the death of the last of the Medici, John Gasto (1737), Tuscany was practically under the power of Austria, notwithstanding the stipulation that both states should not have the same ruler. It was governed by Francis Stephen (1738-1765), Duke of Lorraine, husband of the Empress Maria Theresa; and, when he became emperor (Francis I.), by his second son, Leopold (1765-1790). At Rome, Pope Innocent XI. (1676-1689) had many conflicts with Louis XVI. which came to an end under the well-meaning Innocent XII. (1691-1700). Contests arose on the part of Rome against the Bourbon courts respecting the Jesuit order, and with the forces adverse to the Church and the Papacy, in the closing part of the eighteenth century. In 1735, the Emperor Charles VI. allowed that Naples and Sicily should be handed over, as a kingdom, to Don Carlos, the son of the Spanish Bourbon king, under the name of Charles III., by whom it was granted to his son Ferdinand IV. (1759).
CLOSE OF ANNE'S REIGN.—Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark, had no influence, and deserved none. One of the important events of her reign was the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 (p. 461). After the Tories came into power, the two leaders, Oxford and Bolingbroke, were rivals. An angry dispute between them hastened the queen's death (1714). One of the Tory measures, prompted by hostility to Dissenters, was a law forbidding any one to keep a school without a license from a bishop.
GEORGE I, 1714-1727, m. Sophia Dorothea of Zell.
|
+—GEORGE II, 1727-1760, m. Caroline,
daughter of John Frederick, Margrave of Anspach.
|
+—Frederick, Prince of Wales, d. 1751, m.
Augusta of Saxe Gotha.
|
+—Augusta m.
| Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick.
| |
| +—Caroline
| m.
| +—GEORGE IV, 1820-1830.
| |
+—GEORGE III, 1760-1820, m.
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
|
+—WILLIAM IV, 1830-1837.
|
+—Edward, Duke of Kent, d. 1820, m.
Victoria of Saxe Coburg.
|
+—VICTORIA, succeeded 1837, m.
Albert of Saxe Coburg.
REIGN OF GEORGE I.—George I., the first king of the house of Hanover, could not speak English. His private life was immoral. His first ministers were Whigs. Bolingbroke and Oxford were impeached, and fled the country. The "Pretender," James Edward (son of James II.), with the aid of Tory partisans, endeavored to recover the English crown. His standard was raised in the Highlands and in North England (1715), but this Jacobite rebellion was crushed. After the rebellion of 1715, a law was passed, which is still in force, allowing a Parliament to continue for the term of seven years. A second conspiracy in 1717 had the same fate. England had an experience analogous to that of France with Law, with the South Sea Company, which had a monopoly of trade with the Spanish coasts of South America. A rage for speculation was followed by a panic. The estates of the directors of the company were confiscated by Parliament for the benefit of the losers. Robert Walpole was made first minister, a place which he held under George I. and George II. for twenty-one years. William and Anne had attended the meetings of the Cabinet. George I., who could not speak English, staid away. From this time, one of the ministers was called the "prime minister."
THE REIGN OF GEORGE II.—George II. was systematic in his ways, frugal, willful, and fond of war. In his private life, he followed the evil ways of his father. Walpole's influence was predominant. The clever Queen Caroline lent him her support. Walpole reluctantly entered into war with Spain (1739), on account of the measures adopted by that power to prevent English ships from carrying goods, in violation of the treaty of Utrecht, to her South American colonies. The principal success of England was the taking of Porto Bello by Admiral Vernon.
When the war was declared, the people expressed their joy by the ringing of bells. "They are ringing the bells now," said Walpole: "they will be wringing their hands soon." The blame for the want of better success in the war was laid on the prime minister, and he was driven to resign. Then followed the ministry of the Pelhams, Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle, who, like Walpole, managed Parliament by bribing the members through the gift of offices.
In the war of the Austrian succession (1740), England took part with Austria, and the king in person fought in Germany. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the young Pretender (whose father, the old Pretender, styled himself James III.), landed in the Highlands. The Highlanders defeated the English at Preston Pans, near Edinburgh. The Pretender marched into England as far as Derby, at the head of the Jacobite force, but had to turn back and retreat to Scotland. The contest was decided by the victory of the English under the Duke of Cumberland, at Culloden (1746), which was attended by an atrocious slaughter of the wounded. Culloden was the last battle fought in behalf of the Stuarts. Nearly eighty Jacobite conspirators, one of whom was an octogenarian, Lord Lovat, were executed as traitors. These Jacobites were the last persons who were beheaded in England. The Pretender wandered in the Highlands and Western Islands for five months, under different disguises. He was concealed and aided by a Scottish lady, Flora Macdonald. Then he escaped to the Continent, where he led a miserable and dissipated life, and died in 1788. His brother Henry, Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts in the male line, died in 1807.
SWEDEN.—The eventful epoch in the history of Sweden, in this period, is the reign of Charles XII. (1697-1718). At his accession, when he was only sixteen years old, Sweden ruled the Baltic. Its army was strong and well disciplined. What is now St. Petersburg was a patch of swampy ground in Swedish territory, where a few fishermen lived in their huts. The youth of Charles was prophetic of his career. In doors, he read the exploits of Alexander the Great; out of doors, gymnastic sports and the hunting of the bear were his favorite diversions. He became an adventurous warrior after, the type of Alexander. His rashness and obstinacy occasioned at last the downfall of his country. Three great powers, Russia, Poland, and Denmark, with the support of Patkul, a disaffected Livonian subject of Sweden, joined in an attack on the youthful monarch (1699). Patkul, who was a patriot, unable to secure the rights of Livonia, and condemned as a rebel, had entered the service of the Elector Augustus of Saxony, who was king of Poland. There were territories belonging to Sweden which each of the confederates coveted. Frederick IV. of Denmark expected to incorporate Sweden itself in his dominions.
RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT.—The first ruler of the house of Romanoff, which has raised Russia to its present rank, was Michael (1613-1645). Under Alexis, his son (1645-1676), important conquests were made from the Poles, and the Cossacks acknowledged the sovereignty of the Czar. The principal founder of Russian civilization was Peter the Great (1682-1725). Through the machinations of his half-sister Sophia, who contrived to get the armed aid of the streltzi,—the native militia,—he had to share the throne with a half-brother, Ivan, who was older than himself, and lived until 1696. Sophia pushed aside Peter's mother, and grasped the reins of power. Peter learned Latin, German, and Dutch, and acquired much knowledge of various sorts. As he grew older, his life was in danger; but at the age of seventeen, he was able to crush his enemies (1689). Sophia, who was at their head, he shut up in a monastery for the remainder of her days. From Lefort, a Swiss, and other foreigners, Peter derived information about foreign lands, and was led to visit them in order to instruct himself, and to introduce into his own country the arts and inventions of civilized peoples. He invited into Russia artisans, seamen, and officers from abroad. He traveled through _Germany _and _Holland _to England, and with his own hands worked at ship-building at the dock-yards of Zaandam (near Amsterdam) and Deptford. On his way to Venice, he was called home by a revolt of the streltzi, which he put down. He was unsparing in his vengeance, and, despite his veneer of culture, never got rid of his innate barbarism. _Azoff _he conquered, and it was ceded to him by the Turks in the Peace of Carlowitz (1699). Then his ambitious thoughts turned to the Baltic, for he was bent on making Russia a naval power. He formed a secret alliance with Denmark and Poland against Sweden.
CONDITION OF POLAND.—In 1697 _Frederick Augustus _II.,—Augustus the Strong,—Duke of Saxony, was elected king of Poland: he became a Roman Catholic that he might get the crown. But the Polish nobles took care to increase their power, which was already far too great to be compatible with unity or order. Under the anarchical but despotic nobility and higher clergy, stood the serfs, embracing nine-tenths of the whole population, who were without protection against the greed and tyranny of their lords.
EVENTS OF THE NORTHERN WAR.—The _Danes _first attacked the territory of Holstein Gottorp, whose duke had married the sister of Charles XII. William III. of England supported Sweden. The Anglo-Dutch fleet came to Charles's assistance. He landed his troops in Zealand. The Danes gave up their alliance, and sued for peace. Europe was now astonished to discover that the Swedish king was an antagonist to be feared. In the field he shared the hardships of the common soldier, and was as brave as a lion. _Charles _now attacked the Russian army before Narva, in Livonia. With the Swedish infantry he stormed the camp of the Russians, and routed their army, which was much larger in numbers than his own (1700). He then raised the siege of Riga, which the Poles and Saxons were besieging, having first defeated their troops on the Dwina. These brilliant successes might have enabled _Charles _to conclude peace on very advantageous terms. But he lacked moderation. He was as passionate in his public conduct as _Peter the Great _was in his private life. He was resolved to dethrone _Augustus _in Poland. After the battle of Clissau (1703), he occupied that country, and made the Diet give the crown to Stanislas Lesczinski, the Palatine of Posen. To prevent Russia and Saxony from uniting against the new king, Charles carried the war into Saxony, and forced Augustus, in the Peace of Altranstädt, to renounce his claim to the Polish crown, and to surrender Patkul, the rebel, who had become a subject of Russia, whom he put to death with circumstances of cruelty. In 1703 Peter laid the foundations of the new city of St. Petersburg. But, a few years later, Russia was invaded by Charles, who in 1708 almost captured the Czar at Grodno, defeated his army near Smolensk, and was expected to advance to Moscow. But the imprudent Swede turned southward into the district of the Ukraine, there to be joined by Mazeppa, the "hetman" of the Cossacks, who led them in revolt against Peter. Mazeppa was able, however, to bring him but few auxiliaries. The harshness of the winter, and other untoward events, weakened the Swedish force. The battle of Pultowa (1709) was a great victory for the Czar. Charles escaped with difficulty to Turkey. There he remained for three years, supported with his retinue, at Bender, by the Sultan. His object was to bring about a war between the Sultan and the Czar. He so far succeeded that Peter, when surrounded on the Pruth by Turkish troops, was rescued only by the courage and energy of Catherine, the mistress whom he afterwards married. Charles was finally obliged to leave Turkey, after being exposed to imminent peril in an attack by the janizaries, who seized his camp and took him captive. With a few attendants, riding by day and sleeping in a cart or carriage by night, he journeyed back to Sweden, and arrived at Stralsund (1714). The hostile allies, together with Hanover and Prussia, were once more in array against him. Baron van Görtz, a German, became his principal adviser. He negotiated a peace with Peter, of whom the other allies were beginning to be jealous. Charles's plan was to invade Norway, then to land in Scotland, and, with the help of Spain and of the Jacobites, to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. While besieging Friedrichshall, a fortress in Norway, he exposed himself near the trenches, and was killed by a bullet (1718). It was long a question whether the fatal shot was fired from the enemy or by an assassin. Not until 1859 was it settled, by an examination of the skull, that the gun was discharged from the fortress.
RESULTS OF THE WAR—One result of the Northern war was the execution of Görtz, to whom the Swedish aristocracy were inimical, and a reduction of the king's authority. Hanover received Bremen and Verden; Prussia, the largest part of Pomerania; Sweden gave up its freedom from custom duties in the Sound. Augustus was recognized as king of Poland. Russia, by the Peace of Nystadt (1721), obtained Livonia, Esthonia, Ingermannland, and a part of Carelia, but restored Finland. Sweden no longer had a place among the great powers. The place that Sweden had held was now taken by Russia.
CHANGES IN RUSSIA.—The Czar, Peter, took the title of emperor. He transferred the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. By constructing canals, roads, and harbors, he promoted trade and commerce. By fostering manufactures and the mechanic arts, and by opening the mines, he increased the wealth of the country. He altered the method of government, making the ukases, or edicts, emanate from the sole will of the emperor. He abolished the dignity of Patriarch, making the Holy Synod, of which the Czar is president, the supreme ecclesiastical authority. Peter made a second journey through Germany, Holland, and France (1716). His son Alexis, who allied himself with a reactionary party that aimed to reverse the Czar's policy, he finally caused to be tried for treason. He was condemned, but died either from the bodily torture inflicted on him to extort confession, or, as many have believed, by poison, or other means, used by the direction of his father. His friends, after being barbarously tortured, were put to death.
Great as was the work of Peter, "he brought Russia prematurely into the circle of European politics. The result has been to turn the rulers of Russia away from home affairs, and the regular development of internal institutions, to foreign politics and the creation of a great military power." In his last years, the frugality of his own way of living in his new capital was in striking contrast with the splendor with which his queen, Catherine, preferred to surround herself. He died at the age of fifty-three, in consequence of plunging into icy water to save a boat in distress.
The document called "The Testament of Peter the Great," which explains what has to be done in order that Russia may conquer all Europe, is not genuine. It is first heard of in 1812, in a book published by Lesur, probably by direction of Napoleon I. "Lesur's book," says Mr. E. Schuyler, "was merely a pamphlet to justify the invasion of Russia by Napoleon." (Schuyler's Life of Peter the Great, vol. ii, p. 512.)
THE PRAGMATIC SANCTION.—On the death of Augustus II., there were two competitors for the Polish crown,—his son, Augustus III. of Saxony, and Stanislaus Lesczinski whom France supported. After a contest, by the consent of the Emperor Charles VI., Lesczinski, whose daughter had married Louis XV., obtained the duchy of Lorraine, which thus became a possession of France (1735). In return, the emperor's son-in-law, Francis Stephen (afterwards Francis I.), was to have Tuscany; and France, in connection with the other powers, assented to the Pragmatic Sanction, according to which the hereditary possessions of Austria were to descend intact in the female line. It was expected that the empire would pass along with them.
PRUSSIA: FREDERICK WILLIAM I.—In 1611 the duchy of Prussia and the mark or electorate of Brandenburg were joined together. The duchy was then a fief of Poland. But under the Great Elector, Frederick William (1640-1688), this relation of the duchy to Poland ended. By him the military strength of the electorate was increased. Frederick, his son (1688-1713), with the emperor's license, took the title of King of Prussia (Frederick I.). He built up the city of Berlin, and encouraged art and learning. King Frederick William I. (1713-1740), unlike his predecessor, was exceedingly frugal in his court. He was upright and just in his principles, but extremely rough in his ways, and governed his own household, as well as his subjects generally, with a Spartan rigor. Individuals whom he met in the street, whose conduct or dress he thought unbecoming, he did not hesitate to scold, and he even used his cane to chastise them on the spot. He cared nothing for literature: artists and players were his abomination. He favored industry, and was a friend of the working-class. Every thing was done with despotic energy. He disciplined the military force of Prussia, and gathered at Potsdam a regiment of tall guards, made up of men of gigantic height, who were brought together from all quarters. He left to his son, Frederick II. (1740-1786), a strong army and a full treasury.
CHARACTER OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.—Young Frederick had no sympathy with his father's austere ways. The strict system of training arranged for him, in which he was cut off from Latin and from other studies for which he had a taste, his time all parceled out, and a succession of tasks rigorously ordained for him, he found a yoke too heavy to bear. Once he attempted to escape to the court of his uncle, George II. of England; but the scheme was discovered, and the incensed father was strongly inclined to execute the decree of a court-martial, which pronounced him worthy of death. Frederick, from the window of the place where he was confined, saw Katte, his favorite tutor, who had helped him in his attempt at flight, led to the scaffold, where he was hanged. In the later years of the old king, the relations of father and son were improved. The prince had for his abode the little town of Rheinsberg, where he could indulge, with a circle of congenial friends, in the studies and amusements to which he was partial. He grew up with a strong predilection for French literature, and for the French habits and fashions—free-thinking in religion included—which were now spreading over Europe. On his accession to the throne, Frederick broke up the Potsdam regiment of giants, and called back to Halle the philosopher Wolf, whom his father had banished. Frederick was visited by Voltaire, who at a later day took up his abode for a time with him in Berlin. But the king was fond of banter, and the foibles of each of these companions were a target for the unsparing wit of the other; so that eventually they parted company with mutual disgust. Later they resumed their correspondence, and never wholly lost their intellectual sympathy with each other. As a soldier, Frederick had not the military genius of the greatest captains. He applied superior talents to the discharge of the duties of a king, and to the business of war. He was cool, knew how to profit by his errors and to repair his losses, and to press forward in the darkest hour. Napoleon said of him that "he was great, especially at critical moments."
WAR OF THE AUSTRIAN SUCESSION—-Charles VI. was succeeded, in 1740, by his daughter Maria Theresa, who united in her character many of the finest qualities of a woman and of a sovereign. Notwithstanding the pragmatic sanction by which all the Austrian lands were to be hers, different princes deemed the occasion favorable for seizing on the whole, or on portions, of her inheritance. Charles, elector of Bavaria, claimed to be the lawful heir, and was aided by France, which was afraid of losing Lorraine if Maria Theresa's husband, Francis Stephen, should become emperor. Augustus III. of Poland was a participant in the plot. Frederick II. of Prussia claimed Silesia, and, after defeating the Austrians at Molwitz (1741), seized the greater part of that district. Soon after, the French and Bavarians overran Austria. The Bavarian elector was chosen emperor. Even the elector of Hanover (George II. of England) engaged not to assist the empress.
The claims to Austria were as follows:—
Augustus III., king of Saxony, and Charles Albert, elector of Bavaria, had married daughters of the Emperor Joseph I. (the brother and predecessor of Charles VI.). The wife of Charles Albert was the younger daughter; but he appealed to an alleged provision in the will of the Emperor Ferdinand I., according to which the posterity of his daughter Anna (who married a Bavarian duke) was to inherit the duchy of Austria and Bohemia, in case his male descendants should die out. It was not to the male descendants, but to the legitimate descendants, however, that the will referred. The Bourbons in France and Spain seized the occasion to regain the possessions of Spain lost in the Peace of Utrecht (p. 466). Francis Stephen, the husband of Maria Theresa, it was feared, might seek to get back Lorraine from France (p. 474). Spain was anxious to recover Milan. Philip V. of Spain claimed the Austrian possessions on the basis of certain stipulations of Charles V. and Philip III. in the cession of them. To weaken the Austrian house in Germany, was an aim of France. The courts of France and Spain were ready, on all these grounds, to support Charles of Bavaria. They were ready, also, to support Frederick II. in legal claims which he set up to a portion of Silesia. The empress rejected the offer of Frederick to defend Austria if she would give up this territory.
SPIRIT OF THE EMPRESS: CESSION OF SILESIA.—Maria Theresa proved herself a Minerva. She threw herself for support on her Hungarian subjects, who responded with loyal enthusiasm to her appeal made at the Diet of Presburg. Her forces drove the Bavarian and French troops before them in Austria, entered Bavaria, and captured Munich. Reluctantly the queen, in the Peace of Breslau (1742), ceded Silesia to Frederick, in order to lessen the number of her antagonists. She was crowned (1743) in Prague, and at length gained an ally in George II. of England. The "Pragmatic Army," as it was called, defeated the French under Marshal Noailles at Dettingen. Sardinia and Saxony joined the Austrian alliance.
TO THE PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.—These events widened the dimensions of the contest. France declared war directly against England and Austria. Frederick II. of Prussia was now the ally of France, and began the second Silesian war. He took Prague, but, being deserted by the French, was driven back into Saxony. The son of Charles Albert of Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph, made peace with Austria,—the Peace of Füssen,—promising to give his vote to Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, for the office of emperor. Francis (1745-1765) was crowned at Frankfort. Victories in Saxony on the side of Frederick led to the Treaty of Dresden, which left Silesia in his hands (1745). The most of the English army went back to England to fight the Pretender. The war went on in the Netherlands and in Italy, and between France and England; the English being victors on the sea under Anson (1747), while the French were generally successful on the land. The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) provided for a reciprocal restoration of all conquests: Silesia was given to Prussia, and the Pragmatic Sanction was sustained in Austria.
ALLIANCE AGAINST FREDERICK.—Frederick the Great used the next eight years in doing what he could to encourage industry and to increase the prosperity and resources of Prussia, at the same time that he strengthened his military force. Prussia had evinced so much power in the late conflicts as to be an object of envy and apprehension. Maria Theresa was anxious to recover Silesia. Frederick had a foe in Elizabeth, empress of Russia, whose personal vices he made a subject of sarcastic remark, and who, besides, coveted Prussian provinces on the Baltic. An alliance was formed between Russia and Austria. This was joined by Saxony, and by France; since Louis XV. had become alarmed by the calculating selfishness of Frederick's policy, and was induced to depart from the French traditional policy, and to unite with Austria. The only ally of Frederick was _George II. _of England, which was then engaged in a contest with France respecting the American colonies (1756).
THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR.—Thus arose the Seven Years' War. Frederick, secretly informed of the plans of his enemies, anticipated their action by invading Saxony and capturing Dresden (1756). At Lobositz he defeated the Austrians: he soon took eighteen thousand Saxon troops. He had now to encounter the military strength of the various nations opposed to him. With the bulk of his forces he marched into Bohemia, and gained a great but costly victory at Prague (1757). For the next six months, successes and reverses alternated; but before the end of the year (1757) Frederick won two of his most famous triumphs,—one at Rossbach, over the French and the Imperialists; and the other over the Austrians, at Leuthen. Frederick was now admired as a hero in England, and was furnished by the elder William Pitt, who had succeeded Newcastle, with money and troops. In 1758 the Prussians vanquished the Russians at Zorndorf, but were, in turn, soon defeated by the Austrians at Hochkirch Of the numerous battles in this prolonged war, in which the military talents of Frederick were so strikingly shown, it is possible to refer only to a few of the most important. He was defeated by the united Austrians and Russians at Kunersdorf; and so completely that he was for the moment thrown into despair, and wrote to his minister Finkenstein, "All is lost." In 1760 Berlin was held for a few days by the Russians, but Frederick soon defeated the Austrians once more at Torgau. In 1761, however, his situation was in the highest degree perilous. His resources were apparently exhausted. Spain joined the ranks of his enemies. He faced them all with determined resolution, but he confessed in his private letters that his hopes were gone.
END OF THE WAR.—At this time there was a turn of events in his favor. In Russia, Peter III., who succeeded Elizabeth, was an admirer of Frederick,—so much so that he wore a Prussian uniform,—and hastened to conclude a peace and alliance with him (1762). Peter was soon dethroned and killed by Russian nobles; and his queen· and successor, Catherine II., recalled the troops sent to Frederick's aid. Nevertheless, they helped him to a victory over the Austrians, under the command of Daun, at Burkersdorf (1762). Austria, too, was exhausted and ready for peace. The negotiations between England and France, which ended in the Peace of Paris (1763), made it certain that the French armies would evacuate Germany. Prussia and Austria agreed to the Peace of Hubertsburg, by which Prussia retained Silesia, and promised her vote for the Archduke Joseph, son of Maria Theresa, as king of Rome and successor to the empire (1763).
POSITION OF PRUSSIA.—Joseph II. succeeded his father as emperor in 1765, and was associated by his mother, Maria Theresa, in the government of her hereditary dominions. From the conclusion of the Seven Years' War, Prussia took her place as one of the five great powers of Europe.
THE BRITISH INDIAN EMPIRE.—It was during this period that the empire of the British in India grew up out of the mercantile settlements of a trading corporation, the East India Company. The result was effected after a severe struggle with the French. After the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Mughal empire at Delhi declined. Insubordinate native princes admitted only a nominal control over them. The effect of successive Mahratta and Afghan invasions was such, that when England and France went to war in Europe, in 1745, India was broken up into different sovereignties, to say nothing of the great number of petty chieftains who were practically independent. Pondicherry was the chief French settlement. For a time it seemed that in the struggle for control France, under the masterly guidance of Dupleix, must triumph. In 1756 Calcutta was taken from the English by the Nabob of Bengal, and many Englishmen died in the close room of the military prison in which they were shut up,—"the Black Hole." In 1757 Clive defeated a great army of the natives, with whom were a few French, in the decisive battle of Plassey. He had previously shown his indomitable courage in the seizure of Arcot, and in its defense against a host of besiegers. The victory at Plassey secured the British supremacy, which gradually extended itself over the country. The various local sovereignties became like Roman provinces. On the death of Clive, Warren Hastings was made governor-general (1772). After his recall, he was impeached (1788), on charges of cruelty and oppression in India, and his trial by the House of Lords did not end until seven years after it began. He was then acquitted. Among the conductors of the impeachment on the part of the House of Commons, were the celebrated orators Edmund Burke and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In 1784 the power of the East-India Company had been restricted by the establishment of the Board of Control. Up to that time the Indian Empire, made up of dependent and subject states, had been governed by the sole authority of the company.
CATHERINE II. OF RUSSIA.—Catherine II. (1762-1796) in her private life was notoriously dissolute. If she did not connive at the assassination of her husband, Peter III., she heaped gifts upon his murderers. In her policy, she aimed to strengthen Russia, especially towards the sea. This occasioned successful conflicts with the Turks.
THE PARTITION OF POLAND.—At first inimical to Frederick the Great, Catherine afterwards made an alliance with him. She compelled the election of one of her lovers, Poniatowski, to the throne of Poland. Poland was mainly Catholic; and the Confederation of Bar (1768), made by the Poles to prevent the toleration of Greek Christians and Protestants, was defeated by a Russian army, and broken up. The Turks were worsted in the war which they made in defense of the confederacy. As one result, Russia gained a firm footing on the north coasts of the Black Sea (1774). The "free veto," oppression of the peasantry, their distress, and the general want of union and public spirit, had reduced Poland to a miserable condition. Catherine, however, favored no reforms there looking to an improvement in the constitution. She preferred to prolong the anarchy and confusion. She wished to make the death of Poland in part a suicide. At length she invited Prussia and Austria to take part with her in the first seizure and partition of Polish territory (1772). Each took certain provinces. In 1793 the second, and in 1795 the final partition of Poland, was made by its three neighbors. The capture of Warsaw, and the defeat of the national rising under Kosciusko, obliterated that ancient kingdom from the map of Europe. It should be said that a large part of the territory that Russia acquired had once been Russian, and was inhabited by Greek Christians. By the division of Poland, Russia was brought into close contact with the Western powers. The Crimea was incorporated with Russia in 1783. After a second war, provoked by her, with the Turks, who now had the Austrians to help them, the Russian boundaries through the Treaty of Jassy (1792) were carried to the Dniester.
In this period the United States of America achieved their independence, and began their existence as a distinct nation.
THE ENGLISH COLONIES.—The English colonies south of Canada had become thirteen in number. In the southern part of what was called Carolina, Charleston was settled in 1680. More than a century before (1562), a band of Huguenots under Ribault had entered the harbor of Port Royal, and given this name to it, and had built a fort on the river May, which they called Charlesfort—the Carolina—in honor of King Charles IX. of France. In 1663 the territory thus called, south of Virginia, was granted to the Earl of Clarendon. In it were two distinct settlements in the northern part. The English philosopher John Locke drew up a constitution for Carolina, never accepted by the freemen. The rights of the proprietors were purchased by George II.; and the region was divided (1729) into two royal provinces, North and South Carolina, each province having a governor appointed by the king, and an assembly elected by the people. Besides the English, Huguenots and emigrants from the North of Ireland, as well as from Scotland, planted themselves in South Carolina. Georgia was settled by James Oglethorpe, who made his settlement at Savannah. He had a charter from George II., in whose honor the region was named (1732). Soon the "trustees" gave up their charter, and the government was shaped like that of the other colonies (1752). John Wesley, afterwards the founder of Methodism, sojourned for a time in Georgia. The settlement of New Jersey was first made by members of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, sent over by William Penn, the son of an English admiral, and familiar at court. The Quakers gave up the government to the crown, and from 1702 to 1738 it formed one province with New York. Pennsylvania was granted to Penn himself, by the king, in discharge of a claim against the crown. Penn procured also a title to Delaware. He sent out emigrants in 1681, and the next year came himself. By him Philadelphia was founded. He dealt kindly with all the settlers, and made a treaty of peace and amity with the Indians. The government organized by Penn was just and liberal. In 1703 the inhabitants of Delaware began to have a governing assembly of their own.
THE FRENCH COLONIES.—Among the French explorers in America, La Salle is one of the most famous. Having traversed the region of the upper lakes, he reached the Mississippi, and floated in his boats down to its mouth (1682). The region of the great river and of its tributaries, he named Louisiana, in honor of his king, Louis XIV. This name was applied to the whole region from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains. On his return, La Salle built Fort St. Louis. Afterwards (1684) he took part in an expedition from France which had for its purpose the building of a fort at the mouth of the Mississippi, but which was so wrongly guided as to land on the coast of Texas. La Salle himself perished, while seeking to find his way to Canada. But a French settlement was made near the mouth of the river (1699), and a connection established by a series of forts with Canada.
On the principle that the country belonged to the explorer, Spain claimed all the southern part of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The French claim stretched from the coast of Nova Scotia westward to the Great Lakes, and embraced the valley of the Mississippi to its mouth. England claimed the country from Labrador as far south as Florida, and westward to the Pacific. This region included within it the claims of the Dutch, founded on the discoveries of Henry Hudson.
War between England and France, whenever it occurred, was attended with conflicts between the English and the French settlements in America. The Indians were most of them on the side of the French. But the fierce Iroquois in central New York, who wished to monopolize the fur-trade, were hostile to them. A massacre perpetrated by these at La Chine, near Montreal (1689), provoked a murderous attack of French and Indians upon the settlement at Schenectady, the most northern post of the English. This was an incident of King William's War (1689). In Queen Anne's War (1702-1713) Deerfield in Massachusetts was captured and destroyed by French and Indians (1704). By an expedition fitted out in Massachusetts, and commanded by Sir William Phipps, Port Royal in Nova Scotia was captured (1710). The colonies incurred great expense in fitting out expeditions (1709 and 1711) against Canada, which were abandoned. The contest between France and England for supremacy in America was further continued in a series of conflicts lasting from 1744 for nearly twenty years. An early event of much consequence in the contest known as King George's War,—a part of the war of the Austrian succession (p. 476),—was the capture of Louisburg, an important fortified place on Cape Breton, by an expedition from Boston (1745). The colonists, who were with reason proud of their achievement, had the mortification to see this place restored to the French in the treaty of peace (1748). In these contests the French had the help of their Indian allies, who fell upon defenseless villages. The English were sometimes aided by the Iroquois. The English founded Halifax (1749).
THE "OLD FRENCH WAR" (1756-1763).—The "Old French and Indian War" in America was a part of the Seven Years' War in Europe. A British officer, Gen. Braddock, led a force which departed from Fort Cumberland in Maryland, against Fort Du Quesne at the junction of the Monongahela and Alleghany Rivers. Disregarding the advice of George Washington, who was on his staff, he allowed himself to be surprised by the Indians and the French, and was mortally wounded. The remains of his army were led by Washington, whose courage and presence of mind had been conspicuous, to Philadelphia (1755). Prior to the expedition, Washington had made a perilous journey as envoy, to demand of the French commander his reasons for invading the Ohio valley. The English held Nova Scotia, and expelled from their homes the French Acadians, seven thousand in number, in a way that involved severe hardships, including the separation of families (1755). They were carried off in ships, and scattered among the colonies along the Atlantic shore. The English also took the forts in Acadia. There were two battles near Lake George (1755), in the first of which the French were victors, but in the second they were routed. Montcalm, the French commander, captured the English fort near Oswego, from which an expedition was to have been sent against the French fort at Niagara (1756). In 1757 he took Fort William Henry on Lake George.
THE CAMPAIGNS OF 1758 AND 1759.—The English were dissatisfied at their want of success on the Continent and in America. But they had advantages for prosecuting the conflict. The French, who had been successful at the outset, had to bring their troops and supplies from Europe. They were, to be sure, disciplined troops; but the English had the substantial strength which was derived from the prosperous agriculture, and still more from the brave and self-respecting spirit, of their American colonies. The elder William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, again entered the cabinet, and began to manage the contest (1757). The French held posts at important points,—Fort Du Quesne, where Pittsburg now stands, for the defense of the West; Crown Point and Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, guarding the approach to Canada; Niagara, near the Great Lakes and the region of the fur-trade; and Louisburg, on the coast of Nova Scotia, which protected the fisheries, and was a menace to New England. To seize these posts, and to break down the French power in America, was now the aim of the English. In 1758 an expedition of Gen. Abercrombie, at the head of sixteen thousand men, against Crown Point and Ticonderoga, was repulsed; Lord Howe was killed, and the army retreated. Louisburg, to the joy of the colonies, was captured anew by Lord Amherst (1758). Fort Du Quesne was taken (1758), and named Fort Pitt; Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario was destroyed. The object of the campaign of 1759 was the conquest of Canada. Fort Niagara was captured by Sir William Johnston (1759). Ticonderoga and Crown Point were taken, and the French driven into Canada. Then came the great expedition under Major-Gen, Wolfe, a most worthy and high-spirited young officer, which left Louisburg for the capture of Quebec, "the Gibraltar of America." The attempt of Wolfe to storm the heights in front of the city, which were defended by the army of Montcalm, failed of success. From a point far up the river, he embarked a portion of his troops in the night, and, silently descending the stream, climbed the heights in the rear of the city, and intrenched himself on the "Plains of Abraham." In the battle which took place in the morning, both commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, were mortally wounded. Wolfe lived just long enough to be assured of victory; Montcalm died the next day. Five days after the battle the town surrendered (1759).
An incident connected with Wolfe's approach by night to Quebec is thus given by Mr. Parkman: "For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The general was in one of the foremost boats; and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him. Among the rest, was the verse which his fate was soon to illustrate,—
'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.'
"'Gentlemen,' he said, as his recital ended, 'I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.' None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet." (Montcalm and Wolfe, p. 287.)
In the following year Montreal and all Canada were in the hands of the English. The English colonies were safe. It was decided that English, not French, should be spoken in aftertimes on the banks of the Ohio. In the Peace of Paris (1763), France kept Louisiana, but had already ceded it to Spain (1762).
CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC.—The Indians in the West were dissatisfied with the transference of Canada and the region of the Lakes to England. Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, combined a large number of tribes, and kindled a war against the English, which spread from the Mississippi to Canada (1763). He captured eight forts, but failed to take Detroit and Fort Pitt. Three years passed before the Indians were completely beaten, and a treaty of peace concluded with their leader (1766).
STATE OF THE COLONIES: POPULATION.—At the close of the French war, the population of the thirteen colonies probably exceeded two millions, of whom not far from one fourth were negro slaves. The number of slaves in New England was small. They were proportionately much more numerous in New York, but they were found principally in the Southern colonies. Quakers were always averse to slavery. The slave-trade was still kept up. Newport in Rhode Island was one of the ports where slave-ships frequently discharged their cargoes.
GOVERNMENT.—The forms of government in the different colonies varied. All of them had their own legislative assemblies, and regarded them as essential to their freedom. Under Charles II., the charter which secured to Massachusetts its civil rights was annulled (1684). Under James II., the attempt was made to revoke all the New England charters. Sir Edmund Andros was appointed governor of New England, and by him the new system began to be enforced. The revolution of 1688 restored to the colonies their privileges; but Massachusetts (with which Plymouth was now united), under its new charter (1691), no longer elected its governor. Prior to the Revolution, there were three forms of government among the colonies. Proprietary governments (that is, government by owners or proprietors) still remained in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In these the king appointed no officers except in the customs and admiralty courts. In Rhode Island and Connecticut, which like Massachusetts retained their charters, the governors were chosen by the people. New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, had royal or provincial governments: the governor and council were appointed by the king.
OCCUPATIONS.—The chief occupation of the colonists was agriculture. In the North, wheat and corn were raised. From Virginia and Maryland, great crops of tobacco were exported from the plantations, in English ships which came up the Potomac and the James. Rice was cultivated in the Carolinas. Indigo was also raised. Cotton was grown in the South. Labor in the fields in the Southern colonies was performed by the negroes. Building of ships was a profitable occupation on the coast of New England. The cod and other fisheries also gave employment to many, and proved a school for the training of seamen. The colonists were industrious and prosperous, but generally frugal and plain in their style of living.
EDUCATION AND RELIGION.—Common schools were early established by law in New England, and by the Dutch in New York. As Mr. Bancroft well observes, "He that will understand the political character of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia." Harvard College was founded in 1636; William and Mary, in 1693; Yale, in 1700. Eighteen years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, a printing-press was set up at Cambridge. In 1704 the first American newspaper, "The Boston News Letter," was established. In the Puritan colonies, the minds of the people were quickened intellectually as well as religiously, by the character of the pulpit discourses. Theology was an absorbing theme of inquiry and discussion. In the town-meetings, especially in the closing part of the colonial period, political affairs became a subject of earnest debate. In all the colonies, the representative assemblies furnished a practical training in political life. In the Eastern colonies, the people were mostly Congregationalists and Calvinists: Presbyterians were numerous in the Middle States. In Virginia the Episcopal Church was supported by legislative authority; and it was favored, though not established by law, in New York. In Pennsylvania, while there was freedom in religion, the Quakers "still swayed legislation and public opinion." Philadelphia, with its population of thirty thousand, was the largest city in America, and was held in high esteem for its intelligence and refinement.
COMPLAINTS OF THE COLONIES.—The colonists all acknowledged the authority of king and parliament, but they felt that they had brought with them across the ocean the rights of Englishmen. One thing that was more and more complained of was the laws compelling the colonies to trade with the "mother country" exclusively, and the enactments laying restraint on their manufactures. In the conflicts with the Indians from time to time, the necessity had arisen for leagues; and, more than once, congresses of delegates had met. One of these was held at Albany in 1754, where Benjamin Franklin was present. In the Old French War, there had been a call for concert of action, and a deepening of the sense of common interests and of being really one people.
NEW GROUNDS OF DISAFFECTION.—The colonies had taxed themselves in the French War; but the condition of the finances in England at the close of it inspired the wish there to enforce the laws of trade more rigidly in America, and to levy additional taxes upon the provinces. These English laws were so odious that they were often evaded. The writs of assistance in Massachusetts authorized custom-house officers to search houses for smuggled goods (1761). In the legal resistance to this measure, a sentence was uttered by a Boston patriot, James Otis, which became a watchword. "Taxation," he said, "without representation is tyranny." Taxation, it was contended, must be ordained by the local colonial assemblies in which the tax-payers are represented. But the Stamp Act (1765), requiring for legal and other documents the use of stamped paper, was a form of taxation. It excited indignation in all the colonies, especially in Virginia and in New England. In all the measures of resistance, Virginia and Massachusetts were foremost. Patrick Henry, an impassioned, patriotic orator, in the Virginia Legislature, was very bold in denouncing the obnoxious Act, and the alleged right to tax the colonies which it implied. This right was denied in a Congress where nine colonies were represented, which met in New York in 1765. They called for the repeal of the Stamp Act, and declared against the importation of English goods until the repeal should be granted. William Pitt, in the House of Commons, eulogized the spirit of the colonies. The Stamp Act was repealed. The discussions which it had provoked in America had awakened the whole people, and made them watchful against this sort of aggression. Political topics engrossed attention. When Parliament ordered that the colonies should support the troops quartered on them, and that the royal officers should have fixed salaries, to be obtained, not by the voluntary grants of colonial legislatures, but by the levy of new duties, there was a renewed outburst of disaffection, especially in New York and Boston (1768). By way of response to a petition that was sent to the king against these Acts of Parliament, four regiments of troops were sent to Boston. Their presence was a bitter grievance. In one case, there was bloodshed in a broil in the street between the populace and the soldiers, which was called "The Boston Massacre" (1770). An influential leader of the popular party in Boston was the stanch Puritan patriot, Samuel Adams.
PROGRESS OF THE CONTROVERSY.—After the other taxes were repealed, the tax on tea remained in force. A mob of young men, disguised as Indians, went on board three vessels in Boston Harbor, and threw overboard their freight of tea (1773). Before, there had been outbreakings of popular wrath against the stamp-officers. Their houses had been sometimes attacked: they had been burnt in effigy, and in some cases driven to resign. In general, however, the methods of resistance had been legal and orderly. When the news of the destruction of the tea reached England, Parliament retaliated by passing the Boston Port Bill (1774), which closed that port to the exportation or importation of goods, except food or fuel. The courts, moreover, were given the power to send persons charged with high crimes to England, or to another colony, for trial. To crown all, General Gage, the commander of the British troops, was made Governor of Massachusetts.
THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS.—In order to produce concert of action, committees of correspondence between the several colonies were established. The First Continental Congress, composed of delegates from the colonies, was convened in Philadelphia (1774). The remedies to which they resorted were, addresses to the king and to the people of Great Britain; an appeal for support to Canada; and a resolve not to trade with Great Britain until there should be a redress of grievances.
CONCORD AND BUNKER HILL.—The Legislature in Massachusetts, which Gage would not recognize, formed itself into the "Provincial Congress." The first collision took place at Concord (April 19, 1775), where a detachment of British troops was sent to destroy the military stores gathered by this body. On Lexington Green, the British troops fired on the militia, and killed seven men. Arriving at Concord, they encountered resistance. There the first shot was fired by America in the momentous struggle,—"the shot heard round the world." A number were killed on both sides, and the attacking force was harassed all the way on its return to Boston. The people everywhere rose in arms. Men flocked from their farms and workshops to the camp which was formed near Boston. Israel Putnam, who had been an officer in the French War, left his plow in the field at his home in Connecticut, and rode to that place, a distance of sixty-eight miles, in one day. Stark from New Hampshire, and Greene from Rhode Island, soon arrived.
THE SECOND CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, in session at Philadelphia, assumed control of military operations in all the colonies. At the suggestion first made by John Adams of Massachusetts, Colonel George Washington of Virginia was unanimously appointed commander-in-chief. His mingled courage and prudence, his lofty and unselfish patriotism, his admirable sobriety of judgment, and his rare power of self-control, connected as it was with a not less rare power of command, and with a firmness which no disaster could shake, made him one of the noblest of men. Before he reached Cambridge, where he assumed command of the gathering forces (July 3, 1775), he received the news of the battle of Bunker Hill, in which the provincial soldiers, under Putnam and Prescott, made a stand against the "regulars," as the British troops were called, and retreated only on the third assault, and when their ammunition had given out. Dr. Joseph Warren, a leading Boston patriot, was slain in the battle. Before this time, Fort Ticonderoga had been captured by Ethan Allen, and cannon been sent from it to aid in the siege of Boston (1775). But an attack on Quebec by Arnold and Montgomery, who entered Canada by different routes, failed of its object. Before British reinforcements arrived, the American troops abandoned Canada. In the attack on Quebec, Montgomery fell, and Arnold was severely wounded (Dec. 31, 1775).
INDEPENDENCE.—Only a brief sketch can here be given of the seven years' struggle of the United Colonies. On the 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence, drawn up in the main by Thomas Jefferson, and of which John Adams was the most eloquent advocate on the floor of Congress, passed that body. It was signed by the President, John Hancock, and fifty-five members. The colonies easily converted themselves into States, nearly all of them framing new constitutions. Thirteen Articles of Confederation made them into a league, under the name of the United States of America, each State retaining its sovereignty (1777). Franklin, an old man, and respected in Europe as well as at home for his scientific attainments as well as for his sturdy sagacity, went to France as their envoy. Among the soldiers who came from Europe to join the Americans were La Fayette,—a young French nobleman, who was inspired with a zeal for liberty, and was not without a thirst for fame, which, however, he desired to merit,—and Steuben, an officer trained under Frederick the Great. In Parliament, the Whig orators spoke out manfully for the American cause. The king hired German troops for the subjugation of its defenders.
THE EVENTS OF THE WAR.—The maneuvers of Washington forced Gage to evacuate Boston. The American general then undertook the defense of New York. The British forces, to the number of thirty thousand, under Gen. Howe, and Admiral Howe his brother, were collected on Staten Island. The Americans were defeated in a battle on Long Island (Aug. 27, 1776), and could not hold the city. It remained in the hands of the British to the end of the war. Washington withdrew his troops to White Plains. Fort Washington and Fort Lee were lost. The American commander, followed by Lord Cornwallis, retreated slowly through New Jersey (1776). These were serious reverses. By bold and successful attacks at Trenton and Princeton, the depressed spirits of the army and the country were revived. In the spring of 1777 Howe sought to capture Philadelphia, and landed his forces at the head of Chesapeake Bay. The Americans were defeated at Brandywine (Sept. 10); and Philadelphia, which had been the seat of Congress, was, like New York, in the possession of the British. Their policy was to isolate New England. To this end, Gen. Burgoyne, with a large army of French and Indians, came down from the north of Lake Champlain. A detachment of his forces was defeated by Stark at Bennington. Burgoyne himself was obliged to surrender, with six thousand men, to Gates, at Saratoga (Oct. 17). This event made its due impression abroad. France recognized the independence of the United States, and entered into an alliance with them. This alliance was a turning-point in the struggle. Washington's army, ill-clad and ill-fed, suffered terribly in the winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge; but he shared in their rough fare, and their discipline was much improved by the drill which they received there from Steuben. Sir Henry Clinton left Philadelphia in order that the British forces might be concentrated in New York. He was overtaken by Washington, and the battle of Monmouth took place, which was, on the whole, a success for the Americans. The design of the British to separate New England from the rest of the States had failed. Washington was again at White Plains. They now began operations in the Southern States. Among the occurrences in this period of the war were the massacre of the settlements in the valley of the Wyoming, in Pennsylvania, by the Indian auxiliaries of the British; the surrender of Savannah, and with it Georgia and Charleston, by the Americans; the gallant storming of Stony Point, on the Hudson, by Wayne (July 15, 1779), and a brilliant naval victory of Paul Jones in a desperate engagement with two British frigates near the north-eastern coast of England (Sept. 1779). The American "partisan leaders," Marion, Sumter, and Pickens, carried forward an irregular but harassing warfare in South Carolina. At Camden, Gates was defeated by Cornwallis; and Baron de Kalb, a brave French officer, of German extraction, in the American service, fell (Aug. 16, 1780). In this year (1780) Benedict Arnold's treason was detected; and Major André, a British officer through whom Arnold had made arrangements for giving up the fortress of West Point to the enemy, was taken captive, and executed as a spy. In the next year Gen. Nathanael Greene conducted military operations in Georgia and the Carolinas with much skill, and succeeded in pressing the army of Lord Cornwallis into the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers in Virginia. Thither the French fleet sailed under Count De Grasse; and Washington, by forced marches, was enabled to join with the French in surrounding the British works at Yorktown. On the day when Clinton left New York, at the head of his forces, to unite with Cornwallis, that officer surrendered, with his entire army of seven thousand men, to Washington (1781). This blow was fatal to the British cause. The independence of the United States was recognized by Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, and Russia (1782). The war had been prolonged by the personal obstinacy of George III., against the wishes of his minister, Lord North. The surrender of Cornwallis made it plain that further effort to conquer America was hopeless. Spain and Holland had joined hands with France, but Rodney had won a great naval victory over De Grasse (April 12, 1782). By the treaty of peace, signed at Paris and Versailles (1783), England recognized the independence of her former colonies.
AMERICA AT THE CLOSE OF THE WAR.—The Congress during the war had issued paper money to the amount of twenty millions of dollars. It had no power to lay taxes, or to compel the States to pay their several portions of the public indebtedness. The States themselves were poor, and largely in debt. They surrendered, however, their unoccupied public lands to the United States. In 1787 Congress made one territory of the district north-west of the Ohio River, which Virginia had ceded, and by an ordinance excluded slavery from it for ever.
THE CONSTITUTION.—The lack of one system of law for the different States in reference to duties on imports, and on various other matters of common concern, and disorders springing up in different places, inspired an anxious desire for a stronger central government. A convention, over which Washington presided, met in Philadelphia in 1787, and formed the new Constitution. Hamilton of New York and Madison of Virginia were leading members. There was much opposition to the new plan of government which they agreed upon, but it was finally adopted by all the States. It supplied the defects of the old confederation by uniting national with federal elements. To the Senate, made up of two delegates from each State, it added a House of Representatives, where the number of members from each State was made proportionate to the population. It put the general government, within the limit of its defined functions, into a direct relation to the citizens, and gave to it judicial and executive departments to carry out and enforce its legislation. It committed to the central authority the management of foreign affairs, and various other powers necessary for the preservation of peace and unity in the land, and for the securing of the common weal of the whole country. Washington was unanimously chosen as the first president of the Republic, and John Adams was chosen vice-president. The first Congress met in New York in April, 1789, although the day appointed was March 4.
POETRY AND THE DRAMA.—The literature of France in the age of Louis XIV. was classical in its spirit. The ancient Greek and Roman writers were admired and imitated. The Renaissance was now to run its course. The French Academy, founded by Richelieu, undertook to regulate and improve the French language. Measure, finish, elegance, were demanded by the reigning taste, in all literary productions. Corneille (1606-1684), the father of French tragedy, was the most virile of the French dramatists. Racine (1639-1699), who followed, if less grand, was more pathetic. We find, however, in writers of genius,—even in the great preachers, as Bourdaloue and Massillon, who formed a type of pulpit eloquence peculiar to France,—a tendency to what seems now a stilted style. The master in comedy was Molière (1622-1673), an actor, as well as an author of inimitable humor. One of the most popular of French authors has been La Fontaine (1621-1695), whose fables have charmed multitudes by their smooth versification, as well as by their contents. Boileau (1636-1711), the Horace of France, prescribed, as a lawgiver, rules upon the "Art of Poetry," and himself wrote satires and other poems of high merit.
PROSE LITERATURE.—Bossuet (1627-1704) was an eloquent preacher and historical writer, and an expert theological polemic of the liberal Catholic school. Of a very different tone is Rochefoucauld, whose Maxims, expressed in pithy language, seek to trace all virtuous action to self-seeking. The French fondness for epigram—for terse, paradoxical statement—is exemplified even in the best writers, as, for example, Blaise Pascal. La Bruyère (1645-1696), a genial philosopher, wrote in a most attractive style a work entitled The Characters of Our Age. The metaphysician Malebranche (1638-1715) taught that we know through our spiritual union with God, or that we see all things in God. A disciple of Des Cartes, he did not strictly follow his master. Fénelon (1651-1715), illustrious for his piety as well as for his versatile authorship, wrote on religious topics and on education. Of all his writings, his Telemachus, composed for the young Duke of Burgundy, his pupil, has been the most read. The letters of Madame de Sévigné, addressed to her daughter, and not meant for publication, present most graphic descriptions of the characters and occurrences of the day.
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.—When we cross the limit of the eighteenth century, we meet with growing signs of skepticism in religion, and of innovation in political thought. Criticism of the past, of traditional creeds and established institutions, is spreading. The Historical and Critical Dictionary of Bayle, a storehouse of chronicle and anecdote, is leavened with the spirit of doubt. Three great writers deserve special attention. Montesquieu (1689-1755) satirized all dogma in his Persian Letters. His celebrated work on the Spirit of Laws is just and humane in its tone, and full of original and inspiring views on history and government. He is one of the founders of modern political science. Voltaire (1694-1778), the most popular of all the writers of his age, was the incarnation of its critical and skeptical spirit, the highest example of its wit as of its levity, and of the artificial character of its literary ideals. He was play-writer, poet, historian, critic, and brilliant converser, all in one. In religion, a scoffer not only at superstition, but at all beliefs and rites which imply revelation, he still clung to the belief in a personal God. His creed was deism, Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was, like Voltaire, a deist in his creed; but in religion, as in all his mental action, there was a vein of sentiment. By the fascination of his style, he was able, in his various writings, including his autobiographical Confessions, to interest profoundly multitudes of readers of both sexes, and even to move them to sympathy with himself in a career which deserves not less abhorrence than commiseration. He was, perhaps, the first author to evoke in others a genuine relish, which he felt himself, for the wild scenery of nature. In his Social Contract he maintained that government grows out of a contract of individuals with one another, all of whom in the state of nature are free and independent. He carried to a great extreme an idea which in England had been held by Hooker, and more explicitly expounded by Locke. His doctrine furnished a theory for the political revolution in France. The "Encyclopædists" went much beyond Voltaire and Rousseau. D'Alembert, Helvetius, Holbach, advocated atheism and materialism. Condillac (1715-1780) sought to reduce this species of infidelity to an exact philosophical system by tracing even conscience to sensation and self-interest. All religious sentiment was condemned as morbid illusion.
In Germany, the great name in philosophy is that of Leibnitz (1646-1716), a rival of Newton in mathematics and natural science, and an eminent thinker in metaphysics, theology, and in jurisprudence. In intellect and in variety of attainments, he is almost the peer of Aristotle. Wolf (1679-1754) his disciple, systemized and modified his philosophical views. Klopstock (1724-1803), the author of Messiah, written somewhat after the manner of the Paradise Lost of Milton, excelled the other German poets of his day. Frederick the Great treated with disrespect the native literary products of his country. Yet a new era in German letters and criticism was opened by Lessing (1729-1781), a poet, and a critic of admirable insight, whose influence in this direction in Germany has been likened in its power to that of Luther in religion.
In the eighteenth century, there was a new revival of literature in Italy. Vico (1668-1744) almost made an epoch in the scientific treatment of history and mythology; in political economy and in archeology, there were numerous explorers; Florence became once more a seat of learning. Beccaria (1738-1794) by his writings introduced more humane views in criminal jurisprudence. Volta (1745-1827), an electrician, constructed the instrument called the voltaic pile. Metastasio (1698-1782) fostered the melodrama, or Italian opera, by his dramatic writings. Goldoni (1707-1793), a Venetian, was the most eminent writer of comedies. Tragedy reached its acme in the works of Alfieri (1749-1803), the founder of a new school.
In England, after the Restoration, the influence of French standards in literature is obvious. The drama declined, partly from the earlier antagonism of the Puritans, and partly from the rage for indecency which infected the dramatic writers,—even those of much ability, as Congreve,—and defiled the stage. The Pilgrim's Progress of Bunyan (1628-88) is written in a plain, unaffected style, and is the most popular work of that age. In sharp contrast with Bunyan is Butler's Hudibras, a witty satire, in doggerel verse, upon Puritanism. The principal writer, prior to Queen Anne, is Dryden (1631-1700). We have passed now from the Romantic school of poetry, in which Shakspeare is the most exalted name, to the Classical school. In the age of Queen Anne, Pope (1688-1744), with his vigor, without elevation, of thought, his smooth versification and bright wit, is the principal figure. The same period produced the labored novels of Richardson (1689-1761), and the vigorous and lifelike fictions of Fielding (1707-1754), which are, unhappily, disfigured by coarse and licentious passages. In the early part of the century, Addison (1672-1719) and Steele (1672-1729) were the most distinguished essayists. In them, as in the novels of Defoe (1661-1731), the author of Robinson Crusoe, and in the prose writings of Swift (1667-1745), the richness and idiomatic force of the English tongue are seen; while in Samuel Johnson, the literary dictator in the latter part of the century, the author of the English Dictionary, of The Rambler, the Lives of the Poets, and Rasselas, we have a striking and contagious example of a stately, sounding, Latinized diction. In pleasing contrast, as regards style, which charms from its simplicity, are the writings of Goldsmith (1728-74). In poetry, Gray (1716-71), the author of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, and Collins (1721-59), wrote little, but wrote well. The triumvirate of great English historians of the century are Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a monument of masterly ability and of vast research; a work, however, marred by a want of naturalness in style, and, still more, by a lack of religious faith and reverence, and by impurity of tone and allusion. Hume's style is one of his chief claims to esteem as an historian; for he was indolent in his researches, and prejudiced in his views. He merited distinction chiefly as an economist and a metaphysician.
PHILOSOPHY.—In English philosophy, there are several writers of extraordinary talents and influence. John Locke (1632-1704), an upright man and a lover of freedom, wrote the celebrated Essay on the Understanding, besides other important works in political science and theology. He traced all our knowledge to two sources, sensation and reflection, ultimately to the first of these. Berkeley (1685-1753) advocated with rare genius an ideal theory of matter, and defended theism. Hume (1711-76) indirectly gave rise to much of the later philosophy, by his acute speculations in behalf of skepticism as to the reality of human knowledge and the foundation of accepted beliefs. Reid (1710-96) rescued philosophy from the attacks of Hume by the doctrine of "common sense," and thus founded the Scottish school of metaphysicians. Among the numerous authors who cultivated both philosophy and theology, particular distinction belongs to Dr. Samuel Clarke (1675-1729), and to Bishop Joseph Butler (1692-1752) who wrote briefly, but with marked power, on the nature of conscience, and on the Analogy between religion and what we know of the constitution and course of nature.
NEWTON: ADAM SMITH.—Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the discoverer of the law of gravitation, made, through his Principia, one of the most important contributions ever made to the advancement of physical science. In 1776 Adam Smith, a Scotchman, who had previously written on metaphysics and politics, published his treatise on The Wealth of Nations, the first complete system of political economy. He showed that money is not wealth, but simply one product serving as a means of exchange. He made it clear, that, for one nation to gain in trade, it is not requisite that another should lose. Much light was thrown on political economy by essays of Hume.
The most notable American writers before the War of Independence were Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), a great metaphysical genius, and the founder of a school in theology; and Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), whose writings, in excellent English, related mainly to ethical and economical topics. As the Revolution approached, there sprung up authors of ability on the political questions of the day. The Federalist, written after the war, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, in favor of the proposed Constitution, is a work of high merit, as regards both matter and style.
The inductive method, or the "Baconian" method of observation and experiment, began to bear rich fruits. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) not only discovered the law of gravitation: other discoveries by him in mechanics and optics were of great moment in the progress of those sciences. Fluxions, or the differential calculus, was discovered independently by both Newton and Leibnitz. Euler, a Swiss mathematician of the highest ability (1707-1783), contributed essentially to the advancement of mechanics. Napier invented logarithms, to shorten mathematical calculations. Huygens, a Dutch philosopher (1629-1695), invented the pendulum clock. Gregory (1638-1675) invented the reflecting telescope, Halley, an English astronomer (1656-1742), gave his name to a comet whose return he predicted. Guericke invented (1680), and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) perfected, the air-pump. Boyle was active in founding the Royal Society (1660). Volta, by the invention of the pile called by his name, and Franklin, signally advanced the study of electricity. In the history of zoölogy, Buffon is a great name, as is that of Lavoisier in chemistry. Linnaeus, a Swede, born in the same year with Buffon (1707), attained to the highest distinction by reducing botany to a system. The lives of the eminent astronomers Lagrange (1736-1813), Laplace (1749-1827), and Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), outlasted the eighteenth century.
The radical improvement of the steam-engine by James Watt, a Scotchman (1736-1819),—who obtained his first patent in 1769,—and the invention of the spinning-jenny by Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), are indicative of a new era of progress in the application of science to practical arts and uses.
ENGLISH DEISM.—The religious debates and the religious wars of the seventeenth century were followed by much indifference and disbelief in the eighteenth. Weariness with sectarian struggles, and revolt against the yoke of creeds, were pushed to the extreme of a denial of revealed religion,—finally, in France, to a denial of the truths of natural religion also. In England, there appeared a school of deistical writers, beginning earlier with Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), and continued through Tindal, Morgan, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Collins, and others. On the other side, Butler, Lardner (1684-1768), Bentley, the best of England's classical scholars and critics (1662-1742), and, later, Paley (1743-1805), were among the authors who defended the divine origin of Christianity on rational and historical grounds. Of these writers, Butler was the most profound, Lardner and Bentley the most learned, and Paley the most lucid.
THE "QUAKERS."—During this period, the Society of Friends, "Quakers," was founded in England by George Fox (1624-1691), who in 1647, impelled by what he considered a divine call, began the life of an itinerant preacher. He and his followers were subjected frequently to cruel persecution, both in England and America. In exceptional cases, they fell into extravagances of enthusiasm, interrupted public worship, walked in the streets clothed in sackcloth, or in some instances naked. They condemned war, practiced non-resistance, objected to oaths and to a paid ministry, and set an example of the utmost plainness and simplicity in speech and dress. Among their many converts were William Penn, and their able and learned theologian, Robert Barclay (1648-1690). The Friends, by their Christian forbearance and patience, their purity of conduct and their philanthropy, and their tranquil piety, gradually won the respect of the other religious bodies, who were at first offended by their novel tenets and manners, and by the occasional occurrence of revolting manifestations of a half-insane enthusiasm.
METHODISM.—Of the religious movements in Protestant countries, Methodism is the most noteworthy. This movement was originated by a little group of students at Oxford, of whom John Wesley, his brother Charles, and George Whitefield were the chief. Of these, John Wesley (1703-1791) united with intellectual ability and cultivation, and religious fervor, a remarkable organizing capacity. Whitefield was an orator in the pulpit, of unrivaled eloquence. He was a Calvinist in his theology, and separated from Wesley on account of Wesley's Arminian views. They were nicknamed "Methodists," from their strictness of life in the University, and their systematic ways. Wesley and his associates preached to the common people in England, including the poor colliers and miners, with untiring ardor and surprising effect. Their converts were very numerous, and were formed into societies under a definite polity and discipline. The Wesleyan movement was much opposed in the Church of England by those who stood in dread of enthusiasm. By ordaining lay preachers and superintendents for America, and by putting its chapels under the protection of the Toleration Act,—measures which Wesley deemed necessary,—Methodism became separate from the Anglican Established Church. As a distinct body, it gained a. multitude of adherents in England and America.
MORAVIANISM.—In 1722 a company of persecuted Moravian Christians was received by Count Zinzendorf (1700-1760) on his estate, situated on the borders of Bohemia. They founded a town called Herrnkut. Zinzendorf became their bishop. The new community was distinguished for sincere piety and for missionary zeal. They did not in the least antagonize the Lutheran churches, yet had an organization of their own. Some of them settled in America. The Moravians never became a very numerous body; but their influence in promoting spiritual religion and education, and in carrying Christianity to the heathen, has been more potent than that of many larger bodies of Christians. It was specially wholesome in Germany, at a time when, under the auspices of Frederick the Great, the French type of unbelief prevailed in the higher classes of society.
PIETISM.—Prior to Zinzendorf, Spener (1635-1705), a man of devout feeling, had given rise to the "Pietists," as the promoters of a warmer type of religious experience than was approved by the current opinion were derisively named.
SWEDENBORG.—Swedenborg (1688-1772), a Swedish noble, a mathematician and naturalist of large attainments, communicated, in copious writings, what he sincerely professed to consider special revelations made to him respecting God, the unseen world, and the sense of the Scriptures. His adherents are called "The New Church," or Swedenborgians.
THE JESUIT ORDER.—Under the influences that had sway in the eighteenth century, the authority of the popes sank in the Catholic countries. The spirit of innovation was rife. One of the remarkable incidents of the time, characteristic of its tendency, was the conflict of Portugal and the Bourbon courts of France and Spain, with the Society of Jesuits. The Jesuits had secretly established, unobserved, a state under their own exclusive control in Paraguay, a part of which, by a treaty of Portugal with Spain, fell to Portugal. Other charges, some relating to interference in political affairs, and some to other and different grounds of complaint, led to the expulsion of the order from all Portuguese territory (1757); and soon after, it was suppressed in France and in Spain, and in several of the Italian states. The Jesuit order was formally abolished by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, to be again restored by papal authority in 1814.
RUSSIA: GERMANY.—The minds of men were unsettled, not only by the prevalent tone of literature and speculation, but by governmental changes and reforms. The disposition was to introduce French methods of administration. Catherine II. of Russia (1762-1796) tried the experiment of various judicial and educational reforms. Frederick the Great, with more wisdom and consistency, introduced many changes for the benefit of the industrial class. The most sweeping reforms were undertaken by the Emperor Joseph II. (1780-1790), after the death of his mother, Maria Theresa. His measures for the reduction of the power of the clergy and of the nobility, the closing of monasteries, and the weakening of the connection of the Austrian Church with Rome, were of a very radical character. He himself finally became convinced that they were too radical to be completely realized, in the existing state of opinion among his subjects. Two of his reforms—the abolition of serfdom, and the edict of religious toleration—remained in force. The other changes did not survive him. The attempts to impose his reforms in the Austrian Netherlands provoked an insurrection. Leopold II. (1790-1792), Joseph's successor, suppressed the Belgian revolt, but repealed the ordinances of his brother which had occasioned it.
TUSCANY.—In Tuscany, the brother of Joseph II., Leopold, prior to his becoming emperor, undertook likewise a great plan of ecclesiastical reform in the same line as that of Joseph (1786); but there the opposition of the bishops prevented him from practically carrying out his scheme.
PORTUGAL.—In Portugal, the house of Braganza had ascended the throne in 1640. Joseph Emanuel (1750-1777) left the management of the government to his minister, Pombal. His measures were contrived to weaken the power of the nobles and the clergy. By him the warfare against the Jesuits was carried forward. The fall of Pombal, which followed the death of the king, led to the abolition of all his reforms, which had the same fate as those undertaken later in Austria by Joseph II.
LITERATURE.—See the lists of works on pp. 16, 395, 450, and Adams's Manual of Historical Literature; SCHLOSSER'S History of the Eighteenth Century (8 vols,); NOORDEN'S Europaische Gesch. im 18tn. Jahr.: Der Spanische Erbfolgekrieg (2 vols.); Lord John Wakeman, European History, 1598-1715; Hassall, European History, 1715-1789; Perlcins, Regency and Louis XV, (3 vols.); St. Simon, The Memoirs of the Reign of Louis XIV. and the Regency [an abridgment, 3 vols.]; Voltaire, Age of Louis XIV.; PHILIPPSON (in Oncken's Series), Das Zeitalter Ludwigs d. Vierzehten; A. de Broglie, Louis XV: The King's Secret Correspondence with his Agents, etc. (2 vols.); A. Thiers, The Mississippi Bubble; Morley's Life of Voltaire, and Life of Rousseau.
A. v, Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresas (10 vols., 1863-79): DUNCKER, Aus der Zeit Friedrichs d. Grossen, etc.; RANKE, Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (3 vols); CARLYLE'S History of Frederick the Second (6 vols.); Tuttle, History of Prussia (4 vols.); Von Raumer, Frederick the Second and his Times; A. de Broglie, Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa (2 vols.); ONCKEN, Das Zeitalter Friedrich d. Grossen (2 vols.).
The Diaries of PEPYS and EVELYN; R. Vaughan, Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell; MACAULAY'S History of England from the Accession of James II. (4 vols.); MAHON'S History of England (1701-13), also History of England (1713 to 1783) (7 vols.); BURTON, History of the Reign of Queen Anne; E.E.MORRIS, The Age of Anne; Alison, Military Life of the Duke of Marlborough; Life of Marlborough, by Gleig, by Coxe (3 vols.); LECKY'S History of England in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.); Froude, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols.); Mahan, Influence of the Sea Power on History; Egerton, Short History of British Colonial Policy; Seeley, The Expansion of England; Payne, European Colonies; Lucas, Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British Colonies; H. Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. (3 vols.), and of George III. (4 vols.); J. G. Phillimore, History of England during the Reign of George III.; J. Adolphus, History of England [1760 83] (3 vols.); Wraxall (1751-1831), Historical Memoirs of his own Time (4 vols.). and Posthumous Memoirs of his own Time, (3 vols.); May, Constitutional History of England [1760-1860] (2 vols.); STOUGHTON, History of Religion in England from the Opening of the Long Parliament to the End of the Eighteenth Century (6 vols.); TYERMAN'S Life of Wesley; SOUTHEY'S Life of Wesley; TYERMAN'S Life of Whitefield; TYLER'S History of American Literature; VAN LAUN, History of French Literature (3 vols.); MORLEY'S Series of English Men of Letters; TAINE'S History of English Literature.
Schuyler's Life of Peter the Great; Catherine II., Memoirs written by herself; RAM-BAUD'S History of Russia.
Histories of the United States by BANCROFT, HILDRETH, McMaster, Bryant and Howard, DOYLE, Wilson, Laboulaye, NEUMANN, Fiske, Schouler; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols.); Hart, American History told by Contemporaries (4 vols.); Macdonald, Select Charters and Select Documents; Preston, Documents; Channing, The United States of America (1765-1865); Higginson, Larger History of the United States; Goldwin Smith, The United States; LODGE'S Short History of the English Colonies in America; PARKMAN'S Series of Histories of the French in America; Frothingham, Rise of the Republic [to 1790]; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England; Palfrey's History of New England; Sabine's American Loyalists; Bruce, Economic History of Virginia; Trevelyan, The American Revolution (1766-76); LOSSING, Field Book of the American Revolution; Fiske's Old Virginia and Dutch and Quaker Colonies; brief treatment of epochs by Fisher, Thwaites, Hart, Sloane, Walker.
Lives of Washington, by MARSHALL, SPARKS, IRVING, Weems; Lives of John Adams, by C. F. ADAMS, by MORSE; Life of Franklin, by himself (Bigelow's ed.), by SPARKS, by Parton; Lives of Jefferson, by RANDALL, Parton, Morse; Tudor's Life of James Otis; Life of Samuel Adams, by Wells, by Hosmer; Life of Hamilton, by MORSE; Life of Madison, by RIVES; W. Jay's Life of John Jay (2 vols.); H. Von Hoist, Constitutional and Political History of the United States [from 1759]; Sparks's American Biography (2 series, 25 vols.). WINSOR's Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution (1761-83), a very useful work, gives the literature on the subject (1880); Bancroft, History of the Formation of the Constitution of the United States.
CHARACTER OF THE REVOLUTION.—The French Revolution was a tremendous upheaval of society, which brought with it the abolition of feudalism and monarchy, and the securing of an equality of political rights. Its immediate result in France was the establishment of a democratic republic, followed by an empire resting on military power. Its conquests, and the predominance of France, provoked an uprising of the other European peoples in behalf of national independence. This overthrew the French empire, and produced a temporary restoration of the old dynasty. But the effect of the Revolution, in which the other civilized nations largely shared, was the substitution, in the room of the medieval state, of the modern state resting on a broader basis of equality as regards the rights and obligations of different classes. In the Western nations of the Continent, serfdom, and manifold abuses, civil and ecclesiastical, were abolished.
CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION.—First among the causes of the Revolution in France, was the hostility felt towards the privileged classes,—the king, the nobles, and the clergy,—on account of the disabilities and burdens which law and custom imposed on the classes beneath them. When Charles Vll. organized a standing army, and laid direct taxes to support it, the burghers and peasants rejoiced (p. 328). The monarchy was thus enabled to shield them, and subdue the great nobles. Louis XIV., as long as he was successful, was sustained by the pride and national spirit of the country. Yet his domination over the nobility and the Church left the higher orders in possession not only of the offices and honors which helped to fasten them submissively to the monarch, but also left them in the exercise of the numberless complicated privileges of local rule and taxation,—privileges which were the growth of ages, and which laid on the necks of the people a yoke too heavy to be borne.
1. THE LAND: THE PEASANTS.—Nearly two-thirds of the land in France was in the hands of the nobles and of the clergy. A great part of it was ill cultivated by its indolent owners. The nobles preferred the gayeties of Paris to a residence on their estates. There were many small land-owners, but many had individually too little land to furnish them with subsistence. The treatment of the peasant was often such that when he "looked upon the towers of his lord's castle, the dearest wish of his heart was to burn it down, with all its registers of debt." There was not a large middle class of land-owners, possessed of farms which, although small, were yet adequate to yield them a living. The clergy, besides having the whole management of education, held an immense amount of land, seigniorial control over thousands of peasants, and a vast income from tithes and other sources. In some provinces, there was a better state of things than in others; but, in general, the rich had the enjoyments, and the poor carried the burdens.
2. MONOPOLIES.—Manufactures and trade, although encouraged under Colbert, were fettered by oppressive monopolies and a strict organization of guilds.
3. CORRUPT GOVERNMENT.—The administration of government was both arbitrary and corrupt. Places in parliament and in the army, and most higher offices, were sold, but sold, as a rule, only to nobles. When parliament refused to register decrees of taxation, the king held "beds of justice,"—a method of passing laws against parliamentary protest (p. 299). Warrants of arrest and imprisonment—lettres de cachet—were issued by his sole authority.
4. LOSS OF RESPECT FOR ROYALTY.—Respect for the throne was lost. Under Louis XIV., the number of salable offices was incredibly multiplied. In his last days, "in many towns the trade in timber, wine, and spirits was taken out of private hands; nay, even the poor earnings of those who towed boats on the rivers, of porters and funeral mutes, were made a monopoly, and secured to certain families exclusively, in consideration of a large premium." "Famine prevailed in every province. The bark of trees was the daily food of hundreds of thousands." The debauchery of Louis XV., and his feeble foreign policy, tended to dissipate what reverence for royalty was left.
5. ABORTIVE ESSAYS AT REFORM.—The efforts at political and social reform in France and in other countries, emanating from sovereigns after the great wars, produced a restless feeling without effecting their purpose of social reorganization.
6. POLITICAL SPECULATION.—The current of thought was in a revolutionary direction. Traditional beliefs in religion were boldly questioned. Political speculation was rife. Montesquieu had drawn attention to the liberty secured by the English constitution. Voltaire had dwelt on human rights,—the rights of the individual. Rousseau had expatiated on the sovereign right of the majority.
7. EXAMPLE OF AMERICA.—Add to these agencies, the influence of the American Revolution, and of the American Declaration of Independence, with its proclamation of human rights, and of the foundation of government in contract and the consent of the people.
8. THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE.—The immediate cause of the Revolution was the immense public debt, and the virtual bankruptcy of the government.
LOUIS XVI. (1774-92): THE QUEEN.—Louis XVI. differed from his two predecessors in being morally pure, and benevolent in his feelings; but he was of a dull mind, void of energy, and with an obstinacy of character that did not supply the place of an enlightened firmness. He had married (1770) Marie Antoinette, the daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa. The vivacious young queen, as well as the youthful king, at first charmed the people. But her disregard of court etiquette, and her gay, impulsive ways, provoked the dislike of many high in station, and exposed her to the natural but unmerited suspicion, on the part of the people, that she had faults worse than mere indiscretion. A great scandal connected with a diamond necklace, which an unprincipled woman, the Countess Lamotte, falsely asserted that the queen desired the Cardinal de Rohan to purchase for her, did much to make her the victim of gross defamation (1785). Her forbearance towards unworthy favorites, and her intermeddling in the affairs of government, in opposition to political reforms, gradually kindled against her wide-spread disrespect and aversion.
TO THE STATES GENERAL.—Helpless under the pressure of the heavy debt and the deficit in revenue, the king called to his side Turgot (1774) as controller-general of finance, a political economist and statesman of remarkable integrity and insight. He set to work to reduce the enormous and extravagant public expenditures, and to introduce reforms for the purpose of increasing the public income. He proposed to do away with internal duties on articles of commerce; to break up many guilds; to abolish the corvée, or the hard and hateful requirement upon the peasant to labor so many days on the land of the lord; and to introduce a greater amount of local self-government. These, and other wholesome reforms in the civil service and in the army, excited the violent opposition of the nobles and the clergy, and of the whole body of interested courtiers. The king weakly yielded; the great minister was dismissed; and France lost its golden opportunity to prevent infinitely greater calamities than any which the selfish opponents of change dreaded for themselves. Necker, a Genevan banker of far less financial ability, was now placed at the helm (1776-1781). His remedies were not radical; yet his movements in the direction of economy, and for giving publicity to the financial situation of the government, provoked such hatred in the classes affected that he had to withdraw. Calonne, a prodigal and incapable successor, in connection with the increased expenses of the government consequent on the American War, brought things to such a pass that the king called together (1787) an Assembly of Notables, not so much to get their advice as to obtain their support for a plan of reform not unlike that of Turgot. This necessary reform they selfishly refused to sanction. Calonne fled to London. Necker, to the joy of the people, who built on him vain hopes, was recalled (1788); and it was resolved to summon the States General, who had not met since 1614. To this measure the incompetence and selfishness of the ruling classes had inevitably led.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE THIRD ESTATE.—The States General met at Versailles, May 5, 1789. The clergy numbered three hundred, the nobles three hundred, and the third estate (tiers etat)—whose plain black dress was in contrast with the more showy costume of the higher orders—numbered six hundred. A pamphlet of Abbé Sieyés, in answer to the question, "What is the Third Estate?" declared that is the nation in its true sovereignty and supreme authority. A contest arose at once on the question, whether there should be three houses, or whether all the members should sit together. The Third Estate insisted on the latter plan. The Parisian astronomer, Bailly, was their president. Among the members were Sieyes, and Mirabeau, a man of great intellect and of commanding eloquence. They declared themselves to be the National Assembly; and they persisted, against the king's will, in sitting apart until, at his request, the other orders gave away and joined them. It was resolved not to adjourn until the nation should be put in possession of a constitution; meantime, however, that, so long as the body should not be dissolved, money should be raised by increase of taxation, and the interest be paid on the public debt. The attempts of Louis to dissolve the assembly were firmly resisted by the third estate, which was joined by Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, Gregoire, afterwards Bishop of Blois, and, of the nobility, by the rich, ambitious, and unprincipled Duke of Orleans. The king again yielded, and advised the nobles and clergy to remain.
DESTRUCTION OF THE BASTILLE: EMIGRATION OF NOBLES.—The aristocratic party, on account of this victory of the third estate, and because they could not trust the guard of the king, procured the substitution for it of German and Swiss troops. The excitement caused by this proceeding, and the news of Necker's dismissal, led to a mob of the rough Parisian populace, who seized weapons from the workshops, and forced the surrender of the Bastille, the grim old prison where political offenders had been immured,—the visible monument of ages of royal tyranny,—which they razed to the ground. The heads of Delaunay the governor, and several of the garrison, were carried on pikes through the streets by the frenzied crowd. The mob wore cockades on their hats; these became the badges of the Revolution. This first outbreaking of mob violence had at once important effects. Necker was recalled. Lafayette was made commander of the militia of Paris, organized as a National Guard. The tricolor—red, white, and blue—was adopted for the flag. Bailly became mayor of Paris. The king came to Paris, and showed himself, with the national colors on his breast, to the people, at the Hotel de Ville, thereby giving a tacit sanction to what had been done. Then began the emigration of the nobles to foreign countries: the king's brother, the Prince of Condé, and others high in rank, left the country. The vices which the nobles had learned to practice at home were now to be exhibited abroad. The passions of the revolutionary party were to be inflamed by the suspicion of a complicity of the king and court with the plots of their absent supporters, who strove to enlist other nations in the work of trampling down liberty in France. The emigrants had some reason to fear. Municipal guards were formed in various towns by the party of progress. Soon there were risings of peasantry in several districts. Individuals in Paris—among them one of the ministers who succeeded Necker-were massacred. Nevertheless, the emigration was a grand error. The danger at the moment was not great; and, whatever the peril, the evils of desertion were far more to be deprecated.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION: ASSIGNATS.—The National Assembly, at the instigation of Lafayette, passed a Declaration of Rights, after the pattern of the American Declaration of Independence. On motion of his brother-in-law, the Vicomte de Noailles, the representatives of the nobles, in an outburst of enthusiastic self-renunciation, gave up their feudal rights and privileges. They liberated the peasants from their burdensome obligations: the clergy relinquished their tithes; the sale of offices and titles was abolished; equality of taxes was ordained; all citizens were made eligible to all stations, civil and military. The new constitution provided for one legislative chamber, to which should belong the right to initiate all enactments. The king's veto only suspended the adoption of a measure for two legislative terms. The assent of the chamber was necessary for the validity of all foreign treaties, and for declaring war or concluding peace. The State assumed the support of the clergy. It was a constitutional monarchy that was framed,—such a system as La Fayette and moderate republicans desired. The essence of republicanism was secured under old forms. Assignats, or notes, were issued as a currency, for which the public lands were to be the security,—a safeguard that was ineffective.
THE MOB AT VERSAILLES.—The delay of the king to proclaim the constitution, the call of a regiment of troops to Versailles, imprudent speeches and songs at a court banquet, stirred up the Parisian mob, who ascribed the scarcity of food to the absence of the king from Paris. A countless throng, made up largely of coarse women, went out to Versailles, intruded into the legislative chamber, and at night (Oct. 5) made their way into the palace, over the bodies of the guards. The royal family were rescued by La Fayette and the National Guard. The next day they were forced to go to Paris, attended by this wild and hungry retinue, and took up their abode in the Tuileries. To Paris, also, the National Assembly transferred itself. More and more, Paris gained control.
PROGRESS OF THE REVOLUTION.—The independence of the clergy, and the judicial authority of the parliaments, were now extinguished by the Assembly, The property of the Church was confiscated, as the salaries of the clergy were to be paid by the State; the cloisters and monastic orders were abolished; the clergy were to be chosen by the people; there was to be absolute religious freedom; there was a new organization of bishoprics; the press was to be free; France was divided, for purposes of government, into eighty-three departments; civil officers were to be chosen, directly or indirectly, by popular vote; hereditary nobility, with titles and coats-of-arms, was swept away. The equality of all citizens was ordained. There was to be uniformity in measures, weights, and coinage. A uniform judicial system was instituted, with jury trials in criminal cases.
THE CLERGY.—Thenceforward the clergy were divided into two classes,—those who took the required oath to the constitution (about one third of the whole number), and the "refractory" ones, who, in accordance with the Pope's will, refused it.
THE CLUBS: PARIS.—While these constitutional changes were taking place, the mass of the populace were becoming more and more excited by vehement orators, who discoursed of human rights, and by inflammatory journals. Clubs were organized for democratic agitation, which were named, from the places where they met, Jacobins and Cordeliers. The latter had for their head Danton, with his stentorian voice, and the brilliant young journalist Camille Desmoulins. The Jacobins aimed later at the destruction of the old institutions. The moderate monarchists, such as Bailly and La Fayette, then formed another club (the Feuillants). The municipality or commune of Paris was divided into forty-eight sections, each with an assembly which served as a theater for demagogical harangues.
FÊTE OF THE FEDERATION.—For a time the skies appeared bright. On the 14th of July, 1790, a great Federative Commemoration, or festival of civic fraternity, was held on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Talleyrand at the head of three hundred priests clad in white, with tri-color sashes, officiated at an altar in the midst of the arena. First, La Fayette as president of the National Guard, then the president of the Assembly, and last the king, took an oath before the half-million of spectators to uphold the constitution. Then the queen, partaking in the common enthusiasm, held up the dauphin in her arms, and pledged his future obedience to the oath. There was unbounded joy at what was supposed to be a new millennial era of political freedom and brotherhood. The grand festival awakened sympathy and hope in all the countries of Europe.
FLIGHT OF THE KING.—The hope of unity and political bliss, which exalted all minds to a high pitch of emotion, proved, before long, to be an illusive dream. The king was not ready to confirm the ordinance respecting priests, which made them civil officers; nor was he ready to declare the plotting emigrant nobles at Coblenz and Worms traitors. Mirabeau, who had enlisted in behalf of the king in a resistance to further measures for the reduction of regal authority, and in behalf of a constitutional monarchy, in which the legislative, judicial, and executive functions should be kept apart, suddenly died (April 2, 1791), at the age of forty-two. His death, caused partly by overwork of brain, and partly by dissolute habits, deprived the conservative republicans and the court of their ablest defender. No one like him was left to stem the current of revolutionary passion, which threatened to burst through all barriers. The Paris sections became more and more violent. They hindered a proposed journey of Louis to St. Cloud. This determined him, against the urgent wishes of the queen, to escape, with his family, to the army of the Marquis de Bouillé, at Montmédy. But the fugitives were stopped in their flight, at Varennes, and brought back in custody to Paris. This unwise and abortive proceeding of the king, coupled with his formal annulling of all that he had done in the two years previous, had for its natural consequence his suspension from office. An insurrection of the mob, to put an end to the monarchy, was suppressed by La Fayette. At the end of September, Louis swore to the revised constitution, and was restored to the throne. The Assembly then dissolved, to give place to another, which should complete the new political creation by needful legislation: hence it was called
THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (Oct. 1791-Sept. 1792).—It was composed of seven hundred and forty-five members, mostly young men, among them a number of eloquent orators. One-half of the body were advocates. The National Assembly, by a kind of self-denying ordinance, had voted to exclude themselves from membership in the new body, which thus lacked the benefit of their knowledge and experience. In the Assembly, on the right, were the different classes of supporters of constitutional monarchy, the royalists, and the Feuillants (of the school of La Fayette). On the left, were the majority, which steadily increased in numbers, and embraced (1) the Girondists, or moderate republicans; (2) the Mountain,—so called from their higher seats in the hall,—comprising the most decided democrats or radicals. Here were the leaders of the Jacobins and Cordeliers. A few of the Girondists were for going beyond the constitution of 1791, in the direction of a republic after the model of the United States. They were enamored of the spirit of the ancient commonwealths. They were fond of recurring to the Roman orators and historians. Roland, Brissot, and Vergniaud were among their leaders.
THE PARISIAN POPULACE.—The populace of Paris made Pétion, a democrat, their mayor. In the Jacobin club were Robespierre; Marat, who denounced fiercely in his journal, "The Friend of the People," as aristocrats, all classes above the common level, whether by birth or property, and the former play-actor, D'Herbois. Danton, and Camille Desmoulins, who belonged to the Cordeliers, took part in its sessions. From this company, the Girondists separated after the fall of the king. The red Jacobin cap came into vogue as a badge of republicanism, and the Marseillaise as its favorite inspiring song. Declaimers and journals were in full blast, stirring up the fears and wrath of the people.
THE ASSEMBLY AND THE KING.—The Assembly passed penal acts against the recusant priests,—those who refused the oath; and against the emigrants, who were trying to stir up the powers of Europe against the French government in its new form. These enactments were met by the king with a veto.
WAR WITH AUSTRIA AND PRUSSIA.—The authors of the French Revolution have been so generally objects of execration, and so terrible crimes were actually perpetrated in the course of it, that it is only just to note the circumstances which explain the origin of these atrocities, and which enabled violent leaders and wild passions to usurp control. The efforts of the constitutionalists to save the throne were balked by the exiles and the foreign governments. Frederick William II. of Prussia (1786-1797), and Leopold II. the emperor (1790-1792), in the Declaration of Pilnitz (Aug. 27, 1791), called on the other European powers to join them in aiding Louis XVI. to establish a right sort of government. From Russia, Sweden, Spain, and even Switzerland, there were not wanting manifestations of hostility. The attitude of Austria had the effect to bring into power a Girondist ministry. They wanted war as the best means of attaining the objects which they had in view at home. On April 20, 1792, Louis was compelled to go to the Assembly, and propose a declaration of war against Austria. "The courts of Europe had heaped up the fuel: the Girondists applied the torch." They were not averse to a crusade in behalf of liberty.
THE CONDITION OF GERMANY.—Germany consisted of a multitude of states, of which Austria (which had large territories not German) and Prussia were the chief, and were in constant rivalry. The Holy Roman Empire kept up its name and forms. Besides smaller sovereignties, as Saxony and Bavaria, there were two hundred and fifty petty principalities, fifty imperial cities, and several hundred knights, each with an insignificant domain subject to him. The empire was one body only in theory. National feeling had died out. The Diet had little to do, and no efficiency. Austria, which held the imperial office, and included in its extensive dominions Milan and Southern Netherlands, had sunk into a "gloomy and soulless despotism." The reforms of Joseph II. produced a ferment; but after the death of Leopold II. (1790-1792), under Francis II., a sickly and selfish ruler, a reactionary policy, inspired by the dread of change, had full sway. Thugut, the minister of Francis, cared only for the acquisition of territory: the people were so many millions "to be taxed, to be drilled, to be kept down by the police." In Prussia, Frederick William II. (1786-1797) and his people had no feeling so strong as that of hostility to Austria, whose influence was predominant in the minor states. Prussia cared more for getting additional Polish territory than for helping the French emigrants. The Prussian people were separated by rigorous lines into three classes,—nobles, burghers, and peasants. The nobles were poor. The lawful occupations of each class were prescribed by law. "The mass of the peasantry, at least in the country east of the Elbe, were serfs attached to the soil." The offices in the army were confined to nobles, on whose absolute obedience the king could count. Blows were inflicted on the common soldier as if he were a slave. In some of the other Protestant states, the character of the government had improved. In the south and west, the serfs had been set free. In the ecclesiastical states, including the electorates of Mentz, Trèves, and Cologne, the prince-bishops and canons were nobles, who led a gay and luxurious life. Nowhere were poverty and wretchedness so general as in the lands of the knights. The political life of Germany, notwithstanding its abundant resources, mainly from the decay of public spirit and the want of political unity, had become stagnant and corrupt. Germany was almost incapable of vigorous, united action.
CONFLICT OF LOUIS AND THE ASSEMBLY.—There was no real union between Louis XVI. and the Assembly. Troops of the National Guard, to the number of twenty thousand, from the provinces were to encamp near Paris. This measure, as well as a decree for the banishment of the non-juring clergy, the king refused to sanction. The Girondist ministers laid down their office. A mob burst into the Tuileries: they put on the king's head a Jacobin cap, but he remained calm and steadfast in his refusal to assent to the decrees. La Fayette came to Paris from the Northern army, to restore order; but the queen treated him with habitual distrust, and he fell under suspicion with the radicals. He went back to the army without effecting any thing.
IMPRISONMENT OF THE KING.—Prussia had joined its rival, Austria. Ferdinand of Brunswick, an officer trained under Frederick the Great, commanded the Prussian forces. He issued (July 25) a threatening proclamation to the French people. There were three French armies in the field, under Rochambeau, La Fayette, and Luckner; but the fire of the Revolution had not yet entered into the veins of the soldiers. Military reverses heightened the revolutionary excitement in Paris. The municipal government was broken up by Danton and his associates, with the mob of poor and desperate partisans at their back; and its place was taken by commissioners from the sections. An armed throng again attacked the Tuileries. The king took refuge in the hall of the Assembly. The Swiss guards fought bravely against the assailants, when they received an order from him to cease firing. The result was that they were slaughtered without mercy. The uniform composure of the king in the most trying situations, and his conscientious feelings, were a poor substitute for intellectual force. The Assembly voted to suspend the exercise of his authority, to put him and his family under surveillance, to hand over the young prince to the custody of a person charged with his education, and to call a national convention to draw up a constitution. The royal family were given into the hands of the Paris commune, and lodged as prisoners, in apartments scantily furnished, in the castle called the Temple.
MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.—The blundering of the royalists, their intrigues, and the pressure of the coalition of foreign enemies, had thrown the power into the hands of the Jacobins. The city council, and Danton, the minister of justice, were really supreme, although the Girondists had a share in the new ministry. La Fayette was accused and proscribed, and fled from the country. He was captured by the Austrians, and kept in prison at Olmutz until 1797. The news of the advance of the allies led to the "massacres of September," when the prisons in Paris, which had been filled with priests and laymen arrested on charges of complicity with the enemies of liberty, were entered by ruffians acting under influence of Marat and the commune's "committee of surveillance," and, after "a burlesque trial" before an armed jury, were murdered. In Versailles, Lyons, Orleans, and other towns, there were like massacres. The victims of these massacres numbered about two thousand.
TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING.—The National Convention was made up entirely of republicans. The monarchy was abolished, and France was declared a republic. The Girondists had at first the preponderance in numbers; but the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, Danton, Marat, Couthon, Fouché, the Duke of Orleans (who called himself Philip Égalité), St. Just, Billaud-Varenne, Barère, were supported by the clubs and the city council, and by the savage populace of the sections,—the sans culottes. The guillotine—a machine for beheading, which Guillotin, a physician, did not invent, but recommended for use—was the instrument on which the fanatical revolutionists placed most of their reliance for the extirpation of "aristocracy." The energy of the Jacobins, aided by the general dread of a restoration of the royalists to power, and by the fury of the Paris populace, proved too strong for the more moderate party to withstand. The king, designated as Louis Capet, was arraigned before the assembly, tried, and condemned to death. There were seven hundred and twenty-one votes: his death was decreed by a small majority (Jan. 17, 1793). Through all the terrible scenes of the trial, the parting with his wife and children, and the execution (Jan. 21), Louis manifested a serene and Christian temper.
VICTORIES OF FRANCE.—Meantime, in France the war was felt, and justly, to be a war of self-defense. The enemies were a privileged class in alliance with foreign invaders. Volunteers flocked to the field. The troops under Dumouriez and others had been successful. At Valmy (Sept. 20, 1792) the allies, under Brunswick, were defeated. The victory of Dumouriez at Jemmappes was followed by the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands (Nov., 1792). Savoy and Nice were annexed to France. The Scheldt was declared free and open to commerce, and Antwerp was made an open port.
THE FIRST COALITION.-The execution of the king was the signal for the union of the European powers against France. The intention of the revolutionary party to propagate their system in other countries afforded one excuse for this interference. The Convention (Nov. 19, 1792) had offered their assistance to peoples wishing to throw off the existing governments. Another reason was the recent annexations, and the proceedings in respect to the free navigation of the Scheldt. The main ground and cement of the coalition was the dread which the governments felt of revolutionary movements among their own subjects, from their sympathy with the new institutions in France.
POLITICS IN ENGLAND.—The reason just mentioned was operative in Great Britain. The revolution of 1688 had given power to a group of Whig families and their retainers. To shake off this Whig control, which had long continued, was a constant aim of George III. In William Pitt, the younger, he found a minister capable, under the favoring circumstances, of achieving this result. He was made prime minister in 1783, when he was only twenty-five years old. The king, in 1788, had been attacked with insanity; and while he was thus afflicted, George, Prince of Wales, who was unpopular on account of his loose morals, ruled as regent. The regent affiliated with the Whigs, but Pitt retained his office. The leader of the liberal party was Charles James Fox, a man of noble talents and generous instincts, but notoriously irregular in his habits. The sympathy in England with the Revolution of 1789 was widely diffused. Edmund Burke, however, the great philosophical statesman, who had defended the cause of freedom in the American War, was alarmed by the events in France, and still more by the theories of human rights propounded by the enthusiastic friends of the Revolution. These ideas were set forth in England, in an offensive form, in the writings of Thomas Paine. Burke published, in 1790, his Reflections on the French Revolution, in which he attacked as visionary the political notions of the French school in regard to human rights, and denounced them for their dangerous tendency. He separated from his party, and publicly broke friendship with Fox. Pitt was personally averse to war with France, but was driven into it by the prevailing sentiment. The anti-revolutionary feeling excited by the news of the death of Louis moved England to an armed interference which involved the most important consequences to all Europe. A Tory minister, Pitt was supported in the long struggle in Europe by a majority of the Whigs. In the next twenty years, Great Britain, by her military strength on the land, and much more on the sea, and in particular by her wealth, freely poured out in subsidies to her allies on the Continent, was a powerful, as well as the most persevering, antagonist of France.
FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.—The advance of the allied armies increased the violence and strengthened the hands of the Jacobins. Dumouriez lost a battle in Neerwinden (March 18, 1793), and fell back, through Belgium, to the French frontier. He was in sympathy with the Girondists, and complained of the doings of the Jacobins in Paris and in his army. Being called to account, he went over to the Austrians. This desertion weakened the Girondist party, and put new force into the party of Jacobins. At the same time, news came of a royalist revolt in the West, and of conflicts between the Jacobins and their adversaries in the cities of the South. Danton, who understood that "audacity" was the secret of success, procured the appointment by the convention of a Committee of Public Safety (April 6, 1793), which was to exercise the most frightful dictatorship known in history. A "committee of general security" was put in charge of the police of the whole country. The commune of Paris co-operated in the energetic efforts of the Jacobin leaders to collect recruits and to strengthen the military force. The three chiefs were Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. There was a mortal struggle between the advocates of order and the apostles of anarchy. The fate of the moderates and Girondists was sealed by a great insurrection in Paris, and an invasion of the Convention by an armed force. The violent party had at their back eighty thousand National Guards, who hemmed in the Convention. Twenty-nine Girondist leaders were placed under arrest. Their party fell. The boldest and most reckless faction, which had the Paris commune behind it, triumphed.
WAR OF LA VENDÉE.—Outside of Paris, in other parts of France, there were risings against the Jacobin rule. The most formidable of these was in the West, where the relation of the nobles to the peasants had been kindly, and where the common people looked on the violent proceedings at Paris with anger and disgust. Thus began the war of La Vendée, a terrible episode of civil strife, in which the people of that region were subdued, but not until after protracted conflict and immense slaughter.
THE JACOBIN REVOLUTION.—Danton and the other revolutionary leaders showed a tremendous energy in their attack on both domestic and foreign enemies. A levy was ordered of the whole male population capable of bearing arms. A maximum price was fixed by law for commodities, and also for wages. The government paid its dues in depreciated assignats at the face value. Its emissaries were in all parts of France, stirring up the people and forming revolutionary committees. Thus a system of revolutionary government was everywhere established. A new constitution, of an extreme democratic type, was offered to the acceptance of the people. This dominion of the Jacobins, it must be observed, was a second revolution. The Revolution of 1792 was as different from that of 1789 as was the proposed constitution of 1793 from that of 1791. The insurrections, except at Lyons and Toulon and in La Vendée, were soon quelled. The Jacobin rule was identified with the cause of patriotism in arms against foreign invasion, and with antipathy to the restoration of Bourbon royalty and misrule. In Paris, the revolutionary tribunal was filling the prisons with the suspected, and sending daily its wagon-loads of victims to the guillotine.
MILITARY SUCCESSES OF FRANCE.-The achievements of the great coalition were not at all in proportion to its apparent strength. It was weakened by mutual jealousies and inefficient commanders. In the South, the Spaniards and Piedmontese did not profit by their successes. In the North and North-east, the summer of 1793 was partly wasted by the English, Austrians, and Prussians, in long sieges and in dissensions among themselves. Meantime the French army was growing stronger, and more and more on fire with patriotic ardor. The Duke of York, an incapable general, was obliged to raise the siege of Dunkirk (Sept. 8, 1793). The forces of the coalition began to retire from ground that they had won. At Paris, Carnot's efficient management of military affairs gave France an advantage over her foes. The Prussians were inactive on the Rhine; and Jourdan, reinforced by a French detachment from that quarter, defeated the Austrians at Wattignies. By the movements of Hoche, the allies were driven out of Alsace. Lyons, after a stubborn defense, was captured and savagely punished, and the brave Vendeans were completely defeated by Kleber at Savenay. Near the end of the year, Toulon, then in revolt, was captured. At the siege, a young artillery officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, first distinguished himself by pointing out the proper spot for the planting of batteries that would drive away the English and Spanish fleets, and by carrying out his project.
BONAPARTE.—Napoleon was born on the island of Corsica, Aug. 15, 1769, two months after Corsica became subject to the French. His family, on both sides, were Italians. Napoleon himself never became so fully master of the French tongue that he did not betray in his speech his foreign extraction. He was educated at the military school of Brienne (1779-1784), and then went to the military school at Paris. His principal studies were mathematics and history. He quickly made manifest his military talents, and seems first to have aspired to gain distinction and power, in this line, in Corsica. His connection was at first with the Jacobins, although he afterwards denied it. He had imbibed the ideas of the Revolution, and saw that in the service of the leaders in the war there was opened to him a military career. He turned against his patriotic countryman, Paoli, when the latter sought to separate Corsica from France, at that time under the Jacobin rule.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.—The Reign of Terror had now established itself in France. The Committee of Public Safety wielded absolute power. Every man, woman, and child was called upon to take part in the defense of the country. The property of all the "emigrants" and prisoners of state was seized. Whoever was suspected of being hostile to the established tyranny was thrown into prison. Even to be lukewarm in adhesion to it, was a serious offense. Summary trials were followed by swift executions. The tenderness of youth and the venerableness of age were no protection. Day after day, the stream of human blood continued to flow. A new calendar was ordained: Sept. 22, 1792, was the beginning of the year one. There was a new division of months; in the room of the week, each tenth day was made a holiday. The commune of Paris, followed by other cities, began a crusade against Christianity. Fashions of dress, modes of speech, and manners were revolutionized. Every vestige of "aristocracy" was to be swept off the earth. There was a wild license given to divorce and to profligacy. Paris was like a camp where young soldiers were drilled, weapons were forged, and lint and bandages made ready for the wounded. There were seen, even in the hall of the Convention, throngs of coarse and fierce men, and of coarser and fiercer women, with their songs and wild outcries and gestures. The commune of Paris instituted a sacrilegious festival in the ancient cathedral of Notre Dame, where an actress was enthroned as "Goddess of Liberty." There were priests and bishops who abjured the Christian faith, and there were others who adhered to it at the peril of their lives. The prisons, which were packed with all classes, were theaters of strange and thrilling scenes. In many cases, death, made familiar, ceased to terrify. Crowds escorted the batch of victims carried on carts each day to the place of execution, and insulted them with their brutal shouts. The arrested Girondist deputies were executed. Some of the leaders of that party, including Roland, perished by suicide. Among the eminent persons sent to the guillotine were the eloquent Vergniaud, Brissot, Bailly, Malesherbes (the brave advocate who had defended Louis XVI.), and Madame Roland; also the infamous Duke of Orleans, who had intrigued to get himself raised to the throne. Marie Antoinette, her hair turned white in the tragic scenes through which she had passed, miserably clad, was dragged before the merciless tribunal. There she was insulted with foul accusations which nobody believed. After the mockery of a trial, she was carried like a common criminal, in a cart, with her arms bound, to the place of execution (Oct. 16). Her dignity and serenity, her pallid countenance, and the simple, pathetic words uttered by her at her arraignment, touched for the moment the hardened hearts of the imbruted spectators. Her sad fate has blinded many to the calamitous errors committed by her in the days of her power.
THE JACOBIN CHIEFS.—The Reign of Terror was not confined to Paris. The unexampled atrocities there were repeated in the other large towns with like circumstances of barbarity. A species of fanaticism ruled and raged in the land. The mania, if one may so call it, reached its height in such chiefs of the revolutionary party as Marat, Billaud, and Robespierre. In Marat especially, the mastery gained by one idea almost amounted to mental disorder. He demanded first five hundred heads, then (in Sept., 1793) forty thousand; then, six weeks later, two hundred and seventy thousand. It did seem to be a "homicidal mania." Marat was assassinated by a young maiden, Charlotte Corday, who devoted herself to the task of ridding the world of such a monster.
DEATH OF DANTON.—The Jacobin leaders found their ideal of virtue in the Spartan spirit. Infatuated by Rousseau's theory of the omnipotence of the state, in which the individual is merged and lost under the despotism of the majority, they looked on the massacre of countless persons, guilty of no crime, as a good deed. At length men began to grow weary of this frightful tyranny. The leaders became divided among themselves. Danton, though often the advocate of violent measures, was a statesman, and, to his credit be it said, halted at a point where the others advanced. He made an objection to the confounding of the innocent with the guilty. Hébert and the leaders of the commune, with their atheism, as dangerous political rivals, were offensive to Robespierre, who was a deist. He held a sort of middle position, had most power with the Jacobins, and was enabled to crush and destroy his associates. He was a dull man, of a quiet mien, often seen with a nosegay in his hand, and bloodthirsty according to a precise theory. His ascendency gave him the power, after scenes of tempestuous debate, to inflict first on Hébert, on Clootz, and his other confederates, and then on Danton and the Dantonist chiefs, the same death by the guillotine to which they had doomed so many. Robespierre abolished the worship of Reason, and caused the Convention to pass a resolution acknowledging the existence of a supreme Being, in whose honor fêtes were held. Christianity was denounced as a base superstition.
CRUELTIES IN THE PROVINCES.—When Robespierre was supreme, the Reign of Terror became still more terrible. In trials, the hearing of evidence and of argument were dispensed with. The prisons were crowded with "suspects." Alleged conspiracies in prisons were made a pretext for wholesale slaughter under the guillotine. Suicide and madness were of common occurrence. Even before Robespierre's predominance there had been in the provinces scenes of horror like those which occurred in the capital. The revolted cities, as Lyons and Toulon, were punished with savage ferocity. At Lyons, men, women, and children in masses were shot down with artillery. Those who were not killed with the shot were cut in pieces by the soldiery. At Nantes prisoners were bound together in pairs, and huddled together in barges, which were scuttled and set afloat down the Loire. For these atrocities the deputy Carrier was responsible.
FRENCH VICTORIES.—Yet, at this time, the arms of the republic, except on the sea, where the French fleet was badly beaten by the English, were mostly successful. The Duke of York was vanquished on the Belgian frontier, and the defeat of the allies at Fleurus (June 26, 1794) obliged them to evacuate Belgium.
Charles Bonaparte, m. Letitia Ramolino.
|
+—1, Joseph, King of Spain, d. 1844.
| |
| | +—Lucien, Cardinal.
| | |
| +—Zénaïde,
| m.
| +—Charles, d. 1857
| |
+—3, Lucien, Prince of Canino, d .1840.
| |
| +—Lucien.
| |
| +—Pierre.
|
+—2, NAPOLEON I, 1804-1814, (deposed, d. 1821), m.
| (1), Maria Louisa, daughter of Emperor Francis II.
| |
| +—Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon II), d. 1832.
|
| (2), Josephine, m. General Beauharnais.
| |
| +—Eugene, Duke of Leuchtenberg, d. 1824. m.
| | Augusta, daughter of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria.
| | |
| | +—Josephine, m. Oscar I of Sweden.
| |
| +—Hortense,
| m.
+—4, Louis, King of Holland, d. 1846.
| |
| +—Napoleon Charles, d. 1807.
| |
| +—Napoleon Louis, d. 1831.
| |
| +—LOUIS NAPOLEON III, 1852-1870, d. 1873. m.
| Eugenie, Countess of Teba
| |
| +—Napoleon, d. 1879.
|
+—5, Caroline, m. Joachim Murat, King of Naples, shot 1815.
|
+—6, Jerome, King of Westphalia, d. 1860, m.
Catharine of Wurtemberg.
|
+—Napoleon. m. Clotilde, d. of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy
|
+—NAPOLEAN VICTOR JEROME FREDERIC.
FALL OF ROBESPIERRE (9TH THERMIDOR).—A reaction set in against the cruelties of Jacobinism. Men—even the judges of the murderous tribunal—grew weary of bloodshed. The authority of Robespierre began to wane, even with his colleagues. The assembly at length turned against him. On July 27 (the 9th Thermidor, according to the new calendar) he was arrested. He was released, but was again seized, and, with St. Just, Couthon, and most of the leaders of the commune, was guillotined.
Bare statistics, accompanied by no thrilling descriptions, convey a strong impression of the atrocities of the Reign of Terror. According to M. Taine, "there were guillotined at Paris, between April 16, 1793, and the 9th Thermidor, 2,625 persons. The same process went forward all over France. In Arras, 299 men and 93 women; in Orange, 331 persons; in Nantes, 1,971; in Lyons, 1,684 (avowedly, but a correspondent of Robespierre estimates the total at 6,000); in the fusillades (deaths by shooting) of Toulon, more than 1,000; in the noyades (drownings) of Nantes, nearly 5,000 perished. In the eight departments of the West, it is reckoned that nearly half a million perished." The deaths from want, under the Jacobin government, M. Taine thinks, much exceeded a million. "France was on the brink of a great famine on the Asiatic scale."
REACTION: CONTROL OF THE MODERATES.—The Reign of Terror was brought to an end. The moderates controlled the Convention. The prison doors were opened, and the multitude of suspects were set free. The revolutionary tribunal was broken down. The commune of Paris was so shaped as to strip it of its most dangerous powers. The Jacobin and other incendiary clubs were suppressed. Religion was declared to be free, and the churches were opened to their congregations. The Girondist deputies who survived were invited back to their seats in the Convention. The National Guards were filled up from the middle class,—the bourgeoisie. Little mercy was shown to the Jacobins anywhere. The reaction was seen in the altered character of society and of manners. Those who had acquired wealth in the late time by the changes of property came to the front. The old fondness for dress and gayety reappeared. Paris was again alive with balls and other festive entertainments. The salons were crowded with elegant youth of the higher class (the jeunesse dorée). The party of Terror were cowed; but in consequence of the rise in the cost of provisions, and of the distress caused by it, and by the sudden abrogation of tyrannical laws settling the price of food and wages, there were two fierce outbreakings of the mob of Paris (April 1, May 20, 1795). These were quelled, and the power of the Jacobins was finally crushed. The moderates had now to guard against the increasing strength and rising hopes of the royalists.
CONQUEST OF HOLLAND: PRUSSIA.—The armies of France were everywhere successful. Through the victories of Jourdan and Pichegru, Holland was conquered, and converted into the Batavian Republic, and Dutch Flanders surrendered to France. The Low Countries were now a dependency of the French Republic (1794-1795). Hoche, an excellent general, partly by conciliation, reduced the West—the theater of the La Vendée revolt—to submission. The English and emigrants landed in Quiberon, on the coast of Brittany, but were defeated. The coalition was broken up, first by the withdrawal of Prussia, which ceded (April 5, 1795), and, in a secret article, ceded permanently, its territories on the left bank of the Rhine to the French, for a compensation to be obtained from secularized German states,—that is, states in which the old ecclesiastical rule should be abolished. A few months later (July, 1795), Spain concluded peace, ceding St. Domingo to the Republic. The soldiers of France were fast becoming trained, and their confidence rose with their increasing success. This success was due largely to the weak generalship of the allies. The French were commonly hard masters in the conquered places. On the other hand, however, they effected a welcome abolition of old feudal inequalities and abuses.
CONSTITUTION OF 1995.—Meanwhile, there was disaffection, especially in the cities, with the rule by the Convention. In the cities there was distress, except in the moneyed class. There was a yearning for a strong and stable government. The Convention framed and submitted to the nation a new constitution, the third in the order of political fabrics of this sort. There were to be seven hundred and fifty legislators, divided into two bodies,—the Council of Elders, or the Ancients, of two hundred and fifty, and the Council of Five Hundred. The executive power was given to a Directory of five persons. Two-thirds of the councils for the first term were to be taken from the Convention. The constitution, thus conservative and anti-Jacobin in its character, was well received. But there was dissatisfaction in the reactionary parties; and a great insurrection of the royalist middle class in Paris (Oct. 5, 1795, the 13th Vendémaire) was promptly put down by the resolute action of Bonaparte, to whom had been given the command of the troops of the city. It was the royalist and the anti-republican parties which now threatened the government. But a new authority, the will of the army, was beginning plainly to disclose itself. The dread of Jacobinism still existed. What the people more and more craved was internal tranquillity and order.
BONAPARTE IN ITALY: TO THE PEACE OF CAMPO FORMIO.—The assignats became worthless. This bankruptcy had one benefit: it relieved the state of its debt, and brought coin into circulation. A triple attack was planned by Carnot against Austria. In Germany, Jourdan and Moreau were driven back by the Archduke Charles of Austria. But a splendid success attended the arms of Bonaparte in the attack on the Austrian power in Italy. He had been lately married to Josephine Beauharnais, the widow of a French general guillotined in 1794, the only woman to whom he appears ever to have been warmly attached. There were two children by her former marriage,—Eugène (1781-1824), and Hortense (1783-1837) who married Louis Bonaparte. Starting from Nice, and following the coast, Bonaparte defeated the Austrians and Piedmontese separately, and forced the latter to conclude a distinct peace, which ceded Savoy and Nice to France. He exemplified in this campaign the characteristics which in after-years contributed essentially to his success as a general. He struck the enemy before they could combine their forces. He did not, after the old method, wait to capture all the fortresses in his path, but by swift marches made his attacks at unexpected places and times. He defeated the Austrians after a brief struggle at the bridge of Lodi on the Adda, captured Milan, overran Lombardy as far as Mantua, and forced the Pope, and Parma, Modena, and Naples, to purchase peace by giving up their treasures of art. Thus began the custom of despoiling conquered capitals, and other subjugated cities, of works of art, which went to adorn and enrich Paris,—a new custom among civilized Christian nations. Wurmser, the veteran Austrian general, was defeated in a series of engagements; and, after him, another great Austrian army, under Alvinzi, was vanquished at Arcola (Nov. 14-17, 1796) and at Rivoli (Jan. 14, 1797). Bonaparte now crossed the Alps to meet the Archduke Charles, who had cleared Germany of its invaders. The French general, although his own situation was not free from peril, was able to dictate the terms of peace. In the treaty of Campo Formio (Oct. 17, 1797), Austria ceded the Belgian provinces to France, recognized the Cisalpine Republic to be established by Bonaparte in North Italy, and secretly consented to the cession of the German provinces on the left bank of the Rhine. In return, he gave Venice to Austria, in disregard of the principles of international law, and perfidiously as regards that republic, which had made its peace with him, and become a democracy dependent on France. In this treaty with Austria, there was another secret stipulation that Prussia should not be indemnified in Germany for her losses on the west of the Rhine. Thus Napoleon used the selfishness of the allies to divide them from one another. At Tolentino in February the Pope had ceded for the Cispadane Republic the Romagna, Bologna, and Ferrara. A young man of twenty-seven, Bonaparte had given proof of his astonishing military genius by a series of victories over large armies and experienced generals; and he had evinced equally his skill, as well as his lack of principle, in the field of diplomacy. He had won admiration from his enemies by his evident freedom from the revolutionary fanaticism, and his contempt for declamation about "the rights of man." Returning to Paris, he was received with acclamation, but thought it politic to avoid publicity, and to live quietly in his modest dwelling.
COUP D'ÉTAT: 18 FRUCTIDOR (Sept. 4, 1797).—During Bonaparte's absence, the royalist and reactionary faction had gained ground in the governing bodies. Pichegru was plotting on that side. These schemes had been baffled with the timely assistance of a detachment of troops sent to Paris by Bonaparte under Augereau. On Sept. 4 (the 18th Fructidor), the palace of the Tuileries, where the councils met, was surrounded. The reactionary deputies were arrested; Pichegru and his fellow-conspirators were banished. This coup d'état sealed the triumph of the republicans, but it was effected through the army.
THE EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION.—The Directory were conscious of weakness, and looked with alarm and distrust on the young general, who was fast becoming the idol of the people, as well as of the army. They wished him to attempt a descent on England. He preferred, in the room of this impracticable venture, to conduct an expedition to Egypt, with the design of getting control, if possible, of the Eastern Mediterranean, and of striking at the possessions of Great Britain in India. To this scheme the Directory, quite willing to have him at a distance, readily consented. Hiding his plans until all was ready, he sailed from Toulon (May 19, 1798) with a strong fleet and army; on his way captured Malta through treachery of the knights, and landed safely in Egypt. With him were some of the best of the French generals, and a large company of scientific men. He defeated the Mamelukes in a great battle fought within sight of the Pyramids. But at Aboukir, in the Battle of the Nile, the French fleet was destroyed by the English naval force under Nelson. The French army was thus cut off from the means of return. Bonaparte invaded Syria, but was prevented by the English fleet from getting a foothold on the coast. He had to raise the siege of Acre, and returned to Egypt, where he vanquished the Turks at Aboukir.
REVERSES OF FRANCE IN ITALY.—Here Bonaparte received information which determined him to leave the army under the command of Kléber, and himself to return to France. The European powers had once more taken up arms. Among the causes of the renewal of the war were the formation by the French of the Roman Republic out of the dominion of the Pope, the establishment of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland, and the change of Genoa by its own act into the Ligurian Republic. Prussia, since 1795, from selfish motives had cooperated with France, and stood aloof from the new—the second—coalition. Paul I., emperor of Russia, was active against the French Republic, and Pitt was its indefatigable enemy. The Czar had been made Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, and made much of this empty dignity. The victory of Nelson at Aboukir cemented the union of the hostile powers, with whom the Sultan was now joined. The management of the French armies by the government at Paris was unskillful. Naples, to be sure, was overcome, and transformed into the Parthenopæan Republic. The king of Sardinia was driven out of Piedmont. But Jourdan was defeated by the Archduke Charles, and retreated across the Rhine. The Austrians and the Russian army under Suvoroff, a veteran officer, were victorious south of the Alps (June, 1799); Moreau and Macdonald were defeated at Trebbia. The French were defeated again at Novi (Aug. 15), and lost almost all Italy. The king of Naples came back, and thousands of republicans there were cruelly put to death,—a proscription in which Nelson had a part. It was the victory of Masséna, over the Russians at Zurich, that saved France itself from invasion.
OVERTHROW OF THE DIRECTORY: 18TH BRUMAIRE.—These reverses added to the unpopularity of the Directory. The discontent of the Jacobins with their government had given rise to strong measures of repression. On the other hand, the wealthy class were disgusted at the renewal of the war. A rising was threatened in La Vendee. The feeling was widely diffused, that there was need of a strong man at the helm to save the ship of state from another terrible shipwreck. At this juncture Napoleon appeared in Paris, and was greeted with enthusiasm. Sieyès and one other director, with a majority of the Ancients, agreed to another coup d'état which should make Bonaparte the first magistrate. The garrison of Paris was ready to lend its aid. The resistance of the Council of five Hundred at St. Cloud was baffled by Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, their president, and by the use of military force. Thus there was accomplished the revolution of the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9, 1799).
THE CONSULATE.—In the provisional government set up by the remnant of the council, Napoleon only gradually assumed the chief rôle. He was later enabled to take and to hold supreme power, because of the mutual fear of royalists and republicans, their common dread of Jacobinism, and a prevailing conviction that safety must be sought in the sway of an individual, representing neither extreme, and strong enough to hold all in check. Yet the event evinced the supremacy now gained by the military power. Napoleon immediately made excellent financial reforms, and repealed or softened the laws against the "emigrants" and the priests. By such mild and conservative measures, the prosperity of France began to be renewed. The constitution of the year VIII., as planned by Sieyès and modified by Bonaparte, kept up the semblance, without much of the reality, of democracy. The checks on the power of the First Consul were more nominal than real. The mass of the people had power only to vote for lists of citizens, out of whom all the higher officers were to be selected by successive steps. All legislation was initiated by the Council of State; the Tribunate of a hundred members could discuss proposals made thus, but could not act; the Legislative Chamber of three hundred could vote, but not discuss; and the Senate of eighty was chosen for life, with little to do. This constitution of 1799, in opposition to the communal system of 1789 and 1791, established a centralized administration which destroyed local liberty and self-government. France no longer represented in other countries the cause of liberty. In this character its armies had been hailed in Italy, where a yearning for national unity was awakened. Equality, not liberty, was all that the cause of France now represented.
Napoleon could not have expected that his overtures of peace would be accepted by Austria. The rough, impolitic response made by England, helped him by rousing resentment in France.
MARENGO: PEACE OF LUNGVILLE.—If Sieyès and others expected that Napoleon would merely direct military operations from Paris, they were soon undeceived. Masséna was at the head of the army in Italy, and found it most difficult to hold Genoa against the Austrians. Moreau was at the head of the army in Germany. Apart from other reasons for taking the field in person, it would not have been safe for the new ruler of France to allow himself to be eclipsed in military fame by Moreau. Napoleon, as usual veiling his purpose, gradually collected a large army, and between May 16 and 19, 1800, led his troops, and dragged his cannon, over the Great St. Bernard Pass into Italy, threw himself in the rear of Melas, the Austrian general, and entered Milan. He appears, however, to have used less than his usual caution, probably from fear that Melas might escape; so that he was attacked at Marengo (June 14), by that general, at a moment when the French forces were not sufficiently concentrated. What threatened to be a disastrous defeat for the French, however, was turned into a signal victory by the timely arrival of Desaix; and the name of Marengo rang through Europe. In December, Moreau won the great victory of Hohenlinden over the Archduke John. In February, 1801, the peace of Lunéville was concluded. France kept its "natural boundaries," Belgium and the west of the Rhine. The Italian republics, except Rome and Naples, were restored. Tuscany was to be given to a prince of Spain, a country now dependent on France. The German princes who lost territory were to be indemnified by "secularizing" German ecclesiastical states, and vied with one another in imploring favors of the conqueror.
THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE: THE PEACE OF AMIENS.—England now stood alone against France. Her navies were supreme, and had captured most of the Dutch as well as French colonies. The French army in Egypt had been driven to capitulate on the condition that it should be transported in English vessels to France. Russia, Sweden, and Denmark made (1800) a defensive alliance of armed neutrality on the sea, to maintain the right of neutrals to trade with belligerents, and the doctrine that the neutral ship protects its freight (not being munitions of war) against seizure. England succeeded in ruining this alliance. Pitt now retired from office. He had accomplished the legislative union of England and Ireland, by which the separate Irish Parliament had ceased to exist (1800). But he had encouraged the Irish Catholics to expect that they would be delivered from the restrictions which excluded them from the House of Commons and from many other offices. When the king refused to consent to the fulfillment of these expectations, Pitt resigned (1801). Addington became prime minister. England was tired of the war. Peace was concluded at Amiens (March, 1802). France was to retain all her conquests on the Continent. England surrendered to France and her allies all conquests except Trinidad and Ceylon. Malta was to be given back by England to the Knights of Malta. A third great civil triumph of Napoleon, added to Luneville and Amiens, was the Concordat with the Pope.
REFORMS OF NAPOLEON.—Napoleon now was free to give his attention to internal reforms in France. He called into his counsels the ablest men in all departments of knowledge. In the reconstruction of political and social order, his own clear perceptions and energy were everywhere seen. He brought back from the old institutions whatever was good and valuable which the tempest of revolution had swept away. He reformed the judicial system. He caused to be framed the famous Code which bears his name, and which still forms the basis of law in several European countries. He reduced the power of the communes, and centralized the administration of government by the system of prefects and sub-prefects. Through the Concordat, he renewed the connection of the Catholic Church of France with Rome, reserving, however, to the executive the nomination of archbishops and bishops, whom the government was to support, and guarding, in the spirit of the Gallican theory, the supremacy of the civil authority. Full toleration was secured for non-Catholics. Napoleon personally participated in the religious ceremonies which attended the formal restoration of the old system of worship where "the Goddess of Reason" had been enthroned during the Terror. The ultimate effect of the Concordat was to build up the ultramontane, or papal, theory and sway within the church of France. Education was organized by the establishment of the university, the comprehensive name for the entire educational system of the country. All branches of technical instruction were carefully fostered. The devotees of science were encouraged with an enlightened sympathy and liberal aid. A better organization and discipline were brought into the army.
CHARACTER OF THE CHANGES.—The changes made by Napoleon, while they secured the equality of all Frenchmen before the law, did nothing to rescue civil liberty, such as the republicans had aimed to secure. They were all in the direction of monarchy. Distinctions, like the Legion of Honor, were invented; titles were instituted; a new aristocracy, made up of relics of the old noblesse and of fresh recruits, was created; Napoleon was declared to be consul for life, and the mechanism of the government was converted into a practical dictatorship. Unsparing in his treatment of Jacobins, he aimed still to moderate the passions of party. His activity was seen in an excellent system of public works, such as canals and noble highways, in new towns, and in magnificent buildings which he erected in Paris. At the same time, he went as far as it was safe to go in bringing in monarchical manners and luxuries. He himself adopted a regal way of living. He had no faith in democracy, and spoke with unaffected scorn of "ideology," or the theoretical statesmanship which based itself on ideas of "human rights" in the matter of exercising government. The press was placed under stringent police regulation. Napoleon's family began to contend, with "Corsican shamelessness," for high honors. A feud soon came to exist between them and the Beauharnais,—the family of Josephine. Was the principle of heredity to come back?
RENEWED WAR WITH ENGLAND.—In 1803 the war was renewed with England. That Napoleon was resolved to dictate in European affairs, as he was practical dictator in the French Republic, was plain. He controlled the republics dependent on France. He annexed Piedmont. He made the Spanish Bourbons do his bidding. He intervened in Germany; among other things, offending Austria by enlarging the bounds of Prussia. He exercised over the minor German states the influence of which Austria had been robbed. He complained of the strictures of the English press, and of the asylum granted in England to conspirators against his rule. He was angry that Malta was not given up, which England refused to do on account of an aggrandizement of France not consistent with the Peace of Amiens. There were provocations on both sides, and war was inevitable.
PLAN OF INVADING ENGLAND.—Napoleon seized Hanover. He talked of making a descent on England. He gathered a vast army near Boulogne, and constructed an immense flotilla for the transportation of it across the Channel. His design was to decoy away the British fleet, and then to concentrate enough ships of his own in the Channel to protect the passage of his forces.
THE EMPIRE (1804).—Various attempts had been made against Napoleon's life. An "infernal machine" was exploded near his carriage. On that occasion, only the swift driving of the coachman saved him from death (1800). There were now royalist plots against his life, of which Count d'Artois was cognizant. Pichegru was an accomplice; and Moreau, although not favoring the restoration of the Bourbons, was not entirely innocent. The former died in prison; Moreau escaped to America. Napoleon, exasperated by these plots, caused the Duke d'Enghien, a young prince of the Condé branch of the Bourbons, to be seized on German territory,—in Baden,—and dragged away into France, where, at Vincennes, after a hurried military examination, he was shot, and buried in a grave that had been dug for him before the sentence was pronounced. Of this act of Napoleon, it was said by Fouché, "It was worse than a crime: it was a blunder." The young prince was really innocent. He was a victim of the natural, but violent, wrath of Napoleon, who wanted to strike a blow that his enemies would feel. The event opened the way for him—as it was perhaps intended that it should—to the object of his ambition, the imperial title and throne. He was authorized to adopt a successor. This, the different parties felt, would make his government stable and secure. He was proclaimed emperor, the election being ratified by popular vote. The crown was to be handed down in his family. In imitation of Charlemagne, whom he affected to consider a Frenchman and a predecessor, he was crowned, with splendid pomp, by Pope Pius VII. (Dec. 2, 1804), in Notre Dame. He took the crown from the Pope's hands, and placed it on his own head.
THE NEW ROYALTY.—The emperor surrounded himself with the insignia and ceremonies of royalty. The members of his family became princes and princesses. A new nobility, with the various ancient titles, was called into being. He made his generals—eighteen in number, most of whom had sprung from the ranks—marshals. He first diminished the number of the Tribunate, then (1807) abolished it. The republic of 1789 had now passed into an absolute military monarchy.
THIRD COALITION AGAINST FRANCE (1805).—Napoleon turned the Italian Republic into a vassal monarchy, with himself for its ruler (1805). He incorporated Genoa with France. His step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, he made viceroy of Italy. Pitt had come back to office. Events since the death of the Duke d'Enghien made it possible for him to create the third coalition of England (in union with Austria, Russia, and Sweden) for restoring the balance of power in Europe. Paul I. of Russia had been won over from the previous coalition by the adroit efforts of Napoleon, and by the Czar's hostility to England on account of Malta (1800), he being grand master of the knights. His ordinary state of mind bordered on derangement, so that he was not fit to reign. Refusing to abdicate, he was assassinated by nobles (1801), and his son Alexander I. (1801-24) succeeded him. Russia was now reconciled to England, and the Northern Neutrality Convention against her maritime oppression was dissolved.
POSITION OF PRUSSIA.—The king of Prussia, Frederick William III. (1797-1840), and the ministers whom he trusted, refused to listen to his spirited queen, Louisa, and the more earnest, patriotic party, by which he was urged to unite with the coalition. He clung to his policy of neutrality, and was to be bribed by the gift of Hanover. The attitude of Prussia, which had been governed by selfish considerations, was long the pivot on which the success of Napoleon's aggressions hung.
FAILURE OF VILLENEUVE.—If Napoleon ever seriously projected an invasion of England he abandoned the scheme before 1805, although he retained an army at Boulogne to alarm the English. Villeneuve, whose fleet was to command the Channel, had escaped from Nelson and was on his way back from the West Indies. The admiralty were warned of his movement by a vessel of light draught which Nelson, when he could not find his foe, dispatched to inform them of the danger. Villeneuve, after an indecisive action against the force sent to meet him under Sir Robert Calder, put first into the harbor of Ferrol, and then repaired to Cadiz. Nelson came back with his fleet to the Channel.
ULM AND TRAFALGAR.—The allies marked out four lines of invasion. The second and principal advance was to be up the valley of the Danube, and to be pursued by the Russians and Austrians. Napoleon did not wait for them to unite. He now made use of the army collected for the proposed invasion of England. He suddenly broke up his camp at Boulogne, and swiftly led his splendid and thoroughly drilled army across the Rhine, to the rear of the Austrian forces, of which Mack was the commander. Other detachments from Hanover and Holland came down the Main to take part in the movement. The Austrians were surrounded in Ulm, and gave themselves up, thirty thousand in number, as prisoners of war (Oct. 17, 1805). The strategy was like that pursued in the campaign of Marengo: the result was even more astonishing. It was not long, however, before news came to him of a great disaster to the French on the sea. Four days after the surrender at Ulm, Nelson achieved a grand victory off Cape Trafalgar, over the French and Spanish fleets. Before Villeneuve decided to leave the shelter of Cadiz, he had been obliged to weaken himself by sending away a number of his ships. The watchword sent from the flag-ship just before the encounter—"England expects every man to do his duty"—called forth shouts of enthusiasm from the decks of the British fleet. Two-thirds of the French ships were captured or ruined. Nelson himself was struck by a bullet, and died the same night. His private life was not free from grave faults, but he was the greatest naval hero England has ever produced.
AUSTERLITZ: CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE.—On the land, the career of Napoleon was triumphant. The "Grand Army," with its system of corps and reserves, marched on Vienna, which was occupied on the 13th of November. The Russians were still to be encountered. The army of Alexander was a very powerful one; but he made, instead of awaiting, the attack, and, on the 2d of December, was utterly defeated on the memorable field of Austerlitz. The Peace of Pressburg followed (Dec. 26, 1805). Austria gave up Venice, which was annexed to the new Italian kingdom, of which Napoleon was the head. The Tyrol went to Bavaria, whose elector was recognized as a king, as was also the elector of Würtemberg. Soon after, the Bourbons were dethroned at Naples, and Napoleon's brother Joseph took that kingdom. Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and other smaller states were united into a Confederation of the Rhine (1806), with Napoleon for its protector. The Holy Roman Empire from that time had no longer even the shadow of a reality. Francis I. was simply emperor of Austria, and Austria was greatly reduced in power.
FALL OF PRUSSIA.—Prussia now stood by herself. Out of alarm at the progress of the French arms, and anger because French troops had been led across her territory without her consent, she had preferred to join the coalition. Austerlitz moved her to retrace her steps. She received Hanover as the price of a renewed alliance. England now declared war against Prussia. But Fox, who was an advocate of peace, had come into power in England (Jan. 23, 1806); and Prussia discovered that Napoleon, who was friendly to him, was negotiating for the surrender of Hanover to that country. This crowning indignity moved Prussia, at this inopportune moment, to take up arms against him. Prussia had no ally but Russia. The Prussian army was full of pride and hope; but its organization and method of warfare were after the old, traditional fashion which had come down from the days of Frederick the Great, and its commander, the Duke of Brunswick, though brave, was superannuated. In the two battles of Jena and Auersfadt, fought on the same day (Oct. 14, 1806), the Prussian forces were routed, and either captured or dispersed. A fortnight later (Oct. 27), Napoleon was in Berlin. Fortress after fortress was surrendered, and corps after corps captured by his troops. The royal family, including the Queen Louisa, were treated personally with harshness and disdain. The Prussian monarchy, to all appearance, was in ruins. Its museums and picture-galleries were robbed of their treasures, which went away as trophies to Paris. The Saxon Elector, made a king, joined the Rhenish Confederacy.
Fox died on Sept. 13, 1806. In 1807 (March 31), the Duke of Portland became prime minister; the rival and rising statesmen, Castlereagh and Canning, being both in the cabinet.
TO THE PEACE OF TILSIT.—It remained for the conqueror to deal with Russia. He had intended to prosecute a winter campaign in Poland, but the severity of the winter and the lack of supplies obliged him to fall back from Pultusk to the Vistula. The Russians now took the initiative. A terrible battle at Eylau (Feb. 7 and 8, 1807) was indecisive. Napoleon drew additional troops from all parts of his empire to supply the losses of the grand army. Benningsen, the Russian general, was incautious, and at Friedland (June 14) was routed. Dantzic and the still unconquered provinces of Prussia fell into the hands of the French. This series of wonderful successes made the revolution in the art of war, which Napoleon had introduced, obvious to the dullest eyes. His peculiar method of rapid movement, and subsistence on the country, and the obstacles to its uniform success, were likewise evident. The Emperor Alexander and Napoleon met on the Niemen. Alexander was won by Napoleon's gracious and friendly demeanor. At Tilsit, on the North-Prussian frontier, peace was concluded (July 7 and 9, 1807). Prussia fared the hardest. She lost half of her territory. She had to close her ports and lands to British trade, to limit her army to forty-two thousand men, and to consent to the erection of a duchy of Warsaw out of her Polish territory. Out of the Elbe provinces, a kingdom of Westphalia was constructed, of which Jerome Bonaparte received the crown. Russia also recognized Louis Bonaparte, another brother of Napoleon, as king of Holland. Alexander promised to go to war with England in case England rejected the offer of peace which he was to make as mediator. Alexander and Napoleon were to be fast friends and allies. Russia was to expand on the north and east, but not to have Constantinople. Napoleon had no better apology for the dismemberment of Prussia than a reference to the intemperate manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick in 1792, on the occasion of the first invasion of France. His real object was thoroughly to divide and disable Germany, and to take away the last obstacle to his complete control within its borders.
POWER OF NAPOLEON.—No ruler since Charlemagne had held such power as was now wielded by Napoleon. "Sovereign of France from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from the Alps to the Tiber," he had given the throne of Holland to his brother Louis, that of Naples to Joseph, and made Jerome king of Westphalia. Spain was content to do his will, and Germany was under his feet. He was the leader of mighty armies, with no military rival to endanger his supremacy over them. His conquests, it was impossible to deny, carried with them the abolition of numerous time-worn abuses, and the introduction of important material improvements. France was in many respects prosperous under the despotism established over it.
ELEMENTS OF WEAKNESS.—But there were certain elements of weakness which Napoleon did not sufficiently discern. The feeling of nationality and patriotism in the subject countries was certain to awake with a strength which he did not at all anticipate. Old Rome had extinguished this feeling in most of her provinces, but there were countries whose spirit even Rome could not break. Napoleon undertook a task to which no man was equal. Meantime, he was exhausting the military resources of France. If its male population continued to be willing to follow him to the slaughter, where were the men to be found to fill the places of the multitudes that fell? The time must come when the hunger of the French for military glory would be sated, and dazzling victories would cease to hide the fearful cost at which they were purchased.
THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.—The Treaty of Tilsit was followed by acts on the part of Napoleon which show the presumptuous confidence and arrogant spirit of domination, which, however natural on the pinnacle of might to which he had raised himself, proved disastrous, and, in the end, fatal. One of these acts was the "Continental System," ordained in the Berlin and Milan Decrees.
A Prussian decree (1806), Prussia being then a vassal of Napoleon, undertook to close the ports and rivers of the North Sea to English shipping. In retaliation, there was issued a British "Order in Council," declaring the coast from the Elbe to Brest in a state of blockade; the portion from Ostend to the Seine being declared to be under a rigorous blockade. This led to the Berlin Decree of Napoleon (Nov. 21, 1806). Then second "Orders in Council" (Nov. 11, 1807), prohibiting trade with France, her allies and colonies, as if they were blockaded, called out the Milan Decree of Napoleon (Dec. 17, 1807).
The continental system thus originated undertook to cut off trade between the entire Continent and England, by ordering all the merchandise of England and her colonies to be seized and confiscated, wherever it might be found,—even ships which touched at English ports. The design was to inflict injury on England. It had this effect, but it had the same effect on France, and still more in the other countries which profited by English trade. Wide-spread disaffection at the attempts to enforce this system was the inevitable consequence. Moreover, one result of it was to stimulate Napoleon to further conquests to keep up and to extend his commercial policy. Another motive was added to his growing and insatiable ambition for universal dominion.
INVASION OF SPAIN: WAGRAM.—Russia had declared war against Great Britain, according to the promise of Alexander at Tilsit. The British seized the Danish fleet in the harbor of Copenhagen, to prevent it from falling into the hands of Russia and France (Sept., 1807). Napoleon made this act a partial excuse for invading the Spanish peninsula, under the pretense of guarding the coasts against the English. His army entered Lisbon, and he declared that the house of Braganza had ceased to reign. His forces advanced into Spain beyond Madrid. Dissensions between Charles IV. and his son Ferdinand enabled Napoleon to get himself chosen as arbiter; and having enticed the two contestants to Bayonne, he set them both aside, and gave the crown of Spain to his brother Joseph,—Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister Caroline, taking the throne of Naples. This high-handed proceeding roused the Spanish people to revolt. The officers of Napoleon were several times defeated. A British force under Wellington—then Sir Arthur Wellesley—appeared in Portugal to lend help to the national movement. A French fleet in Cadiz was destroyed. Napoleon invaded Spain with an overwhelming force, and established his brother at Madrid (Dec. 2, 1808). But the people still kept up a harassing guerilla war. From Spain Napoleon was called away by the rising of Austria, which the events in Spain had once more moved to begin hostilities. Within a month from the beginning of the campaign, he again entered Vienna as a victor (May 11, 1809). He suffered a reverse at Aspern; but in the desperate battle of Wagram, in which not far from three hundred thousand men took part, he was triumphant. Austria purchased peace by further cessions of territory, and by joining the Continental System. The brave Tyrolese kept up the struggle with an heroic spirit; but at last Hofer, their leader, was captured and shot at Mantua (1810).
PIUS VII.—As Pius VII. refused to close his ports against England, and to ally himself with France, Napoleon proclaimed (May, 1809) that the Papal States were annexed to his empire. The Pope, who had steadfastly resisted his attempts at coercion, excommunicated him. The pontiff was arrested, and conveyed to Savona, and afterwards to France.
SWEDEN: BERNADOTTE.—Another ally in upholding the "Continental System" against England, Napoleon gained in Sweden, where one of his marshals, Bernadotte, had been chosen Crown Prince.
Under Adolf Frederic (1751-1771), a council of nobles usurped many of the functions of the king. A combined Russian and French party in Sweden was against him. His son, Gustavus III. (1771-1792), being supported by France, invaded Russian Finland, and, by the help of the Estates, reduced the power of the nobles, giving, however, to the Estates in the new constitution, the right to veto a project for offensive war. He was murdered in 1792. His son Gustavus IV., who became of age in 1808, was a bitter opponent of Napoleon, whom he considered to be the beast of the Apocalypse (Rev. xiii. 1). After the Peace of Tilsit, he made war on Russia, and on Denmark, from which he sought to wrest Norway. The nobles and the army rose against him, and obliged him to abdicate (1809). His uncle, Charles XIII., became king. Finland was surrendered to Russia. The king having no children, Bernadotte (1764-1844), a French marshal, made by Napoleon Prince of Pontecorno, but who often showed himself independent in his relations to him, was elected Crown Prince of Sweden (1810). Sweden joined the Continental System.
NAPOLEON'S DIVORCE AND MARRIAGE.—Napoleon, who was childless, in the hope of founding a dynasty on a sure basis procured a divorce from Josephine, and married Maria Louisa, the daughter of Francis I. of Austria. To the son who was born of this marriage he gave the sounding title of King of Rome, the old designation of the emperors-elect before their coronation.
TORRES VEDRAS.—The first successful stand against the military supremacy of Bonaparte was made in Spain. Wellington divined the secret of the French victories, and devised the means of effectual resistance. In Portugal, between the Tagus and the sea he fortified the position called Torres Vedras, which could be defended against superior forces. This he held against all the efforts of Masséna to conquer and dislodge him. Deprived of the means of subsistence, the French suffered great losses and privations, and were obliged to retreat (May, 1811). Their method depended for success on the attaining of the desired result in a short time by swift operations.
REACTION AGAINST NAPOLEON.—The campaign of Wellington produced a strong moral effect in other parts of Europe. While France was beginning to show signs of weariness with the endless war, and with the despotic government under which it was kept up, in Germany a new spirit of patriotism was stirring in the hearts of the people. Under Stein, a great and patriotic minister, the Prussian system of civil administration was reorganized on a sound basis. The army was likewise reconstructed on the basis of universal military service. Serfdom was abolished and the old caste system, with its restrictions on land-holding, abandoned. A new Germany was slowly waking to life, and collecting its energies for the combat for freedom. The "Continental System" caused increasing irritation. Louis Bonaparte abdicated his throne in Holland, rather than enforce its odious requirements (July, 1810). The quarrel of Napoleon with the Pope, and the indignities suffered by the pontiff, who lived for three years upon alms, added to the discontent which the emperor's commercial policy provoked, even in France.
THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN—The circumstances narrated above did not prevent Napoleon from the fatal mistake of invading Russia. The czar would not enforce the commercial restrictions. Napoleon refused to promise not to restore the kingdom of Poland. There were various other causes of mutual jealousy and coolness. Sweden, under Bernadotte, which had been forced to declare war against England (1810), now joined Russia. Austria and Prussia, in their state of practical vassalage, had to furnish military help to Napoleon. In June, 1812, when he crossed the Niemen, he had brought together a force of five hundred and fifty thousand men. He had reinforcements from Poland, and might have had more had he not, from deference to Austria and Prussia, refused to restore the Polish kingdom. The Russians retreated as he advanced. Barclay, the Russian general, declined a battle, and destroyed whatever places could afford an advantage to the invader. At length, Kutusoff took the command, and was compelled by the Russian feeling, against his will, to give battle. At Borodino, where there was immense slaughter on both sides, the Russians retired, but without disorder. When the French arrived at Moscow, they found an empty town, which was set on fire by accident or by Russians. The Czar refused to treat for peace. There was no alternative but to retreat (Oct. 19, 1812). The sufferings of the soldiers from cold and famine were terrible. The Russians availed themselves of every opportunity to harass the retreating force. When it reached the ruins of Smolensk, only forty thousand were left of more than a hundred thousand that had left Moscow. The army continued to dwindle. At Smorgoni, Napoleon left Murat in command, and hastened in disguise to Paris. The expedition cost the lives of not less than three hundred thousand men. This gigantic failure was due to the foiling by the Russians of Napoleon's habitual plan of forcing decisive battles by movements so rapid that his troops could subsist upon the country which they overran, and to the unexpected destruction of Moscow.
THE GERMAN WAR OF LIBERATION: LEIPSIC.—In Germany, there now began the great War of Liberation. York—the commander of the Prussian contingent reluctantly furnished to Napoleon—went over to the Russians (Dec. 1812). During the first three months of 1813, all North Germany rose in arms. Heart-stirring appeals were issued by Frederick William III. to his people. He called for the formation of volunteer corps, and all young men capable of bearing arms responded with alacrity to the summons. Russia and Prussia formed a defensive alliance. Sweden made a treaty with England, and agreed to assist the allies. Napoleon's wonted success attended him at first in the encounter with the Russian and Prussian forces. He gained a victory at Lützen (May 2), and another at Bautzen (May 20, 21). Austria sought to mediate, but Napoleon unwisely preferred war. Austria now, disregarding the family tie with Napoleon, was drawn by the current of German patriotism, as well as by self-interest, into the alliance against him. His imperious and arrogant domination was felt to be insupportable. But the circumstance that determined the course of Austria was the victory gained by Wellington at Vittoria, in Spain, over the French under Jourdan (June 21). The news of it turned the scale in the Austrian councils. The odds against Napoleon were now fearful, especially as his own army was largely composed of recruits who were hardly above the age of boys. He won one more triumph at Dresden (Aug. 27), but this was his last victory on German soil. The allies avoided the errors which he had taught them to avoid, and succeeded in bringing their forces together, and in compelling Napoleon to fight at Leipsic. The allied armies numbered three hundred thousand, while the French force did not exceed a hundred and eighty thousand. The "battle of the nations" lasted for three days (Oct. 16, 18, 19), although the fighting was chiefly on the first and third. On the last day it continued for nine hours. The Saxon contingent abandoned the French on the field, and went over to the allies. The defeat of the French, as night approached, became a rout. Napoleon, with the remnant of his army, was driven to the Rhine. The battle of Leipsic was really the decisive contest in the wars of Europe against Napoleon. From the defeat there, it was impossible for him to recover.
FALL OF NAPOLEON: ELBA.—The members of the Confederacy of the Rhine joined the allies. Holland rose in revolt, and drove out the French officials. Even France was exhausted and full of discontent. Meantime Wellington defeated Soult in the Pyrenees, and invaded France from that side. Napoleon was bent on resistance, and by his superior skill succeeded in ousting the brave Prussian soldier, but inexpert strategist, Blücher, as well as the Austrian general Schwartzenberg (Jan. and Feb. 1814). But the preponderance of numbers on the side of the allies was too great. Their bold decision to march on Paris secured their triumph. The city surrendered (March 30). Napoleon had lost his hold on the ruling bodies. The senate, through the influence of the astute Talleyrand, once his minister, declared that he and his family had forfeited the throne. At Fontainebleau, he signed his abdication in favor of his son (April 6), but this condition was rejected. The small island of Elba was given to him by the allies as a sovereign principality. After a pathetic farewell to his veteran Guard, he betook himself to his small dominion. Louis XVIII., the brother of Louis XVI., was placed on the throne of France. France, by the Peace of Paris (May 30), was left with its ancient boundaries as they were before the Revolution slightly increased.
THE CHARTER.—According to a promise which the king had given, he (June 4, 1814) promulgated a constitutional CHARTER, a name borrowed from the Middle Ages when charters were granted to vassals. There was to be a legislature, with a house of peers or lords appointed by the king, and a chamber of deputies chosen by limited suffrage; the electors to be owners of property to a certain amount, and to be thirty years old. The king was to have the initiative in legislation. The Roman Catholic religion was declared to be the religion of the state, but liberty was given to dissenters. The right to make peace and war was given to the king, and also the right to issue ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the state. This last provision opened a door for arbitrary government, and paved the way for the downfall of the dynasty. The points of resemblance in the constitution to the English system were adapted to provoke a constant contrast with it, in respect to the degree of liberty actually secured and exercised by the people. The charter was dated from the nineteenth year of Louis XVIII., as if there had been no Republic or Empire.
PIUS VII.—Pope Pius VII., who, after 1809, was a virtual prisoner at Savona, refused to comply with Napoleon's demands. He could not be moved to invest the bishops whom the emperor had appointed. This was a principal point in the dispute. Napoleon called a national council of French bishops (1811). In 1812 the Pope was taken to Fontainebleau, and treated by him with harshness. When the pontiff refused to give a full and final sanction to the proposed agreement, until he should be free to confer with his cardinals, he was treated with still greater severity. The fall of Napoleon set him free, and he entered Rome, May 24, 1814.
CONGRESS OF VIENNA.—In September, 1814, the congress of Vienna met to readjust the map of Europe after the whirlwind of change and revolution. There were present the emperors of Russia and Austria, the kings of Prussia, Denmark, Bavaria, and Würtemberg, and a great number of German princes. Castlereagh, and later Wellington, represented England, and Talleyrand was one of the representatives of France. The conferences were far from being harmonious. In particular, the claims of Russia upon Poland, and the claims of Prussia on Germany, threatened another war. While the debates, alternating with gay festivities, were still proceeding, the participants were startled by the news of the reappearance of Napoleon in France.
RETURN OF NAPOLEON FROM ELBA.—The new Bourbon rule was unpopular with the French. It was felt to be the effect and sign of national humiliation. The offensive conduct of the returned emigrant nobility, and measures looking towards a restoration of bygone abuses in government, fomented the disaffection. Napoleon, while apparently busy in laying out roads and canals, and regulating the affairs of his little kingdom, which was only sixty miles in circumference, kept himself well informed as to the state of public opinion in France. With a few hundred men of the Imperial Guard, he landed at Cannes (March I, 1815), and was joined by one regiment after another which were sent out to crush him. Ney, one of the best of his marshals, was carried away by the common feeling, and went over to the side of his old commander. Louis XVIII. fled from Paris; and, on March 20, Napoleon was again installed in the Tuileries.
WATERLOO.—Napoleon offered to the country a more liberal constitution, but the Bourbons were more hated than he was trusted. He professed to the great powers his desire for peace, but they did not listen to these assurances. Each agreed to furnish an army of one hundred and eighty thousand men to serve against him. He put forth prodigious exertions to gather a force with which to meet the host of his enemies; and although he could appeal to no warm national feeling, such as had called into being the armies of the Revolution, he succeeded in bringing together a force of over one hundred thousand men. He decided not to wait for the attack, but to assail the two armies of Blücher and Wellington in Belgium. His plan was to attack them separately. Blücher so far fell into the trap, that, in his eagerness to meet the detested foe, he offered battle to Napoleon at Ligny (June 16), and, after a desperate contest, was forced to retire from the field. On the same day, Wellington so far checked Ney in his attack at Quatre Bras, that he could not strike the Prussians on the flank, as Napoleon had designed. Napoleon thought that the Prussians would not be able, after their defeat, at once to aid Wellington. He sent Grouchy, however, with thirty-four thousand men, to observe them and inflict on them a final blow. On the forenoon of June 18, he himself attacked the British forces at Waterloo. The French got possession of La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse in front of Wellington's center, the scene of a bloody contest; but all their charges on Wellington's main line were met and repelled by the immovable squares of the British infantry. In the afternoon Napoleon's right began to be assailed by the Prussians; and finding, at seven o'clock, that they were coming in great force, he ordered a charge of the Imperial Guard on Wellington's forces. After a fierce struggle, the Guard was compelled to recoil and retire. The Prussians, piercing the right flank of the French army, turned its defeat into a rout. Grouchy was at Wavre, fighting the Prussian corps of Thielmann, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army.
ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA.—On the 22nd of June Napoleon again abdicated in favor of his son. Carnot was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with La Fayette at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 Blücher and Wellington entered Paris. Napoleon fled to Rochefort, and, finding himself unable to escape to America, surrendered to the British admiral, and was taken on board the war-ship Bellerophon. Louis XVIII. was brought back to Paris. Napoleon, by the agreement of the allies, was conveyed to the island of St. Helena, where he remained, a fretful captive, until his death (May 5, 1821). Ney escaped, but was captured, condemned, and shot (Dec. 7, 1815). France engaged to pay a war indemnity of seven hundred million francs. Its boundaries were fixed as at 1790.
CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON.—Respecting certain traits of Napoleon, there is no dispute. His military genius all allow, although his daring was sometimes over-daring; and there are critics who profess to discern, after the beginning of the Russian campaign, and especially in the last contest in Belgium, signs of a decline in his almost superhuman vigilance and energy. Yet all must admit "that transcendent geometrical faculty," as Sainte-Beuve calls it, "which characterized Napoleon, and which that powerful genius applied to war with the same ease and the same aptitude that Monge [a great French mathematician] applied it to other subjects." No general ever had greater power to fascinate soldiers, and secure their devotion to him. One reason was, that he recognized and rewarded merit wherever he saw it. His intellectual movements were as much swifter than the ordinary as his marches were more rapid than those to which armies had been accustomed. For civil organization and administration he had rare talents, and in many directions enlightened views. Europe owes much to his innovations in this sphere. He was not incapable of warm personal attachments; as was manifested, for example, in his grief over Duroc, the favorite general, who fell at Bautzen. But an insatiable appetite for war, and, still more, a conviction, which he sometimes confessed, that he could retain and fortify his authority only by dazzling France, and continuing to astonish mankind by brilliant achievements, drove him forward on a path of aggression and bloodshed. He had an unpitying nature: he was careless of human suffering. Early in his career, in Italy, he ordered a needless and useless attack on the outposts of the enemy, "to treat a lady to a sight of real war." He did not shrink from ordering two thousand prisoners at Jaffa to be shot. He shocked all Germany by causing Palm, a bookseller of Nuremberg, to be shot for refusing to tell the name of the author of a publication offensive to him. He frequently displayed a petty rancor,—as, for example, in leaving a legacy in his will to the man who was accused of an attempt to assassinate the Duke of Wellington. His violence of temper, as in the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, hurried him into acts that were not less impolitic than criminal. His tyrannical will would brook no contradiction, even in matters o£ trifling importance. He broke away from engagements when he thought it advantageous to do so. It is not an injustice to say, that he was habitually untruthful: his bulletins were disfigured by flagrant falsehoods, as well as gross exaggerations. In a letter to Talleyrand from Italy (Oct. 17, 1797) he says, "This is history: what I say in my proclamations and speeches is a romance." With his wonderful intellectual powers, inexhaustible energy, and amazing achievements, he never quite loses the characteristic spirit of an adventurer. He is haunted by a secret consciousness that this character belongs to him.
The judgment Of an adversary must be taken with allowance; but Wellington spoke at least without passion when he said, "Bonaparte's whole life—civil, political, and military—was a fraud. There was not a transaction, great or small, in which lying and fraud were not introduced." His "foreign policy was force and menace, aided by fraud and corruption."—Croker's Correspondence, etc., vol. ii. p. 86.
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA.—The Congress of Vienna was dissolved in June, 1815. Its Acts were finally signed by the five great powers,—Austria, France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia,—and by Spain, Portugal, and Sweden. The Austrian and Prussian monarchies were restored. Austria received back Venice with Milan,—forming the subject Lombardo-Venetian kingdom,—besides receiving the Illyrian provinces and the Tyrol. The old possessions of Prussia were restored. She received the Rhenish provinces, a part of the duchy of Warsaw (Posen), and a great part of Saxony, besides other important additions. Holland and Belgium were formed into the one kingdom of the Netherlands, which had also a part of Luxemburg, and was ruled by the stadt-holder William I. The German Confederacy was instituted, with thirty-nine sovereign states, including the four free cities,—Austria being the presiding state. The greater part of the duchy of Warsaw fell to Russia, under the name of the Kingdom of Poland. Sweden retained Norway, which, however, kept its own free constitution; and Denmark acquired Lauenburg. England had vastly enlarged her colonial possessions. The present Swiss Confederation, consisting of twenty-two cantons, was established; three new cantons having been added to the former nineteen. The old dynasties were restored in Spain, in Tuscany, Modena, and the Papal States, in Naples, and in Sardinia. To Sardinia, Genoa, against its will, was annexed.
CHRONOLOGICAL STATEMENT.—The First Coalition was formed in 1793, when all Europe, except Sweden, Denmark, Tuscany, Switzerland, Venice, and Genoa, and Turkey, joined against France. In 1792 France had been at war with Austria and Prussia. In 1795 the coalition was broken: Prussia and Spain made peace with France. In 1797 Austria also concluded peace with France (the Peace of Campo'Formio). In 1798 the Second Coalition was formed, in which Turkey was included. Prussia and Spain were not parties to it. The Peace of Amiens, made with England (1802), ended the contest following it. The Third Coalition was formed in 1805, by England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden. Peace was concluded between Austria and France (Dec. 26, 1805). War followed in 1806-7, between France on one side, and Prussia and Russia on the other. These allies, with England, made a Fourth Coalition. In 1807 France and Russia were allies. The rupture between Austria and France in 1809 gave rise to what is often called the Fifth Coalition. In 1813 the Sixth Coalition, made up, after the accession of Austria, of all the principal powers, was in arms against France. On March 25, 1815, after Napoleon's return from Elba, the powers again declared war against him. As there was a fresh treaty, this may be called a Seventh Coalition.
THE TWO PARTIES.—The cabinet of Washington consisted of four members. The secretary of the treasury was Alexander Hamilton of New York. The secretary of state was Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. The seat of government was placed at Philadelphia; but in 1800 it was removed to the District of Columbia, which was ceded for the purpose by Virginia and Maryland. Almost from the beginning, there were two political parties. The Federalists were made up of those who had been most in favor of the new Constitution, and desired to build up a strong central government. Accordingly they advocated a liberal construction of the Constitution as regards the extent of federal authority. They cherished the traditional spirit of the English laws and English political institutions. Washington and John Adams belonged to this class, and Hamilton was their most active leader. The Anti-Federalists, of whom Jefferson was the chief, were for a careful guarding of the rights of the States, and a strict interpretation of the powers allotted to the General Government. They had more sympathy with the political ideas at that time fast coming into vogue in France. They had a warm faith in the capacity of the mass of the people for self-government and for suffrage. They were called Republicans, and were sometimes styled Democrats.
HAMILTON'S MEASURES: THE CONFLICT OF PARTIES.—Hamilton proposed and carried highly important measures for the restoration of public credit and for the revival of industry and commerce. Under his leadership, the debts of the old confederacy, and the debts of the separate States which they had incurred in the common defense, were assumed. To provide revenue, a protective tariff and a system of internal taxation were ordained. A national bank was incorporated (1791), and a mint was established at Philadelphia. These measures had a great effect at home, and made a strong impression favorable to the new government abroad; but they were opposed by the Anti-Federalists as an unwarrantable assumption of power by the General Government. The excise on domestic spirits provoked an insurrection, called "the Whisky Rebellion," in Western Pennsylvania, which was put down by the militia. As the French Revolution advanced from step to step, the division of parties in America became more marked, and their mutual hostility more intense. At first all were in sympathy with France. La Fayette sent the key of the fallen Bastille as a gift to Washington. But the Federalists were determined to maintain a strict neutrality in the conflict between France and England. As the Revolution proceeded, a strong antipathy was awakened in America to the radical theories, as well as to the bloody deeds, of its promoters. This was enhanced by the strenuous efforts of the French Republic, aided by the Anti-Federalists, to induce the United States to take an active part in the war, on the side of France. Genet, the French minister, undertook to fit out privateers in Charleston. Washington issued a proclamation of neutrality (1793), which was followed by a Neutrality Act of Congress (1794). When Genet had the effrontery to appeal from the President to the people, at the demand of Washington he was recalled.
JAY'S TREATY.—The contest of parties reached its climax in connection with Jay's Treaty with Great Britain (1794),—a treaty negotiated by John Jay, chief justice, whom Washington had sent as envoy to London. There were mutual grounds of complaint between the two countries. The British had not surrendered the Western military posts, and were in the habit of "impressing seamen." 'This last practice was founded on the claim that a British subject can never become the subject of another country, and that, moreover, his military service may be always called for by his sovereign. When almost all Europe was at war, the carrying trade naturally fell, to a large extent, into American hands; hence, it was alleged, many English sailors deserted to get employment in American ships. The British claimed and exercised the right to visit foreign vessels, and to take from their decks the sailors who were asserted to be British subjects. The English, on their part, complained that the treaty stipulations as to debts due in America to British subjects had not been observed. Jay's Treaty provided for the giving-up of the Western posts, according to the previous stipulation; but said nothing respecting the right of impressment, which the British at that time would never have consented to relinquish. It was alleged, also, that in other features the treaty favored England unwarrantably, and unfairly in relation to France. It encountered violent opposition from the Republicans; but it was approved by Washington, and the legislative measures for carrying it out were passed in the House of Representatives by a slender majority, obtained through the eloquence of Fisher Ames, a member from Massachusetts.
NEW STATES: INVENTIONS.—According to the census of 1790, there were somewhat less than four millions of people in the United States. Virginia was the most populous State; next to Virginia stood Pennsylvania, then North Carolina, and, fourth in order, Massachusetts. A little more than one-fifth of the population were negro slaves. Vermont, the territory of which had been claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, was the first new State admitted to the Union (1791). A genius for mechanical invention early manifested itself in the country. Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin (1792), for separating the seed from the fiber of the cotton-plant,—a machine which indirectly lent a powerful impulse to the production of cotton. In 1788 John Fitch was running a steamboat on the Delaware River; but the construction of a steamboat with side-paddles was due to the inventive talent of Robert Fulton (1807). Emigration from the Atlantic border to the West took three principal routes,—one from New England and New York, through the valley of the Mohawk; the second, through the passes of the Alleghanies; and the third, across the Blue Ridge to the rivers flowing from the south into the Ohio. In 1792 Kentucky, settled mainly by emigrants over the last-mentioned path, was made a State. The next State to be admitted was Tennessee (1796). The new settlers carried into the West the spirit and institutions of the several communities which they had left. South of the Ohio, negro slavery was introduced. A treaty with Spain (in 1795) secured the free navigation of the Mississippi.
WASHINGTON'S RETIREMENT AND DEATH.—Washington himself was not exempt from bitter partisan attack in public prints. On his retirement from office, he prepared, with the assistance of Hamilton, a Farewell Address to the people, in which he exhorted them to maintain the Union as the only safeguard of liberty, and warned them against "entangling alliances" with European powers. The deep and universal sorrow which was felt when he died (1799) was a tribute as exalted as any nation ever paid to a fallen hero and benefactor.
ADAMS: RUPTURE OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.—John Adams, a Federalist, succeeded Washington as president; and Jefferson became vice-president (1797). The French had seized a large number of American vessels, on the pretense that they were affording aid to England. In order, if possible, to prevent war, the President sent out a special mission to France; but the commissioners—Pinckney, Gerry, and Marshall—were told by the Directory that they must pay money as a bribe before they could be received, and were finally ordered to quit the country (1797). The phrase of Pinckney, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," expressed the universal feeling. The report of the insulted envoys roused the indignation of the American people, and moved Congress to prepare for war. Washington was made general of all the forces to be raised, and he appointed Hamilton to be second in command. Hostilities had really commenced; the Federalists were eager for a declaration of war; but President Adams, without the knowledge of his cabinet, suddenly nominated to the senate another ambassador to France. He had previously become assured that such a messenger would be well received. Napoleon having come into power, a treaty was concluded with him (1800). The course of the President, however, gave mortal offense to the adherents of Hamilton, and fatally divided the Federal party. Hamilton and his supporters became wholly alienated from Adams, so that the triumph of the Republicans was rendered certain.
"RESOLUTIONS OF '98."—The violence of the attacks upon the administration, which were made partly by foreign emissaries, had caused the Federalists (1798) to pass the alien and sedition laws. The first authorized the President to order out of the country aliens who were conspiring against its peace. Its operation was limited to two years. The second punished seditious libels upon the government with fine and imprisonment. These acts provoked a storm of opposition. Under the auspices of Jefferson, and of Madison, who was now one of his supporters, the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798-99 were passed by the Legislatures of those States. These resolves affirmed the right of a State to judge of the constitutionality and validity of an Act of Congress. They were interpreted as an assertion of the extreme doctrine of State rights.
PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA.—In 1800 Jefferson was elected to the presidency, and Aaron Burr, a scheming politician of the Republican school, was made vice-president.
At that time, and until the amendment of the Constitution (1804), the electors voted for two persons, without designating either for the presidency or the vice-presidency. The candidate having the highest number of votes became president. As Jefferson and Burr had an equal number, the choice between them for the highest office was made by the House of Representatives.
The obnoxious laws of the preceding administration disappeared with it. One of the most important events under Jefferson's administration was the purchase of Louisiana from France, which had acquired it from Spain. Napoleon knew that he could not keep it from falling into the hands of England, and readily sold it for fifteen millions of dollars. Thereby the territory of the United States was doubled in its extent. The whole region between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with New Orleans, was added to the country, together with whatever claim France had to West Florida, Texas, and the district west of the Rocky Mountains. Ohio, composed of the south-eastern portion of the northwest territory, was admitted to the Union in 1803.
In the first fifteen years after the government was organized, there are four things that affected powerfully the character and career of the United States. The first was the influence of Washington in inspiring attachment to the Union. The second was the genius of Hamilton in creating an efficient administration of the new civil polity. The third was the democratic political tendency fostered by Jefferson. The fourth was the vast expansion of the national territory by the Louisiana Purchase, insuring the extension of the Union, and preventing the rise of rival political communities in its neighborhood.
WAR WITH THE ALGERINES.—The pirates of Algiers, Morocco, and the other Barbary States, demanded tribute of American vessels on the Mediterranean. The first exploits of the navy of the United States were in combats with these marauders (1801-5). Decatur performed the exploit of burning in the harbor of Tripoli the American ship Philadelphia, which the Tripolitans had captured (1804). Derne was captured, and Tripoli bombarded. Finally a treaty put an end to the exaction of tribute (1805).
An event that deeply moved the whole country was the killing of Hamilton by Burr in a duel (1804). Burr was afterwards charged with an intention to form a new government on the south-western borders of the United States. He was tried for treason (1807), and not convicted, although many have believed him to be guilty.
CAUSES OF THE WAR OF 18l2-15.—The great European wars brought the United States into serious difficulties, principally in regard to questions relating to commerce. Attempts were made by the European nations to establish blockades by mere enactment, without actual and sufficient occupation of the ports which were declared to be closed. The tendency of the British Orders in council, and of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees (p. 528), was "to grind to pieces the few remaining neutral powers." These were in effect cut off from trade with both Continental and English ports by the ordinances of one or the other of the two belligerents, the penalty being the confiscation of the vessels employed in such traffic. Such were the restrictions upon neutrals, that a great number of American ships were seized and confiscated by English and French cruisers. In addition to these grievances, the Leander, a British ship, exercised the pretended right of impressment by firing on an American trading-sloop (1806); and in like manner another British vessel, the Leopard, fired on the frigate Chesapeake, which was not prepared for resistance, and took four men from its crew (June 22, 1807). In retaliation, Jefferson ordered all British ships of war to leave the coast of the United States. Then followed the Embargo, embracing a succession of enactments of Congress, which forbade American vessels to leave the harbors of the United States for Europe, and forbade European vessels to land cargoes in American ports. The result of this measure was to smite American commerce with an utter paralysis. The ships rotted at the wharves. The unpopularity of the Embargo, especially in the Eastern commercial States, was such that in Jefferson's second term it was repealed. It was followed (1809) by the Non-Intercourse Act, prohibiting commerce with France and England. The British Orders in Council were then, in a measure, relaxed, as was the practical enforcement against our vessels of the Berlin Decree. In 1812, the French rescinded their obnoxious decrees; and the English immediately took the same step, but not soon enough to prevent a war with the United States.
EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1812 AND 1813.-James Madison, a wise and moderate statesman of the Republican party, became president in 1809. He was personally averse to engaging in war with Great Britain; but the exasperation of a large part of the country, and the pressure of the younger leaders of his party,—Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes,—moved him to a reluctant consent. The war, which was declared in 1812, was bitterly opposed in the New-England States, where the strength of the Federalists chiefly lay. By them the real motive of it was considered to be partiality for France. The treasury was nearly empty; there were but few ships of war, and only a small land force of about ten thousand men, made up in part of raw recruits. Before this time, the North-western Indians, under Tecumseh, whom the British were suspected of inciting to war, had been defeated at Tippecanoe (1811), by William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana. The war with England opened inauspiciously with the surrender of Detroit by Gen. William Hull to Gen. Brock (Aug. 16, 1812), and an unsuccessful attempt to invade Canada at Queenstown. On the sea, however, the Americans had successes which filled them with pride and exultation. Captain Isaac Hull, of the frigate è_Constitution_, captured the British frigate Guerrière, and brought his prisoners to Boston. Decatur, captain of the United States, brought the Macedonian as a prize into the harbor of New York. The Constitution destroyed the Java; but the Chesapeake, whose captain was killed, surrendered to the Shannon. Privateers were fitted out, which captured several hundreds of British ships and several thousands of prisoners. In 1813 Perry defeated the English fleet on Lake Erie. His victory gave the Americans the command of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan. Harrison defeated the British and Indians,—who had been driven to abandon Michigan,—near the River Thames in Canada. Except on the Lakes the navy was successful only in single ship actions. The Americans had taken possession of Mobile, which they as well as the Spanish claimed; but the Creek Indians were incited by the Spaniards to engage in hostilities. Forces from Tennessee, under Andrew Jackson, and troops from Georgia and Mississippi, fought the Creeks with success.
THE WAR IN 1814-15.—In 1814 a third attempt of the Americans under Gen. Brown, to invade Canada, produced no decisive result. There was hard fighting. The British were routed at Chippewa; and they were repulsed at Lundy's Lane, opposite Niagara Falls, by Lieut. (afterwards General) Winfield Scott. Napoleon had now been defeated; and the English sent twelve thousand troops, who had served under Wellington in Spain, to Canada, to invade the United States from the north, while another army was to make an invasion by way of New Orleans. A fleet under Admiral Cockburn sailed up the Potomac, and burned the Capitol and other public buildings at Washington (Aug. 24, 1814). An attack was made on Baltimore by a British fleet, but was bravely repelled. The defeat of the British fleet near Plattsburg, on Lake Champlain, by Commodore Macdonough (Sept. 11, 1814), resulted in the retreat of the British army, which was besieging that place, to Canada. New Orleans was defended by General Jackson. The British under Pakenham and Gibbs attacked his works, but were defeated and withdrew (Jan. 8, 1815). The town was protected from the approach of the English fleet by the fort. Before the battle, peace had been concluded, but the news had not reached this country.
THE HARTFORD CONVENTION.—The antagonism to the war in the New England States found expression in the call of a convention at Hartford, where their delegates met (Dec. 15, 1814). These States complained, that while their commerce and fisheries were ruined, there was no protection afforded to their sea-coast. Stonington in Connecticut had been bombarded, and Castine in Maine had been captured. They denied, also, that the General Government had the power over the State militia which it claimed. For these and other grievances, they sought for a remedy "not repugnant to their obligations as members of the Union." They declared that measures of the General Government which are palpable violations of the Constitution are void, and that the States injuriously affected might severally protect their citizens from the operation of them, by such means as the several States should judge it wise to adopt; but they disavowed the right or intent to break up the Union. The effect of the convention was to bring great popular discredit on the Federalists, and to seal their doom as a distinct party.
TREATY OF PEACE: ALGIERS.—In the Treaty of Ghent (Dec. 24, 1814), provisions were made for defining boundaries as settled by previous treaties, and an engagement was made on both sides to suppress the slave-trade; but no mention was made of maritime rights and the impressment of seamen. This last practice was, however, discontinued, although it was never renounced. The war left the disputes that caused it just where they were. Many then and since have regarded it as really undertaken by the dominant party in the United States, in order to help one of the belligerents in the great struggle then going forward between England and France. Whether this view be just, or not, it is certain that the war imparted to Americans the consciousness of power and nationality. The connection between America and Great Britain was broken off at the Revolution, because, as Turgot once said, colonies are like fruits which only stay on the tree until they are ripe. But the conflict was not over at the conclusion of the Peace of 1783. Bancroft has called the war of 1812-15 "the second war of independence." Nothing lent it this character so much as the naval victories won by the United States, which gave them a standing among the nations. In 1815 a squadron under Decatur was sent to Algiers, and the Barbary States were compelled to give up by treaties all their demands.
NEW SPIRIT IN LITERATURE.—In the latter part of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries, literature broke away from the artificial rules and the one-sided intellectual tone of the "classical" school,—that school which had prevailed through the influence of the French writers of the age of Louis XIV. The new era was marked by more spontaneity, and a return to nature, and by a more free rein given to imagination and feeling. "Romanticism," a general designation of the results of this new movement as contrasted with the "classical" period, sometimes ran out into extravagances of sentiment, and an exaggerated relish for the mediaeval spirit.
WRITERS IN ITALY AND IN FRANCE.—In Italy, there were few writers of distinction. Monti (1754-1828) was a poet full of harmony and elegance, a follower, but with unequal steps, of Alfieri. Another of the same school is the patriotic poet, Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827), a master of his native tongue. The poems of Pindemonte (1753-1828) are graceful and pathetic. Leopardi (1798-1837) mingles sublimity with pathos. Of the Italian historians of this period, Botta (1766-1837), who published a history of the American Revolution, and histories of Italy, is a clear writer, with a talent for vivid description. In France, Chateaubriand (1768-1848), who figured both in political life and as a prolific and brilliant author, by his Genius of Christianity and many other productions gained great celebrity,—more, however, by charms of style and sentiment, than by weight of matter. Madame de Staël (1766-1817) was the daughter of Necker. Between her and Napoleon there was a mutual hostility. She wrote Corinne, Delphine,—"in which she idealizes herself,"—a work on Germany, and various other productions. She was versatile, vigorous in thought, and humane in her temper and spirit. In philosophy, a believing and spiritual school, in opposition to materialism, was founded by Maine de Biran (1766-1824), Royer-Collard (1763-1846), and Benjamin Constant. De Maistre (1754-1821) wrote ably on the side of authority and of the Catholic Church.
ENGLISH POETRY.—Literature in England, especially in the department of poetry, casting off the trammels of the classical school, in which Dryden and Pope were foremost, entered on a new and splendid era. Whether it dwelt on external nature or human passions and experiences, it appealed to sensibility. It was no more exclusively, or in the main, an address to the understanding. Cowper (1731-1800) set the example of genuine naturalness, and of interest in nature and in every-day life. Robert Burns, a Scottish peasant (1759-1796), by his wonderful union of tenderness, passion, and humor, with poetic fancy and simplicity of diction, was more than the poet of a single nation. Wordsworth (1770-1850) blended in his poems a delight in rural and mountain scenery, with a deep vein of pensive thought and sentiment. If he wrote dull pages, even the severest critics allow that in The Excursion there are most beautiful "oases in the desert;" while in such poems as the Ode on the Power of Sound, the Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections of Childhood, and Laodamia, there are passages not excelled since Milton. A more sustained fervor of feeling and imagination belonged to Byron (1788-1824), who, notwithstanding his morbid egotism and offenses against morality, combined passion with beauty, and was never dull. Walter Scott (1771-1832) exhibited in his narrative poems the spirit of the romantic school, with none of its sentimentality or extravagance. Coleridge (1772-1834), the author of Christabel and The Ancient Mariner, was a highly original poet, as well as a philosopher. Southey (1774-1843), with less genius, was a man of letters, prolific both in verse and in prose. Shelley and Keats had a much higher gift of imagination. Campbell, Rogers, and Moore are names of distinction, although less illustrious than those of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Scott and Byron. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), a poet and the author of Imaginary Conversations, and other prose writings, was master of a style of extraordinary power and purity.
ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS.—In novel-writing, Miss Austen, Miss Porter, and Miss Edgeworth preceded Walter Scott. Waverley, the first in the series of Scott's novels, appeared anonymously in 1814. In 1802 the Edinburgh Review, the first of the noted critical quarterlies, began its existence, under the editorship of Francis Jeffrey, and numbered among its writers Brougham, Sydney Smith, and Sir James Mackintosh. In 1809 the Quarterly Review, the organ of the Tories as the Edinburgh Review represented the Whigs, began, with Gifford for its editor. Among the essayists of that time, in a lighter vein, were John Wilson ("Christopher North"), poet and critic in one; and the genial humorist, the friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Charles Lamb. John Foster (1770-1843) was an original essayist on grave themes. In philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), a clear and fluent expositor, and Thomas Brown (1778-1821), kept up the reputation of the Scottish school founded by Reid. Burke, Alison, and Jeffrey wrote on beauty, and on the taste for the beautiful. Mackintosh, a statesman of liberal opinions, wrote on ethics. Coleridge, inspired by the German thinkers Kant and Schelling, through his philosophical fragments and theological essays did much to create a new current in English philosophical and religious thought. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was less eminent as a metaphysician than as a contributor, through his writings, to legislative reform.
AMERICAN WRITERS.—In America, the political writings of Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Jay, Madison, Marshall, and Ames, have a permanent value. Their letters and the letters of Washington are written in clear and manly English. Lindley Murray (1745-1826) published (1795) an English Grammar, which superseded all others. In theology, there were a number of vigorous thinkers and writers, such as the younger President Edwards, Samuel Hopkins, Bellamy, Emmons, J. M. Mason, and Dwight. Dwight's System of Theology was much read in England and Scotland. Belles-lettres literature in America was in its infancy. There was a triad of poets,—Trumbull, a humorous writer (1750-1831), Joel Barlow (1755-1812), and Dwight (1752-1817); all of them survivors of the school of Pope. Their patriotic feeling was their chief merit, but Barlow and Dwight each wrote one excellent hymn.
GERMAN AUTHORS.—One of the most versatile and stimulating of German writers was Herder (1744-1803). Full of imagination and spirit, he made his quickening influence felt as a theologian, critic, philosopher, and philologist. His name is in some measure eclipsed by the fame of his two great associates at Weimar, Goethe (1749-1832) and Schiller (1759-1805). By the universality of his genius, which was equally exalted in the sphere of criticism and of original production, Goethe is, by common consent, the foremost of German authors. His dramas, especially Tasso, Egmont, and Faust, and his pastoral epic, Hermann and Dorothea, are the most celebrated of his poems; but many of his minor pieces are marked by exquisite harmony and beauty. Schiller, with less repose and a less profound artistic feeling, yet from his humane impulses and fire of emotion stands closer to the popular heart. Körner (1791-1813), and Arndt (1769-1860), the author of the song, "Where is the German's Fatherland," were patriotic lyrists of high merit. Uhland (1787-1862) is a ballad-writer, not surpassed in this species of composition by any of his contemporaries. The "Romantic School," with its predilection for the Middle Ages, included Novalis, Tieck, and also the two brothers Schlegel, who were critics rather than poets. One of the most unique and original of the German writers was Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825), essentially a philosopher and moralist, yet with a pervading element of humor and pathos.
GERMAN PHILOSOPHY.—In philosophy, the first name in the order of time and of merit is that of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). The Critique of Pure Reason is the most important of his productions. He showed, against Hume, that the ideas of cause, substance, self, etc., are not products of imagination, or due to a mere custom of thought, but are from within, and are necessary and universal. In the Critique of the Practical Reason he found the real basis of faith in God, free-will, and immortality, in our moral nature. On all the topics which he treated, he was both earnest and profound. On the basis of a portion of his teaching, subsequent speculative philosophers reared a system of idealism and pantheism. Of these, the most celebrated are Fichte (1762-1814), who held that the world external to the mind has no existence; Schelling (1775-1854), who taught that nature and mind are at bottom one and the same substance, in different manifestations; and Hegel (1770-1831), who resolved all being into a realm of ideas, a self-existent and self-developing thought-world.
Among the numerous writers in other departments in this period, the brothers Alexander von Humboldt and William von Humboldt were eminent,—the former in natural science and as an explorer; the latter in political sciences, criticism and philology.
PAINTING AND SCULPTURE.—In Italy, a great sculptor—the greatest since Michael Angelo—appeared in the person of Canova (1757-1822); who, however, was equaled by an Englishman, John Flaxman (1755-1826). An eminent follower of Canova was Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), a Dane. Dannecker, a German sculptor (1758-1844), excelled in portrait statues. Another German sculptor, the founder of a school, was Rauch (1774-1857), whose statues are faithful, yet idealized, likenesses. A famous French painter in this period was David, whose pictures, in the classic style, lack force and warmth. Many of his scholars attained to high proficiency in the art. Horace Vernet (1789-1863) and Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) chose their subjects from modern European history. The modern German school of painting was founded by Overbeck, Von Schadow, and Cornelius. The greatest English painter after Hogarth was Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), whose portraits have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Almost or quite on a level with him was Gainsborough (1727-1788). Benjamin West (1738-1820) was by birth an American, as was Copley, an artist of superior talents (1739-1815). Lawrence (1769-1830) was a British painter whose portraits have a high historical value. The greatest of the English landscape painters was Turner (1775-1851).
John Trumbull (1756-1843), an American, painted spirited battle-pieces, and miniature portraits of decided artistic merit. Washington Allston (1779-1843), another American painter, produced works admired for their warmth of color, and for the refined feeling expressed in them.
MUSIC.—The great German musicians Haydn and Mozart were followed by an equal or greater genius in music, Beethoven (1770-1827). At the head of the school of German song-writers is Schubert (1797-1828). One of the most popular of the German composers was Weber (1786-1826).
PHYSICAL AND NATURAL SCIENCE.—The most brilliant discoveries in astronomy were made by the French philosopher Laplace, whose Mécanique Céleste made an epoch in that science. Dr. Thomas Young (1773-1829) did much to explain the true theory of the tides, and to confirm the undulatory theory of light. Others eminent in the progress of optics are Fresnel (1788-1827), Biot, Arago,—all French physicists,—and Sir David Brewster. Lavoisier (1743-1794) infused a new spirit into chemical science. Priestley (1733-1804) discovered oxygen and other gases. Dalton (1766-1844) is the author of the atomic theory of the composition of matter. Sir Humphry Davy added to chemical knowledge, and, simultaneously with George Stephenson, invented the safety-lamp for miners. Berzelius (1779-1848), a Swedish chemist, and Gay-Lussac (1778-1850), a Frenchman, are great names in the history of this science. Galvani, the discoverer of animal electricity, and Volta, the inventor of the galvanic pile, stimulated others to fruitful experiments in this branch of study. Lamarck (1744-1829) was one of the first of the modern advocates of the origin of species by development. Cuvier (1769-1832), the greatest naturalist of modern times, made most important observations in comparative anatomy, and "established many of the positive laws of geology and paleontology." Geology first assumed the place of a science through the labors of Werner (1750-1817), a German mineralogist. There were two classes of geologists,—the Neptunians, or Wernerians, who ascribed rocks to aqueous deposition exclusively; and the Vulcanians, or Huttonists,—adherents of the view of Dr. Hutton (1726-1797) of Edinburgh,—who attributed many of them to the action of fire. The Geological Society of London was founded in 1807. Among discoveries of practical utility in science, the discovery of vaccination for the prevention of small-pox, by Jenner (1749-1823), an English physician, is one of the most remarkable.
LITERATURE: See the lists on pp. 16, 359, 497; also President
A. D. White's list, with critical notes, attached to Morris's The
French Revolution and First Empire (in "Epochs of history"), and
Adams's Manual: the Histories of Alison (Tory), Louis Blanc, Carlyle,
Jomini, Fyffe, Stephens, Mahan, Chuquet. Aulard, Lavisse et Rambaud,
Histoire Gènèrale VIII., IX. Michelet (7 vols.), Mignet,
Morris, Von Sybel (4 vols.), Thiers, Taine, L. Haüsser; Madame de
Rémusat's Memoirs; Metternich's Memoirs (5 vols.),
Joyneville, Life and Times of Alexander I. (3 vols.); Seeley,
Life of Stein; Lowell, Eve of the French Revolution; on
Napoleon, Rose, Lanfrey, Sloane.
De Tocqueville's L'Ancien Règime et la Révolution; P. Janet's
Philosophie de la Révolution Française; Quinet, La
Rèvolution; The Essays on the Revolution, by Burke, Mackintosh,
Croker; Macaulay's Essays on Mirabeau and Barère; Lamartine's The
Girondists; A. Young's Travels in France in 1787-88-89
(London, 1794); Oncken, Das Zeitalter der Revolution des
Kaiserreiches (2 vols.); Sorel, L'Europe et la Rèvolution
Française (5 vols.); Debidour, Rapports de l'Église et de
l'Etat en France; Vandal, Napoléon et Alexandre
1st. Treitschke Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten
Fahrhundert (4 vols.).
Taine, History of English Literature; Mrs. Oliphant, Literary History of England in the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries; Allibone, Dictionary of British and American Authors; Wendell, A Literary History of America.
POLITICAL CHANGES IN EUROPE.—The aspiration of the peoples of Europe after constitutional freedom and national unity, after the yoke of Napoleon had been thrown off, was for a long season baffled. This was owing partly to the lassitude natural after the protracted and exhausting wars, and more to the combination of the principal sovereigns, instigated by the love of power and the dread of revolution, for the purpose of preventing the popular yearning from being gratified. But in 1830—when half of the lifetime of a generation had passed by—the overthrow of the old Bourbon line of kings in France was the signal for disturbances and changes elsewhere on the Continent. In England, at about the same time, there began an era of constitutional and legislative reforms which effected a wider diffusion of political power. In 1848—after a second interval of about equal length—another revolutionary crisis occurred. At the same time, movements in favor of communism and socialism brought in a new peril. Alarm felt on this account, by the middle class in France, was one important aid to the third Napoleon in reviving the empire in France. The condition of Europe—in particular, the divided state of Germany—enabled him to maintain a leading influence for a score of years in European politics. The unification of Germany, which began in the triumph of Prussia over Austria, was completed in Napoleon's downfall through the Franco-German war. The unification of Italy, to which Louis Napoleon had contributed by the French alliance with Sardinia against Austria, was consummated under Victor Emmanuel, after his cooperation with Prussia in her great struggle with Austria. Thus Germany and Italy reached the goal to which they had looked with desire and hope at the close of the Napoleonic wars in 1815.
AMERICA.—On the Western Continent, Mexico and the South-American dependencies of Spain and Portugal gained their independence in connection with political revolutions in the European countries to which they had been attached. The United States, in the enjoyment of peace, and favored by great material advantages, advanced with marvelous rapidity in population and in wealth. Discord, growing out of the existence of negro slavery in the South, brought on at last the Civil War, which terminated in the conquest of the Confederate States and their restoration to the Union, in the freedom of the slaves, and in the prohibition of slavery by Constitutional amendment.
MILITARY SYSTEM IN EUROPE.—During this period, in Europe there has been a wide diffusion of popular education. But a serious hinderance in the way of physical comfort and general improvement in the principal European states has long existed, in the immense standing armies and costly military system which their mutual jealousies and apprehensions have caused them to keep up.
SCIENCE AND INVENTION.—This period outstrips all previous eras as regards the progress of the natural and physical sciences, and of invention and discovery in the practical applications of science. An almost miraculous advance has taken place in the means of travel and of transmitting thought. There has been an equally marvelous advance in devising machinery for use in agriculture and manufactures, and in connection with labor of almost every sort.
PEACE AND PHILANTHROPY.—The vast extension of commerce, with its interchange of products, and the intercourse which is incidental to it, has proved favorable to international peace. The better understanding of economical science, by bringing to view the mischiefs of war and the bad policy of selfishness, has tended in the same direction. Philanthropy has manifested itself with new energy and in new forms of activity. A quickened and more enlightened zeal has been shown in providing for the infirm and helpless, and for mitigating the sufferings of the soldier. Missionary undertakings, for the conversion and civilizing of heathen nations, have been a marked feature of the age.
SOCIALISM.—The "industrial age" had its own perils to confront. The progress of manufactures and trade, the accumulation of wealth unequally distributed, brought forward new questions pertaining to the rights and reciprocal aggressions of laborer and capitalist. Socialism, with novel and startling doctrines as to the right of property, and to the proper function of the state, inaugurated movements of grave concern to the order and well-being of society.
GERMANY: THE HOLY ALLIANCE.—The years of peace which followed the War of Liberation produced a signal increase of thrift and of culture in Germany. But they brought also a grievous disappointment of ardent political hopes. There was a feeling of national brotherhood, which that struggle had engendered,—such a feeling as Germans had not experienced for centuries before. Constitutional government and German unity were objects of earnest desire. Frederick William III., the king of Prussia (1797-1840), had promised his people a constitution. But the two emperors, Francis I. of Austria and Alexander of Russia, together with Frederick William, had, at the instigation of Alexander,—whose mind was tinged with religious mysticism,—formed at Paris (Sept. 26, 1815) "the Holy Alliance," a covenant in which they pledged themselves, in dealing with their subjects and in their international relations, to be governed by the rules of Christian justice and charity. They invited all the potentates of Europe, except the Sultan and the Pope, to become parties to this sacred compact. With the exception of George IV., the Prince Regent of England, the sovereigns complied with the request. This alliance, which was sincerely meant by Alexander, was popularly confused with the alliance of Austria, Russia, Prussia, England, and France, the aim of which was to prevent further revolutions. Francis I., who lived until 1835, was stubbornly averse to every movement that in the least favored popular freedom and constitutional government. Supreme in his counsels for a whole generation was Metternich, not a profound statesman, but an expert diplomatist, who labored, generally with success, to stifle every effort for an increase of freedom in Germany, and elsewhere on the Continent. In the smaller German states, especially those which had belonged to the Confederacy of the Rhine, there was a disposition to found a constitutional system; but the Prussian government followed in the wake of Austria, and Austria stood in the way of every such innovation.
AGITATION AND REACTION.—The agitation for liberty was specially rife among the students in the German universities. A demonstration by them at the Wartburg (1817), in commemoration of Luther and of the victory over Napoleon at Leipsic,—in which there were songs and speeches, and a burning of anti-liberal books,—was noticed by the Prussian and Austrian ministers; and the alleged revolutionary movements of students were denounced by the Emperor Alexander. This reactionary zeal was whetted by the murder of Kotzebue, a German poet, who was hated as a tool of Russia and a foe of liberty, and was assassinated by Karl Sand, a fanatical Prussian student (March 23, 1819). Young Sand was executed for the deed, but his fate drew out many expressions of pity and sympathy. The Diet of the confederacy (Sept. 20, 1819) adopted what were called the Carlsbad Resolutions, which provided for a more rigid censorship of the press, committees of investigation to suppress revolutionary agitation, and a strict supervision of the universities by the governments. All the states were required to enforce these regulations. The liberal party, the party of freedom and unity, still subsisted, especially in the smaller states, where some of the princes, as William I. of Würtemberg (1819-1864) and Louis I. of Bavaria (1825-1848), entertained comparatively liberal views.
FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XVIII.—The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) withdrew the army of occupation left by the allies in France. The Pentarchy, or Five Great Powers, pledged themselves to the continued maintenance of peace by means of conferences and congresses. Louis XVIII. (1814-1824), although inactive, was not void of good sense, and was disposed to accommodate himself to the times. But the court party, with his brother the Count d'Artois at its head, were unyielding in their despotic ideas. They were for restoring the system of the old monarchy. The increase in the liberal members of the Chamber, or legislative assembly, impelled Richelieu, the head of the ministry, to resign (Dec., 1818). A more liberal man, Decazes, succeeded him. He was supported by a party which arose at this time, called Doctrinaires on account of a certain pedantic spirit, and a disposition to shape political action by preconceived theories or ideas, which was imputed to them. In their ranks were Royer-Collard, Guizot, Villemain, Barante, and others. They advocated a constitutional monarchy. Among the liberals not affiliated with them was La Fayette, who encouraged the Charbonniers, a secret society for promoting liberty, that had its origin in Italy.
TYRANNY IN SPAIN.—In 1820 revolts broke out against the Bourbon governments in Spain and Italy. Ferdinand VII. had been restored to liberty by Napoleon in 1814, and had returned to the Spanish throne. In 1812 the Cortes had established a constitution with a system of parliamentary government, limited prerogatives being left to the king. In favor of the new system were the educated and enlightened class generally. But—as was not the case in Germany—the uprising against Napoleon in Spain had owed its strength very much to the ignorant and superstitious peasantry, who, while they hated the foreign yoke, clung to the feudal and ecclesiastical abuses which the French rulers in Spain, as far as time and opportunity permitted, swept away. Ferdinand thus had a strong support in his movement to bring back the former bigoted and exclusive system. He wrested the national property from the holders to whom it had been sold. He restored the Inquisition: not less than fifty thousand individuals were imprisoned for their opinions. From his tyranny ten thousand Spaniards escaped into France.
SOUTH AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE.—The French usurpation in Spain cost that country its American colonies. They would not submit to the French sovereignty, and after its fall maintained their independence. Buenos Ayres broke loose from Spain in 1810, and in 1816 joined the Plate states in a confederation. Paraguay declined a union with Buenos Ayres, and continued under the patriarchal absolutism introduced by the Jesuits, Dr. Francia being its ruler until his death (1840). Uruguay became a republic distinct from Buenos Ayres in 1828. In the northern colonies, the principal hero of the struggle for independence was Simon Bolivar, who sprang from a noble Creole family. He first fought for the independence of Venezuela (1810), but was made by New Granada its general in 1812, and became president of the two countries, which were united under the name of Colombia (1819). Quito was now taken, and Peru was set free from the Spanish rule. Upper Peru, in 1825, was named, in honor of the "Liberator," Bolivia. He found it impracticable to connect the different states in one confederacy, and closed his eventful life in 1830. Colombia divided itself into the three states, Venezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador (1831).
MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE.—After the year 1808, there were various attempts at revolution in Mexico. In 1821 its independence was achieved by an insurrection under Iturbide, a native Mexican. He failed in the effort to make himself emperor (1822); and the Republic of Mexico was organized in 1824, and was recognized by the United States in 1829.
MILITARY REVOLT IN SPAIN.—The loss of her American colonies, and the efforts to restore them, reduced Spain to extreme poverty. In 1820 a successful military insurrection, led by Quiroga, Riego, and Mina, proclaimed anew the constitution of 1812. Ferdinand, who was capable of any amount of hypocrisy as well as cruelty, swore to uphold it. The revolution was supported by the intelligent class of people, but the defenders of it were split into different parties. The clergy and the peasantry were arrayed on the other side. Guerilla bands were organized under the name of the "Army of the Faith."
CONGRESS OF VERONA.—The military revolt in Spain alarmed the Great Powers. The three sovereigns were now leagued for the defense of "the throne and the altar;" for Alexander, who had shown liberal inclinations on the subject of the emancipation of the serfs, and even towards Greece in its aspiration for independence, now recoiled from every thing that savored of freedom. At the Congress of Verona (Oct., 1822), the sovereigns resolved to interfere in Spain. The Duke of Wellington declined to concur with them, and, on his return from the congress, advised Louis XVIII. to take the same course.
ENGLAND: CANNING.—George IV. (1820-1830) had been regent since 1810. Already unpopular, he became still more so in consequence of his abortive effort (1820) to procure a divorce from Queen Caroline, whom he had married at the demand of his father (1795). She was not allowed to be present at his coronation. On account of the profligacy of her husband, there was a strong sympathy with her, although she was a coarse-minded woman. For a number of years after the Peace of 1815, the English government resisted movements towards reform at home; and in its foreign policy, under the guidance of Castlereagh, it sustained the reactionary cause abroad. Disaffection towards the ministers gave rise to a plot, contrived by some desperate men, to destroy them in a body. It was detected; and Thistlewood, with some of his confederates, was executed (1820). On the death of Lord Castlereagh in 1822, Canning, a disciple of Pitt, became foreign secretary. He adopted a more liberal policy, and worked against the schemes of Metternich for interference in the affairs of foreign states. He transferred England, says Guizot, "from the camp of resistance and of European order into the camp of liberty."
THE REBELLION CRUSHED IN SPAIN.—The French unwisely rejected England's advice. Louis XVIII. sent an army into Spain, under the Duke of Angoulême, released Ferdinand at Cadiz, and gave him the power to revoke all that he had done in favor of liberty. The brave Riego was hung on a gibbet of enormous height. The Spanish army was disbanded, and the "Army of the Faith" took its place. Many thousands of constitutionalists were thrown into prison. Canning recognized the republics of South America, lest they, too, should fall under French control. It was his boast, that he "called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old."
PORTUGAL: BRAZIL.—The royal family of Portugal were residing in Brazil when the Spanish revolution occurred. Portugal, in the absence of King John VI., framed a liberal constitution. The Brazilians were eager for independence from Portugal. John decided to withdraw. Arrived in Portugal, he accepted the new constitution; but the anti-revolutionary party rallied about his son Dom Miguel, who was supported by his mother, a sister of Ferdinand VII, of Spain. Dom Miguel was at length driven into exile, and went to Vienna. Meantime Dom Pedro, a son of John VI., had made himself emperor in Brazil by allying himself with the constitutional party; and John was prevailed on by the British, in 1825, to recognize the new South American empire.
NAPLES AND SICILY.—In all the eight principalities of Italy, except in Tuscany, the misrule of the restored governments was galling to the people, whose hope of freedom had been raised only to be cast down. Everywhere the tyrannical influence of Austria was dominant. The rulers in Italy were slavishly submissive to her will; and any rising of the people, if not put down by them, was crushed by Austrian forces sent down from Lombardy. Secret societies sprung up; the chief of which, the Carbonari, aimed at national independence, but beyond that cherished no definite, united purpose. The Spanish revolution served as the occasion for a similar rebellion of the soldiery of Naples. A new liberal constitution was established, which Ferdinand IV. (July 13, 1820) solemnly swore to maintain. The insurrection in Sicily aimed at independence, but Palermo was surrendered to the revolutionary government of Naples. The Neapolitan rebellion led to the Congress of Troppau (Oct., 1820), which was transferred to Laybach (Jan., 1821). There Austria, Prussia, and Russia formed a league, the fruit of which was, that an Austrian army of sixty thousand men marched into the South of Italy, and the revolution was crushed. Ferdinand reëstablished his despotism, disbanded the greater part of his army, and punished with exile, imprisonment, and death the leading supporters of the constitution which he had taken an oath to defend.
SARDINIA.—In Piedmont, the demand for a constitution and a rising at Alessandria impelled Victor Emmanuel I. to abdicate in favor of his brother, Charles Felix, who was favorable to Austria and her policy. Prince Charles Albert,—a distant cousin,—who had liberal views, held the regency for a few months; but Charles Felix, on his return from Modena (Oct., 1821), governed according to despotic principles. The contest in Italy between "despots and conspirators" went on until the renewed outbreakings of revolt in 1830.
THE GREEK INSURRECTION.—The weakness of Turkey emboldened the Greeks to attempt to throw off the hated Ottoman yoke. The sultans had become the puppets of their guards, the janizaries. One after another of them had been dethroned by their soldiers. The pashas were insubordinate: in Egypt, Mehemet Ali had almost made himself independent. Russia, by the Peace of Bucharest in 1812, had possessed herself of Bessarabia and of Eastern Moldavia as far as the Pruth. Among the Greeks, who were not more than a million in number, and were only one among the various peoples subject to Turkey, there were formed Hetaireiai, or secret societies, for the purpose of organizing an insurrection. The people were first summoned to rise by Alexander Ypsilanti (1821). A "national congress" promulgated a new constitution for Greece (1822). Great enthusiasm in behalf of the Greek cause was awakened in most of the civilized countries; but the Congress of Verona (1822), inspired by Metternich, decided to give no help to the "insurgents." In the war of the Greeks with the Turks, there were atrocities committed on both sides. Scio was taken by the latter in 1822. Not far from twenty thousand of the inhabitants were massacred, and twice that number were enslaved. In 1824 the Greeks began to receive foreign help. Among those who volunteered with a chivalrous sympathy to aid them in their combat was Lord Byron, who died at Missolonghi (1824). Nicholas I. of Russia, who in 1825 succeeded Alexander I., was more inclined to take an active part in the Greek contest, as he considered himself the head of all Christians of the Greek faith. The Sultan Mahmoud II., by crushing the janizaries, strengthened himself at home, but weakened his means of attack and defense abroad. In 1826 he made important concessions to Russia; among other things, allowing her to occupy the east coast of the Black Sea, and giving to her vessels a free admission to Turkish waters.
GREEK INDEPENDENCE.—Mehemet Ali hoped to succeed Mahmoud. His son Ibrahim had defeated the Greeks at Navarino (1825). The next year, in conjunction with the Turks, he captured Missolonghi. The apprehension that Nicholas might seek to divide Turkey with Mehemet Ali caused the Treaty of London to be concluded by the Great Powers which founded the kingdom of Greece (July 6, 1827). England, Russia, and France joined in executing the treaty. They destroyed the Turkish-Egyptian fleet at Navarino (Oct. 20). Later, Nicholas waged a separate war with the Porte, which was terminated by the Peace of Adrianople (1829), when the latter recognized the independence of Greece. The crown of Greece was accepted in 1832 by Otho, son of Louis of Bavaria.
CHARLES X.—Louis XVIII. died in 1824. His brother, Charles X. (1824-30), dealt generously with the collateral branch of the Bourbons, the house of Orleans. He restored to Louis Philippe, the son of that Philip Egalite whose base career was ended by the guillotine (p. 512), the vast estates of the Orleans family, and gave him the title of "Royal Highness." But he failed to secure the cordial support of this ambitious relative. The Duke of Orleans stood well with the king, but was on good terms with the liberal leaders. The king sought to reinstate the ideas and ways of the old régime. He was specially zealous in behalf of ecclesiastics, and ceremonies of devotion. But liberal views in politics gained ground in the second Chamber, as well as in the army and among the people. A liberal ministry under Martignac was in power for a while; but in 1829 it was succeeded by a ministry the head of which was the unpopular Prince Polignac, and the other principal members of which were hardly less obnoxious. They represented the extreme reactionary and royalist party. Their active opponents—Guizot, Thiers, and Benjamin Constant among them—found that their assaults on the government were generally applauded. All of these were brilliant political writers. Constant (from 1825) had been the leader of the opposition. Thiers was a journalist of wide influence. Guizot had held office under the liberal ministers, and as lecturer on modern history, and by his writings, had laid the foundation of the great distinction which he deservedly gained, as one of the foremost students and expounders of history in recent times. Thiers and Guizot were at this time united in the advocacy of a constitutional system, as opposed to the reactionary policy and the personal government to which the king and his ministers were committed. Later we shall see that the paths of these two statesmen diverged. In 1830 Guizot was the opposition leader in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Chamber of Peers, the ministry was attacked by Chateaubriand, who had been a valuable supporter of the Bourbon cause, and by others. The Chambers were dissolved by the king. The capture of Algiers, in a war against the piratical power of which it was the seat, did not avail to lessen the growing hostility to his government. It found expression through the press and in speeches at a great banquet.
ORDINANCES OF ST. CLOUD.—Taking advantage of the provision in the charter which gave extraordinary powers to the king for special emergencies (p. 537), the ministry took the fatal step (July 25, 1830) of issuing the "ordinances of St. Cloud," dissolving the Chamber of Deputies, further restricting the suffrage so that many merchants and manufacturers lost this privilege, and reëstablishing the censorship of the press in a peculiarly burdensome form.
THE JULY REVOLUTION.—The ordinances were published on July 26. That evening Prince Polignac's windows were broken by a mob. The whole city of Paris was in a tumult. The liberal journals protested. There were collisions between the mob and the king's troops. A protest of the liberal deputies, who met at the house of Casimir Perier, was issued. In the night the people armed themselves. La Fayette arrived in Paris. On the 28th students, workmen, and all classes of citizens, armed themselves with whatever weapons they could lay hold of. The revolutionists took possession of the Hôtel de Ville. The cry was that the charter was violated. All efforts to induce the king to make concessions failed. Many of the soldiers in Paris fraternized with the people, who on the 29th had control of the whole city, except the vicinity of the Tuileries, which they gained possession of that evening. La Fayette, at the call of the deputies, assumed command of the National Guard. Finally, when it was too late, the king decided to withdraw the ordinances, and to change the ministry. Thiers and Mignet caused anonymous placards to be posted, proposing that the Duke of Orleans should take the crown from the people. On the 30th Louis Philippe entered Paris on foot: he had passed the summer at his country place at Neuilly. Talleyrand,—whose influence was great with foreign courts,—Lafitte, and Thiers were active in the effort to advance him to the throne. The deputies decided that he must be made lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Charles X., who still blindly confided in him, on the 31st appointed him to this office. What the intentions of Louis Philippe were, is not clear. He probably meant to be governed by circumstances. On the 29th a municipal commission was installed at the Hôtel de Ville, consisting of La Fayette and six other leading men. They selected several persons as officials whose authority was generally acknowledged. Louis Philippe, at the head of the deputies, went to the Hôtel de Ville. He was cordially received by La Fayette and his associates. It was agreed that there should be "a popular throne, with free institutions." On the balcony, under the tri-color flag, the Duke of Orleans was introduced as "the man of the people." La Fayette felt that a republic would be contrary to the national wish. Thiers was of the same mind. They feared complications and contests abroad, and what might be the results of general suffrage, in the existing state of the country, at home.
FLIGHT OF CHARLES X.—The desertion of Charles X. by his troops would have rendered an armed contest on his part impracticable. The dexterous management of Louis Philippe was made effectual by the favoring circumstances. On Aug. 2 the king abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux, and was compelled to fly from the kingdom. The volunteer army had been stirred up to go out to Rambouillet to drive him away. The angry old king did not wait for their coming.
LOUIS PHILIPPE MADE KING.—The Chamber of Deputies declared the throne vacant. They altered the charter,—putting all religious bodies on a level, giving freedom to the press, limiting the powers of the king, and giving to the Chambers, as well as to him, the initiative in framing laws. They chose Louis Philippe "King of the French." He owed his elevation to the middle classes, and claimed to be the "citizen king."
SEPARATION OF BELGIUM.—The effect of the new revolution was to set in motion the elements of discontent in the other European countries. Belgium was the first to feel the shock. The Belgians were restless under the rule of William I., whose treatment of them aggravated the disaffection which their political relation to Holland constantly occasioned. A revolt broke out at Brussels. The offer of a legislative and administrative separation of Belgium from Holland, with one king over both, might have been accepted if it had been made earlier; but it followed unsuccessful efforts to quell the insurrection by force. A provisional government was created at Brussels, which proclaimed the independence of Belgium (Oct. 4), and convoked a national congress. France confined itself to preventing the interference of foreign powers. A conference of ministers at London (Jan., 1831) recognized the new state, which adopted a liberal constitution. Leopold I. of Saxe-Coburg was chosen king. He was aided by the forces of the French; but the war with Holland lasted until 1833, and it was not until 1839 that Holland definitely accepted the action of the London congress.
POLAND.—Poland was harshly ruled for the Czar by the Grand Duke Constantine. The revolution in France was the signal for a Polish rising, that began in an unsuccessful attempt of students and others to seize the person of the grand duke. The insurrection spread: men of talents and distinction, as well as Polish soldiers, joined the cause of the people. The Czar, Nicholas, would make no terms with the insurgents, and the Diet (Jan. 25, 1831) declared him to have forfeited the Polish crown. The Poles fought with desperate valor in a series of bloody battles, only to be overwhelmed by superiority of numbers. They were defeated at Ostrolenka by Diebitsch (May 26). After his death, Warsaw surrendered to Paskievitch (Sept. 8), and another Russian general entered Cracow. Poland was now reduced, as far as it could be, to a Russian province. The army was merged in the Russian forces; the university was suppressed; the Roman Catholic religion, the prevailing faith, was persecuted; and it was computed that in one year (1832) eighty thousand Poles were sent to Siberia.
GERMANY: HUNGARY.—In Saxony and in the minor states of Germany, disturbances were consequent on the tidings of the revolution at Paris. Prussia and Austria were little affected by it; but the demands of the Diet in Hungary, when Ferdinand, the son of Francis I. was crowned king of that country, were an augury of a far greater commotion to arise at a later day. In the Diet of 1832 Louis Kossuth first appeared as a member. Between the years 1828 and 1834, the German states (not including Austria), under the guidance of Prussia and Bavaria, formed a Zollverein, or customs-union, which was an important step in the direction of German unity, and one which Austria looked on with disfavor.
ITALY.—In 1831, there were signs of revolt in different states of Italy. At Modena, a provisional government was erected. The same thing was done at Bologna. Maria Louisa was driven out of Parma. Among those who joined the insurgents in the Papal Kingdom were Napoleon and his younger brother Louis Bonaparte, sons of Louis Bonaparte king of Holland. The elder of the sons died soon after at Forli. The Italians relied on the help of Louis Philippe, but the citizen king had no disposition to engage in war with Austria. The uprisings were put down with the assistance of Austrian troops. Charles Albert, after April, 1831, king of Sardinia, did a good work in the discipline of his army. Without any esteem for Austria, he refused to further the plans of the revolutionary party, and thus incurred the hostility of Mazzini, who was organizing the movement of "Young Italy" for independence and unity. Mazzini, a man of elevated spirit and disinterested aims, was long to be known as the head of the republican patriots and plotters.
ENGLAND.—In England, reform went forward peacefully. The middle class gradually obtained its demands. The national debt, at the close of the wars with Napoleon, amounted to nearly eight hundred millions of pounds. In 1823, with the accession of Mr. Huskisson to office, began the movement for a more free commercial policy, which led in the end to the repeal of the corn-laws. The question of "Catholic disabilities" was agitated from time to time, and something had been done to lighten them. Yet in 1828 Catholics were still shut out by law from almost every office of trust and distinction. They could not sit in either house of Parliament. The endeavors of liberal statesmen for their relief were defeated by the Tory majorities. The agitation was increased by the "Catholic Association" formed in Ireland by the Irish leader and orator, Daniel O'Connell. A Tory ministry was formed by the Duke of Wellington, with Mr. (afterwards Sir) Robert Peel for its chief supporter in the House of Commons (1829). Yet, to avert the danger of civil war, the ministry introduced, and with aid of the Whigs carried, the "Catholic Emancipation Bill."
THE REFORM BILL.—On the death of George IV., William IV., his brother (1830-1837), succeeded to the throne. He was favorable to parliamentary reform. The ferment on this subject caused the resignation of the Wellington ministry, which was succeeded by the ministry of Earl Grey. A bill for reform was presented to Parliament, depriving eighty-eight "rotten or decayed" boroughs, where there were very few inhabitants, of a hundred and forty-three members of the House of Commons, who were given to counties or to large towns, such as Birmingham and Manchester, which had no representation. At the same time the franchise was greatly extended. The bill was strenuously resisted by the Tories, who now began to be called Conservatives. Its repeated rejection by the House of Lords caused a violent agitation. Finally, in 1832, when it was understood that the king would create new peers enough to pass the measure, it was carried in the upper house, and became a law.
SLAVERY ABOLISHED.—In 1833 the system of slavery in the British colonies was abolished, twenty million pounds being paid as a compensation to the slave-owners. This measure was the result of an agitation in which Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Buxton had been foremost.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a strong feeling arose against the slave-trade. Granville Sharp (1734-1813) was one of the earliest promoters of its abolition. By his agency, in the case of a negro,—Somerset,—claimed as a slave, the decision was obtained from Lord Mansfield, that a slave could not be held in England, or carried out of it. The Quakers were early in the field in opposition to the traffic in slaves. In the House of Commons, Wilberforce, a man of earnest religious convictions and one of the most eloquent orators of his time, contended against it for years. His friend Pitt, and Fox, joined him in 1790. The measure of abolition was carried in 1807. Then followed the agitation for the abolition of slavery itself. The slave-trade was made illegal by France in 1819. It had been condemned by the Congress of Vienna. In the French colonies, slavery continued until 1848.
LEGAL REFORMS.—In the same year the monopoly of the East-India Company was abolished, and trade with the East was made free to all merchants. A new Poor Law (1834) checked the growth of pauperism. In 1835, by the Municipal Corporations Act, the ancient rights of self-government by the towns, which had been lost since the fourteenth century, were restored to them. Civil marriage was made legal, in compliance with a demand of the Dissenters, who were likewise relieved of other grounds of complaint (1836). Increased attention began to be paid to popular education.
CHARTISM.—Notwithstanding the constitutional changes in England, the distress and discontent of the poorer classes occasioned the riotous "Chartist" movement in 1839, when universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and other radical changes were in vain demanded. Mass meetings were held, and outbreakings of violence were feared; but order was preserved.
CHINA: AFGHANISTAN.—A war with China (1839) had no better ground than the refusal of the Chinese government to allow the importation of opium. The occupation of Kabul in 1839 caused a general revolt of the Afghans. A British army was destroyed in the Khyber Pass. The British then conquered, but did not care to retain, Afghanistan.
REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS.—Victoria, the only child of the Duke of Kent, the brother of William IV., succeeded the latter in 1837. She married her cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1840). In 1846 the party which had long advocated free trade gained a triumph in the repeal of the Corn Laws, which had existed since 1815, imposing duties on imported grain. In the agitation which preceded the repeal, Richard Cobden was the leader: he was effectively aided by John Bright. But the measure was carried by Sir Robert Peel, who on this question abandoned his former views and those of the Conservatives, by whom he had been raised to power. He was bitterly assailed, especially by D'Israeli, who was rising to the position of a leader among them.
LOUIS PHILIPPE.—Louis Philippe made up his first ministry from the party which had raised him to the throne. Among its members were Broglie, Guizot, and Casimir Périer. The king aimed by shrewd management to maintain his popularity at home, and to keep the peace with foreign powers, by taking care to encourage liberal movements abroad, yet without taking any step in that direction which would bring on war. He did nothing for the Poles in their mortal struggle, and nothing really effectual for the Italians. Several abortive attempts upon his life were made by secret societies; one of a dangerous character, by Fieschi (1835), who fired "an infernal machine" from his window when the king was passing. This was followed by the "Laws of September," to curb the license of the press. They reminded the public of the royalist laws of 1820. They were opposed by the more liberal men: Royer-Collard and Villemain spoke against them. They went by the name of the "Fieschi laws." An effort to raise an insurrection among the French troops in Strasburg was made by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1836), who, after his flight from Italy, had resided in Switzerland, where he had busied himself in study, and had written several books. The enterprise proved a ridiculous failure: its author was allowed to go to America.
FRENCH POLICY IN THE EAST.—Various causes conspired to undermine Louis Philippe's government. One of these was its connection with the war of Mehemet Ali with the Sultan. In the former war with his over-lord, the Sultan, the viceroy of Egypt had been invested with Syria as a fief. He now sent an army into Syria, under his son Ibrahim, who overran that country, advanced victoriously into Asia Minor, and threatened Constantinople (1832). The European powers intervened, and obliged Mehemet Ali to content himself with Syria, together with the district of Adana in Asia Minor, and the island of Candia, which the Sultan had ceded to him before. In 1839 the Sultan tried to recover Syria, but encountered an overwhelming defeat, and lost the entire Turkish fleet. England now combined with Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and the Western powers once more saved the Turkish Empire; although France, under the ministry of Thiers, had strongly favored the cause of Mehemet Ali (1840). Contrary to the wish of the French, he had to give up Syria. He secured for himself and his descendants the pashalic of Egypt (1841). The failure of the French policy in the East, by this action of the Quadruple Alliance, caused indignation and chagrin in France. Even Thiers, who was in sympathy with the cause of Mehemet Ali, was loudly blamed. There was danger of a rupture with England. Thiers was a principal author of the plan for fortifying Paris by encircling the city with forts. The king judged that they might prove to be of use in putting down insurrections. Louis Napoleon thought the occasion favorable for another attempt to seize the crown. He landed from England at Boulogne with a few followers, and proclaimed himself emperor. He was captured, tried, and imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, where he spent six years. His time there was mostly given to study and writing. A few months before this attempt of Louis Napoleon, the French government had arranged for the bringing of the body of the first Napoleon from St. Helena to Paris. It was one of various impolitic measures, in which Thiers was actively concerned, for doing honor to the emperor and his military achievements. But at that time Louis Napoleon, who was known to be a man of slow mind, but whose capacity for intrigue was not understood, was regarded with contempt, and the Bonapartists excited no alarm. In 1841, in the presence of the royal family and of a vast concourse, the remains of Napoleon were deposited with great pomp in a magnificent tomb under the dome of the Church of the Invalides. Marshal Soult superseded Thiers at the head of the ministry (1840); but Guizot was the ruling spirit in the cabinet, and was associated with the king until his dethronement. The death of the Duke of Orleans, the eldest son of Louis Philippe, by a fall from his carriage (July 13, 1842), endangered the new dynasty. The duke's eldest son, the Count of Paris, was then only four years of age.
GUIZOT'S ADMINISTRATION.—From 1840 Guizot was the principal minister of Louis Philippe, and Thiers was in the opposition. They differed both as regards foreign and domestic policy. Thiers, who in his convictions was a decided liberal, and in full sympathy with the spirit of the French Revolution, was for the extension of suffrage, and for making the influence of France felt and respected in matters of European concern, even at the risk of war. Guizot, on the contrary, clung to the English alliance, and he considered that a foreign war—for example, in defense of Mehemet Ali,—would be to France a great and needless calamity. Claiming to be a fast friend of representative government, Guizot nevertheless inflexibly resisted movements for the extension of popular rights,—movements which he believed would lead, if they were not withstood, to revolution and anarchy. On the one hand were the legitimists, aiming at the restoration of the elder branch of the Bourbons; on the other hand there were the republicans, who wished to be rid of monarchy altogether. The government of Louis Philippe satisfied neither. It served as a transition, or temporary halting-place, in the progress of France towards the goal of rational and stable republicanism, to which the great Revolution tended. It was an "attempt to put new wine in old bottles." This inherent weakness of the Orleans rule, it would have been difficult by any means to neutralize in such a way as to avert, sooner or later, a catastrophe. The unbending conservatism of Guizot—as seen, for instance, in his refusal to extend suffrage—hastened this result. A government over which less than half a million of voters of the middle class alone had an influence, could not stand against the progressive feeling of the country. The middle class, on which the throne depended, became separated from the advanced party, to which the youth of France more and more rallied. Guizot was personally upright; but official corruption was suffered to spread in the last years of his administration, and bribery was used in the elections. These circumstances, added to the mortification of national pride from the little heed paid to France by the other powers, weakened the throne. The failure of the government to support the cause of liberty in Poland and Italy was another important source of its growing unpopularity.
Guizot, in the personal Memoirs written by him after the fall of Louis Philippe, has defended himself against the charge of a want of loyal support of Thiers, the head of the ministry, while he (Guizot) was ambassador to England (1840). There was a private understanding that he should go no farther than his sympathy with the views of Thiers extended. Guizot has undertaken, also, to show that a war in behalf of Mehemet Ali would have been most unwise; and that it was for the interest of France to regain its weight in European affairs, not by the renewal of the bloody and fruitless contests of the past, but by methods of peace. He deemed it his duty not to give way to the "warlike tastes and inclinations" of the French people. The effort, however, to tie down so spirited a nation to so tame a policy, proved to be futile. The recollections of the empire, which the government itself did so much to arouse, moved the people to compare the achievements of the past with the humiliating position of their country under the Orleans rule.
Guizot has left this interesting exposition of his principles and policy: "In the diplomatic complication which agitated Europe, I saw a brilliant opportunity of exercising and loudly proclaiming a foreign policy, extremely new and bold in fact, though moderate in appearance, the only foreign policy which in 1840 suited the peculiar position of France and her government, as also the only course in harmony with the guiding principles and permanent wants of the great scheme of civilization to which the world of to-day aspires and tends.
"The spirit of conquest, of propagandism, and of system, has hitherto been the moving cause and master of the foreign policy of states. The ambition of princes or peoples has sought its gratification in territorial aggrandizement. Religious or political faith has endeavored to expand by imposing itself. Great heads of government have attempted to regulate the destinies of nations according to profound combinations, the offspring rather of their own thought than the natural result of facts. Let us cast a glance over the history of international European relations. We shall see the spirit of conquest, or of armed propagandism, or of some systematic design upon the territorial organization of Europe, inspire and determine the foreign policy of governments. Let one or other of these impulses prevail, and governments have disposed arbitrarily of the fate of nations. War has ever been their indispensable mode of action.
"I know that this course of things has been the fatal result of men's passions; and that, in spite of those passions and the evils they have inflicted on nations, European civilization has continued to increase and prosper, and may increase and prosper still more. It is to the honor of the Christian world, that evil does not stifle good. I know that the progress of civilization and public reason will not abolish human passions, and that, under their impulse, the spirit of conquest, of armed propagandism, and of system, will ever maintain, in the foreign policy of states, their place and portion. But, at the same time, I hold for certain that these various incentives are no longer in harmony with the existing state of manners, ideas, interests, and social instincts; and that it is quite possible to-day to combat and restrain materially their empire. The extent and activity of industry and commerce; the necessity of consulting the general good; the habit of frequent, easy, prompt, and regular intercourse between peoples; the invincible bias for free association, inquiry, discussion, and publicity,—these characteristic features of great modern society already exercise, and will continue to exercise more and more, against the warlike or diplomatic fancies of foreign policy, a preponderating influence. People smile, not without reason, at the language and puerile confidence of the Friends of Peace, and of the Peace Societies. All the leading tendencies, all the most elevated hopes of humanity, have their dreams, and their idle, gaping advocates, as they have also their days of decline and defeat; but they no less pursue their course; and through all the chimeras of some, the doubts and mockeries of others, society becomes transformed, and policy, foreign and domestic, is compelled to transform itself with society. We have witnessed the most dazzling exploits of the spirit of conquest, the most impassioned efforts of the spirit of armed propagandism; we have seen territories and states molded and re-molded, unmade, re-made, and unmade again, at the pleasure of combinations more or less specious. What survives of all these violent and arbitrary works? They have fallen, like plants without roots, or edifices without foundation. And now, when analogous enterprises are attempted, scarcely have they made a few steps in advance when they pause and hesitate, as if embarrassed by, and doubtful of, themselves; so little are they in accord with the real wants, the profound instincts, of existing society, and with the persevering, though frequently disputed, tendencies of modern civilization…. I repeat, our history since 1789, our endless succession of shocks, revolutions, and wars, have left us in a state of leverish agitation which renders peace insipid, and teaches us to find a blind gratification in the unexpected strokes of a hazardous policy. We are a prey to two opposing currents,—one deep and regular, which carries towards the definite goal of our social state; the other superficial and disturbed, which throws us here and there in search of new adventures and unknown lands. Thus we float and alternate between these two opposing directions,—called towards the one by our sound sense and moral conviction, and enticed towards the other by our habits of routine and freaks of imagination." (Memoirs of a Minister of State, from the year 1840 pp. 7-9, 10.)
THE KING'S AVARICE.—The imputation of avarice to Louis Philippe was one source of his increasing unpopularity. On his accession he had handed over to his children the estates of the house of Orleans, in order that, as private property, they might not be forfeited with the loss of the crown. He was not content with increasing his wealth by adding to it all the possessions of Charles X. and of the Duke of Bourbon, but it was discovered that he was engaged in business ventures. In providing for ample marriage settlements for his children, he resorted to devices which gave offense to the Chamber of Deputies and to the public. Yet writers like Martin, who are strongly averse to his method of rule, clear him of blame in these particulars, if he is to be judged by what is usual in a monarchical system.
THE SPANISH MARRIAGES.—An event of consequence in relation to the fall of Louis Philippe from power was the affair of the Spanish marriages, which took place under the ministry of Guizot. The Duke de Montpensier, the youngest son of the king, was married to the sister of Isabella II. of Spain. The design, it was believed, was, in the anticipated childlessness of the queen, to secure for his heirs the Spanish crown.
Ferdinand VII. of Spain was an absolutist; but the extreme monarchical party there wished for a king of more energy, and desired to raise to the throne his brother Don Carlos. In 1830 Ferdinand, being then childless, was induced by his wife, the daughter of Ferdinand IV. of Naples, to abrogate the Salic law excluding females from the succession. Her daughter Isabella was born a few months later. After the death of the king (1833), the Carlists resisted the exclusion of their favorite from the throne. Don Carlos was proclaimed in the Basque provinces, and a civil war arose. The queen, Maria Christina, as regent, was supported by the moderados (moderates) and the liberals, and was allowed to recruit for her army in England and France. The leading constitutionalist general, Espartero, was successful; and Don Carlos fled into France (1839). The queen regent allied herself with the conservative wing of the progressive party (the moderados); but insurrections at Barcelona and Madrid, in the interest of the radical wing, obliged her to make Espartero, the head of the movement, prime minister (1840). His administration greatly promoted the prosperity of the country. But the conservatives and absolutists were against him; and, as the result of a counter-insurrection, Gen. Narvaez, the leader of the conservatives, became chief of the cabinet (1844); but he was dismissed two years later. The constitution was divested of some of its liberal features. The queen, Isabella II., had been declared of age by the Cortes, and placed on the throne (Nov. 10, 1843). Christina, her dissolute mother, returned from France, whither she had fled. In the hope of securing the Spanish throne to the Orleans family, Louis Philippe arranged with Christina to effect a marriage between Isabella and a weakling in body and mind, Francis de Assis; and, at the same time, a marriage of his son, the Duke de Montpensier, with her sister Maria Louisa (Oct. 10, 1846). An Orleans prince would not have acquired the crown, even if Louis Philippe had remained on the French throne, since a daughter was born to Isabella in 1851.
There was loud complaint in England against the king and Guizot, for the alleged violation of a promise in this affair. Their defense was that Lord Palmerston, who succeeded Aberdeen, took a very different position from that of this minister, which had been the condition of the engagement. It was from Palmerston's action previously in the affair of Egypt, that the French were embittered, the English alliance was weakened, and the policy of Guizot, who was sincerely desirous to maintain this friendly relation, was discredited at home.
FALL OF LOUIS PHILIPPE.—The scarcity of provisions in 1846 and 1847 provoked much discontent in France. "Bread riots" broke out in various places. The liberal party, composed of diverse elements, organized committees as one of their instruments of agitation in behalf of political reform. The democratic and socialistic journals published inflammatory discussions and appeals. The complaint of corruption among officials grew louder. Communism had numerous votaries; and M. Louis Blanc was an apostle of socialism,—the theory that the government should furnish work and maintenance to all of its subjects. Great reform banquets were held, where the spirit was inimical to Guizot,—who would yield nothing to the popular clamor,—and hostile to the reactionary policy of the Orleans monarchy. The spark that kindled the flames of revolution was the prohibition by Guizot of a great reform banquet appointed to be held on the 22d of February, 1848, in the Champs Elysées, in which a hundred thousand persons were expected to participate. On that day barricades were thrown up in the streets, and there were some conflicts with the municipal guard. These disturbances continued on the next day. The king, who did not lack physical courage, evinced no firmness or boldness in this crisis, dismissed Guizot as a peace-offering, and called upon Count Molé to form a cabinet. Molé declined; the riotous disturbances increased; and Thiers, on the promise of the king to consent to the reforms demanded, undertook, when it was too late, to take office, and try to pacify the people. Soldiers began to fraternize with the mob. The king showed no spirit, but abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Count of Paris. The Duchess of Orleans presented her two sons, the count and his brother, before the Chamber of Deputies. But the motion for a provisional government prevailed (Feb. 24). It consisted of Dupont de l'Eure, Lamartine the poet, Arago, Ledru-Rollin, and six associates. It established itself in the Hotel de Ville. This act, and the firmness and eloquence of Lamartine, prevented the establishment of an ultra-republican, socialistic Directory. The middle classes, alarmed on account of the displays of mob violence, rallied to the support of Lamartine and the party of order. Louis Philippe and his family were allowed to escape to England. There Guizot temporarily took up his abode. After a year, this "last of the Huguenots" returned to France, where he died in 1874.
CONTEST WITH SOCIALISTS.—A concession was made to the socialists in the establishment of government workshops, which turned out to be not workshops at all, but mere excavations. A mob of the Red Republicans was checked (April 16) by the National Guards. The National Assembly voted for a republic. Another mob of socialists and communists was suppressed (May 15). But the great contest came (June 23-26) when the government dismissed a part of those given employment on public works. The battle was severe; but the government troops under the command of a patriotic general, Cavaignac, who was made dictator during the struggle, subdued the insurgents. He was now appointed president of the council, or chief of the executive commission.
THE REPUBLIC: LOUIS NAPOLEON.—Fear of communism and of mob violence gave a new impetus to the conservative tendency. A republican constitution, however, with a president holding for a term of four years, was adopted. Louis Napoleon was elected a member of the assembly. He was chosen president of the republic, mainly by the votes of the peasantry and common soldiers, and with the help of Thiers and others who thought him incapable, and desired to bring about a restoration of the Orleans rule.
Thiers was a personal enemy of Cavaignac. "Thiers" says Martin, "did not feel the same repulsion for the consulate and the empire as does the present generation: he took Louis Napoleon for an inexperienced and somewhat narrow-minded man, whom he could easily restrain and direct, not guessing the determined obstinacy and prejudice hidden beneath his heavy and commonplace exterior." (Popular History of France [from 1789], iii. 200.)
DISTURBANCES IN GERMANY.—The effect of the revolution which dethroned Louis Philippe was felt like an electric shock through all Europe. It was experienced immediately in the smaller states of Germany. New ministries were installed, which were pledged to a liberal policy. Louis of Bavaria resigned the crown to his son Maximilian. The Grand Duke of Baden agreed to the demands of a popular convention at Mannheim, and he placed a liberal ministry in control of the government. Prussia and Austria were thoroughly disturbed by the movement for freedom and national unity. A rising in Vienna (March 13-15), headed by the students, compelled Metternich to depart for safety to England, the asylum of political exiles of every creed. The emperor summoned a Diet to be chosen by popular suffrage, and went for safety to Innsbruck among his faithful Tyrolese. In Berlin, at the same time, there were excited meetings, and conflicts in the streets between the people and the soldiers. The Prussian king yielded to the demand of the crowd which gathered before his palace on the 18th of March, that the troops should be sent out of Berlin; but he did not send them away until the next day, and after an attack had been made on them from behind barricades. The ministry was dismissed, and a call was issued for a National Assembly to be chosen by ballot.
THE FRANKFORT CONVENTION.—There was a gathering at Frankfort, of about five hundred Germans, who organized themselves as a provisional parliament under the presidency of Mittermaier (March 31). They resolved to call a National Assembly, to be elected by the German people. The Confederate Diet recognized the authority of the provisional parliament.
THE FRANKFORT PARLIAMENT.—The National Assembly met on May 18, and created a new provisional central government, with the Archduke John of Austria as its head. The Confederate Diet ceased to exist. But the division of parties in the assembly, with respect to the system of government for united Germany, gave rise to long and profitless discussions. Differences of opinion as to the steps to be taken in a war which had sprung up with Denmark, respecting the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, made the strife of factions in the parliament still more bitter.
NEW PRUSSIAN CONSTITUTION.—The Prussian National Assembly met on May 22. A hot contention arose between the moderate and the radical parties. At length the king adjourned the assembly to meet in Brandenburg; but the party of the "Left" (the radical party) protested, and was soon dispersed by force. In Brandenburg a quorum failed to meet. The government framed a constitution with two chambers,—the second to be chosen by universal suffrage,—and called a new parliament to consider it. The new parliament failed to agree with the government, but another parliament met (Aug. 7, 1849). Mutual concessions were made, and the king swore to maintain the new constitution (Feb. 6, 1850).
AUSTRIA: END OF THE FRANKFORT ASSEMBLY.—The Diet of the Austrian Empire was a confused assembly representing different nationalities. Kossuth, an eloquent Hungarian deputy in the lower house, demanded independence for his country. The Slavonic tribes resisted the supremacy of the Magyars. When the emperor took active measures against these (Oct. 6), there was an uprising in Vienna. The city was held by the revolutionists until the 30th, when it was captured by the emperor after much bloodshed. Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his young nephew, Francis Joseph. The Frankfort Assembly debated the question, what relation Austria should have to united Germany. A majority decided (March 27, 1849) that a president should be appointed, whose office should descend in his family, and that he should be styled "Emperor of the Germans." The station was offered to Frederick William of Prussia, but he declined it. The new constitution was not accepted by the more important states. The assembly dwindled away through the withdrawal or resignation of members, and, having adjourned to Stuttgart, was finally dispersed by the Würtemberg government (June 18). Its history was a grievous disappointment of ardent hopes. The Prussians helped the Saxon, Bavarian, and Baden governments, to put down formidable and partially successful popular insurrections in their states.
THE HUNGARIAN REVOLT.—Austria reduced her German provinces to subjection, and early in 1849 the Italian provinces also. But a great contest was to be waged with the Hungarians, who gathered an army of one hundred thousand men, and gained decided advantages over incompetent Austrian generals. But in the end Austria brought together overwhelming forces and was aided by the intervention of Russia, which sent an army into Hungary. The Hungarian general, Gorgey, whom Kossuth and the ministers had made dictator, surrendered at Vilagos (Aug. 13, 1849). Kossuth and other Hungarian patriots fled into Turkey. Hungary was dealt with as conquered territory. The Austrian commander, Haynau, treated the vanquished people with brutal severity. The Hungarian constitution was abolished. The general constitution of Austria was abrogated on Dec. 31, 1851.
CONDITION OF ITALY.—Charles Albert, the king of Piedmont, or Sardinia, disliked the preponderance of the Austrians, and desired to give his people good government, but was disinclined to enter into the schemes of "Young Italy," composed of the ardent republicans of whom Mazzini was the chief. On this account they were exasperated with him. On the contrary, a great part of the "moderates" placed their hope for Italy in the Sardinian king and his house. To one of these, D'Azeglio, a nobleman of high character, who reported to him, in 1845, the danger that revolutionary risings against misrule in Italy would occur, and set forth the necessity for a speedy remedy, the king said, "Make known to these gentlemen, that they must be quiet and not move, for at present nothing can be done; but let them be certain, that, if the occasion presents itself, my life, the life of my sons, my arms, my treasure, my army, all shall be devoted to the cause of Italy." In Tuscany, there was much less oppression than elsewhere, but even there the government was despotic.
LIBERAL POLICY OF PIUS IX.—On the death of Gregory XVI. (1846), Cardinal Mastai Feretti was made Pope, and took the name of Pius IX. He adopted a new and liberal policy. Prisoners for political offenses were set free, an amnesty was proclaimed, and improvements—including railroads—were promised. The "Gregoriani," who were devoted to the old administrative system and to Austrian predominance, were offended. The Roman people generally were full of joy and hope. The extreme republicans were dissatisfied and suspicious. On the occasion of disturbances, the Pope consented to the formation of a National Guard, as the liberal party wished. The consequence was, that Austrian troops were marched into his territory. This movement roused Charles Albert to espouse more actively the Italian cause. In Tuscany the Liberals, with Ricasoli for a leader, drove the Grand Duke to measures of reform. Austrian aggressions were more severely felt in Parma and Modena. In Palermo, there was a rising (Jan. 12) against the unbearable tyranny of Ferdinand II. This was followed by an insurrection in Naples itself. The king was obliged to grant to his people a constitution. The same boon was granted by Pius IX., by the king of Sardinia, and by the Tuscan Grand Duke. Italy, it should be observed, was already on fire with these revolutionary movements prior to the overthrow of the government of Louis Philippe. The earliest popular demonstrations at Milan were on Sept. 5 and 8, 1847.
EVENTS IN ITALY.—The revolt in Vienna and in Hungary in 1848 furnished the long-coveted occasion for the Italians to attack the hated Austrian rule. Lombardy flew to arms, and expelled the Austrian troops. The Venetians set up a provisional government under Daniele Manin, their leader in the insurrection. The king of Sardinia declared war against Austria. A multitude of Italian volunteers rushed to his standard. But there was no national league; his military management lacked skill; and after some successes he was defeated by Radetzky, the Austrian general, at Custozza (July 25). Garibaldi, who had been a sailor, but was now a gallant and adventurous champion of the Italian movement, kept up the contest in the mountains on the north. The Austrians were once more in power. The refusal of the Pope to take part in hostilities against them alienated the liberals. His best minister Rossi, who stood midway between the extreme parties, was assassinated (Nov. 15). From the disorder that reigned at Rome, Pius IX. escaped in the dress of a common priest to Gaeta. The extreme democrats in Tuscany got the upper hand, and set up a provisional government. In Piedmont, Gioberti, the minister, gave way to Ratazzi, who was of the democratic school. But the dream of an Italian confederation was dissipated by the great defeat of Charles Albert by Radetzky at Novara (March 23). The broken-hearted king resigned his crown to his son, Victor Emmanuel. In Rome, the government, after the flight of the Pope, was lodged in an assembly elected by popular suffrage, with triumvirs, of whom Mazzini was the first. The French were not disposed to allow the Austrians to dominate in the peninsula, and sent an army under Oudinot, who captured Rome from the republicans, after a stubborn defense by Garibaldi. A French garrison now occupied the city. The Pope, who had abandoned the idea of political changes in the direction of Italian freedom and unity, was brought back to the Vatican (April, 1850). By the close of the summer of 1849, the Austrian authority was restored, and was exercised with redoubled severity in Venice and Milan. The rulers of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma had before returned to their capitals. They were kept in power by means of Austrian garrisons. The will of Austria was law in the greater part of Italy. Ferdinand II. (called Bomba) maintained his tyranny by the help of Swiss mercenaries and loathsome dungeons. Piedmont was the only spot where constitutional freedom survived. In its youthful monarch and in Garibaldi, the hope of Italy rested. The course of events ultimately proved that both the fire of the republicans and the prudence of more moderate statesmen were requisite for its emancipation.
COUP D'ÉTAT OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.—The Legislative Assembly in France, consisting of one chamber, had in it many monarchists. As the first Napoleon was sustained by the dread of Jacobin rule, so the third Napoleon profited by the dread of the ultra-republicans. It was felt by the trading-class, that the safety of society depended on him. When the French troops were sent to Rome in 1849, the opposition of Ledru-Rollin and his radical party became more furious. But Changarnier and his troops dispersed their procession (June 13), and broke down their barricades. The Paris insurrection was put down, and Ledru-Rollin fled the country. Thiers, Broglie, Molé, Montalembert, and other adherents of the Bourbons, either of the old or of the Orleans branch, now professed to yield to Louis Napoleon their adhesion. His measures for the restraint of the press, the punishment of political offenses, etc., were popular, especially in the provinces. The clergy were favorable to him. The soldiers, in the autumn of 1850, began to shout "Vive I'Empéreur!" Changarnier was removed from the command of the troops (Jan., 1851) when it was learned that his regiments did not join in the cry. Movements of this kind, together with petitions for a revision of the constitution, provoked hostility in the Assembly. The struggle between the president and that body culminated in the "Coup d'État" of December 2, 1851. St. Arnaud had been appointed minister of war, the fidelity of the troops in Paris rendered sure, and all needful preparations made with profound secrecy. The president gave a great party on the night of the first. During the night, the republican and Orleanist leaders—Cavaignac, Changarnier, Lamoricière, Thiers, Victor Hugo, and many others—were surprised in their beds, and imprisoned. They were sent away in custody to different places. Placards were posted, dissolving the Assembly, and declaring Paris in a state of siege; also, an address submitting to the people the question whether there should be a responsible chief of state for ten years. The soldiers fired on gatherings of the people in the streets, killing many innocent persons, for the purpose of forestalling any attempt at resistance. The deputies, as they persisted in their purpose to meet, were surrounded, and placed under arrest. Within a few weeks many thousands of persons suspected of disaffection were exiled or imprisoned. Nearly seven and a half million votes were cast for Napoleon, and only 647,292 against him. The political prisoners were released. Thiers was allowed to return to Paris.
NEW FRENCH EMPIRE.—A new constitution was promulgated (Jan. 14, 1852), resembling that which existed under the consulate. The Legislative Assembly was virtually stripped of power.
One year later, the restoration of the Empire was decreed, and sanctioned by popular vote. The change was at first viewed with alarm by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Francis Joseph made a visit to Berlin, and was received with great honor. The two principal German sovereigns reviewed the troops of Berlin, in front of the bronze statue of Blücher. But Napoleon declared that the Empire meant peace, and the other great powers followed the example of England in recognizing his imperial government.
THE CRIMEAN WAR.—The administration of the French emperor was acceptable to the commercial classes, who prized tranquillity. He erected new edifices in Paris, and made many other improvements, which, however, had an eye to defense against popular insurrection, and involved much hardship for the poor. He married (Jan. 30, 1853) a young Spanish countess, Eugénie Montijo. What did most to give stability to his power, and to raise his repute in Europe, was the union of France with England in the prosecution of the Crimean war. The Emperor Nicholas thought the time propitious for the aggressive ambition of Russia with regard to Turkey. His plan of attack embraced a "provisional" occupation of Constantinople by Russian troops. He had intimated to England that the situation of "the sick man"—meaning the decaying government of Turkey—opened the way for a division of the Turkish Empire between the two powers. Lord Aberdeen was then prime minister in England, and Mr. Gladstone was chancellor of the exchequer. The dispute of Russia with Turkey, which was the ostensible occasion of the war, related to the holy places in Jerusalem, the resort of worshipers of different creeds, and to the privileges accorded by the Sultan to the Greek and Latin Christians respectively. The claim of Nicholas resolved itself into a demand to exercise a sole protectorate over the Christians of the Greek faith in the Turkish Empire. Without formally declaring war his forces crossed the Pruth. Alarm was awakened in Austria, in consequence of the Russian movements in that region. Nicholas had only been able to secure neutrality from Prussia and Austria. Louis Napoleon was anxious for war. Lord Aberdeen was averse to it; but the pressure of Lord Palmerston and his supporters was too strong, and war was declared (March 27, 1854) by England and France in alliance with Turkey. At first the Turks had unexpectedly gained advantages over the Russians, but the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Sinope (Nov. 30, 1853). Approaches of Russia which portend the acquisition of the mouths of the Danube, or of any of the Slavonic districts of European Turkey, can only excite jealousy and apprehension on the side of Austria. Nicholas, on the demand of Francis Joseph, which was seconded by Prussia, evacuated the Danubian principalities, which were provisionally held by Austrian forces. The English and French fleets that were sent into the Baltic did not produce the effect that was anticipated by the allies. The shores of the Black Sea were the main theater of the conflict. The troops of the English and French landed at Eupatoria in the Crimea in September, 1854, and defeated the Russians in the battle of the Alma. There was a second engagement at Balaklava (Oct. 25); and in the battle of Inkermann (Nov. 5) the attempt of the Russians to surprise the British forces met with a defeat. The effort of the allies was directed to the capture of the strong fortress of Sebastopol. St. Arnaud, the French general, had died, and been succeeded by Canrobert. Later, Lord Raglan, the English commander, died. The siege was prolonged. Once the batteries of Malakoff and Redan were attacked by the allies unsuccessfully; but, after a month's bombardment, both were taken by storm (Sept. 8, 1855), and Malakoff, which the French took, was held. The Russians blew up their forts at Sebastopol, and withdrew to the northern part of the fortress. Meantime Nicholas had died (March 2, 1855), and been succeeded by Alexander II.; and Lord Aberdeen had been superseded by Palmerston as head of the English ministry.
PEACE OF PARIS (MARCH 30, 1856)—In the Peace of Paris, Russia was obliged to cede the mouths of the Danube and a small portion of Bessarabia to Moldavia, to limit the number of her ships in the Black Sea, and to engage to establish no arsenals on its coast. The Black Sea was to be open to commerce, but interdicted to vessels of war. Russia gave up the claim to an exclusive protectorate over Christians in Turkey. She surrendered also the fortress of Kars in Turkish Armenia, which she had captured. Wallachia and Moldavia were confirmed in important privileges of self-government, under the Porte. Austria, France, and Great Britain, in a distinct treaty, guaranteed the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire.
NEUTRALITY DECLARATIONS.—The parties to the Treaty of Paris (including Austria and Prussia) united in four declarations on the subject of neutrality, by which privateering was abolished, the neutral flag was made to protect enemy's goods except contraband of war, these goods under an enemy's flag were exempted from capture, and it was ordained that blockades in order to be binding must be effective. The United States declined to concur in this agreement unless the private property of subjects or citizens of a belligerent power (unless it be contraband of war) should be also exempted from seizure by armed vessels of the enemy. This rule, were it adopted, would put private property on the sea on a level with private property on the land, in case of war.
WAR OF FRANCE AND SARDINIA WITH AUSTRIA.—After the contests of 1848-49, Victor Emmanuel II. was looked on by all except the ardent republicans of the school of Mazzini as the champion of Italian independence. He made Azeglio his chief minister, and Cavour his minister of commerce. Various reforms were adopted, especially for the reduction of the power and wealth of ecclesiastics. The rapid progress of administrative changes led Azeglio to withdraw from office. Cavour, his successor, a statesman of broad views and consummate ability, began to plan not only for the Sardinian kingdom, but likewise for all Italy. By his advice, Sardinia joined England and France in the Crimean war. At the Congress of Paris (1856), he spread before the European powers the deplorable misgovernment at Naples and in the other states of Southern Italy. He denounced a plot against the life of Louis Napoleon, which Orsini, a Roman, and a member of a secret society, tried to carry out, but failed (Jan. 14, 1858). Communications and a personal interview between Napoleon and Cavour followed. An alliance was formed, one of the objects of which was the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy. Prince Napoleon, the son of Louis Napoleon's uncle Jerome, was married to Clotilde, the daughter of Victor Emmanuel. Napoleon's ministers were opposed to a war with Austria, and he himself affected to have no intention of that kind. Russia proposed a congress; but Austria refused to admit Sardinia, or to join it herself, unless that power should immediately disarm. Russia was at that moment unfriendly to Austria, which had refused to help the Czar in the Crimean war. Prussia, also, showed a disinclination to interfere. France and Sardinia declared war against Austria, and Napoleon proclaimed that he would free Italy, from the Alps to the Adriatic (May, 1859). As the war began, a revolt broke out in Tuscany. The Tuscan Duke, the Duchess regent of Parma, and the Duke of Modena, had to fly from their capitals. Cavour accepted help from all Italian patriots except the adherents of Mazzini, to whom were imputed schemes of assassination. Garibaldi led the "Riflemen of the Alps." Louis Napoleon commanded the French army in person. The French were victorious at Magenta (June 4), where MacMahon was made a marshal. At the battle of Solferino (June 24), all of the three contending sovereigns were present. The Austrians were vanquished with very heavy losses. At this time Napoleon, unexpectedly to his Italian ally, in a personal interview with Francis Joseph at Villafranca, arranged preliminaries of peace, which provided, to be sure, for the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia, but left Venice and the "Quadrilateral,"—as the district, with its fortifications, east of the Mincio, was called,—under the Austrian rule. It was proposed that an Italian confederation should be formed, with the Pope for its honorary president,—a plan not destined to be realized. The Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena were to be restored, could it be done without a resort to arms. Napoleon was afraid of a long war. Russia was not disposed to suffer him to stir up a revolution in Hungary. Prussia might soon intervene; and this, Austria, too, did not anticipate without anxiety, since Prussia would thereby become predominant in Germany. Cavour, in disgust and indignation at this premature close of the struggle, laid down his office.
FURTHER EXTENSION OF THE SARDINIAN KINGDOM.—Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, and Romagna which belonged to the Pope, by deputies implored Victor Emmanuel to annex them to his kingdom. Plus IX. made the most strenuous opposition. Napoleon refused to use coercion, or to suffer it to be used by others, to carry out the Villafranca arrangements in the duchies. Cavour was recalled to office in 1860; and at his suggestion, made to Napoleon, the communities just named were allowed to dispose of themselves by popular vote. The result was their incorporation in the Sardinian kingdom. By way of compensation to Napoleon, Savoy and Nice were ceded by the Sardinian government to France. The Pope excommunicated all invaders and usurpers of the Papal States, without the mention of names.
ANNEXING OF NAPLES AND SICILY.—The next great event in Italy was the expulsion of Francis II., the tyrant who reigned in Naples and Sicily after the death of Ferdinand II. (1859). Garibaldi, without the consent of the Sardinian government, raised the standard of revolt in Sicily (1860), and conquered the island. The king and Cavour feared that his movement would give control to the republicans, and also bring Sardinia into war with other powers. But, despite this opposition, Garibaldi entered Naples as a victor, and was joined by Mazzini. The Sardinian troops entered the Papal States, which the king had threatened to do unless the guerilla attacks of pontifical troops in the south were suppressed. The French general, Lamoricière, in the service of the pontiff, was defeated at Castelfidardo. Garibaldi, triumphant in the Neapolitan kingdom, met Victor Emmanuel in the Abruzzi, and hailed him as "King of Italy." Naples and Sicily voted to join the kingdom of Sardinia. With the exception of Venice and the Roman Campagna, the whole of Italy was now united under the house of Savoy. On Feb. 18, 1861, the first parliament of united Italy was opened by Cavour. Shortly after, there was a public reconciliation between him and Garibaldi, between whom there had been an estrangement.
In addition to Garibaldi's general and constant dissent from the moderate policy of Cavour, the former was displeased that his soldiers had not been rewarded with higher positions in the Sardinian army than it was practicable or safe to grant to them. Cavour believed that society was on the march towards democracy, but that no republic, at the present, in Italy could be stable. Cavour had his heart set on gaining Rome for the capital of the kingdom, and on establishing "a free church in a free state." He did not live to see the realization of his hopes. His death occurred (May 30, 1861), shortly after the amicable interview with the republican patriot, to which reference has just been made.
"THE SEPTEMBER CONVENTION."—The hope of the national party in Italy was now directed towards the gaining of Venice and Rome. But, as regards Austria, the European powers would not have suffered a breach of the Peace of Villafranca. Louis Napoleon had assumed the part of protector of the Holy See, and a French garrison was stationed at Rome. After Cavour's death, Ricasoli, the head of the ministry, led the constitutional party; and Ratazzi, who succeeded him and had been more in sympathy with the Garibaldians, did not deviate from his predecessor's cautious policy. The relations of the Italian government to France, even obliged the king to interfere to put down a rising, set on foot by Garibaldi, for driving the French out of Rome. Garibaldi was defeated by the Sardinian troops at Aspromonte (Aug. 27, 1862), and taken to Spezzia. Thence he went to Caprera. The liberal party in Europe were incensed with Louis Napoleon. This was one inducement that moved him to enter into an agreement with Victor Emmanuel, by which France engaged to withdraw her troops gradually from Rome, leaving the Pope to form an army of his own; while, on the other hand, the king engaged (Sept. 1864) to prevent any attack on the papal territory. The French minister of foreign affairs said to the Italian minister at Paris, "Naturally the result of all this will be that you will end by going to Rome;" but matters were to be so managed that France should not be held responsible. This was the September Convention. Florence was made the capital of Italy; but it was acknowledged that this was a temporary arrangement, and that, as soon as the progress of events should open the way, the seat of government would be transferred to Rome. After the withdrawal of the French troops in 1866, Garibaldi, with the connivance of the Italian government,—in which Ratazzi, who had been obliged to leave his office, was again the ruling spirit,—once more gathered a force for the capture of Rome (1867); but France interfered, and the advance of Garibaldi was checked at Mentana by French troops. Afterwards Napoleon again placed a French garrison in Rome. Ratazzi, whose scheme of capturing Rome by non-interference was balked, had to lay down his office. The next step towards Italian unity was to be a result of the Austro-Prussian war.
RIVALSHIP OF PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA.—The brief but mighty struggle which secured for Prussia the preponderance in Germany grew immediately out of complications respecting Schleswig-Holstein. It was, however, the fruit of a rivalship which had been gaining in intensity since the times of Frederick the Great. It was the grand triumph of Prussia, after a long succession of defeats and humiliations in the field of diplomacy.
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.—The two duchies of Holstein and Schleswig had long been annexed to the crown of Denmark, whose king, as Duke of Holstein, was a member of the German Confederation. The two duchies, as regards their government, did not stand on the same footing; but the people of Holstein and the German portion of the Schleswig people held that by a treaty in 1460 the two duchies could not be separated. Moreover, the law of succession in the duchies excluded the female line, and when there was a prospect that the male line of the Danish dynasty would die out the Germans wished the duchies to become independent under an Augustenburg prince while the Danes wished to absorb the duchies in Denmark. In 1848 the Germans of Schleswig-Holstein revolted against Frederick VII. The troops of the German confederation assisted them; but the attitude of England and Russia, which favored the Danes, moved Prussia to conclude the armistice of Malmö,—an act that excited the anger of the German National Assembly at Frankfort. After the expiration of the truce, the war, with intermissions, went on, waged by Schleswig-Holstein, alone or with aid from Germany; later in a protocol—an agreement signed in London in 1852 by the Great Powers, in which Austria and Prussia concurred,—the king of Denmark and his heirs were guaranteed in the possession of the duchies. This act, however, was not accepted by the duchies themselves, or by the Diet of the German Confederation; so that the seeds of strife still remained.
PREPONDERANCE OF AUSTRIA.—After the suppression of the revolts of 1848, Austria, whose counsels were guided by the astute minister Schwarzenberg, labored to dwarf and supplant the influence of Prussia. Frederick William IV. of Prussia aimed to bring about a closer union of German states, and called a national parliament to meet at Erfurt. Austria withstood these attempts. The disposition of Prussia to support the resistance in Hesse to the tyranny of its elector, threatened to bring on an armed contest with Austria and its German allies; but the attitude of Russia caused Prussia to desist from its movement. At the conference at Olmütz (1850), Manteuffel, the Prussian minister, yielded every thing to Austria; and subsequently, under the influence of Russia, the German Confederation of 1815 was restored. Prussia took no part with the Western powers in the Crimean war, with which it had no direct concern, and thus did not, like Austria, make herself obnoxious to the Czar.
WILLIAM I: BISMARCK.—On the accession of William I. as regent (Oct. 1857), the Prussian government initiated a more spirited and independent policy in its relations to Austria. It refused to lend active aid to that country in the war with France and Sardinia (1859). The efficient measures of King William for the reorganization and increase of the army encountered constant opposition, year after year, in the assembly, from the liberal party, which did not divine his motives, and saw in them nothing but the usurping of an unconstitutional authority. In 1862 the king made Bismarck minister of foreign affairs, and the virtual head of the administration. This able man had widened his knowledge of European politics by serving as ambassador first at St. Petersburg and then at Paris. Previously he had been allied with the absolutist party of Manteuffel: he was always for "strong government." After 1851, when he was delegate of Prussia at the Federal Diet at Frankfort, he made up his mind to deliver Prussia from the domineering influence of Austria. But he was held in distrust by the Prussian liberals, who saw in him only an energetic supporter of the king in his reform of the army by acts of arbitrary power not warranted by the constitution. In 1863 Francis Joseph summoned a congress of German princes to Frankfort to frame a new German constitution; but as Prussia stood aloof, nothing was accomplished. There was much bitterness between the two states. For the moment, however, attention was diverted by the aspect of affairs in Schleswig-Holstein.
EVENTS LEADING TO WAR.—On March 30, 1863, Frederick VII. of Denmark issued a decree for the separation of Schleswig, and its incorporation in Denmark. The troops of the German Confederacy were sent by the Diet into Holstein. Prussia and Austria, who held that the Danes had broken the Treaty of 1852, announced their agreement to prosecute the war with Denmark as independent powers, apart from the confederation. They persisted in this purpose, and their victories over the Danes compelled Christian IX. to sign a treaty (Oct. 30, 1864) by which he resigned his rights in the duchies in favor of the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia. How should the duchies be disposed of? It was Bismarck's aim to annex them to Prussia, which was sorely in need of seaports. He professed that the war had abrogated the London Treaty of 1852. The prime object of Austria was to prevent Prussia from making this gain. The dispute was hot and threatening; but in the Gastein Convention (Aug. 14, 1865), Lauenburg (which the Danes had also ceded) was sold to Prussia, and the disposition of the duchies was left to be determined later. Meantime the Prussians were to hold Schleswig, and the Austrians Holstein. The Prussians were, moreover, to hold provisionally the port of Kiel. The scheme of Austria was to hand over the debated question to the Diet of the Confederation, where it could command a majority. To this Prussia would not consent, but demanded that the Confederacy should be reconstituted in such a that Prussia, as well as Germany, might have strength in the event of a European war. Bismarck made a secret treaty with Sardinia, which provided that Prussia and Sardinia should act together in case of war with Austria, and that peace should not be made until Venetia had been given up to the kingdom of Italy. When Austria convoked the estates of Holstein Prussia retorted by sending twenty thousand troops into Holstein. The Austrian force, which was inferior, retired. When the Confederation (June 14) passed a motion made by Austria to put the confederate troops, not Austrian or Prussian, on a war footing, the Prussian plenipotentiary protested, and declared the Diet dissolved. He also presented a new constitution as the basis of a new league of states, from which Austria was to be excluded. Prussia issued a proclamation, to the effect that the purpose of the war that was now to begin was the union of Germany, and the establishment of a free parliament of the German nation.
THE AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR.—The Prussian military plans were the work of Von Moltke, chief of the general staff, who was without a superior in military science. They were carried out with astonishing precision and celerity. On June 15 Prussia required Saxony, Hanover, and Hesse to disarm, to remain neutral, and to send delegates to a German parliament. A few hours were given them to decide. They refused the demand, and on the 16th the Prussian forces marched into their lands. On that day they seized the capital of Hesse, and took the elector prisoner. On the 29th they had surrounded King George of Hanover, and he was compelled to surrender with his whole army. The main Austrian army, under Benedek, made up of contingents from the various nations subject to the emperor, with the troops of Saxony, one of his German allies, were gathered in Bohemia. Thither three Prussian armies moved, on different lines, as they were directed by telegraph from Berlin. Several battles occurred. The armies approached one another, but were purposely kept apart. On June 30 King William and Von Moltke left Berlin. On the 2d of July it was determined to attack the Austrians the next day; and word was sent to the crown prince, whose division was not so far that he could not bring up his forces to take part in the combat. In the morning the battle of Sadowa, in which between two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand men were in each of the contending hosts, began. It raged until noon, with no decisive advantage on either side. At two o'clock the division of the crown prince, after a hard march, arrived; and their attack on the flank of the Austrians was the signal for a forward movement along the whole Prussian line. The battle in its course resembled that of Waterloo. The defeat of the Austrians virtually decided the whole contest. Francis Joseph asked France to mediate, but Prussia and Italy refused to consent to the proposal. The Austrian emperor ceded Venice by telegraph to Louis Napoleon. The Austrians had defeated the Italians at Custozza (June 24), and in a naval battle at Lissa. But a great part of the Austrian army it was necessary to transfer to the North.
THE PEACE OF PRAGUE: THE PEACE OF VIENNA.—The Peace of Prague was concluded between Prussia and Austria (Aug. 23, 1866). Austria was excluded from Germany, and gave up her rights in Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia. At the request of Prussia, Venice was ceded to Italy. Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort were incorporated in Prussia. The population of Prussia from about nineteen millions was increased to twenty-three millions five hundred thousand. In the Peace of Vienna (Oct. 3), Austria recognized the kingdom of Italy, to which Venice had been ceded.
NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION.—The South German states remained independent; but the North German Confederation was formed, under the leadership of Prussia, which was to have control of the military forces of its members. In the council of the Confederation, Prussia was to have seventeen votes, and the other states together twenty-six votes. An imperial Diet was established, the members of which were to be elected by general suffrage. Bismarck was made chancelor of the Confederation.
THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE.—The war with Prussia was followed by the political reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian empire on a more liberal basis. Von Beust, who had been a Saxon minister, became minister of foreign affairs (1866), and afterwards president of the ministry and chancellor of the empire. The Hungarian constitution of 1848 was restored, and a separate ministry was constituted for Hungary; while, as regards the army and foreign affairs of both divisions of the empire, an imperial ministry was established. The Cisleithan division, composed of the German and Slavonic provinces, was to have its own ministry and constitution. This conferred on the people and their representatives "rights and privileges of the greatest importance,—equality of all citizens before the law, freedom of the press, right of association and meeting, complete liberty of faith and conscience, the unrestricted right to impose taxes and levy recruits, etc." The reconciliation with Hungary having been effected, Francis Joseph was crowned as King of Hungary at Pesth. Transylvania and Croatia were united with Hungary. Great legal improvements in Austria ensued. The army was re-constituted after the example of the Prussian military system. There was an improvement in financial administration. Marriage by civil contract was authorized; and on subjects connected with marriage, the clergy were deprived of jurisdiction. The control of education, except religious education, was assumed by the state. In case of marriage between Catholics and Protestants, the male children were to be educated according to the faith of the father; the female children, according to that of the mother.
LOUIS NAPOLEON BAFFLED.—The Austro-Prussian war hastened the downfall of Louis Napoleon. The only consolation which the French had for the loss of freedom at home was power and reputation abroad. The astonishing rapidity of the Prussians, and the overwhelming success of their arms, had disconcerted the schemes of the French emperor. The defeat of Austria was so quick and so complete that he could not come in as mediator between the belligerents, and manage to secure the extension of France to its "natural frontiers" on the Rhine. He was baffled by Bismarck's diplomacy, as before he had been outwitted by Cavour; for Napoleon had wished, not a united Italy, but simply a Northern Kingdom. The French felt humiliated at the sight of military achievements parallel to those by which in other days they had disposed of the fate of Prussia herself. The opposing factions grew bolder in their attitude towards the Napoleonic government. The emperor made cautious attempts to secure cessions of territory from Prussia on the Rhine, but was met with a blunt refusal from Bismarck. He then sought to purchase from the king of Holland, Luxemburg, which had formerly belonged to the German Confederation. This attempt was resisted by Prussia, and war seemed imminent; but it was finally settled at the London Conference, that the duchy should be neutral territory, and that the fortress, which had been occupied by the Prussians, should be demolished. Germany was making progress towards a more complete union. A customs parliament, representing all the states, met at Berlin in May, 1868. Before that time, treaties of offensive and defensive alliance had been made between the North German Confederation and Würtemberg, Baden, and Bavaria. They were published on March 17, 1867.
BEGINNING OF THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.—As Louis Napoleon, or those who held sway in his counsels, were bent on war with Prussia, a pretext was easily found. The bad administration of Queen Isabella of Spain, and her personal misconduct, caused insurrections to break out in 1868; and she was obliged to fly to France. A provisional government was established under Gens. Serrano and Prim, and Señor Olozaga. Later (1869) Serrano was made regent. The Cortes in 1870 offered the Spanish crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who belonged to a younger branch of King William's family. The proposal was regarded in France with indignation, as a new step in the upbuilding of Prussian power. King William was required to forbid his relative's candidacy, which he declined to do. The prince, however, of his own accord withdrew. Not satisfied with this issue of the affair, Napoleon insisted that the Prussian king should engage never to support the candidacy of a Hohenzollern prince for the Spanish crown. William, who was at Ems, told the French ambassador, Benedetti, that he could not give a promise of this sort. When the question was again raised he sent an aide-de-camp, declining to discuss the matter further. This act was represented at Paris as an insult to France, and orders were issued to mobilize the army. The king, on his way to Berlin, was met at the Brandenburg station by the crown prince, Von Moltke, Von Roon, the able war minister, and Bismarck. The Confederate Diet assembled July 19, and placed its resources at the disposal of the king. The French declaration of war was received on the same day. Bavaria, Würtemberg, and the South German States, contrary to the unreasonable expectation of Napoleon, allied themselves with Prussia. In a moment all Germany was ablaze. The recollection of the days of the first Napoleon, and of the war of liberation, filled the whole land with patriotic enthusiasm. More than a million of men took the field in defense of the fatherland.
EVENTS TO SEDAN.—At the outset Napoleon tried to modify the plans Marshal Niel had drawn up in 1867 for such an emergency, and which called for three armies. He unwisely attempted to unite all the troops under his own command. Had he been able by a bold initiative to have gained a foothold in South Germany, Italy and Austria would probably have come to his support. But the French army was not in the state of full readiness which had been alleged to exist. The masterly dispositions of Von Moltke, and the swift movements of the Germans, broke up the French programme. The three great divisions of the German army were led by Steinmetz, Prince Frederick Charles, the king's nephew, and the crown prince, Frederick William. They advanced towards the boundary from Treves to Landau. Three victories of the Germans—at Weissenburg (Aug. 4), over Marshal MacMahon at Wörth (Aug. 6), and at Spicheren on the same day—compelled the French army to retreat towards the Moselle. The Baden division was left to besiege Strasburg. The next great battles, of which Gravelotte (Aug. 18) was the most hotly contested, were fought for the purpose of preventing Marshal Bazaine from joining with the main army the forces of MacMahon. Bazaine was defeated, and confined with his immense body of troops in and about the fortress of Metz; and his efforts to break through the German lines were baffled. The Prussian crown prince and the crown prince of Saxony, with their combined armies, proceeded against MacMahon. The defeats of the French had occasioned such wrath at Paris, that the ministry of M. Ollivier was compelled to retire (Aug. 10), and it was not safe for the emperor, who was with MacMahon, to return to the capital. The French general concentrated his forces at Sedan. On Sept. 1 the decisive battle was fought. The French were worsted and surrounded. The Emperor Napoleon yielded his sword to King William. The terms of capitulation were agreed upon by Von Moltke and Gen. Wimpffen (MacMahon being disabled by a wound), while other matters of a civil nature were arranged between Napoleon and Bismarck. The army that was surrendered numbered eighty-two thousand men, with fifty generals and five thousand other officers.
SIEGE OF PARIS: SURRENDER OF METZ.—As soon as the news of Sedan reached Paris, the imperial government fell to pieces. The Empress Eugénie escaped to England. A republic was proclaimed; and a new government was improvised, composed of enemies of the Empire, who belonged to different parties. Trochu was president, and governor of Paris; Jules Favre, a moderate republican, was minister of foreign affairs; and Gambetta, an extreme republican, was minister of the interior. The wish was for peace; but the inexorable demand of the Germans for the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, once parts of Germany, and now asserted to be necessary for its defense against future attack from France, called out a united and indignant spirit of resistance. The defense of Paris was undertaken with extraordinary energy: a large army was collected there, and a great supply of provisions was gathered. The siege of Paris was prosecuted by the Germans with an equally unflinching determination, from Sept. 19, 1870, to Jan. 28, 1871. Repeated sallies of the French troops, although made with much spirit, failed of success. The efforts to break the Prussian lines of connection with Paris, and to compel them by movements from without to raise the siege, were likewise baffled. Gambetta escaped from Paris in a balloon, and at Tours directed in the formation of two armies,—the army of the Loire, and the northern army, both of which were defeated. Strasburg capitulated (Sept. 27); and a month later (Oct. 27) Bazaine surrendered Metz, with three marshals, three thousand officers, and one hundred and seventy-three thousand soldiers. The main army of France was thus lost.
WILLIAM MADE EMPEROR: SURRENDER OF PARIS.—While the siege of Paris was in progress, all the princes of Germany, and the senates of the three free towns, united in the resolution to offer to the President of the Confederation the title of Emperor. Accordingly, on Jan. 18, 1871, King William, in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, was formally proclaimed Emperor of Germany. On the next day Trochu led the final sortie from Paris, of a hundred thousand men, which was repulsed after a severe contest. The provisions in the city were nearly exhausted, and on Jan. 23 an armistice for twenty-one days was signed. Paris surrendered on the 28th; and on the first day of March a national convention at Bordeaux accepted the preliminaries of peace, which included the cession of Alsace and the German part of Lorraine with Metz, and the payment of an indemnity of five thousand million francs. Thiers, who was elected chief of the executive department (Feb. 17), had managed the negotiations with Bismarck at Versailles, and urged the acceptance of them on the convention.
THE GERMAN IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION.—The first Diet of the new German Empire was opened at Berlin on March 21. The constitution of it left to each state the management of its domestic affairs. To the imperial government, with the Federal Council or Bundesrath, the Reichstag, and the emperor were relegated the affairs of common interest. The president of the Council was the imperial chancellor: Bismarck was appointed to that office. The Reichstag was composed of deputies chosen by general suffrage. The chancellor is not responsible to the Reichstag, but to the emperor. Power has not passed from the monarch to the representatives of the people.
CONTEST WITH THE COMMUNISTS: REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION.—After the conditions of peace with the Germans were settled, Paris had to pass through a terrible period of disorder. The communists were bent on establishing municipal independence, or the self-government of the Commune, and a democratic republic. They demanded a federation of the townships, or communes, and distrusted the republicanism of the officials who were in the exercise of power. They are not to be confounded with communists in the socialistic sense: only a small fraction of the communal government, or central committee, were socialists. The party comprised a multitude of fanatical democrats of the lower classes, who were ready for the most violent measures. They had risen several times during the siege of Paris, and had tried to seize on power, but had been put down by the troops. After the surrender of Paris, they gained possession of the northern part of the city, and fortified it. The attempt to get back the cannon which they had seized caused a great communist uprising (March 18, 1871). A new reign of terror began. Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, and many others, were murdered. MacMahon, acting for the Assembly, besieged Paris anew; the Germans being neutral in the forts that were still left, according to the treaty, in their hands. In the fierce struggle for the possession of the city, the principal buildings of Paris were set on fire by the savage communistic mob. The Tuileries, the Hôtel de Ville, and a part of the Palais Royal, with other public edifices, were destroyed. The insurrection was at length suppressed, and severe punishments were inflicted. A large number of the ringleaders were either shot or transported.
COMPLETED UNION OF ITALY.—When the war between Prussia and France broke out, the republicans in Italy were disposed to take possession of Rome at once. Mazzini urged them to this step. The king, however, was bound by the agreement with France to prevent this action; which, moreover, might have divided, instead of uniting, Italy. Mazzini was arrested, and sent to Gaeta. But with the fall of Napoleon, on the declaration of Jules Favre that the "September Convention" (p. 574) was at an end, Victor Emmanuel, professing that he was bound to maintain order in the peninsula, sent his troops into Rome. The Pope lost his temporal dominions, and was limited to the title and prerogatives of the spiritual head of the Catholic Church. The seat of the Italian government was removed to the ancient capital (July 1, 1871). The present king, Umberto I., ascended the throne 1878.
PIUS IX.: THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN.—The long pontificate of Pius IX. was distinguished by important acts having relation to the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1854 he promulgated the declaration of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. He thus determined authoritatively a question which had long been debated in the schools of theology. Ten years later (1864) he issued an Encyclical, together with a Syllabus of Errors, in which, besides the condemnation of opinions in matters of faith which were adjudged heterodox, various alleged encroachments of the civil authority and heretical views respecting the control of the state in reference to marriage, education, etc., were denounced. The views thus condemned are such as the kingdom of Belgium had recognized, and France and some other Roman Catholic countries have shown themselves willing to accept. In 1869 the Oecumenical Council of the Vatican assembled, and after long debate sanctioned the doctrine of papal infallibility; that is, they promulgated the dogma that the Pope, when addressing the whole Church on a subject of morals or theology, is kept by the Spirit of God from enunciating error.
"OLD CATHOLICS."—Most of those who had strenuously endeavored to prevent this action, either because they considered it inexpedient, or disbelieved in the doctrine which it established, acquiesced in the decision of the council. There were some persevering dissentients, however, in Germany especially, of whom Dr. Döllinger was the most distinguished. They organized themselves as a distinct body, under the name of "Old Catholics." They were mostly educated persons; the party had no root among the common people. In France, the most distinguished of them was Père Hyacinthe, a preacher of much popularity and eloquence.
REVOLUTIONS IN SPAIN.—After the revolution attended by the flight of Queen Isabella from Spain (1868), a majority of the Cortes decided for a monarchy, although many desired a republic. In 1870 Amadeus, the second son of the King of Italy, accepted the crown. But he found it impossible to restore order and peace, and Feb. 11, 1873, abdicated the throne. A bloody conflict of factions ensued. Don Carlos, the new Pretender of that name, raised his standard in the North. The Cortes were for a federal republic. Castelar, who as president was at the head of the government, and after him Marshal Serrano, by whom he was superseded, made no decisive progress against the Carlists. Alfonso, the youthful son of Isabella, was proclaimed king by General Martinez Campos; and the army pronounced in his favor (Dec. 29, 1874). Serrano laid down his office. The Carlist revolt was crushed, and Don Carlos driven out of the country. Alfonso died 1885, and was succeeded by a regency during the long minority of his posthumous son, Alfonso XIII. Both Canovas and Sagasta loyally supported the queen-mother, Maria Christina, acting as regent.
STATE OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.—In July, 1875, the Turkish provinces of Herzegovina and Bosnia rebelled against the intolerable oppression of the Sultan's government. The little mountainous kingdom of Montenegro—which for four centuries had preserved its independence through numerous struggles with Turkey, and had a quarrel of its own with that power—lent help to its Slavonian neighbor. Servia did the same. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, a composite of distinct provinces and nationalities, was strongly interested to avert war in that region. The revolt was not put down by the Turks. The three European emperors moved the Sultan to pledge himself to an extensive programme of reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina,—a pledge which there was no intention on his part to fulfill. England gave no aid to the revolt, but strengthened herself in the East by obtaining, through a purchase of shares from the Khedive of Egypt, the control of the Suez Canal (Nov. 25, 1875). Russia, as kinsman of all the Slavonic peoples, and protector of Greek Christians, assumed alone the part of a champion of the maltreated provinces. But England refused to join with Russia, Germany, Austria, and France, in threatening "more effectual"—that is, coercive—measures, in case of the Porte's refusal to pacify the insurgents by carrying out his promises. Great Britain was bent on keeping the Sultan's empire, as being a barrier in the way of Russian ambition and essential to the security of India, from being dismembered, and professed to be swayed by respect for the rights of Turkey as an independent power. A revolt in Bulgaria was crushed by the Turks, who were guilty of such terrible atrocities that the "Bulgarian massacres" shocked all Christendom (1876). In the course of the difficulties just narrated, two revolutions, by which sultans had been dethroned, had taken place in the palace at Constantinople. The ambassadors of the Great Powers, in a conference at Constantinople, agreed in demanding of Turkey a constitution and guaranties for the benefit of the oppressed subjects in the provinces of the Ottoman Empire. This requirement the Porte refused to accept. A subsequent attempt of the same nature met with no better success (1877). Russia allowed its subjects to render effective help to the revolted districts. On the contrary, England was offended by the alleged ambitious schemes of the Muscovites, and advocated longer forbearance with the Sultan; but Lord Derby announced (April 19, 1877) that Turkey had been warned to expect no assistance from England. Nevertheless, the mission of Mr. Layard to Constantinople, and all the other circumstances, emboldened the Turks to refuse compliance with the Czar's demands.
THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.—The Turko-Russian war began in April, 1877. Russia, according to her previous declaration, took up arms alone. The Russian troops crossed the Danube and the Balkan Mountains, and seized on the important Shipka Pass. At first they seemed destined to a speedy triumph. But the Turks under Osman Pasha fought with unexpected valor and success. At length, however, their leader was obliged to surrender his army of forty-four thousand men at Plevna (Dec. 10). Adrianople was occupied by the Russians (Jan. 28). They were thus in the neighborhood of Constantinople. Meantime, after reverses in the East, the Russians had taken Kars, and pushed on to Erzeroum.
TREATY OF SAN STEFANO: THE BERLIN CONFERENCE.—Turkey now appealed to England to mediate; but Russia declined any such intervention, and insisted on treating separately with Turkey. England was now ready to interfere in behalf of the Sultan, and for the safety of Constantinople. Russia hastened to conclude with Turkey the Peace of San Stefano (March 3), the stipulations of which greatly reduced the Turkish power in Europe. Bulgaria was to be governed by a Christian prince, and fifty thousand Russian troops were to occupy it for two years. England concluded (June 4) a secret treaty engaging to protect Turkey in Asia: Cyprus was given up to be occupied by the British. Austria, as well as Great Britain, was anxious to deprive Russia of the advantages which she had naturally expected to reap by the war,—a war in which the other powers had declined to take part. Thus another great war was threatened, about the provisions of the San Stefano treaty. The conflict was averted by the Congress at Berlin (June 13-July 13, 1878), where D'lsraeli—who was then prime minister, and a friend of the anti-Russian policy—represented England. Austria and England were aided by Germany, and the diplomacy of Gortchakoff was thus overborne. Servia and Roumania, as well as Montenegro, were declared independent. Bulgaria was divided into two portions; the southern of which, called East Roumelia, was to be governed by the Sultan directly, but with a separate administration under a Christian governor. To Austria, the military occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which meant the possession of these provinces, was yielded. Thessaly had engaged in an insurrection, and Greece had hoped for an extension of her boundaries; but nothing effectual was done by England to forward this claim. Here Russia, always opposed to the building-up of a strong Greek kingdom, was at one with England. Russia obtained Kars, but her gains were far less than she deemed herself entitled to receive. The other powers, on the contrary, permitted Austria to advance far in the direction of Constantinople. During the war, the hostility of the Magyars (or Hungarians proper) to the Slaves had been ready to break out in the form of direct armed assistance to Turkey. On the other hand, the Slaves in Hungary, and in all the Austrian territories, were with difficulty restrained from enlisting actively in aid of the Russians. The arbitrary dealing of the Berlin Conference with Bosnia and Herzegovina occasioned an armed but ineffectual resistance, in these provinces, to the extension of the Austrian sway over them.
SITUATION OF RUSSIA.—Russia, embittered by Austria's refusal to aid in the Crimean War, had remained neutral in the struggle with Prussia, which ended in the exclusion of Austria from Germany. Russia was now offended with Germany for repaying her neutrality in the Franco-Prussian struggle by helping in the Berlin Conference the schemes of England and Austria. The attempt of Russia to form an alliance with France prompted Bismarck (Sept., 1879) to negotiate a defensive alliance with Austria. The activity of the Nihilists, and the refusal of France (March, 1880) to deliver up Hartmann, charged with an attempt on the life of the Czar, made the French alliance impossible. The sympathy of the Emperor William, after the endeavor made to assassinate Alexander (Feb. 17, 1880), tended to restore cordiality. Russia was embarrassed by these internal troubles. Alexander was murdered by Nihilists (March 13, 1881), and was succeeded by his son, Alexander III., who died after a lingering illness, Nov. 1, 1894. He was succeeded by his son Nicholas II. In 1891 and 1892 Russia was afflicted by famine and cholera.
NIHILISM.—The accession of Alexander II., following on the rigid autocracy of Nicholas, had introduced a more lenient rule. Alexander decreed (March 3, 1861) the emancipation of the serfs, who were also endowed with small possessions in land. The boon thus conferred, along with its advantages, brought with it hardship; for there were ways of oppression still open to the nobles, by which the emancipated class were made grievously to suffer. The great measure served to increase the national agitation which was connected with other causes. There had long been an enthusiastic party of "Slavophils," actuated by a strong race-feeling, and eager for "Panslavism," or a union of Slavonic peoples. It was the people in Russia which moved the court, against its will, to go to war, single-handed, with Turkey, in 1877. In the prosecution of the war, the abuses which were brought to light among officials, civil and military, heightened the indignation which the corrupt "bureaucracy"—the administration by departments, each under its chief—provoked. The failure to gather the harvest of the war, of which Russia was deprived by diplomacy, increased the popular unrest. A party of socialistic democracy, a revolutionary party, had developed itself as early as 1874. The way had been preparing for it for a decade of years. Out of this party came later (1878) the "Terrorists,"—the secret body which sought for a remedy for social and governmental evils by annihilating all existing authority in Church and State. They had begun with the demand of a constitution. The despotic, repressive measures of the government—in 1879 and 1880, sixty thousand persons were sent to Siberia without a trial—were followed by more desperate attempts of Nihilist conspirators upon the lives of the rulers of the land, and of their agents. These culminated in the murder of the Czar.
COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM.—A brief sketch of the various movements thus designated may be here in place. Communism is the name given to the theory that it is desirable to have a community of goods, and a total or partial abolition of private property. Socialism is often used to designate the same system, but is more commonly applied to the doctrine that government should own the land and all the implements of industry. Not a few religious sects of communists, like the Shakers (established in 1780, in the United States), have long existed. The hope of social amelioration by societies of a communistic character has led to a variety of movements for the formation of them on both sides of the Atlantic. Equality, education, deliverance from poverty and from burdensome toil, have been the blessings sought. Prominent leaders in such movements were Saint-Simon (1760-1825), whose ideas produced a strong effect in France; Charles Fourier (1772-1837), by whose influence "phalanxes," as the communities adopting his views were named, were formed in Europe and America; and Robert Owen (1771-1858), whose societies were built up at New Lanark in Scotland, New Harmony in Indiana, and in other places. Since the French Revolution of 1848, these particular attempts of philanthropic socialism have passed out of notice. Shortly after the Reign of Terror, Babeuf attempted (1796) to overthrow the authorities in Paris, and to bring to pass an equal division of property. The course of political struggles in France, in connection with the revolutions in industry and trade, which have occurred since the fall of the first Napoleon, have given rise to a disaffected working-class, or proletariat. The complaint has arisen, that the benefits resulting from political freedom in Europe have come to the middle class,—to tradesmen and manufacturers possessed of capital,—and that the laboring class are deprived of their due share of the profits of industry. One noted expounder of communism in France was Proudhon (1809-1865), who sought to give emphasis to his doctrine by affirming that "property is theft." Louis Blanc, who was a member of the provisional government in France in 1848, both before and after that time was an active promoter of the scheme under which government is to furnish labor on a large scale, and to become the grand employer of the working-class. In Germany, socialism in its later distinctive form, as defined above, has been advocated by a number of well-known writers. Perhaps the ablest of these was Ferdinand Lasalle (1825-1864). Like the other principal socialists, he would clothe the State with a vastly augmented power and responsibility. In this particular, socialism is directly antagonistic to the ideas of democracy which had previously prevailed. Lasalle's doctrine was that the State should lend capital at interest to associations of laborers. This, he thought, would be the first step in their emancipation. Karl Marx would go much farther. He would transfer to the State all capital and all means of production. He would, as he professes, "overthrow all the existing arrangements of society." With property, inheritance is to be abolished; labor is to be made compulsory; all means of transport are to be in the hands of the State, and so forth. The International Working Men's Association—popularly called "the International"—was organized in London in 1864. It has held congresses in Geneva, and in other cities. It entered upon the most destructive schemes of social agitation and revolution. But the society was divided in 1872, on the expulsion of Bakunin, a Russian Nihilist. A faction of the most violent class continued its activity for a while, and stirred up risings in several towns in Spain in 1873, in imitation of the insurrections in Paris in 1871. Different shades of socialistic theory have been advocated; from the "Christian Socialism" which aims at such objects as the creation of cooperative associations in the working-class, to the fanatics who would sweep away existing institutions by violence, and who resort to the use of dynamite as a means of inspiring terror.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION SINCE 1871.—Thiers had wonderful success in providing for the payment of the German indemnity. His term of office was prolonged (Aug. 31, 1871) for three years, with the title of President. Thiers had cooperated with MacMahon in crushing the commune, and in wholesome measures for the preservation of order. An adverse vote in the Assembly (May 24, 1873) caused his resignation. This was effected by a combination of the monarchical parties. MacMahon, his successor, took a very conservative position. The monarchists united to restore the Count of Chambord to the throne as Henry V., but the scheme failed. In February, 1875, a new constitution, of a conservative republican cast, was established, which provided for a president and a cabinet, a senate, and a chamber of deputies. The legitimists, Orleanists, and imperialists united with the president in his reactionary, anti-republican policy. The whole clerical party were on that side. The republicans were divided among themselves, the most radical group being under the leadership of Gambetta. The danger to the republic compelled a common policy. One of the great subjects of controversy related to public education, in the management of which the Church and the clergy desired to retain and extend their influence and control. To secularize education, was a main aim of the body of the republicans. The success of the republicans, against extraordinary efforts made to defeat them, in the elections of 1877, at last prevailed on the marshal-president to accept the verdict of the country; and late in the year a republican cabinet was formed. The measures of Jules Ferry and his supporters, for taking the business of instruction out of the hands of ecclesiastics and of the clerical orders, although most earnestly resisted by Bishop Dupanloup and the whole clerical party, and opposed by a section of the republicans led by Jules Simon, were, after heated contention, adopted, and were completely carried out (1880). The death of Thiers (Sept., 1877) did not weaken the party of which he was the most honored leader. The death of the young Prince Louis Napoleon (1879) in South Africa, where he was serving, under the British, against the Zulus, was an almost fatal blow to the hopes of the Bonapartist faction. The more recent death of Count Chambord (1883) was followed by the recognition, on the part of the legitimists, of the Count of Paris, of the Orleans house, as the next heir to the throne. A manifesto of Prince Jerome Napoleon (1883), after the death of the young Prince Napoleon, aroused an agitation against all pretenders to the throne,—in particular, against the Orleanists; which led, after protracted debates, to the forced retirement of all the princes of this family from active service in the French army. In November, 1881, Gambetta became the head of the cabinet; but the opposition to his policy within the republican ranks was stronger than had been anticipated. After a short time he laid down his office. He died Dec. 31, 1882. Jules Grévy (first elected Jan. 30, 1879) was re-elected president Dec. 28, 1885. He was forced to resign in 1887 because his son-in-law was implicated in corrupt transactions. His successor was Sadi Carnot.
FRENCH CONQUESTS ABROAD.—The failure of France, in the Oriental difficulties, to gain the power which she desired, impelled her to build up colonial interests and settlements. Partly to punish marauding tribes, in 1881, an expedition was sent against Tunis; and the Bey was forced to accept a protectorate of the French over his dominion. Thus the French enlarged their power in Africa. This proceeding gave great offense to England, Italy, and the Turkish Sultan. On the ground of a treaty of 1841, a French admiral demanded the submission of the north-west coast of Madagascar to a French protectorate; and when this demand was refused, he bombarded and captured the second city in the island, Tamatave (1883). The efforts of France to gain control over Tonquin and the adjacent territory in China attracted still more attention. Tonquin is the most populous province of the kingdom of Anam, of which it formed a part after 1802. Over this kingdom, China claimed the rights of a suzerain; which the French refused to acknowledge. In 1862, after a war lasting for almost four years, Napoleon III. obtained from Anam, by the treaty of Saigun, the provinces called Cochin-China. In 1874 the French Republic extorted from King Tuduc of Anam a treaty by which his foreign policy was placed under the direction of France. Against this treaty, China protested. In 1882 the French commander Rivière seized the city of Hanoi. The "Black Flags," a body of free-lances or pirates, whose leader had been one of the Chinese rebels, fought against the French; but it soon appeared that both the king of Anam and the government of China were in league with his hostile force. Two years later a treaty was signed bringing Tonkin almost directly under French rule and reëstablishing the protectorate in Anam.
THE CONFLICT OF PRUSSIA AND THE VATICAN.—The Roman Catholic Church in Germany is recognized as a legal institution. Its revenues are received from the state, which, in turn, exercises a supervision over the education of its clergy. In Prussia, especially under Frederick William IV., large privileges were granted by law to the Catholic body. The proceedings of the Vatican Council awakened in Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the apprehension that the decree of papal infallibility might give rise to conflict between the authorities of the Church and of the State. Bismarck considered that the "ultramontane" party in the Church involved danger to the newly created German Empire. The Prussian government resisted the attempt of the Church, in 1871, to remove from office Catholic teachers who refused to subscribe to the Vatican dogma of papal infallibility. In other words, the government recognized and undertook to protect the "Old Catholics." The contest with the clerical or ultramontane party went on; and before the end of the year, the Catholic branch of the Prussian Ministry of Worship and Instruction was abolished. In a debate in 1872, Bismarck said, "Of this be sure, that neither in Church nor in State are we on the way to Canossa." His policy met with a determined resistance from Pius IX. The Jesuits were expelled from the German Empire. This law was afterwards construed to include other orders.
THE FALK LAWS: CONTINUED CONFLICT.—The laws proposed by the Prussian minister of worship, Falk, required that candidates for the clerical office in the Catholic Church should have a training in the gymnasium and university, and that every ecclesiastical appointment should be sanctioned by the civil authorities. They provided for a royal court for the settlement of ecclesiastical questions. These laws were passed in 1873. In 1875 civil marriage was made obligatory in the empire. These measures were stoutly resisted by "the Center," or the clerical party, in the Prussian Parliament, and in the Reichstag. They were declared by the Pope to be invalid, and Roman Catholics were forbidden to obey them. Other enactments, one of which forbade all payments to the bishops and clergy unless they should sign a promise to obey the laws of the state, were adopted by Prussia. Refractory bishops and priests were punished in various ways. The result was that the Roman Catholic party, led by Windhorst, ex-minister of Hanover, in opposition to Bismarck's measures, was consolidated. The struggle extended beyond the bounds of Prussia: it was Bavaria, a Catholic state, which proposed the law requiring civil marriage. After the accession of Leo XIII., there was on both sides an increased disposition to find terms of peace by which the numerous vacancies in Catholic clerical offices could be filled. The need which Bismarck felt of the support of "the Center" for his financial measures favored this result. Falk resigned (July 13, 1879), he being personally odious to the Roman party. After long debates, a bill was passed (Jan. 1, 1882) giving to the king and his ministers discretionary powers, which opened the way for filling the vacant places. Still, in the great festival at the completion of the Cologne Cathedral (Oct. 15), the clerical party stood aloof. But the mutual friendly approaches of the chancelor and his ultramontane opponents continued. Diplomatic correspondence was opened with the Vatican. Some of the harsher features of the anti-papal legislation were revoked.
BISMARCK AND SOCIALISM.—One motive in this modification of the chancelor's policy was the rapid progress of socialism. At first, while Bismarck was engaged in a struggle with the liberals, who impeded his plans in the Prussian Parliament, he had willingly availed himself of the support of Lasalle and his socialistic followers. But after the war with France, the party of the "Social Democrats" became more and more numerous and formidable. It was not, however, until a second attempt was made on the emperor's life, that Bismarck was able to carry, against the combination of parties, his measures giving to the government extraordinary powers for the stifling of socialistic agitation (1879). The law for the suppression of socialistic meetings, newspapers, etc., was rigorously enforced.
THE "PARTICULARISTS."—Bismarck was, moreover, obliged to contend with the "Particularists," who were hostile to the Empire, and with a large number besides them, who were opposed to a greater degree of imperial centralization at the expense of the power of the separate states. Unable to obtain for the imperial government the control over the German railroad system, he devised a plan (1879) by which Prussia would eventually control three-quarters of the railroads of Germany. An imperial code of laws was adopted (1877); but, from jealousy of Prussia, the seat of the supreme court of appeal was fixed at Leipsic. In his economical and financial measures, the chancelor was often charged with the exercise of arbitrary power. Free, representative government, according to the English system, did not accord with his idea of the Prussian monarchy, and with the character of the new empire, the unity of which he was naturally anxious to fortify. By his alliance with Austria in 1879, he placed Germany in a situation to resist Russia and France, in case Russia, aggrieved by the action of Germany at the Berlin Conference (1878), should join hands with France in acts of hostility against the German empire. In 1888 William I. died and was succeeded by his son, Frederick III., who held the sovereignty but a few months, dying June 15, 1888. His son, William II., succeeded him.
THE BRITISH SWAY IN INDIA.—British sway by degrees extended itself over India. The fall of the Mogul empire left the country in a state of anarchy. Strife arose with one tribe after another, until the authority of England came to be acknowledged as far north as the Himalayas. The English advance was made with the help of native auxiliaries, and could not have been made without it. It was quite as much an internal revolution as a foreign conquest. As the British enlarged their dominion, and came into conflict with the French, the appetite for supremacy grew. Under the rule of the Marquis of Wellesley (1798-1805), partly through the victories of Sir Arthur Wellesley (afterwards the Duke of Wellington), "the policy of intervention and annexation" was pursued with brilliant success. The Burmese were conquered, and parts of their territory annexed, in 1826, 1852, and 1885. The effort always was to secure a quiet frontier. In 1843 a war with Scinde resulted in its absorption in British territory. In 1849 the annexation of Punjab followed, a British protectorate having been found insufficient. The misgovernment of the native princes in Oude led to the assumption of the government of that province by the English in 1856.
THE INDIAN MUTINY.—There was hostility to British rule among the Mohammedans in India, and distrust among the Hindoos. The latter acquired a fanatical belief that the English, who had abolished the burning of widows, and even legalized their marriage, meant to force the people to lose caste by driving them to sacrilegious practices. The report that cartridges had been served out which had been lubricated with the fat of the swine, abhorred by Moslems, and of the cow, venerated by the Hindoos, stirred up a revolt among the native Sepoy troops (1857). The insurrection spread, and was attended with savage cruelties. There was a frightful massacre of women and children at Cawnpore, before General Havelock could arrive for its relief. The English, who were besieged in Lucknow, after terrible suffering, were relieved by the opportune coming of this gallant soldier. All the English residents in Delhi, who could not escape into the jungle, were murdered. The weak old king placed himself at the head of the rebellion. Delhi was recaptured by the British, and the conquest completed by Sir Colin Campbell (March 22, 1858). Oude was subdued. Gradually the rebellion was crushed, and merciless severity was exercised by the conquerors upon those most actively concerned in it. One consequence of the revolt was the entire transference of the government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. The measure was introduced into Parliament by Lord Palmerston (1858). Under the ministry of Disraeli, and on his motion, the Queen added to her titles that of "Empress of India" (1877).
BRITISH WARS WITH THE AFGHANS.—In the last century Ahmed Khan, the ruler of Afghanistan, extended his dominion as far as Delhi. But he died in 1773, and his son Timour changed the seat of government from Candahar to Cabul. In 1838 the English declared war against Dost Mohammed, one of the three rulers of the country, whose seat of power was in this city. The British attack was successful; but insurrections broke out (1841), and they agreed to evacuate the country. The whole British army, which had to pass through the Kurd-Cabul Pass, was destroyed by cold and hunger, and by the harassing attacks of the mountaineers (1842). It numbered forty-five hundred fighting men and twelve thousand five hundred camp-followers. Another British army, under Gen. Pollock, forced the Khyber Pass, and took vengeance on Cabul. In 1855 Dost Mohammed, now an ally of the English, drove the Persians out of Herat, which, as "the key of India," the British were anxious to protect against ambitious schemes of Russia. In 1863 he took Herat from Ahmed, the sultan there, who was considered a tool of Persia and of Russia. Dost Mohammed died soon after, and was succeeded by his son Sher Ali Khan. After the acquisition of Quetta by the English, he began to side with the Russians. His intrigues with them, and his refusal to receive a British embassy, brought on the second Afghan war of the British (1878-81). The ameer died (Feb. 21, 1879); the Afghans were defeated by Gen. Roberts, who took Cabul, and installed as ameer Abdurrahman Khan (1880). The English then decided to evacuate the territory. On their march they were attacked by Ayub Khan of Herat. Later he was defeated by Roberts, and driven back to that place. The Gladstone ministry had succeeded the ministry of Disraeli, who had been anxious to establish a "scientific frontier" between Afghanistan and the Czar's territories,—such a frontier as would secure a "neutral zone" between them and India, to serve as a barrier against Russian invasion.
RUSSIA AND AFGHANISTAN.—The gradual approaches of Russia in the direction of Herat have been on two lines. The one is the line south-easterly from the Caspian. She gained a lodgment in 1869 at Krasnovodsk on the eastern shore of that sea. In 1880 Geopteke and Askabat were taken. The other line of aggressive approach is south-westerly from the neighborhood of the Oxus. On this line, partly from displeasure at the English occupation of Egypt, and in pursuance of the policy, adopted especially since the Berlin Conference (1878), to advance towards Herat, the Russians suddenly seized Merv, an oasis extremely important from a military point of view, over which Persia claimed a certain suzerainty. The Russians occupied it in force, under Gen. Komaroff (March 16, 1884). Subsequently England and Russia agreed to ascertain and fix the northern boundary of Afghanistan. The occupation of Penjdeh by the Afghans, followed by the advance of Komaroff,—of which the British complained as an aggression,—brought the two countries to the verge of war (1885).
THE WESTERN POWERS AND EGYPT.—"The Oriental question"—the question relating to Turkey and its dependencies—constantly took on new phases, and presented to the powers of Europe fresh difficulties and dangers of conflict. The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, was a friend and admirer of Napoleon III. and of the French. He succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan repeated concessions, which reduced his dependence on Turkey to little more than an obligation to pay an annual tribute, together with certain marks of respect and honor. His conflicts with lands on the south, Dafour and Abyssinia, his extravagant outlays in public works of internal improvement, and the enormous interest paid to foreign capitalists for their loans, involved him in the utmost financial embarrassment. This furnished the occasion to the Western powers, in particular to England and France, to intermeddle still more in Egyptian affairs. The Khedive sold to the British Government his shares in the Suez Canal, and gave into the hands of the English and French (1878) the control of the financial administration of the country. This sort of dependence was repugnant to both the Khedive and the Egyptian people. The native officers were pushed into the background. The most lucrative stations were filled by foreigners, and the weight of taxation was almost intolerable. The attempt to throw off this yoke only resulted in the deposition of Ismail by the Sultan, on the demand of the two Western powers. His weak son, Tewfik Pasha, took his place. The control of the finances remained in foreign hands. The result of the discontent of the people, and of the disaffection of the Egyptian officers, was a revolt led by Arabi Pasha, a military officer (1881). The Khedive complied with the demands of the insurgents: their chief was made minister of war. The Western powers were bent on suppressing this movement, and, in addition to threats and diplomatic measures, sent their fleets to Egypt. A revolt broke out in Alexandria, in which the English consul was wounded and many Europeans were slain (June, 1882). The city was filled with terror, and all trade was suspended. The English fleet bombarded the city, and set it on fire. Arabi withdrew his troops to Cairo. He was now deposed by the Khedive, and declared a rebel. His troops showed little spirit. The fortifications of Tel-el-Kebir were taken by the English general, Sir Garnet Wolseley, almost without resistance. Aboukir, Damietta, and Cairo surrendered, and the Egyptian leader, Arabi, was captured and banished. From that time Egypt fell into a condition of helpless dependence on England. France found herself without the influence there which she had always coveted since the days of the first Napoleon. The system of administration in Egypt was now organized by the English, through Lord Dufferin. Great complaint was made against them by the other powers, for not taking sufficient precautions to prevent the introduction of the cholera from India. The principal troubles of the English grew out of the invasion of the false prophet called El Mahdi, who gathered to himself a host of followers in the Soudan, partly instigated by Moslem fanaticism, but largely impelled by their hatred of the Egyptian government established over that region. The people of the Soudan complained bitterly of the oppressive Egyptian officers. The slave-dealers there were exasperated at the prohibition of their traffic, on which England had insisted. In the course of the conflict with El Mahdi, Hicks Pasha, an English officer in the service of the Khedive, was defeated and slain, and his force cut to pieces, near El Obeid (Nov. 3, 4, and 5, 1883). There was great fear now for the province of Sennaar and especially for the city of Khartoum, where there were many Europeans. Mr. Gladstone, and the English ministry of which he was the head, were not disposed to hold the Soudan, but desired to give it up as soon as the garrisons could be rescued and brought away. To this policy the Khedive was opposed. The project of a military interference in the Soudan by the Sultan, the English took care to prevent by attaching to it impossible conditions. On the Red Sea, Osman Digna, a partisan of the Mahdi, made repeated attacks upon Suakim, the base of the operations of Baker Pasha, another former English officer, now become general of the Egyptian army. On account of the cowardice of the Egyptian troops, Baker was defeated with heavy loss (Feb. 4, 1884). The British troops from Cairo under Graham had better success; and Osman Digna was vanquished, and driven into the mountains. The English government adopted the extraordinary measure of sending General Gordon to Khartoum; his errand being to pacify the tribes of the Soudan, to provide for the deliverance of the garrisons, and to arrange terms of accommodation with El Mahdi. This last it was found impossible to accomplish. Berber was captured by the enemy, and garrison and male population were slaughtered. Gordon was shut up in Khartoum. The peculiar financial situation obliged the English ministry to hold a conference of the great powers (June 28, 1885) at London. Lord Granville insisted that only financial points, and not the general Egyptian question, should be considered, which did not accord with the views of the other powers, and the conference adjourned without effecting anything. The perilous situation of Gordon, and the feeling in England on this account, obliged the government to send out General Wolseley with a large force to Egypt; but before aid could be given Gordon, Khartoum, was betrayed, and he was slain. The course of England respecting Egypt had left her isolated as regards the other European powers, and had awakened much disaffection in England. It was the policy of the Gladstone ministry in relation to Egypt, even more than complaints growing out of their conduct in the troubles with Russia, that obliged them to resign, and to give place to the Tory cabinet of Lord Salisbury. Upon the death of Tewfik (Jan. 7, 1892) his son, Abbas Pasha, became khedive.
GREAT BRITAIN AND CANADA.—On the cession of Canada to Great Britain (1763), the French inhabitants of Lower Canada were secured in the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and in the possession of equal rights with English settlers. "The Quebec Act" of 1774 made Canada one royal government, and brought in the English criminal code with trial by jury. During the Revolution, many loyalists emigrated to Upper Canada. A strong desire arose for a repeal of the "Quebec Act." In 1791, under Pitt, the two parts of Canada were made separate provinces. A constitution was granted, which provided for an elective legislature for each. The governors, the executive councils, and the legislative councils were to be appointed by the Crown. The governments were still subject to the Colonial Office in London. A spirit of opposition between the two provinces increased. Upper Canada, under English law, grew in numbers and prosperity; but the growth of population in Lower Canada was much more rapid. Here there was an antagonism between the Assembly and the English governors. There was an open rebellion in 1837, which spread into Upper Canada. The two Canadas were united in 1841; the executive department became responsible, as in England, to the popular branch of the legislature; and under the liberal and enlightened administration of Lord Elgin (1847-54), a better feeling arose. He was obliged, however, to suppress a mob of the conservatives, or "loyalists" (1849), who were hostile to the extension of a general amnesty to former rebels. In 1856 the Upper House was made elective. In 1857 Ottawa was made the seat of government. In 1867 the Dominion of Canada was constituted. It was at first a federal union of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Canadas; Upper Canada receiving the name of Ontario, and Lower Canada being named Quebec. Manitoba, formed out of a part of Hudson Bay Territory, was admitted to the Dominion in 1870, and British Columbia in 1871. Prince Edward Island was admitted in 1873; and the same year the territories were received by transfer from the Hudson Bay Company. The Dominion has a Senate and a House of Commons. The authority of the Crown is represented by the governor-general and the council. Legislation is subject to a veto from the sovereign. Each province has its local government, but whatever powers are not expressly reserved to the several provinces are granted to the General Government,—a provision the reverse of that found in the Constitution of the United States, which the Canadian system in various features resembles.
In the Peace of Utrecht (1713), France gave up its claim to Nova Scotia: the Peace of Paris (1763) surrendered to Great Britain New Brunswick, and Cape Breton and Prince Edward islands. These are known at present as the maritime provinces. When the American War of Revolution began, thousands of loyalists emigrated to Nova Scotia, as well as to Upper Canada, from whom many of the present inhabitants are descended. The island of Vancouver, on the western coast of British Columbia, was surrendered to the navigator of this name by Quadra, a Spanish commander, in 1792. In 1843 a trading-post was established at Victoria by the Hudson Bay Company. The island forms politically a part of British Columbia. The Government of the Dominion, when British Columbia was received, engaged to construct a railway to the Pacific across British North America. England acquired a title to Newfoundland in 1713. It first received a constitution in 1832. The government was made responsible to the Assembly in 1852.
GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRALIA.—Australia, which covers an area of three million square miles, when it was first visited by Europeans was found to be inhabited by native tribes of the Papuan, Melanesian, or Australasian race, of whom about eighty thousand now remain. In the seventeenth century, various points along its coasts were touched by European voyagers, especially by the Dutch. The discoveries of Captain Cook (1769 to 1777) had an important influence in leading to settlements on this island-continent. New South Wales, a name given by Cook, is the oldest of the English provinces in Australia. Not Botany Bay, which he had selected for a settlement, but Port Jackson, was made a penal station (1788) for convicts from England. This place, however, continued to be erroneously called Botany Bay. The principal harbor was named Sydney Cove. In 1803 Van Dieman's Land, now called Tasmania, was first occupied. Thus the beginnings of colonization in Australia were made by the dregs of English society. The convicts labored for their own support, and, when their terms had expired, sometimes received as a gift small farms, and implements with which to till them. The character of the settlement, and the management of it, became much more humane after 1810, when Macquarie became governor. Free colonists, English and Scotch, came and joined it. The discovery of the upland pastures beyond the Blue Mountains, which were remarkably adapted to sheep, made an epoch in the history of the colony. Spanish merino sheep were introduced: wool became the chief staple; the production of it, especially after the invention of the combing-machine, became very profitable, and free emigrants poured in. The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in England. Western Australia began to be settled in 1829, but did not thrive. New colonies continued to be formed in Eastern Australia. South Australia was made prosperous by copper-mines. Victoria, which became a distinct province in 1851, owes its growth to gold mines. Melbourne, its chief town, was planted in 1837. The first British governors at Sydney were military officers, ruling with despotic authority. Representative institutions were gradually formed in the different provinces. The constitutions were framed on the model of the home government; but in Victoria and Tasmania the Upper House was made elective. After long conflicts with the home government, the Australian colonies escaped from the misfortune of being places to which convicts were transported. The discovery of gold in New South Wales and Victoria was made in 1851, and caused at once an immense influx of immigrants. Next to gold, the most important article of export has been wool. Wheat and copper have been exported in large quantities. The breeding of cattle has been a profitable employment in these communities.
NEW ZEALAND.—In 1838 the first regular and permanent settlement was made in New Zealand. Wellington was founded in the next year. New Zealand, with South Island and North Island, became a colony independent of Australia in 1841.
ENGLAND AND IRELAND.—The disaffection of the Irish, and their antipathy to English rule, broke out in different forms, as circumstances changed. For a long time the demand was for "Catholic emancipation." This was granted (p. 558); but most of the English concessions were made under such a pressure, and in appearance so grudgingly, that little was accomplished by them in placating Irish hostility. The outcry against tithes for the support of the Protestant Established Church was to a great extent quieted in 1838, when the odious features of this tax were removed. The Act disestablishing the Irish Protestant Church, carried by Mr. Gladstone in 1869, and put in execution in 1871, took away one of the great grievances of which the Irish nation had to complain. The repeal of the legislative union of England and Ireland was the watchword of O'Connell and his followers. In one form or another, the demand for local self-government or independence, which has been more lately urged under the name of "home rule," has been kept up with little intermission. It is about the special question of land reform that the most bitter conflicts have centered. The ownership of a great part of the land in Ireland by a few persons: the fact that great obstacles and great expenses—difficulties of late somewhat lightened—have existed in the way of the transference of land if any one had the means to purchase it: the circumstances that the owners have generally been, not residents, but absent landlords; that, in cases of dispute with tenants, the laws were for a long period framed in their interest; that the management of estates was left to agents or middle-men; that multitudes of tenants, whose holdings were small, could glean a bare subsistence from the soil, were doomed to famine if the potato-crop failed, and, when unable to pay the rent, were liable to "eviction," that is, to be turned out of doors, with their families, to perish,—these have been causes sufficient to give rise to endless disputes and conflicts. Add to these facts the inbred hostility arising from differences of race and religion; the memory, on the part of the Irish, of centuries of misgovernment, and the feeling that the lands held by sufferance were wrested from their ancestors by force,—and the animosity manifested in revolts and outrages is easily explained. The English government, in a series of measures,—in connection with which, acts of coercion for preventing and punishing violence have been passed,—undertook to lessen the evils that exist, and to produce a better state of feeling. The Encumbered Estates Court was established to render more easy the transfer of lands. This Act, and the Land Act passed the same year (1860), although well meant, failed to improve the situation of the tenants. Mr. Gladstone's great measure of disestablishment has been referred to. His second great reform measure was the Land Law of 1870, the effect of which was to make the landlord pay damages to the evicted tenant, to compensate him for improvements which he had made, etc. One object of this Act was to create a body of peasant proprietors in Ireland. Additional Acts, in 1880, were designed to assist tenants to purchase their holdings. The hopes as to the practical benefit to follow the Act of 1870 were disappointed. In 1877, 1878, and 1879, there was a partial failure of the crops. The Fenian movement, designed to secure Irish independence by force, was organized in the United States, 1857. By uniting with similar Irish brotherhoods, it extended itself in Great Britain as well as America, collected large funds, and, 1866, made ineffectual attempts to invade Canada. An armed rising in Ireland shortly after, under Fenian leadership, was suppressed. The national agitation consequent on these proceedings in Ireland, issued in the organization, 1870, of the Home Rule party, with Mr. Isaac Butt a leading promoter. The object was to secure an Irish Parliament for Irish affairs, and for the control of Irish resources; the Imperial Parliament being left to deal with imperial affairs. In this period (about 1874) Mr. Parnell grew to be conspicuous in politics. He became the leader of the Home Rule members of the House of Commons, who sought, by obstructing the progress of business, to compel the English government to withdraw its measures of coercion, and to legislate in accordance with the views of himself and his associates. The "obstructionists," by joining the Tories, effected the retirement of the Gladstone Cabinet (1885). In Ireland a system of "boycotting" was adopted for the punishment of landlords guilty of evicting tenants. This led to deeds of violence and blood. Parnell died in 1891. and Justin McCarthy became the leader of the Irish cause in Parliament. A Gladstone Cabinet again came into power in 1892, with an avowed object of securing Home Rule for Ireland.
END OF THE FEDERAL PARTY.—The end of the war with Great Britain (1812-15) was marked by the extinction of the Federal party. But the Republicans, the opposing party, were now equally zealous for the perpetuity of the Union, and were quite ready to act on a liberal construction of the Constitution with respect to the powers conferred on the General Government. This had been shown in the purchase of Louisiana: it was further exemplified in 1816 in the establishment of a national bank, and in the enactment of a protective tariff. Then, and until 1832, presidential candidates were nominated by Congressional "caucuses." James Monroe (1817-25) received the votes of all of the States but three. The absence of party division has caused his time to be designated as "the era of good feeling."
PURCHASE OF FLORIDA.—Slaves in Georgia and Alabama frequently escaped from their masters, and fled for shelter to the swamps of Florida. The Creek and the Seminole Indians were always disposed to aid them. In 1817 General Andrew Jackson was appointed to conduct an expedition against the Seminoles. He came into conflict with the Spanish authorities in Florida, where he seized Spanish forts, and built a fort of his own. Finally, in 1819, the Floridas were purchased of Spain for five million dollars, and the United States gave up its claim to the extensive territory west of the Sabine River, which was known afterwards as Texas. This became a part of Mexico two years later.
SLAVERY: THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.—In 1820 a sectional struggle arose in Congress, on the question of the admission of Missouri as a State with a constitution permitting slavery. The slave-trade had been carried on by the States separately, before the National Constitution was formed. It was abolished by Congress in 1808, the earliest date allowed by the Constitution for the power to abolish it to be exercised. The principal founders of the government, both in the North and South, considered slavery an evil, and looked forward to its gradual extinction. In the North, where the slaves were less numerous, laws for gradual emancipation were early passed. But the rapid increase of slaves in the South, the growing demand for cotton, and the stimulus given to the production of it by the cotton-gin, made the prospect of emancipation by legislative action less probable as time advanced. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1811; and the fallacious hope was entertained by many, that the negroes might be carried back to the Liberian settlement on the African coast. The extension of slavery in the territory north-west of the Ohio had been prevented by the Congressional ordinance of 1787. When the question of the admission of Missouri to the Union came up, the members of Congress from the North and the members from the South were in hostile array on the point, and a dangerous excitement was kindled. By the exertions of Henry Clay, the "Missouri Compromise" was adopted, by which the new State was admitted with slavery in it; but, as a kind of equivalent, slavery was prohibited forever in all the remaining territory of the United States north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern boundary of Missouri.
THE "MONROE DOCTRINE."—When the "Holy Alliance" was engaged in its crusade against liberty in Europe, it was thought that they might attempt to conquer for Spain the revolted South American republics. Canning suggested to the American minister in England, that it would be well for the United States to take action against such a scheme. President Monroe, in his annual message in 1823, said that we should consider an attempt of the allied powers to extend their system in this country, or any interference on their part for the purpose of controlling the destiny of the American States, as unfriendly action towards the United States. This is the "Monroe Doctrine." An additional statement in disapproval of future colonization on the American continents by European powers was made in the same message. This second statement was never sanctioned by the House of Representatives. It is vague, and was probably meant to exclude indirect attempts to overthrow the liberty of the new American republics. The only thing which the "Monroe Doctrine" really contains is the intimation on the part of the United States of a right to resist attempts of European powers to alter the constitutions of American communities.
The true origin and intent of the "Monroe Doctrine" are often
misunderstood. They are set forth in Woolsey's International
Law, and in his article in Johnson's Encyclopedia, "Monroe
Doctrine;" also in Webster's writings, Vol. III. p. l78, and in
Calhoun's "Speech on the Panama Question." See also Foster, A
Century of American Diplomacy, Chap. XII.
PARTIES AFTER MONROE.—At the expiration of Monroe's second term, there being no choice for president by the people, John Quincy Adams, who had long been in public life in various important stations, was chosen by the House of Representatives. His supporters combined with the adherents of Henry Clay, who became secretary of state. This alliance was loudly denounced by their opponents as a "bargain." From the close of the last war with Great Britain, a party called by their adversaries "loose constructionists" of the Constitution, of which Clay was a leader,—a party who were in favor of measures like a protective tariff, a national bank, and internal improvements,—as the making of canals,—to be undertaken by Congress,—had been growing up. It now took the name of National Republicans, which was afterwards exchanged for that of Whigs. On the other side were the "strict constructionists," who, however, differed among themselves respecting certain measures,—for example, the tariff. In their ranks Andrew Jackson belonged. Of this political tendency, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina became a leading promoter. Andrew Jackson was a favorite candidate for the presidency, and the name of Democrats was applied to his followers.
PRESIDENCY OF JACKSON.—Jackson was elevated to the presidency in 1829. He was a fearless man, an ardent patriot, with a choleric temper and an imperious will. He carried to an unexampled extent a custom, which had begun with Jefferson, of supplanting office-holders of the opposite political party by supporters of the administration. This came to be called the "spoils system," from the maxim once quoted in defense of it, that "to the victors belong the spoils."
NULLIFICATION.—During Jackson's administration, there occurred the "nullification" crisis. In 1828 a new protective tariff had been passed, which was regarded in the South, especially in South Carolina, as extremely unjust and injurious. The New England States had been averse to protection; and in 1816 Daniel Webster opposed the tariff measure as specially hurtful to the Eastern States, whose capital was so largely invested in commerce. After the protective policy had been adopted, and when, under its shield, manufacturing had been extensively established in the North, the former adversaries of protection, with Webster, as well as Clay, who had been a protectionist before, thought it unfair and destructive to do away with the tariff. Its adversaries denounced it as unconstitutional. Calhoun and his followers, moreover, contended that nullification is legal and admissible; in other words, that a law of Congress may be set aside by a State within its own limits, provided it is considered by that State a gross infraction of the Constitution. There was a memorable debate on this subject in 1830, in the United States Senate, when the State-rights theory was advocated by Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina, and the opposite doctrine defended by Webster. In 1832 South Carolina passed an ordinance declaring that the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832 were null and void, and not binding in that State. President Jackson issued a spirited proclamation in which the nullification doctrine was repudiated, and the opposite, or national, theory was affirmed, and the President's resolute intention to execute the laws of the United States was announced. The difficulty was ended by the compromise tariff introduced by Henry Clay, providing for the gradual reduction of duties (1833).
REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS.—The President was hostile to the National Bank, which he considered dangerous, as liable to be converted into a tool for partisan ends. Not being able to carry Congress with him, he assumed the responsibility, after his second election, of removing the deposits, or public funds, from its custody, or, rather, of an order for the cessation of these deposits. For this he was censured by the Senate, a majority of which regarded his act as arbitrary and unconstitutional.
ANTI-SLAVERY AGITATION.—From about this time, the agitation respecting slavery constantly increased. In the North a party arose, which, through lectures and in newspapers and pamphlets, denounced slavery as iniquitous, and called for immediate emancipation. The most prominent leader of this party was William Lloyd Garrison, and its most captivating orator was Wendell Phillips. This party advocated disunion, on account of the obligations imposed upon the North in reference to slavery by the Constitution. They were sometimes assailed by mobs in Northern cities. The major part of the people in the North desired some method of extinguishing slavery which should leave the Union intact. Meantime they were for obeying the Constitution, although the obligation to restore fugitive slaves was felt to be obnoxious, and there grew up a disposition to avoid compliance with it. The "colonizationists" diminished in number. There were various types and degrees of anti-slavery sentiment. The resolution to confine slavery, by political action, within the limits of the States where it was under the shield of local law, became more and more prevalent. In the South, on the contrary, the enmity to "abolitionism" was intense, and served to increase the popularity of the doctrine of State-rights. Slavery came to be defended as necessary under the circumstances, and as capable of justification on moral and Scriptural grounds. Occasions of reciprocal complaint between North and South, for illegal doings relating in one way or another to slavery, tended to multiply.
ANNEXATION OF TEXAS.—In 1836 Texas declared its independence of Mexico. General Sam Houston, an emigrant from Tennessee, was the leader in the revolt. He defeated the Mexicans under Santa Ana, at the San Jacinto (1836). In 1845, largely by the agency of Mr. Calhoun, Texas, by an Act of Congress, was annexed to the United States. The motive which he avowed was the fear that it might fall into the hands of England, and become dangerous to the institution of slavery in the South. The measure was strenuously opposed in the North as a scheme by which it was intended to strengthen the influence of the slaveholding States in Congress. It was favored, for the same reason, by those who were inimical to abolitionism in whatever form.
WAR WITH MEXICO.—A consequence of the acquisition of Texas was a war with Mexico. The successes of Gen. Zachary Taylor at Palo Alto and Monterey (1846), and at Buena Vista (1847), and the campaign of Gen. Winfield Scott, who captured Vera Cruz, fought his way through the pass of Cerro Gordo, and at length entered the city of Mexico (Sept. 14, 1847), compelled the Mexicans to agree to the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo (1848). By this treaty all claim on Texas to the Rio Grande was relinquished, together with the provinces of Upper California and New Mexico.
THE "WILMOT PROVISO."—The Wilmot Proviso was proposed in Congress, excluding slavery from all territory to be acquired from Mexico. This demand for the prevention of the further extension of slavery in the territories subject to national jurisdiction, became a rallying-cry. On the nomination of General Taylor to the presidency by the Whigs (1848), a "Free-Soil" party was organized on this basis,—the precursor of the Republican party. The convention which nominated Taylor laid on the table a motion approving of the Wilmot Proviso. The Whigs succeeded in the election, but their party lost a portion of its adherents.
CLAY'S COMPROMISE.—The application of California for admission to the Union, which, on account of the rapid growth of that community through the discovery of gold, was soon made, brought the sectional difficulty to another crisis. President Taylor died (July 9, 1850), and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, the vice-president. The contest in Congress was soon after adjusted by Clay's compromise, by which California was admitted as a free State, Utah and New Mexico were organized into Territories without any mention of slavery, the slave-trade was prohibited in the District of Columbia, and a new fugitive-slave law was enacted, that was framed in such a way as to give great offense at the North. Webster, in a celebrated speech in favor of the compromise (March 7), gave as a reason for not insisting on the Wilmot Proviso, that the physical character of the new Territories of itself excluded slavery from them.
THE KANSAS TROUBLES.—In 1854, during the administration of Franklin Pierce, the standing sectional controversy reached a new phase. Two Territories, Kansas and Nebraska, were knocking at the doors of Congress for admission as States. Kansas lay west of Missouri, and, like Nebraska on the north, was protected from slavery by the Missouri Compromise (p. 601). But the Democrats carried through Congress a bill introduced by Mr. Douglas of Illinois, practically repealing that compromise, and leaving the matter of the toleration of slavery to be determined by the actual settlers as they might see fit. This measure was extensively regarded in the North as a breach of faith. Companies of emigrants were organized in the Northern States, to form permanent settlements in Kansas; and in order to prevent that country from becoming a free State, marauders from Missouri crossed the line, to attack them, and to harass the newly planted colonies.
THE DRED-SCOTT CASE.—James Buchanan became president in 1857. At this time the Supreme Court decided that neither negro slaves nor their descendants, slave or free, could become citizens of the United States; and added incidentally the dictum that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that Congress had no right to prohibit the carrying of slaves into any State or Territory. The effect of this opinion, if embodied in a legal decision, would have been to prevent the exclusion of slavery, even by a Territorial legislature, prior to the existence of the State government. This judicial act, following upon the attitude taken by the government at Washington with reference to the Kansas troubles, greatly strengthened the numbers and stimulated the determination of the Republican party in the Northern States.
THE JOHN BROWN RAID.—An occurrence not without a considerable effect in exciting the resentment, as well as the apprehensions, of the South, was the attempt of John Brown, a brave old man of the Puritan type, whose enmity to slavery had been deepened by conflict and suffering in the Kansas troubles, to stir up an insurrection of slaves in Virginia. With a handful of armed men, he seized the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. Half of his followers were killed: he himself was captured, and, after being tried and convicted by the State authorities, was hanged (Dec. 2, 1859).
SECESSION OF STATES.—In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln received the electoral vote of every Northern State except New Jersey. The conviction of the Southern political leaders that the anti-slavery feeling of the North, with its great and growing preponderance in wealth and population, would dictate the policy of the general government, determined them to attempt to break up the Union. The result, it was expected, would be the permanent establishment of a slave-holding confederacy, or the obtaining of new constitutional guaranties and safeguards of the institution of slavery; which, it was felt, would be undermined even if nothing more were done than to prevent the spread of it beyond the States where it existed. South Carolina passed an ordinance of secession (Dec. 20, 1860), and was followed in this act by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The delegates of the seceding States met at Montgomery, Ala., and formed a new government under the name of the Confederate States of America (Feb. 8, 1861). Jefferson Davis was elected president, and Alexander H. Stephens vice-president. Except at Pensacola in Florida, and in Charleston, all the national property within the borders of the seceding States was seized. Efforts looking to compromise and conciliation were of no effect. After the accession of Mr. Lincoln, the purpose of the government to send supplies to the garrison of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, caused the Confederates to attack that fortress, which the commander, Major Anderson, after a gallant defense, was obliged to surrender. President Lincoln immediately issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve for three months, and called Congress together (April 15). There was a great uprising in the Northern States. The President's call for troops at once met with an enthusiastic response. Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina now joined the Southern Confederacy, the capital of which was established at Richmond. Great Britain recognized the Confederate States as having the rights of belligerents (May 13). France did the same.
EVENTS OF THE WAR IN 1861-62.—Only a brief account can be given of the events of the war. General Winfield Scott was at first in command of the Union forces, and General J. E. Johnston of the forces of the Confederates. It was imagined at the North, that there could be an easy and quick advance of the Federal forces to Richmond; but the troops were not drilled, and the preparations for a campaign were wholly inadequate. The Union troops were defeated at Bull Run, or Manassas, and Washington was thrown into a panic (July 21, 1861). Congress at once adopted energetic measures for raising a large army and for building a navy. General George B. McClellan was placed in command of the forces. It was foreseen on both sides, that the result of the conflict might depend on the course taken by foreign powers, especially by England. The South counted upon the demand for cotton as certain to secure English help, direct or indirect, for the Southern cause. Mr. Charles Francis Adams was selected by Mr. Seward, the secretary of state, to represent the Union at the Court of St. James. The Confederates sent abroad Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell to procure the full recognition of the new Confederacy by England and France. The Trent, on which they sailed, was stopped by Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy, and the commissioners taken from it. This breach of international law threatened war, which was averted by the surrender of the two captives to England. England, however, refused to assent to Louis Napoleon's proposal to recognize the independence of the seceding States; but the laxness of the British Government in not preventing the fitting out of vessels of war in her ports, to prey on American commerce, excited indignation in the United States. Palmerston was at the head of the cabinet, and Lord John Russell was secretary for foreign affairs. For the depredations of the Alabama, the tribunal chosen to arbitrate at the end of the war, and meeting at Geneva, condemned England to pay to the United States an indemnity of fifteen and a half millions of dollars. Early in 1862 Fort Henry on the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, were taken by General Ulysses S. Grant, who led the land forces, and Commodore A. H. Foote, who commanded the gunboats. At Fort Donelson nearly fifteen thousand prisoners were captured. Grant fought the battle of Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh, which continued two days (April 6, 7), and ended in the retreat of the Confederates. Their general, A. S. Johnston, was killed, and the command of his troops devolved on Beauregard. Grant, who had been reinforced by Buell, drove the Confederates back to Corinth, Miss., nineteen miles distant. The capture of Island Number Ten, by Pope, followed; and soon Memphis was in the hands of the Union forces. Farragut ran the gauntlet of the forts at New Orleans (April 24), and captured that city. In the East the Union forces had not been so successful. The iron-sheathed frigate Merrimac destroyed the Union fleet at Hampton Roads (March 9), but was driven back to Gosport by the timely appearance of the iron-clad Union vessel, the Monitor. McClellan undertook to approach Richmond by the peninsula. The campaign lasted from March to July, and included, besides various other engagements, the important battles of Fair Oaks, and of Malvern Hill (July 1). At the end of June the Union army was driven back to Harrison's Landing on the James River. Meantime the Confederate general, Jackson, in the valley of the Shenandoah, repulsed Fremont, Banks, and McDowell, and joined General Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate forces, who now pressed forward towards Washington. Pope was defeated at Manassas (Aug. 29, 30), and Lee crossed the Potomac into Maryland. He was met by McClellan, and defeated at Antietam (Sept. 17), but was able to withdraw in safety across the river. McClellan was superseded by Burnside, who was defeated by Lee at Fredericksburg (Dec. 13).
EMANCIPATION.—On the 1st of January, 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring all slaves in States or parts of States in rebellion, to be free. This act was legally possible only as a belligerent measure, or as an exercise of the right of a commander. The refusal of the Government to carry on the war for the direct purpose of emancipation, or to adopt measures of this character before,—measures which the Constitution did not permit,—was not understood in foreign countries, and, in England especially, had tended to chill sympathy with the Northern cause. Regiments of negro soldiers were now formed.
THE FIRST SIX MONTHS OF 1863.—Hooker succeeded Burnside in command of the Potomac Army, and was defeated by Lee at Chancellorsville (May 3). There "Stonewall" Jackson, one of the best and bravest of the Confederate generals, lost his life. Lee now crossed the river, and entered Pennsylvania. This was the critical moment in the struggle. Great pains were taken, by such people in the North as were disaffected with the administration at Washington, to manifest hostility to the war, or to the method in which it was prosecuted. A riot broke out in the city of New York while the drafts for troops were in progress, and it was several days before it was put down. The defeat of Lee by Meade at Gettysburg (July 1-3) turned the tide against the Confederates; their army again retired beyond the Potomac. At the same time, in the West, General Grant captured Vicksburg with upwards of thirty thousand men (July 4), and Port Hudson was taken. The Mississippi was thus opened to its mouth. The Union navy acted effectively on the Atlantic coast, and at the end of the year nearly all the Southern ports were closed by blockades.
VICTORIES AT CHATTANOOGA.—Grant assumed command of the military division of the Mississippi, including the region between the Alleghanies and that river. With the Army of the Cumberland under Thomas, with reinforcements from Vicksburg under Sherman and from the Army of the Potomac under Hooker, he won the victories of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, at Chattanooga, Tennessee (Nov. 24 and 25). This success opened a path for the Union forces into Alabama and the Atlantic States. Sherman was sent to reinforce Burnside in Tennessee, and defeated Longstreet.
TO THE SURRENDER OF LEE.—Grant was made lieutenant-general, or first in command under the President (March 7, 1864). Three attempts to reach Richmond, made severally by McClellan, Hooker, and Burnside, had failed, as Lee's two aggressive movements had been defeated at Antietam and Gettysburg. The "border States" in the West were in the hands of the Union forces, as well as the lower Mississippi; and the blockade was maintained along the Atlantic coast. The plan now was for Sherman to secure Georgia, and to march eastward and northward into the heart of the Confederacy, starting at Chattanooga. Military operations, which had been prosecuted over so vast an extent of territory, now began to have a unity which they had greatly missed before. Grant personally took command of the Army of the Potomac. His object was to get between Lee's army and Richmond. This object was not effected; but the sanguinary battle of the Wilderness (May 5, 6), and other subsequent battles, had the effect, in the course of six weeks, to push Lee back within the fortifications of Petersburg and Richmond. During the long siege of these places, diversions were attempted by Early in Maryland and Pennsylvania; but he was repelled and defeated by Sheridan. The Confederate vessel Alabama was sunk in the English Channel by the Kearsarge (June, 1864). Farragut captured the forts in Mobile Bay. Sherman's forces, after a series of engagements, entered Atlanta, Ga., which the Confederates had been compelled to evacuate (Sept. 2). A detachment was sent by Sherman, under Thomas, after Hood, which defeated him at Nashville (Dec. 15, 16). Sherman marched through Georgia, and entered Savannah (Dec. 21). On Feb. 1, 1865, he commenced his movement northward. The attempts of General J. E. Johnston to check his advance were ineffectual. Sherman entered Columbia, S. C., and pushed on to Raleigh; Johnston, whose numbers were inferior, retiring as he approached. The efforts of Lee to break away from Grant, in order to effect a junction with Johnston, did not succeed. Sheridan's victory over Lee at Five Forks (April 1) compelled him to evacuate Petersburg. He was pursued and surrounded by Grant, and surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House (April 9). The Union forces had entered Richmond (April 2). Johnston surrendered his forces to Sherman (April 26). Jefferson Davis was captured by a body of Union cavalry in Georgia (May 10).
MURDER OF LINCOLN.—The joy felt in the North over the complete victory of the Union cause was turned into grief by the assassination of President Lincoln (April 14), who had begun his second term on the 4th of March. He was shot in a theater in Washington, by a fanatic named Booth, who imagined that he was avenging wrongs of the South. An attempt was made at the same time to murder Secretary Seward in his bed. The assailant inflicted on him severe but not fatal wounds.
Mr. Lincoln had taken a strong hold upon the affections of the people. With a large store of plain common-sense, with an even temper, an abounding good-nature, and a humor that cast wise thoughts into the form of pithy maxims and similes, he combined an unflinching firmness, and loyalty to his convictions of duty. He refused to be hurried to the issue of an edict of emancipation, which, as he judged, if prematurely framed, would lose to the Union cause the great States of Maryland, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri. Keeping steadily before him the prime object of the war, he inculcated, as he felt, malice toward none, and charity for all. What Clarendon says of Cromwell is true of Lincoln: "As he grew into place and authority, his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had had concealed faculties, till he had occasion to use them."
FINANCES IN THE WAR.—The Confederate Government had carried on the war by the issue of paper money made redeemable on the condition of success in gaining independence. This currency, of course, became worthless. The debt of the United States at the close of the war had risen from about sixty-five millions to more than twenty-seven hundred millions of dollars, not to speak of the debts incurred by States and towns.
AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION.—The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution (declared in force Dec. 18, 1865) prohibited slavery in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment (declared in force July 28, 1868) secured to all the freedmen the right of citizenship and equality under State law, and ordained that the basis of representation in each State should be reduced in proportion to any abridgment by State law of the right of suffrage in its male population. The Fifteenth Amendment (declared in force March 30, 1870) forbade the abridgment of the right to vote, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The effect of the amendments was to confer on the blacks the civil and political rights enjoyed by the whites.
RECONSTRUCTION: ADMINISTRATION OF JOHNSON.—The Southern States were conquered communities; but the theory was held that they had not been, and could not be in law, dissevered from the Union. The difficulty of reconstructing State governments was aggravated by the fact that the bulk of the intelligent people in the seceding States were precluded, or excluded themselves, from taking part in the measures requisite for this end; by the additional fact of the ignorance of the blacks, and of the selfish greed of white adventurers who took the place of leaders among them; and by dissensions in the North, and in the administration at Washington, as to the right and lawful course to be pursued. The President, Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, became involved in a contest with the dominant Republican party in Congress, on questions pertaining to reconstruction. He was impeached and tried by the Senate (Feb. 24-May 16, 1868), but the number of votes for his conviction was one less than the number required. On the expiration of Johnson's term, General Grant was raised to the presidential office. It was complained, that the new governments instituted in the South by the freedmen and their white coadjutors were grossly corrupt and incapable, and that their "returning boards" made false results of elections. On the other hand, it was complained, that the opponents of these governments resorted to violence and fraud to intimidate their political adversaries, and to keep them out of office. The troops of the United States, which had sustained the officers appointed by the blacks and by their white allies in several of the States, were at length withdrawn; and political power was resumed throughout the South by the adverse party, or the class which had contended against what were derisively styled "carpet-bag" governments. A difficulty arose in 1876, in consequence of a dispute about the result of the presidential election. It was referred to an "Electoral Commission" appointed by Congress, and Rutherford B. Hayes was declared to be chosen (1877-1881). During his administration (Jan. 1, 1879) the banks and the government resumed specie payments, which had been suspended since an early date in the civil war. The rapid diminution of the national debt is one of the important features of later American history. The Republicans succeeded in the next national election; but General Garfield, who was chosen President, was mortally wounded by an assassin (July 2, 1881), a few months after his inauguration. Guiteau, who committed the causeless and ruthless deed, claimed to be "inspired by the Deity," but was judged to be morally and legally responsible, and died on the gallows. Chester A. Arthur, the Vice-president, filled the highest office for the remainder of the presidential term. At the election in 1884 Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York, was elected as Chief Magistrate; and the Democrats, for the first time since the retirement of Mr. Buchanan and the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln (in 1861), took the reins of power into their hands; the Republicans, however, retaining a majority in the Senate. Benjamin Harrison (Republican) succeeded Cleveland as President, 1889. The McKinley Tariff Bill, 1890, reduced the duty on some imports, but increased them heavily on others. In 1892 the four hundredth anniversary of America's discovery was celebrated, and Grover Cleveland, Democratic nominee, was again elected to the presidency. The revival of industry and prosperity in the Southern States, and efforts for popular education for the blacks as well as whites, are circumstances worthy of special record.
GRANT AND LEE.—About two months after his retirement from the presidency, General Grant began a tour of the world. He landed in San Francisco from Japan, on his return, in September, 1879, after an absence of nearly two years and a half. In 1880 an effort was made by his warm political supporters to bring him forward as a candidate of the Republicans for a third term in the presidency. This effort failed, as had a similar endeavor, made with less vigor, four years before. The remainder of his days were spent in private life. His death occurred on July 23, 1885. He was buried in New York, on Aug. 8, with distinguished honors. General Lee, the commander of the Confederate forces in the civil war, from the close of the struggle to his death (Oct. 12, 1870) was president of Washington and Lee University, at Lexington, Va.
UTAH: THE MORMONS.—The sect of Mormons was founded in Manchester, N. Y., in 1830, by Joseph Smith, a native of Vermont, who claimed to have received heavenly visions from the time when he was fifteen years old. He pretended that he was guided by an angel to the spot, near Manchester, where was buried a stone box containing a volume made up of thin gold plates, which were covered with strange characters in the "reformed Egyptian" tongue. This "Book of Mormon" was really a manuscript composed, in 1812, for quite another purpose, by one Solomon Spaulding, who had been a preacher. A copy of it made by a printer, Sidney Rigdon, fell into the hands of Joseph Smith. It contains fabulous stories of the settlement of refugees coming from the Tower of Babel to America, who were followed in 600 B.C. by a colony from Jerusalem that landed on the coast of Chili. War broke out among their descendants, from the bad part of whom the North American Indians sprung. One of the survivors of the better class of these Hebrews, named Mormon, collected in a volume the books of records of former kings and priests, which, with some additions from his son, was buried until the prophet chosen of God should appear. In style the Book of Mormon endeavors to imitate the English version of the Scriptures. On the basis of this volume and of its alleged miraculous origin, Smith founded the sect of "Latter Day Saints," as he styled them. From Kirtland, O., where they came in 1831, and where the converts were numerous, they removed to a place which they named New Jerusalem, in Jackson County, Mo. Here they were joined by Brigham Young, also a native of Vermont, a man of much energy and shrewdness. Smith was charged by the Missourians, and some of his own followers who deserted him, with outrageous crimes and frauds. The conflict between the Mormons and the Missourians resulted in the migration of the former to Nauvoo in Illinois, where a community was organized in which Smith exercised supreme power. In 1843 Smith, who was as profligate as he was knavish, professed to receive a revelation sanctioning polygamy. His bad conduct, and that of his adherents, brought on a conflict with the civil authorities. Smith, with his brother, was killed in the jail by a mob. Driven out of Nauvoo, the Mormons (1848) made their way to Utah, and founded Salt Lake City. Their systematic efforts to obtain converts brought to them a large number from the ignorant working-class in Great Britain and in Sweden and Norway. The Territory of Utah was organized by Congress in 1849. The laws and officers of the United States, however, were treated with defiance and openly resisted by Brigham Young, the Mormon leader; and he was removed from the office of governor, to which he had been appointed by President Fillmore. A contest with the United States authorities was succeeded by the submission of the Mormons in 1858. In 1871 efforts for the suppression of polygamy by law were undertaken by the Federal Government, and have since been continued with imperfect success. Brigham Young died in 1877, and was succeeded in the presidency of the Mormons by John Taylor, an Englishman. A body of anti-polygamist seceders from the Mormon community, including a son of Brigham Young, has been formed. Another Mormon sect opposed to polygamy, calling itself the "Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints," originated in 1851. The number of professed believers in the strange and grotesque tenets of Mormonism, in all the different places where its disciples are found, probably exceeds two hundred thousand.
THE FORMATION OF THE STATES.—The "District of Maine" formed a part of Massachusetts from 1651 to 1820, when it was admitted to the Union as a distinct State. Its northern boundary was not clearly defined until the treaty of 1842 between the United States and England, which was made by Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton. The North-West Territory, which was organized in 1789, comprised the cessions north of the Ohio and as far west as the Mississippi, which had been made by the "landed States;" that is, the several States holding portions of this region. A small portion, "the Western Reserve," was retained by Connecticut until 1795, when it was sold to the National Government. Out of this "North-West Territory," there were formed five States. Connected with the name of each is the date of its admission to the Union: Ohio (1802), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848). South of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi, lay the territory belonging to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. From this, the cession of Virginia formed the State of Kentucky (1792); that of the Carolinas formed Tennessee (1796); that of Georgia formed Alabama (1819) and Mississippi (1817). The extensive territory called Louisiana was ceded by France to Spain in 1762, was ceded back to France in 1801, and purchased by the United States in 1803. From this territory, there have been formed the States of Louisiana (1812), Missouri (1820), Arkansas (1836), Iowa (1846), Minnesota (1858), Kansas (1861), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), Montana and the two Dakotas (1889), Wyoming (1890), and Oklahoma and Indian Territories. From the cession of Florida by Spain (1819), the State of Florida was formed (1845). Oregon was claimed by the United States by the right of prior discovery: it was organized as a Territory in 1849; the Territory of Washington was formed from it in 1853, and Idaho in 1863. Oregon was admitted as a State in 1859, Washington in 1889, and Idaho in 1890. Texas was admitted to the Union in 1845. From the cessions of Mexico (1848) there have been formed the States of California (1850) and Nevada (1864), and the Territories of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. West Virginia was formed into a distinct State in 1863, in consequence of the secession of Virginia.
THE FRENCH INVASION: MAXIMILLIAN.—After the close of the war with the United States (1848), there continued to be a war of factions in Mexico. There was a democratic party, which obtained the upper hand in 1857, but was opposed by the church party. The clergy and the religious bodies were possessed of nearly one-half of the landed property in the country. Benito Juarez, who had been chief justice, became president; but he was resisted by the clerical party, with their military supporters, and there was civil war (1857-58). Juarez was recognized as the lawful president by the United States. Spain, France, and England demanded reparation for injuries and losses suffered in Mexico by their subjects. In December, 1861, and January, 1862, they landed troops at Vera Cruz, to compel Mexico to satisfy their claims. The demands of England and Spain were met, and they withdrew their forces. It became clear, however, that Louis Napoleon, who refused to recognize Juarez, had an ulterior design to overthrow the Mexican government, and to establish an empire in its place. It was a part of a visionary scheme to establish the domination of "the Latin race." He expected to check the progress of the United States, and ventured on this aggressive enterprise on account of the opportunity offered by the civil war in America. He persuaded the Archduke Maximilian, the brother of Francis Joseph, emperor of Austria, to accept the throne, and agreed to sustain him with men and money. Maximilian arrived in Mexico in 1864. Large bodies of French troops fought on his side. The war resolved itself into a guerrilla contest, in which great cruelties were perpetrated on both sides. The end of the American civil war put the Government of the United States in a position to demand of Louis Napoleon the withdrawal of the French forces. His own situation in France, and the state of public opinion there, prevented him from refusing this demand. The folly, as well as criminality, of the undertaking, had become more and more obvious. He therefore decided to violate his promises to Maximilian. Deserted thus by his defenders, this prince, who, although misled by ambition, had noble traits, was captured by the troops of Juarez, tried by court-martial, and shot (1867). His wife Carlotta, the daughter of Leopold I. of Belgium, and the grand-daughter of Louis Philippe, failing in negotiations at Rome, had lost her reason. Juarez was installed in power at the capital. In 1868 and 1869, there was a succession of insurrections and revolutions; but he was again elected in 1871, and died the next year. After that time, there was more tranquillity in Mexico, and much was done to develop the mines and other material resources of the country, and for public education.
DIAZ: INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.—President Juarez died in 1872, and was succeeded by Lerdo de Tejada. Under him the authority of the State over the Church was maintained. The monastic orders were abolished. The democratic constitution, which had been framed in 1857, was amended (1873-4), and was afterwards upheld against the efforts of the reactionary or ecclesiastical party to overthrow it. In 1876, there were three claimants of the presidency,—Tejada, Iglesias, the chief justice, who denied the validity of his election, and Gen. Porfirio Diaz, who was at the head of a revolt. Diaz established himself in power, and was succeeded in 1880 by Manuel Gonzalez. On the expiration of his term (1884), Diaz was once more chosen to the same office. In 1891 an insurrection, headed by Catarino Garza, a journalist, and General Riez Sandival, was directed against the Diaz government. It was put down and Diaz was re-elected president, July 11, 1892. Under Diaz and his coadjutors much was done for the development of the country. Mexico has advanced towards a stable government in the republican form.
BRAZIL.—After returning to Portugal, King John recognized the independence of Brazil, and his son Dom Pedro as emperor of the country (1825), although John kept the title during his lifetime (p. 553). The two crowns were not to be united. On the death of his father (1826), Dom Pedro resigned his claim to the throne of Portugal. His subsequent career in Brazil was a troublous one, owing to his contest with a liberal party. He returned to Spain in 1831. After his departure there were party contests under a regency. In 1840 Dom Pedro II., who had been left behind in Brazil by his father, and was then fourteen years of age, was proclaimed emperor. Measures were taken against the slave-trade, and it was finally abolished; an effective plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves was adopted (1871). Rosas, dictator of Buenos Ayres, who intended to subvert the republics of Uruguay and Paraguay, was defeated by the Brazilian forces and their allies (1852). A long war against Lopez, dictator of Paraguay, ended in his capture and death (1870). This war involved losses to Brazil in men and money. Under Dom Pedro II., public works, manufactures, and commerce were promoted. A long strife of the government with the Catholic hierarchy ended in an accommodation (1875). In November, 1889, as the result of a bloodless revolution, Dom Pedro II. was dethroned, and a republican form of government declared. In Feb., 1891, Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca was confirmed as President, resigned in November, and was succeeded by Vice-President Floriano Peixoto, who held office until Nov. 15, 1894, when Prudente de Moraes, the first Brazilian President elected by a popular vote, was inaugurated.
OHILI, PERU, BOLIVIA.—The contest of Chili with Peru and Bolivia has attracted special notice. Chili, after the formation of its constitution in 1833,—which resembles the constitution of the United States,—enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The strife to which we refer began between Chili and Bolivia. The point in dispute was the right to the province of Atacama, between Chili and Peru, the southern part of which was claimed by Chili. Bolivia claimed the whole. By a treaty in 1866, the territory in dispute was to be, under certain conditions, common property. A rivalry existed between Chili and Peru, and a secret alliance was formed in 1873 between Peru and Bolivia. Bolivia now asserted her title to the entire province of Atacama. The Argentine Republic was disposed to take sides against Chili, but, in consequence of the success of the Chilians, remained neutral. The Chilians captured (Oct. 8, 1879) the Peruvian iron-clad vessel, the Huascar. They gained other advantages, and took possession of the whole province, with its deposits of nitrate and guano. Revolutions ensued in Bolivia and Peru. Chilians took Lima, the Peruvian capital, and overran the country. Terms of peace proposed by Chili, involving large cessions of territory, were ratified by the Congress at Lima (March 1, 1884). A treaty of peace was made between Chili and Bolivia (May 4). In Jan., 1891, war broke out in Chili, resulting in the defeat of President Balmaceda in August. An assault on American seamen by Chilians in Valparaiso, Oct., 1891, caused strained relations between Chili and the United States, the latter demanding apology and reparation. Chili complied, Jan., 1892.
CHINA AND FOREIGN NATIONS: THE TAIPING REBELLION.—In the recent period, there has been a gradual but grudging and reluctant opening of China to commercial intercourse with foreign nations, and to the labors of Christian missionaries. In 1840 there began the first war with Great Britain, called the "opium war" for the reason that it was caused by the Chinese prohibition of the importing of that article. In the treaty at the end of the war, five ports were made free to British trade; Hong-Kong was ceded to England; and it was provided that the intercourse between the officials of the two nations should be on the basis of equality (1842). Two years later an advantageous treaty was concluded by the United States with China: a treaty was also concluded with France (1844). Aggressions of the Chinese led to a second war with Great Britain, in alliance with France (1857-60); in which the Chinese fleet was destroyed, and Canton, a city of a million inhabitants, was captured. Treaties were made, but the infraction of them was followed by the capture of Peking (1859). In the settlement which immediately took place, toleration was granted to Christianity, and liberty to foreign ambassadors to reside at the capital. In 1868 Mr. Anson Burlingame, who had been United States minister to China, with two Chinese envoys, visited the powers which had made treaties with China, and negotiated agreements by which important principles of international law were mutually adopted. The most important domestic event in China, in recent times, is the "Taiping"-rebellion, which broke out in 1850, in Southern China. Complaints of oppression and consequent disorder were brought to a climax on the accession of the young emperor, Heen-fung. The revolt spread from province to province, and found a leader in the person of Hung Lew-tseuen, who called himself Teen-Wang (Celestial Virtue). He proclaimed his purpose to overthrow the Manchu dynasty, and to restore the throne to the native Chinese. He claimed a divine commission, had caught up certain Christian ideas, and professed to be an adherent of Christianity. Multitudes flocked to his standard.
City after city fell into their hands. The war with England and France operated in his favor. After the conclusion of peace, the government was more energetic and successful in its effort to suppress the rebellion, and was helped by foreign officers, in particular by Major (afterwards General) Gordon. Nanking was recaptured (1864); and the revolt, which had been attended with an enormous destruction of life, came to an end.
JAPAN AND FOREIGN NATIONS.—Up to the year 1866, the actual rulers of Japan were the Shogun, or emperor's lieutenant, who resided at Yedo, and the daimios, or territorial nobles, whose residence was also there. The Mikado, or emperor, lived in Kioto, surrounded by his relatives, the imperial nobles. There was a strict classification of the whole people, and a strict supervision of them, and the country was shut to foreigners. In 1853 Commodore Perry, of the United-States Navy, first entered the harbor of Yedo, and in 1854 returned, and negotiated a treaty with the Shogun, which opened certain ports to foreign trade, and to the admission of consuls. Treaties of a like nature between Japan and the other principal nations were soon made. The Mikado and his court were deeply incensed at the Shogun's usurpation of authority, and were at the same time hostile to the introduction of foreigners. Thus a double contest arose. There was an attempt to put down the Shogun, and to strip him of his authority, and to drive off the strangers. This last effort led the Mikado's officers to fire on the ships of the foreign nations. The punishment which these inflicted in the harbor of Shimonoseki (1864) so impressed the emperor, in conjunction with his fear lest the foreigners should help the Shogun, that he completely reversed his policy, and proceeded to remove the barriers to intercourse with them. The daimios, who had been compelled to live at Yedo, flocked to Kioto. The Mikado, countenanced by the foreigners, overcame the resistance of the party of the Shoguns. He removed his residence to Yedo, now called Tokio (1869). Feudalism was abolished (1871), and a constitution promulgated in 1889. The empire was thus united and strengthened. Institutions and customs of Western civilization were rapidly introduced. Political and legal reforms kept pace with the introduction of railroads and other material improvements. Christian missionaries actively engaged in preaching and teaching.
During the last decade of the nineteenth century tendencies which years before had begun to appear became the dominant feature of the European situation. The old ideals of the Manchester school—freer trade, more intimate and peaceful intercourse between nations, the right of each people to control its destiny, the development of liberal institutions—gave way to a policy of high protective tariffs and bitter commercial warfare, of constant increase in armaments, of eager rivalry in seizing the territory of less civilized and weaker peoples, accompanied, particularly on the continent, by a decrease in the effectiveness of parliamentary government. Several of the great statesmen of the century yielded to new men. Although the close came without such wars as desolated Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, the heavy burdens which rested upon the taxpayer and the constant danger that the work of civilization would be rudely interrupted hardly justified the optimism of the earlier decades. The pronunciamento of the Czar Nicholas in favor of restricting the growth of armaments and the consequent establishment, in 1900, of an international tribunal of arbitration at the Hague held out hopes of a better future.
ENGLAND.—An analysis of the majority which Gladstone had obtained in the general election of 1892 showed that the prospects of Home Rule for Ireland were slight. This majority was composed of an English minority supported by Scottish, Welsh, and Irish groups. The bill which was introduced in the following year differed from the previous bill in that it did not withdraw the Irish members from Westminster. Although the House of Commons gave it a small majority, it was defeated in the Lords. Gladstone felt that his support was too precarious to force the question to a final settlement by an appeal to the country. He accordingly turned his attention to the remainder of his programme, the most important part of which was a Parish Councils bill. This aimed to do for local government in the parishes what the previous Salisbury ministry had done for local government in the counties. After the success of the bill was assured Gladstone withdrew, and Lord Rosebery became prime-minister. Gladstone spent the remainder of his life in retirement. The Rosebery ministry soon fell, and a new Salisbury ministry dissolved Parliament. In the general election of 1895 the Conservatives and their allies, the Liberal-Unionists, received an overwhelming majority. This took the Home Rule question out of practical politics. Only through a series of minor concessions was the attempt to be made to satisfy Ireland's legitimate aspirations. This victory also showed that English public sentiment was ready to break definitely with the principles of Gladstone and his friends, and support a policy of energetic imperialism. The Queen, whose jubilee was again celebrated in 1897, died on January 22, 1901. The new king, Edward VII., at the age of sixty-one, was crowned in 1902.
GERMANY: BISMARCK's LATER POLICY.—Since 1878, when Bismarck abandoned his alliance with the National Liberals, he had been endeavoring to increase the financial strength of the empire by changing the customs and excise system, to conquer the socialists both by direct attack and by taking the working classes under the special care of the state, and, more recently, to procure for Germany colonial possessions. Although his new financial policy was definitely protectionist, his chief aim was to free the imperial government from the need of applying to the different states for a subvention. In consequence of his policy, the income from customs and excises rose in ten years from 230,000,000 marks to 700,000,000. But the plan of state subventions although altered in fact was preserved in appearance, for Bismarck was obliged to concede to Particularist jealousies that all income from these sources above 130,000,000 must be paid to the states and the deficiency in the imperial treasury be made up in the usual manner. Later on the new naval programme again made state contributions a reality. In the laws to protect the workingmen Bismarck affirmed this to be the duty of the Christian state; he did not concede that such measures were simply the right of the workmen. The plan was carried out in three great laws: that of insurance in case of illness (1883), in case of accident in mines or factories (1884), and in case of old age or incapacity (1889). These laws were enacted in the face of much outcry from employers, and were effectively administered. They did not, however, so far remove the grievances of the lower classes as to check the growth of the Social Democratic party. Although the party has since 1891 embodied in its programme the theories of Marx, it is not wholly socialistic in character; it is also a protest of the democratic spirit against the administration of Germany as an aristocratic, military monarchy. In the face of repressive laws the party grew steadily, so that in 1890 it was able to cast 1,400,000 votes. The only force able to resist its advance was the Catholic Center, because the Catholic Church included among its members all classes in the community; while the Protestant Church, in the cities at least, was more generally composed of the employing class. From 1884 Bismarck had put Germany forward as an eager competitor for colonial acquisitions in Africa and the Pacific. The lands that Germany was able to obtain were hardly suited to distinctively German settlement, and afforded comparatively little advantage to trade.
BISMARCK'S FALL.—William II. began by continuing the policies which had been characteristic of the closing years of his grandfather's reign. It was not long before he became restive under the leadership of Bismarck. He desired to make his own personal aims more prominent. In 1890 there was a struggle over the renewal of the laws against the socialists and a consequent general election. The Emperor seized the opportunity to declare his purpose to improve still further the situation of the working classes, and, with this in view, to call an international congress. In Prussia he declared it to be the duty of the state to regulate the conditions of labor. Such declarations took the control of the electoral campaign out of Bismarck's hands. One result was decided losses for the conservative groups. Bismarck tried to maintain his ascendency by insisting that, according to a cabinet order of Frederick William IV., the king of Prussia must communicate with the ministers through the president of the council. William retorted by denying Bismarck's right to negotiate with the chiefs of the parliamentary groups, and by requiring a decree reversing the obnoxious cabinet order. On March 20 he demanded Bismarck's resignation. Bismarck left Berlin amid a great ovation a few days later. For some years he and his friends formed an unofficial center of opposition and criticism. He died in July, 1898.
GERMANY SINCE BISMARCK'S FALL.—Bismarck's successors were Count Caprivi (1890-1894), Prince Hohenlobe (1894-1900), and Count Bülow. It was tacitly recognized that the anti-socialist laws had failed, and they were not renewed. The socialists as well as all other groups received the additional advantage that somewhat later a law was passed permitting societies of all kinds to affiliate. It was estimated that in 1900 the Social Democrats controlled over 2,000,000 votes. The government vainly attempted to dike the rising flood by laws providing a practical censorship of art and of literature, but these had to be abandoned. In the parliamentary life of Germany the most significant change was the disintegration of the old parties, the strengthening of such groups as the Catholic Center and the Social Democrats, and the creation of a strong Agrarian party or interest. The Agrarians became prominent during the controversy over a commercial treaty with Russia. This treaty was part of a general attempt to develop the European market to make good the loss through the adoption of high tariffs in countries like America and France, and, at first, by Russia herself. Although Germany could not furnish enough grain to feed her own people, and there was a tariff on imported grain, the price kept falling, while the prices of manufactured articles steadily increased. The peasants and the landowners felt that they were threatened with ruin. Accordingly they formed an alliance in 1893, and a parliamentary union which, from that time on, was so formidable as to force important concessions from the government. Among other important measures of this period were the adoption of a new Civil Code for the empire, to go into effect Jan. 1, 1900; the reduction of the term of military service to two years; and the efforts by the successive naval programmes of 1897 and 1900 to create for Germany a strong sea power capable of supporting her trade and colonial aspirations.
FRANCE: BOULANGER.—In 1888 the continuance of the Republic was endangered by the support which many of its enemies and some of its ignorant friends lent to the pretensions of General Boulanger, who had made himself popular as minister of war by his army reforms and by his belligerent attitude toward Germany. When he ceased to be minister, and particularly after he was deprived of his military command, he began an energetic propaganda for a revision of the constitution, with the cry "Dissolution, Revision, Constituent." The royalists gave freely to further the campaign, hoping that moderate men would be frightened into calling the Count of Paris to the throne in order to save the country from another military empire. The Boulangists took skillful advantage of the fact that the deputies representing each department were elected "at large," and not on single district tickets, so that it was possible for Boulanger's name to be placed on each departmental ticket, and so in time to receive the votes of all France. With such a mandate it would be impossible for the moderate Republicans to resist him. For a time the scheme was successful. Boulanger was even elected on the Paris list. Had he been willing to undertake a coup d'etat he might then have overthrown the Republic, but he wished for a more peaceful triumph at the approaching general election. This his opponents deprived him of by abolishing the method of election "at large," so that each deputy was to represent a particular district. Boulanger was soon after attacked on a charge of treason before the Senate acting as a high court. He fled to Belgium and a little later committed suicide on the grave of his mistress.
PANAMA CRISIS.—Hardly had the danger from Boulanger subsided when, in 1892, many of the leading politicians were discredited by the disclosures made in the judicial investigation of the bankruptcy of the Panama Canal Company. It appeared that the company had spent large sums to muzzle the press, so that ignorant investors should not discover the precarious condition of the enterprise. It had also contributed to the campaign expenses of friendly deputies and directly purchased votes in order to obtain authority to negotiate a loan in a manner ordinarily illegal.
Although several deputies and senators were tried, no one was convicted save an ex-minister, who confessed that he had accepted 300,000 francs. Had the exposure come a little earlier, it must have led to the triumph of Boulanger. Its principal consequence was to bring new men of less tarnished reputations to the front.
THE CHURCH.—In the same year the Church with direct encouragement and even pressure from Pope Leo XIII, rallied to the support of the Republic. The pope issued an encyclical to French Catholics and followed this by a letter to the French cardinals. Many royalists were afflicted by this attitude, but nearly all were submissive. They called themselves the "constitutional party," but were also called the "rallied." Their watchword seemed to be, "Accept the constitution in order to modify legislation."
PARTIES.—The radical revolutionary groups, which had been crushed in the suppression of the Commune of 1871, and which had not been able to reconstitute themselves effectively until the amnesty of 1880, began in the early nineties to make their influence more effective. This coincided with a general shifting of political power toward the Left. The assassination of President Carnot, in 1894, and the enthusiasm provoked by the cementing of the Russian alliance and by the coming of the Czar to Paris, prolonged the control of the moderates, or Progressists, as they were called in 1896. It was the persistent attacks of the radicals that disgusted Casimir-Périer with the presidency. His successor was Félix Faure, a successful business man. When he died suddenly in 1899, Émile Loubet was chosen by the support of the groups of the Left. Before the moderate Republicans lost control they revolutionized the economic policy of France, substituting for practical free trade and commercial treaties a high protective tariff.
DREYFUS CASE.—France had not recovered from the shock of the Panama scandal before she was involved in another scandal far more subtle in its demoralizing influence. Jealousy of the success of Jewish financiers, strengthened by the common feeling that capitalists are enriched by ill-gotten gains, led to an obscure campaign against the Jews and all capitalists. The reminiscences of Panama did not allay these feelings. Soon the royalists seized this instrument as a means of discrediting the Republic, asserting that it had been organized through the influence of German-Jewish immigrants who were enriching themselves at the expense of the thrifty but guileless French. It was also asserted that Jews in the army were betraying its secrets to their German kindred. As the army was universally popular, this was an effective blow at the Jews. The denouement was the arrest of Captain Dreyfus, his degradation, and his confinement on an island off the coast of French Guiana. The evidence had been slight, and it was discredited when a courageous officer of the Intelligence Department told his superiors that even this had been constructed by a Major Esterhazy. The officer, Colonel Picquart, was removed, and his place taken by Colonel Henry, who undertook to supply the necessary evidence. Although he imposed on the minister of war, he was unable to endure the moral strain, especially after distinguished men like Zola became champions of the innocence of Dreyfus, and he committed suicide after making a confession. The government was obliged to bring the case before the Court of Cassation in 1898, which ordered a new trial. Although Dreyfus was again convicted by a military court, he was immediately pardoned by the President.
OTHER COUNTRIES.—After 1897 the situation in Austro-Hungary became precarious, owing to the difficulties which arose when the time came to renew the Ausgleich, or agreement, between Austria and Hungary, first made in 1867. Neither portion of the empire was satisfied with its part of the bargain. As the Hungarians always stood together in any struggle with Austria, they were likely to get the better of the bargain. There was the additional difficulty that no agreement of any sort could be adopted in the Austrian parliament, which had become hopelessly disorganized through the savage conflicts between the various groups, Germans, Czechs, anti-Semites, etc. The only way to prevent the actual dissolution of the empire was to renew the agreement in behalf of Austria by imperial warrant. Another country belonging to the Triple Alliance, Italy, was brought into trouble by the policy of extravagant expansion, pursued especially under the leadership of Crispi. But the disastrous defeat by the Abyssinians at Adowa, in 1896, gave pause to the plans of such statesmen. Spain also suffered disaster in this period, first through the outbreak of revolt in Cuba, and then through the loss of the remnant of her once splendid colonial empire in consequence of the war with the United States.
EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY.—The foundation of the Triple Alliance had been laid by the treaty between Germany and Austria. To this Italy had acceded in 1883. Such a combination tended to bring Russia and France together, especially as Russia began to see that the only power pursuing a policy favorable to her desires was France. Finally Russian and French officers were authorized to arrange for the possible coöperation of armies in case of war, and in 1894 a military convention was completed. That there came to be a definite understanding still more comprehensive has been generally believed, but its terms were not divulged. The French minister of foreign affairs used the word "alliance" in the Chamber of Deputies in 1895, and two years later, when President Faure visited the Czar at St. Petersburg, the Czar used the phrase "two great nations, friends and allies." The consequence of these two alliances, and of the peaceful policy pursued by England, was the localizing of difficulties and the maintenance of a "concert" on all questions likely to embroil Europe. This was evident from the treatment of the Eastern, the African, and the Far Eastern questions.
ARMENIA.—Bulgarian affairs had not received their final solution at the Berlin Congress, for the peaceful revolution of Philippopolis in 1885 had forcibly reunited Bulgaria and East Roumelia. But the powers did not recognize the change until Prince Alexander had withdrawn, and Prince Ferdinand had placed himself more under Russian tutelage, making this emphatic by the decision to bring up his son, Prince Boris, according to the Greek rite. The success of Bulgaria rendered the Armenians envious. Discontent at the failure to carry out the reforms promised by the treaty of Berlin led to the formation of a revolutionary party which hoped by provoking a Turkish repression, similar to the Bulgarian "atrocities," to necessitate a new European intervention. Such a scheme was opposed by American missionaries and by the native clergy, for they saw that it was doomed to disaster. The revolutionists endeavored to compromise the missionaries by posting their placards on the walls of the American college at Marsivan. The suspicions of the Turks were directed against the missionaries, and the Girls' Schoolhouse was burned by a mob. Ostensibly to capture agitators the Kurds followed by the regular troops perpetrated terrible massacres in the mountain villages of Sasún in 1893 and 1894. The powers could not agree upon any common plan to check such evils, and when they did force upon the Sultan a scheme of reform, it served only as a signal for worse massacres, which recurred chronically until the final massacre in Constantinople in August, 1896. As the "concert" was honeycombed by jealousies, it was impossible to do more than prevent the development of this horror into a general European war. England was unable to intervene separately because of the hostile attitude of Russia. Such statesmen as Lord Salisbury recognized that England's traditional support of Turkey had been discredited by such events. When, in the following year, war broke out between Greece and Turkey, and when Crete fell into a state of anarchy, the powers were more successful in their common action, for they were able to mitigate the terms which the victorious Turks demanded, and to withdraw Crete from direct Turkish control.
EGYPT.—The history of Egypt touches both the situation in the Turkish empire and the more general situation of Africa and the routes to the Far East. England's occupation of Egypt, at first considered temporary, gave her practical control of the Suez Canal; it also gave her a strong position in the eastern Mediterranean, the lack of which had been one reason for her hostility to the treaty of San Stefano in 1878. The problem of the equatorial provinces had remained vexatious ever since the triumph of the Mahdi and of his successor, the Kalifa. Any attempt to begin a campaign for their recovery was hindered by the peculiar financial condition of Egypt. As all the funds were either mortgaged to creditors, or at least under an international control not favorable to the presence of England, the only money absolutely under the control of the Egyptian government was a special reserve fund, the result of painful administrative economies. But the necessity of an advance was imperative. Although the attempt of the Congo Free State to establish a permanent foothold in the upper Nile basin had been checked by England, France was striving to extend her territorial possessions straight across from Senegal to Jibutil, on the Gulf of Aden. Major Marchand had left Paris secretly in 1896 with this mission. In this year also the defeat of the Italians at Adowa, and the pressure of the troops of the Kalifa upon Kassala, held by the Italians for the English, did not permit longer delay. A great preparatory work had been done in the ten years previous. A new army had been created. The advance began in March, under the leadership of Sir Herbert Kitchener. One of its most effective and brilliant features was the construction in the following year of a railway 230 miles across the Nubian desert to save a river journey of 600 miles. The decisive campaign took place in 1898, with the battle on the Atbara and the crushing defeat of the Kalifa at Omdurman in September. During the summer Marchand had been establishing posts in the upper Nile region as far as Fashoda. Kitchener immediately proceeded thither, raised the English and Egyptian flags near by, leaving the settlement of the question to diplomacy. The French, not being supported by Russia in an aggressive attitude, were obliged to give way, and their sphere of influence was not to include any portion of the Nile basin. The war had been economically managed, so that Egyptian finances were not seriously disarranged. The help that England was obliged to give justified her in considering the Sudan as territory held jointly by her and by Egypt. The general consequence of English rule in Egypt has been a reduction of taxation, and, at the same time, the collection of a larger revenue. Vast public improvements, like the dam at Assouan, also added to the resources of the country.
AFRICA.—Although Africa since 1885 had been the subject of an important conference at Berlin and of various international agreements it was, strictly speaking, beyond the sphere of action of the European concert. Its partition among the European states, a movement originating in the expeditions of Livingstone and Stanley, went on rapidly from 1884. The Congo Free State, which at first promised to be an international enterprise, speedily changed into a territorial possession of the king of Belgium. When in 1890 it became necessary for him to raise funds for the support of his rule, it was agreed that the reversion of the territory belonged to Belgium as a colony. King Leopold, as already remarked, made an attempt to establish his authority over a part of the upper Nile basin, but here he was thwarted by the ambition of both England and France. England undertook to lease the Bahr-el-Ghazal in consideration of the lease from him of a strip fifteen and a half miles wide along the eastern border of the state, in order to make possible the scheme of a railway on land under British control from "the Cape to Cairo." This scheme was defeated by the Germans as well as by the French. The Portuguese were in turn prevented from extending their holdings from Angola to Mozambique. The French and the English, though each disappointed in their extreme purposes, made substantial gains; England in the regions north of the Cape, across the Zambezi, in Uganda, and in the Sudan; France in western and northern Africa, so that all the northwest, except the coast colonies and the independent Sultanate of Morocco, came under her power. France also turned her protectorate of Madagascar into a colonial possession. England's policy of expansion, together with difficulties arising out of the gold mining industry, involved her in a war with the Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The center of the mining industry was Johannesberg. So rich were the mines that the foreign population there soon outnumbered the Boers. These foreigners, or uitlanders, desired all the privileges of Englishmen, although they had become residents in a state ruled by primitive agriculturists. They claimed that their industry was ruinously hampered by unwise taxation. So great did their sense of wrong become that they entered into an arrangement with Cecil Rhodes, premier of Cape Colony, and with Dr. Jameson, administrator of the South African Chartered Company, in accordance with which, at a given signal, they were to rise and Dr. Jameson with armed troopers was to come to their assistance. Dr. Jameson did not wait for the signal, the scheme broke down, and he and his troops were captured. To the Boers all this seemed to be an English plot against their independence, and so they became more suspicious. Through a series of incidents the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, was led to attempt to extort by force from the Boers the desired concessions. Before the diplomatic campaign was well begun new issues were introduced, both parties began to prepare for war, and finally in October, 1899, the Boers took the initiative and invaded the British colonies. The war was at first disastrous for the English, but finally through a large army under Lord Roberts the Boers were driven from both the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, which were occupied and declared to be colonies of the empire. But it was not until three years after the beginning of the war that the last Boer bands were compelled by Lord Kitchener to surrender, and the country was pacified. England's influence in South Africa was greatly strengthened by this victory, although her prestige in the world at large was somewhat compromised.
THE FAR EAST.—Before the close of the century the interest which had once belonged to the near East was transferred to the Far East. The first indication of this was the action of the powers at the close of the war which broke out between Japan and China, in 1894, over their relations to Korea. Japan was triumphant, demonstrating in the battle of the Yaloo River the superiority of her new navy. She occupied the peninsula of Liaotung and Port Arthur, a harbor of strategic importance. She demanded a cession of this peninsula, together with Formosa and a large indemnity. Russia, Germany, and France intervened and kept Japan from establishing herself on the mainland. This action did not appear altogether in the interest of China, for each of the three powers soon asked of China quite as important concessions for themselves,—France in the south, Germany at Kiaochow, and Russia at Port Arthur,—which compelled England to guard her interests by leasing WVei-hai-wei, opposite Port Arthur. At this time began the marking out of spheres of influence, a practical partition of China, accompanied by demands of all sorts of railway and mining concessions. This unedifying pressure from aggressive Europeans seemed for a time to awaken China. The emperor began to urge forward reform. It was thought that China might follow in the footsteps of Japan, but suddenly there was a palace revolution, the dowager-empress seized control, and the reformers had to fly for their lives. Closely following this came a serious anti-foreign outbreak, led by "the Boxers," and encouraged by certain high officials. Before Europe was aware of the gravity of the situation it was alarmed by the report that the foreign legations at Pekin had been besieged, captured, and massacred. Although this was a false report, it was true that from June 20 to August 14, 1899, the legations were besieged, partly by a mob and partly by Chinese regulars. The siege was raised by a mixed expedition of European and Japanese troops sent from the coast. The satisfaction with which the news of rescue was received in Europe was chilled by stories that some portions of the expeditionary corps had been guilty of crimes only to be paralleled in the history of European wars in the seventeenth century. After the war a difficult diplomatic question remained, all the more puzzling because the ambitions of the powers prevented any hearty agreement among them. These questions were only in appearance settled by the signing of the protocol in January, 1901. Attention was fixed upon Russia, supported by a new instrument of influence, the Trans-Siberian railway, because it appeared to be her purpose to establish her power in Manchuria on a permanent basis.
AUSTRALIA.—During the Boer war the English colonies by their loyal and generous cooperation strengthened the bonds of empire and forced to the front schemes to render the imperial tie more practically beneficial and effective. One of these groups succeeded in completing its own federal organization. This was Australia. Active effort towards federation was begun in 1889 by Sir Henry Parkes, but not until six years later was public sentiment sufficiently aroused. The main difficulty, as in the case of the American colonies, was to reconcile the differing trade-interests and to establish a proper balance between the larger and the smaller states. Finally, in 1900, these difficulties were overcome, and all the colonies save New Zealand voted to become parts of the commonwealth of Australia. Each state was to have six senators, and to be represented in the lower house in proportion to its population, although no state was to have fewer than five representatives. Matters of taxation were more fully intrusted to the lower house than in the United States. For a time it seemed impossible to settle the delicate questions of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council of England, the only instrument of control left in the hands of the home government, but this was settled by a judicious compromise. During the last decade not only Australia, but also New Zealand, made many interesting attempts to solve labor and social problems by legislation. Although the prosperity of Australia received heavy blows after 1890, it began to recover after 1895, and to advance towards its earlier level.
UNITED STATES: CLEVELAND'S SECOND ADMINISTRATION.—Although the McKinley tariff aided in elevating its author to the presidency, its first political consequences were not helpful to the Republican party. In 1892 there was a popular cry for tariff reduction, and Cleveland was triumphantly elected by the Democrats, who also obtained control of both houses of Congress. President Cleveland's purpose of reforming the tariff was hindered at first by a grave financial and industrial crisis, which came in the spring of 1893. The causes of this crisis were the extravagant inflation of business during the preceding years, a financial policy accompanied by the purchase for coinage of vast quantities of silver, and the natural timidity of capital while the economic policy of the government was in danger of fundamental change. The opponents of the administration took skillful advantage of the panic to bring its policies into discredit. So great was the stringency of the money market, especially on account of the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury, that President Cleveland was obliged to call an extra session of Congress, and to urge upon that body the repeal of the law requiring the monthly purchases of silver for coinage. This measure, adopted by the Senate with evident reluctance in the late fall, did not wholly relieve the situation, and to maintain the gold reserve and defend its credit the government was forced four times to issue bonds for more gold, the consequence of which was the increase of the public debt by over $262,000,000. During the controversies upon monetary legislation, the President had alienated many members of his party in the House, and particularly in the Senate. He was unable to bring them together for such tariff legislation as had been promised. A bill was passed which also embodied income tax provisions, and this bill became a law without the President's signature. Not long afterwards the Supreme Court declared the income-tax clauses unconstitutional. Since the tariff bill did not produce the expected revenue, the government was obliged to face an ominous deficit. The President, however, by his courage and honesty, upheld the national credit despite attacks from his own party. His foreign policy, save in one instance, was conservative. He refused to take advantage of the Hawaiian revolution to bring on the annexation of those islands, and he endeavored to maintain the neutrality of the United States in the struggle between Spain and the Cuban revolutionists; but he intervened in a boundary dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela, insisting that the question should be submitted to arbitration rather than be settled on the terms imposed by the stronger.
MCKINLEY ADMINISTRATION.—In the campaign of 1896 the older leaders of the democracy were thrust aside and William J. Bryan became the party candidate, with the free coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1 as its watchword. This appealed strongly to the distressed debtor class, very numerous in the West on account of the "hard times." The tone of the platform and of the speeches of the leaders was such as to attract the workingmen. The Republicans nominated McKinley, with the promise to reenact the former tariff legislation, to foster industries, and to protect the financial credit of the country. The success of the Republicans was at first doubtful; but the conservative interests became alarmed, and finally the Republicans gained a decisive victory. By the time President McKinley was inaugurated, the period of business liquidation and readjustment was over, confidence had returned, and so the new President became, as campaign placards of his party had announced, "the advance agent of prosperity." The tariff was restored to its older level, the monetary system was reformed, and the gold standard legally established. It was not this legislation, however, that rendered the period significant; it was the adoption of a new national policy of expansion, incident to the war with Spain. The Spaniards had been unable to put down the Cuban insurrection. The drastic measures, especially the policy of "reconcentration" adopted by General Weyler, had discredited the Spanish cause. The ancient tradition of Spain's cruelty to her colonies predisposed the American people to credit reports of atrocity. The administration was apparently anxious to perform its duties as a friendly power, but this was rendered more and more difficult owing to the growing popular demand for intervention. On the 15th of February, 1898, the American battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbor. Although there was no decisive proof that this was due to the Spaniards, there was no doubt of it in the popular mind. A little later the Spaniards were ready to make any concessions short of an actual abandonment of their sovereignty. It was now too late. There was an irresistible demand for war, and war was declared in April. The result was inevitable, and Spain was obliged to yield sooner than was anticipated. Her fleet at Manila was destroyed by Admiral Dewey, May 1, and her West India squadron by the fleet in which Rear Admiral Sampson held the chief command, on July 3. Meantime a small American army had rendered Santiago untenable. After the surrender of Santiago, Porto Rico was soon overrun. Manila, which had been under the American guns since May, was also forced to surrender. A protocol signed in August led to the negotiation of peace in December. According to its terms, not only was Cuba to be evacuated, but Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Ladrones were to become American possessions. In this way a war begun because of popular sympathy with the Cubans, turned into a means of territorial expansion. The resistance to the policy of an expansion of this sort was strong in certain sections of the country. Many senators held similar opinions, long delaying the ratification of the treaty of peace.
COLONIAL PROBLEMS.—Simultaneously with the ratification of the peace, war broke out in the Philippines between the American army and the natives, whose leaders had been bent on securing independence. The American troops easily defeated the organized native armies, though one consequence of the struggle was widespread ruin in the island of Luzon; but they were unable for over two years to pacify the country. Even before these troubles were ended, measures were taken to substitute a civil for a military administration, which went into effect in the summer of 1901. Porto Rico was organized as a partly autonomous territory, and although on its trade with the United States there was not at first a full freedom from tariff restrictions, these subsequently disappeared. In dealing with Cuba there had been no formal recognition of the revolutionary organization. It was suspected by many that the military occupation would be prolonged until annexation was brought about, but the President insisted upon the fulfilment of the pledges which had been made at the beginning of the war. A Cuban convention agreed to a treaty in accordance with which the United States acquired the right to intervene to guarantee the independence of the island should this be endangered by entanglements with foreign states. The Cubans also promised to sell or lease to the United States sites for naval stations. The army of occupation was then withdrawn, and the new government inaugurated in 1902. Even before the outbreak of the war, President McKinley had endeavored to bring about the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, but it required such a pressing need of a controlling position in the mid-Pacific, as the hostilities emphasized, to overcome the opposition. It was not until after the war closed that the islands were organized as a territory. About the same time England withdrew from her joint control of Samoa, and Germany agreed with the United States for a partition of the group. Active preparations were also made for the building of an interoceanic canal through Nicaragua or the Isthmus of Panama on the route laid out by the French. With these questions of expansion and colonial government, other equally important problems, growing out of the new period of prosperity, agitated the public mind, particularly the formation of gigantic corporations, a form of organization which tended to supersede the trusts. As the state laws were helpless to check abuse of power by such corporations, there was a growing demand for the better enforcement of the national laws already enacted or the adoption of other laws more effective. In 1900 McKinley was reëlected, Bryan again being put forward by the Democrats. A few months after his inauguration, while he was visiting the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, he was fatally shot by an anarchist. Upon his death, the Vice-President, Theodore Roosevelt, became President.
As an era of invention and discovery, the nineteenth century is a rival of the fifteenth.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES.—Too much was already known of the globe to leave room for another so stupendous discovery as that of the New World. Nevertheless, many important geographical discoveries have been made, especially since about 1825. Geographical societies without number have been founded, of which the Royal Geographical Society in England (1830) is one of the best known. Geographical knowledge is increased in two ways,—first, by the discovery of places not before known; and secondly, by the scientific examination of countries and districts, with accurate surveys, and the making of maps. In both these departments, especially in the latter, the recent period won distinction. The Russians in their advance rendered the regions of Northern and Central Asia accessible to travelers. Not only India, but also extensive districts in Central Asia, have been explored by the British. China has been traversed by a succession of travelers, and Japan has unbarred its gates for the admission of foreigners. Abyssinia has been traversed. The mystery respecting the sources of the Nile has been dispelled by Speke, Grant, and Baker. In 1822 and 1825 Clapperlon, in two journeys, went over the whole route from Tripoli to the coast of Guinea. In 1830 Richard and John Lander settled the question as to the outlet of the Niger. Barth, and other later explorers, have carried forward the study of the course of this great river, in the exploration of which Mungo Park lost his life (1806). In 1816 the Congo was explored to the falls of Yellala. The travels of Schweinfurth, Livingstone, Barth, Cameron, and Stanley have greatly enlarged our acquaintance with formerly unknown portions of the African continent. In 1879 Stanley, commissioned by King Leopold of Belgium, opened up communication with the populous basin of the Congo. During the struggle of the European states to acquire colonial territory, no part of the continent remained unexplored. European rivalries also had similar important consequences to geography in Asia, especially in the Trans-Caspian region and in Tibet. Dr. Sven Hedin was the most successful of the explorers in Tibet, traversing wholly unknown districts. Unknown regions on the American continent, in South America, in far north-western North America, and in Labrador, have been visited. The same is true of the interior of Australia. The eagerness to find a north-western passage (and later in scientific exploration) has led to hazardous and not unfruitful expeditions under Ross, Parry, Franklin, Kane, Markham, McClintock, Greely, and other voyagers. In 1875 Markham reached the highest latitude that up to that time had been attained (83° 21' 26"). A still higher point (86° 14') was reached by Dr. Nansen who in 1893 started to drift in the Fram across the polar regions. In 1892 Lieutenant Peary crossed Greenland from the west coast to a part of the north-east coast never before visited. The Antarctic seas were also explored first by the Challenger in 1874. By 1900 the farthest point reached was 78° 50'. Geography has become a much more profound and instructive science. The physical character of the globe, and of the atmosphere that surrounds it, have been studied in their relation to man and history. Physical geography, or physiography, has thus arisen. In recent years scientists have gone far in the study of the physical geography of the sea, in making maps of its bottom, and in the endeavor to define the system of oceanic winds and currents. In connection with physical geography, the distribution of animal life on the land and in the depths of the sea has been studied, and much valuable information gained.
FOUR INVENTIONS.—Among the useful inventions of the present century, there are four which are of preëminent consequence. The honor connected with each of these, as is generally the case with great inventions, belongs to no individual exclusively. Several, and in some cases many persons, can fairly claim a larger or smaller share in it. (1) The most efficient agent in bringing the steam-engine to perfection was James Watt (1736-1819), a native of Scotland. (2) In connection with the application of steam to navigation, no name stands higher than that of Robert Fulton. (3) Carriages on railroads were at first drawn by horses. In 1814 George Stephenson, in England, invented the locomotive, and afterwards (1829) an improved construction of it.
The first great railroad for the transportation of passengers began to run between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830. Remarkable achievements in engineering have been connected with the construction of railways. The Alps were pierced, and the Mont Cenis tunnel was completed in 1871. The principal civilized countries have gradually become covered with networks of railways. The whole method of transportation of the products of industry has been altered by them. Besides their vast influence in facilitating and stimulating travel and trade, they have modified the method of conducting warfare, with very important results. (4) In contriving the electric telegraph, Wheatstone, an Englishman, Oersted, a Dane, and Henry, an American, had each an important part. The most simple and efficient form of the telegraphic instrument is admitted to be due to the inventive sagacity of Morse (1837). His instrument was first put in use in 1844. The first submarine wires connecting Europe with America transmitted messages in 1858, between England and the United States. Since that time numerous submarine cables have been laid in different parts of the globe. Upon the invention of the telegraph, another invention—that of the telephone—has followed, by which conversation can be held with the voice between distant places. By the phonograph it has become possible to reproduce audibly songs, speeches, and conversations. Still more recently a system of wireless telegraphy has been invented by which messages may be sent even across the Atlantic without the use of a cable.
The Suez Canal, a channel for ships, connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and opening thus a shorter highway by water between Europe and the East, was officially opened on the 17th of November, 1869.
USES OF STEAM.—The practical applications of steam, besides its use in the propulsion of vessels, and of carriages on railways, are numberless. It is used, for example, in automobiles, in traction engines, in plowing and harvesting machinery, in fire-engines, in road-rollers, and in all sorts of hoisting and conveying machinery.
Steam forge hammers were invented by Nasmyth, an engineer of Manchester, in 1839. In a multitude of industrial occupations, where water-power was once used, or tools and machines whose use involved muscular exertion, the work is now done by the energy of steam. More recently electricity has been displacing steam not only on street railroads and suburban railroads, but also in many other industrial processes, as well as the lighting of buildings and streets.
TOOLS AND MACHINES.—In modern days no small amount of skill has been directed to the devising of tools and machines for the more facile and exact production of whatever costs labor. Factories have become monuments of ingenuity, and museums in the useful arts. Improved machinery lightens the toil of the sailor. Machines in a great variety facilitate agricultural labor. They open the furrow, sow the seed, reap and winnow the harvest. In-doors, the sewing-machine performs a great part of the labor formerly done by the fingers of the seamstress. The art of printing has attained to a marvelous degree of progress. Hoe's printing-press, moved by steam, seizes on the blank paper, severs it from the roll in sheets of the right size, prints it on both sides, and folds it in a convenient shape,—all with miraculous rapidity. Inventions in rock-boring and rock-drilling have made it possible to tunnel mountains. The use of explosives for mechanical purposes is a highly important fact in connection with the modern labor-saving inventions.
INDIA RUBBER.—Shoes made of caoutchouc, the thickened milky juice of the india-rubber plant, were imported from Brazil to Boston as early as 1825. Improvements in the use of this material, in the solid form and in solution, were made by Mr. Macintosh of Glasgow, and Thomas Hancock of Newington, England, about 1820. From the dissolved caoutchouc, a coating was obtained making garments water-proof. In 1839 Charles Goodyear, an American, discovered the process of vulcanizing india-rubber,—that is, producing in it a chemical change whereby its valuable qualities are greatly enhanced. The material thus procured was applied to a great number of uses. It enters into a great variety of manufactured articles.
ENGINERY OF WAR.—A continual advance has been made in the construction of the implements of war. The whole science and art of war have been fundamentally changed, mainly in consequence of these modern inventions. Reference may be made to the invention of rifled cannon, heavier ordnance, breech-loading guns, and shells and explosive bullets. It was the needle-gun of the Prussians, which gave them a signal advantage in their war with the French. The building of armored battle ships has been followed by the construction of small swift vessels from which to launch torpedoes at the battle ships. Other swift vessels have been constructed to pursue and destroy the torpedo boat. High explosives and smokeless powder have also been invented.
THE TELESCOPE AND MICROSCOPE.—Among the instruments which have promoted the extension of science, the microscope, with its modern improvements, is one of the most interesting. It has aided discovery in botany, in physiology, in mineralogy, and in almost all other branches of science. It has even assisted in the detection of crime. The large refracting telescopes have been constructed within the last few decades. Telescopes have recently been used with increasing success in photographing the heavens with accuracy.
INSTRUMENTS IN MEDICINE AND SURGERY.—The microscope has rendered inestimable service to the healing art. Rare ingenuity has been exerted in contriving surgical instruments by which difficult operations are performed with comparative safety and without pain. In medicine and surgery, the discovery of anesthetics for the general or partial suspending of nervous sensibility is one of the triumphs of practical science in later times. Chloroform was brought into general use in the medical profession in 1847; although it had been discovered, and had been used by individuals in the profession, much earlier. Nitrous oxide was first used by Horace Wells, a dentist of Hartford, in the extraction of a tooth (1844). In 1846 the great discovery of anæsthetic ether, by Morton of Boston, was first applied in surgery. Jackson and others were claimants, with more or less justice, to a part in the honors of this discovery. Lately cocaine has been found to benumb the sensibility of the more delicate membranes, as those of the eye and the throat. In auscultation, or the ascertaining of the state of the internal organs by listening to their sound, a very valuable instrument is the stethoscope. The principle of the ophthalmoscope, that wonderful instrument for inspecting the interior of the eye, was expounded by Helmholtz in 1851. By its aid, not only the condition of that organ is explored, but indications of certain diseases in the brain, and in other parts of the body, are discovered. Helmholtz did an equal work in acoustics. The recent discovery and use of the X-rays has assisted surgeons in locating foreign substances and in diagnosing disease.
THE SPECTROSCOPE: PHOTOGRAPHY.—In connection with the phenomena of light, the spectroscope, by which the chemical elements entering in the composition of the sun and of other heavenly bodies are ascertained, is one of the marvels of the age. The way was paved for this discovery by a succession of chemists and opticians,—Fraunhofer (1814), Brewster (1832), Sir John Herschel (1822), J. W. Draper, and others; but the instrument was devised by Kirchhoff and Bunsen. Photography, or the art of making permanent sun-pictures, is the result of the labors of Niepce (who died in 1833), Daguerre (1839), Fox Talbot, an Englishman, J. W. Draper, and other men of science and practical artisans. Instantaneous photography has been of much service in the observation of eclipses and other astronomical phenomena. Progress has also been made in color-photography.
THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.—Perhaps the most important conclusion of physical science which has been reached in the recent period is the doctrine of the conservation of energy. Chemists had shown that the sum of matter always remains the same. In the transformations of chemistry no matter is destroyed, however it may change its form. Now, it has been proved that the quantity of power or energy is constant. If lost in one body, it reappears in another; if it ceases in one form, it is exerted in another, and this according to definite ratios. One form of energy is convertible into another: heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, are so related that one can be made to produce either of the others. This fact is termed the correlation of physical forces. Connected with the discovery of it are Meyer in Germany, and Grove and Joule in England. It has been expounded by Sir William Thompson, Helmholtz, Tait, Maxwell, etc. The truth was elucidated by Tyndall in his Heat considered as a Mode of Motion, and by Balfour Stewart in his Conservation of Energy. But Count Rumford, an American (1753-1814), the real founder of the Royal Institution, long ago opened the path for this discovery by furnishing the data for computing the mechanical equivalent of heat.
GEOLOGY AND PALEONTOLOGY.—In geology, from the publication of Lyell's work (1830), the tendency has more and more prevailed to explain the geological structure of the earth by the slow operation of forces now in action, rather than by violent convulsions and catastrophes. In 1831 Sedgwick and Murchison, likewise English geologists, commenced their labors. Agassiz published his Essay on the Glaciers in 1837, the precursor of like investigations by Tyndall and others. These are only a small fraction of the numerous body of explorers and writers in geological science. In the United States, Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), an eminent scientific teacher, lent a strong stimulus to the progress of geology, as well as of chemistry. Even in the branch of paleontology, or the study of the fossil remains of extinct animals, it would be impracticable to give the names of those who have added so much to our knowledge of the earth and its inhabitants in the ages that preceded man.
ASTRONOMY.—The great French geometers, Lagrange and Laplace, made an epoch in astronomical science. Since their time, however, there has been a large increase of knowledge in this branch. The discovery of the planet Neptune (1846) by Galle, as the result of mathematical calculations of Leverrier, which were made independently also by Adams, was hailed as a signal proof of scientific progress; and, recently, the discovery of a fifth satellite of Jupiter. Besides Neptune hundreds of thousands of stars have been discovered and registered. Mathematical astronomy has advanced, while the study of nebulae and of meteors, and the investigation of the constitution of celestial bodies by the help of the spectroscope, are among the more recent achievements of this oldest of the sciences. Among the names identified with the recent progress of astronomy are Sir John Herschel and A. Herschel, Maxwell, Struve, Secchi, Bessel, Bond, Peirce, Newton, Newcomb, Young, Lockyer, Schiaparelli.
PROGRESS IN CHEMISTRY.—In chemistry the major part of the more rare elements have been discovered since the century began. It was proved in 1819 that the capacities for heat which belong to the atoms of the different elements are equal. In the same year Mitscherlich's law was propounded,—the law of isomorphism, according to which atoms of elements of the same class may replace each other in a compound without altering its crystalline structure. Chemists have directed their attention to the molecular structure—the ultimate constitution—of various compounds. Faraday (1791-1867) developed the relations of electricity to chemistry. Liebig (1803-1873), a German chemist, in connection with numerous laborers in the same field, made interesting contributions in the different departments of chemical science. Among the recent elements which have been discovered are argon, which enters into the composition of air, helium, and radium.
BIOLOGY.—No branch of natural science has been more zealously cultivated of late than biology. Among those who have given an impulse to the study of natural history, one of the most eminent names is that of Charles Darwin. His work on The Origin of Species (1859) advocated the opinion that the various species of animals, instead of being all separately created, spring by natural descent and slow variation from a few primitive forms of animal life. He laid much stress upon "natural selection," or the survival of the strongest or fittest in the struggle for existence. With the name of Darwin should be associated that of Wallace, who simultaneously propounded the same doctrine. The general doctrine of evolution, or of the origin of species by natural generation, has been held in other forms and modifications by Richard Owen, and other distinguished naturalists. One of the most noted opponents of the evolution doctrine in zoology was Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), a very able and enthusiastic student of nature. One of its most eminent expounders and defenders was Huxley. Some have sought to extend the theory of natural development over the field of inorganic as well as living things, and to trace all existences back to nebulous vapor.
ARCHEOLOGY.—Geology lends its aid to archeology, or the inquiry into the primitive condition of man. Not only has much light been thrown on obscure periods of history, by the uncovering of the remains of Babylon, Assyria, and other abodes of early civilization, and by the deciphering of monumental inscriptions in characters long forgotten; but the discovery of buried relics of prehistoric men has afforded glimpses of human life as it was prior to all written memorials. One of the most instructive writers on this last subject is Tylor in his Primitive Culture, and in other works on the same general theme.
PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE.—Victor Cousin (1792—1867), a brilliant thinker and eloquent lecturer and writer, founded in France the eclectic school of philosophy. He aimed to construct a positive view on the basis of previous systems, which he classified under four heads,—idealism, sensualism, skepticism, and mysticism. In his teaching, he sought a middle path between the German and the Scottish schools, leaning now more decidedly to the one, and now to the other. Jouffroy (1796-1842), the most prominent of Cousin's disciples, but more exact and methodical than his master, wrote instructively, especially on aesthetics and moral philosophy. Philosophy in France took an altogether different direction in the hands of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the founder of the positivist school. He taught that we know only phenomena, or things as manifested to our consciousness, and know nothing either of first causes, efficient causes, or of final causes (or design). We are limited to the ascertaining of facts by observation and experiment, which we register according to their likeness or unlikeness, and their chronological relation, or the order of their occurrence in time.
SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY.—The most distinguished expounder of the Scottish philosophy, and the most learned of that whole school, was Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856). He maintained the doctrine of natural realism,—that we have a direct, "face to face" perception of external things. He held that the range of the mind's power of conceptive thought lies between two inconceivables, one of which must be real. Thus we can not conceive of free-will (which would be a new beginning), nor can we conceive of an endless series of causes. Free-will—and the same is true of the fundamental truths of religion—is verified to us as real by our moral nature. A Scottish writer of ability, who, however, opposed the peculiar tenets of the Scottish school, was Ferrier (1808-1864). Among the other philosophical writers of Scotland, affiliated, but with different degrees of dissent, with the school of Reid and Hamilton, are Professors Fraser and Calderwood, and the late James McCosh.
PHILOSOPHY IN ENGLAND.—More allied to the philosophy of Hume and of Comte are the metaphysical theories of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Intuitions were regarded by Mill as the impression produced by a frequent conjunction of like experiences, and thus to be the product of sensation. Causation was resolved into the invariable association of phenomena, by which an expectation is created that seems instinctive. Another writer of the same general tendency, who seeks for the explanation of knowledge in the materials furnished by the senses, is Alexander Bain, a Scottish author, versed in physiology. Herbert Spencer constructed a general system of philosophy on the basis of the theory of evolution. He holds that our knowledge is limited to phenomena, which are the manifestation in our consciousness of things which in themselves are unknown; and that behind and below all is "the Unknowable,"—an inscrutable force, out of which the universe of matter and mind is developed, and which gives to it unity and coherence.
PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY.—In Germany the decline of the school of Hegel was succeeded by a sort of anarchy in philosophy. Herbart (1776-1841), a contemporary of Hegel, framed a system antagonistic to Hegelian idealism. Among numerous metaphysical authors, each of whom has a "standpoint" of his own, are the justly distinguished names of Fichte (the younger), Ulrici, Trendelenburg, and Hermann Lotze. Lotze. in his Microcosm, has unfolded, in a style attractive to the general reader, profound and genial views of man, nature, and religion. A remarkable phenomenon in German speculation is "pessimism,"—the doctrine gravely propounded in the systems of Schopenhauer and E. Von Hartmann, that the world is radically and essentially evil, and personal existence a curse from which the refuge is in the hope of annihilation. In its view of the world as springing from an unconscious force, and of the extinction of consciousness as the state of bliss, as well as in its notions of evil as inwrought in the essence of things, this philosophy is a revival of Indian Oriental speculation. Historical and critical writings in the department of philosophy abound in Germany. The histories of philosophy by Ritter, Erdmann, Zeller, Kuno Fischer, and Lange, are works of remarkable merit.
PHILOSOPHY IN ITALY.—Among the Italian metaphysicians, the two writers who are most noteworthy are Rosmini (1797-1855), who taught idealism; and Gioberti (1801-1882), whose system is on a different basis,—a gifted writer who was equally conspicuous as a statesman and a philosopher.
PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNITED STATES.—Philosophy in America has been zealously cultivated, both in connection with theology and apart from it, by a considerable number of teachers and writers. Among them are James Marsh, C. S. Henry, Francis Wayland, L. P. Hickok, H. B. Smith, and other eminent authors, mostly of a more recent date.
POLITICAL ECONOMY.—Ricardo (1772-1823), who followed Adam Smith (p. 492), dealt more in abstractions and processes of logic, than his predecessor. The writings of Ricardo, together with the discussions of Malthus (1766-1834) on population,—in which it was maintained that the tendency to an increase of population outstrips the increase of the means of subsistence,—led to numerous other writings.
Political economy was handled in productions by James Mill (1821), J. R. McCulloch, N. W. Senior (1790-1864), R. Torrens (1780-1864), Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), Thomas Chalmers, the celebrated Scottish divine, Archbishop Richard Whately, Richard Jones (1790-1855), a critic of the system of Ricardo, and others. An eminent writer, an expositor with important modifications of the Ricardian teaching, is John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Fawcett and other able authors have followed for the most part in Mill's path. An English author of distinction in this field is J. E. Cairnes (1824-1875). The French school of economists have adhered to the principles of Adam Smith much more than have the Germans. Among the most noted of the French authors in this field are Say (1767-1832), whose views are founded on those of Smith; Sismondi (1773-1842), who, however, departs from the English doctrine, and favors the intervention of government to "regulate the progress of wealth"; Dunoyer (1786-1862); Bastiat (1801-1850), one of the most brilliant advocates of free-trade; Cournot (1801-1877), who applies, with much acumen, mathematics to economical questions. In America, since the days of Franklin and Hamilton, both of whom wrote instructively on these topics, a number of writers of ability have appeared. Among them are H. C. Carey, who opposes the views of Ricardo and Malthus, and defends the theory of protection; Francis Bowen, also a protectionist; F. A. Walker, Perry, etc. In Italy, there have not been wanting productions of marked acuteness in this department. Of the numerous German writers, one of the most eminent is List (1798-1846), a critic of Adam Smith, and not an adherent of the unqualified doctrine of free-trade. In the list of later English writers, the names of Bagehot, Leslie, Jevons, and Sidgwick are quite prominent. With regard to free-trade and protection, the latter doctrine has been maintained in two forms. Some have regarded protection as the best permanent policy for a nation to adopt. Others have defended it as a provisional policy, to shield manufactures in their infancy, until they grow strong enough to compete, without help, with foreign products. After the repeal of the corn-laws in England (1846), the free-trade doctrine prevailed in England. Since Comte published his exposition of Sociology (1839), the tendency has arisen to consider political economy as one branch of this broader theme. With it the controversies pertaining to socialism are intimately connected.
The disciples of Adam Smith have contended for the non-intervention of governments in the industrial pursuits of the people. They are to be left to the natural desire of wealth, and the natural exercise of competition in the pursuit of it. The prevalent theories of socialism are directly hostile to this—called the laissez-faire—principle. Socialists would make government the all-regulative agent, the owner of land and of the implements of labor.
ENGLISH ESSAYISTS.—In literature the later time has seen an extraordinary multiplying of periodicals and newspapers, among whose editors and contributors have been included numerous writers of much celebrity. In Great Britain, several famous authors first acquired distinction mainly by historical and critical articles in reviews. This is true of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle. Each of them became a historian. Macaulay, an ardent Whig, with an astonishing familiarity with political and literary facts, wrote in a spirited and brilliant style a History of England from the Accession of James II. to the death of his hero, William III. Carlyle, with a unique force of imagination and a rugged intensity of feeling, original in his thought, yet strongly affected by German literature, especially by Richter and Goethe, wrote in his earlier days a Life of Schiller. He wrote later a history of the French Revolution, in which the scenes of that tragic epoch are depicted with dramatic vividness; and a copious History of Frederick the Great. Among the most characteristic of his writings are his Heroes and Hero-Worship; the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," in which is poured out his contempt of democracy; and the Life of John Sterling,—the counterpart of a biography of Sterling, written in a different vein by a learned and scholarly divine, Julius Hare.
Of essayists in a lighter, discursive vein, one of the most popular, who has already been referred to (p. 544), was the Scottish writer, John Wilson (1785-1854), the author of numerous tales and criticisms, and of diverting papers written under the name of "Christopher North." Without the fancy and humor of Wilson, yet master of a style keeping within the limits of prose while verging on poetry, was Thomas De Quincey, the author of The Confessions of an Opium Eater, Essays on the Roman Emperors, etc.
HISTORICAL WRITINGS IN ENGLAND.—The literature of history has been enriched by British authors with important works besides those named above. Grote and Thirlwall each composed histories of Greece which are the fruit of thorough and enlightened scholarship. The work of Grote is a vindication of the Athenian democracy, a view the antipode of that taken in the work on Grecian history by Mitford. An elaborate work on the History of the Romans under the Empire is one of several historical productions of Charles Merivale. Stanhope [Lord Mahon] composed a narrative of the War of the Spanish Succession, and other useful histories. Sir W. F. P. Napier wrote a History of the War in the Peninsula, in which the campaigns of Wellington in Spain are described by an author who took part in them. The constitutional history of England has been treated with satisfactory learning and judgment by Hallam, May, and Stubbs. The Puritan revolution has been described with masterly skill and judicial fairness by S. R. Gardiner. In the earlier field, Mr. Edward A. Freeman labored with distinguished success, the History of the Norman Conquest being his principal work in this branch of historical inquiry. J. R. Green is the author of an attractive history of the English people. J. A. Froude wrote with engaging literary art a History of England in the Reign of Elizabeth, which attempts, in the preliminary part, an apology for the character and conduct of Henry VIII. Spencer Walpole has written a History of England since 1815. Ramsay has written the Foundations of England, Angevin England, Lancaster, and York. John Hill Burton, a Scottish author, educated as a lawyer, composed vigorously written histories of Scotland and of the reign of Queen Anne. Lecky wrote in a pleasing style a History of England in the Eighteenth Century, besides a History of Rationalism in Europe, and a History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne. In ecclesiastical history, Milman, whose leading work is the History of Latin Christianity, Dean Stanley, and Bishop Creighton have been the principal writers.
ENGLISH NOVELISTS.—The series of "Waverley novels" by Walter Scott (1771-1832) had an unbounded popularity. Pervaded by a cheerful, healthy tone, they presented fascinating pictures of life and manners, and kindled a fresh sympathy with the Middle Ages and with the spirit of chivalry. The poems of Scott depicted, in a metrical form, like picturesque scenes, and knightly combats and adventures. The fictions of Scott gave rise to a school of writers, one of whom was G. P. R. James (1801-1860). A new and different type of novel appeared, in connection with which the names of Dickens (1812-1870) and Thackeray (1811-1863) are preëminent. Both are humorists; in Dickens especially, humor runs into broad caricature. Both present pictures of society and of common life. They illustrate the tendency of the novel at present to rely for its attraction upon scenes and incidents of ordinary life, and the minute portraiture of manners and of character. Dickens owes his popularity largely to the unique sort of drollery and the genuine pathos that are mingled in his pages. Thackeray is a satirist, with a keen eye to detect the weaknesses of humanity, but with a deep well of sympathy, veiled, however, and sedulously guarded from sentimentalism, by a tone of banter and a semblance of cynicism. Measured by their popularity with the cultivated class, the novels of Mrs. Lewes (George Eliot) stand next in rank to the productions last referred to. In some of her tales, the artistic motive and spirit are qualified by the didactic aim, or the underlying "tendency,"—the purpose to teach, or to promote a favorite cause,—which has become a frequent characteristic in modern fiction. Among the other English novelists, Bulwer (1805-1873), whose later stories are free from the immorality that stains the earlier, is one of the most widely read. The novels of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) are among the justly popular productions in this department. Among the novelists of the late Victorian Era were Charles Keade, Blackmore, Stevenson, Kipling, Meredith, Hardy, and Mrs. Humphry Ward.
ENGLISH POETS.—Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), the author of The Princess, In Memoriam, and the Idylls of the King, held the first place among the poets of his day. An adept in the metrical art, he combines in these mature productions, with terseness of diction and fresh, striking imagery, deep reflection and sympathy with the intellectual questionings and yearnings of the time. In his lyrical poems the fullness of his power is seen. He was, without question, a consummate literary artist. Browning (1812-1889), careless of rhythmical art, with a defiance of form, but with dramatic power, in his descent to "the under-currents" of the soul, placed himself open to the reproach of obscurity. Among English poets of high merit in the recent period stand the names of the delightful humorist Thomas Hood (1798-1845), Arthur Clough (1819-1861), and more recently, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).
With this reference to the poets may be coupled the name of the most eloquent and suggestive of the English writers on art, John Ruskin.
THEOLOGY IN ENGLAND.—Theological scholarship in Great Britain, after a long season of partial eclipse, again shone forth in the present period. Critical works relating to the Scriptures have been produced, which are on a level with the best Continental learning. About 1833, there began at Oxford what has been called the "Tractarian movement," from a series of "Tracts for the Times," relating to theology and the Church, which were issued by its promoters. The party thus originating were called "Puseyites," as Dr. Edward Pusey (1800-1882), the author of learned commentaries, and of works in other departments of divinity, was their acknowledged leader. They formed one branch of the class called "High Churchmen." They laid great emphasis on the doctrine of the "apostolic succession" of the ministry, the necessity and efficacy of the sacraments administered by them, and the importance of visible ecclesiastical unity. They claimed to stand in the "middle path" between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. One of the leading associates of Pusey was John Keble (1792-1866), the poet, author of The Christian Year. The most eminent writer in this group of theologians was John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who won general admiration by the subtlety of his genius and its rare felicity of expression. He entered the Church of Rome, and was advanced to the rank of a cardinal. One of the principal literary undertakings of the recent period is the Revision of the Authorized Version of the Bible, by associated companies of English and American scholars. In the long catalogue of influential writers in theology, it is practicable to refer here to a few suggestive names. Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was equally noted as a glowing preacher, an eloquent defender of the Christian faith, and a lucid expounder of the Calvinistic system. Edward Irving (1792-1834) was a pulpit orator of unsurpassed eloquence in his day, whose peculiar view as to the restoration of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit, that were granted in the apostolic age, gave rise to a religious body calling itself the "Catholic Apostolic Church." Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872) was one of the leaders of the "liberal," or "Broad Church," portion of the English Episcopal Church. His writings have exerted a strong influence. In the same general direction, but of a more critical and argumentative tone, were Richard Whately (1787-1863), Archbishop of Dublin; and Thomas Arnold, who, in addition to his influence as a teacher, classical scholar, and historian, engaged actively in discussions on the questions relating to Church and State.
LITERATURE IN AMERICA: POEMS AND TALES.—The period which we are now considering witnessed a gratifying development of belles-lettres and historical literature in the United States. At the outset, two writers appeared who acquired a transatlantic fame. Washington Irving (1783-1859) in 1818 published The Sketch Book, in a series of pamphlets. It had been preceded by Knickerbocker's History of New York and other humorous publications. Among his later writings were included the Life of Columbus, the Life of Mohammed, and the Life of Washington. The refinement and charm of his style, which brought back the simplicity of Goldsmith, satisfied the foreign critics who had ridiculed the florid rhetoric of previous American authors. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) published The Spy, the first of his novels, which attracted much attention, in 1821. This was followed, two years later, by The Pioneers, the first of the famous "Leatherstocking" series of novels, in which Indian life and manners were portrayed. Cooper was also the founder of the "sea-novel," a line of fiction in which he was followed by an English writer, Marryat (1792-1848). Richard H. Dana and Fitz-Greene Halleck were poets who had a much higher than the merely negative merit of freedom from tumidity, the bane of the earlier American bards. Not only in verse, but also in his prose tales, Dana manifested genius. Several later poets, acknowledged at home and abroad, well deserve the name. Such are Bryant (1794-1878), whose poems, pensive and elevated in their tone, lack neither vigor nor finish; Longfellow (1807-1882), a poet of exquisite culture, whose purity of sentiment, as well as polish and melody of diction, have made him a favorite in both Europe and America; Whittier (1807-1892), whose spirited productions are pervaded with a glowing love of liberty and humanity. Lowell (1819-1891) has justly earned fame as a poet and a critic; and, as a poet, in both serious and humorous compositions. The "Biglow Papers" are without a rival in the species of humor that characterize them. Distinction as a poet and a prose writer belongs likewise to Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), who was especially successful as an author of "poems of society." Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), faulty in his moral spirit as he was wayward in his conduct, exhibited, both in his poems and tales, which are unique in their character, the traits of a wild and somber genius. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), admired as a poet, but more generally as an essayist, valuing insight above logic, has commented on nature, man, and literature with so rare a penetration and felicity of expression that Matthew Arnold has placed his productions on a level with the Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. In the list of American novelists the foremost name is that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his romances the subtle analysis of the workings of conscience and sensibility, in particular the obscure—including the morbid-action of these powers, is combined with perfection of style and of literary art. The novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe, especially those which relate to slavery and depict negro character, have had a world-wide currency. Among other novelists were Paulding and Sedgwick, and more recently, Howells, James, Bret Harte, Cable, and Aldrich. The most distinguished humorist has been S. M. Clemens (Mark Twain).
Good work has been done by Americans in literary history and criticism. The History of Spanish Literature, by George Ticknor, is the fruit of many years of labor by a competent scholar.
HISTORICAL WRITINGS IN AMERICA.—Creditable works have been produced in America in the department of historical literature. The lives of Washington and Franklin, and other biographical and historical writings of much value, have been composed or edited by Jared Sparks. George Bancroft (1800-1891) published, in successive editions, the results of extensive researches in the history of the United States. Works on the same subject have been published by Richard Hildreth and many others. John G. Palfrey is the author of an excellent history of New England. William H. Prescott by his History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, his histories of Spanish conquest in America, and his fragment on the reign of Philip II. of Spain, has deservedly attained to a high distinction on both sides of the Atlantic. The same may be said of John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877), in his Rise and Progress of the Dutch Republic. The history of French colonization and of the contests of France in America has been detailed with thoroughness and skill by Francis Parkman. Other prominent writers have been John Fiske, Justin Winsor, Henry. Adams, James F. Rhodes, and A. T. Mahan.
AMERICAN WRITERS ON LAW ANS POLITICS.—American writers on law embrace names of world-wide celebrity. Among them are Henry Wheaton, in international law, a science to which Woolsey and Lawrence have made valuable contributions; James Kent, whose Commentaries on American Law is a work held in high honor by the legal profession; and Joseph Story, a jurist and legal writer of distinguished merit. The speeches and other productions of Webster, Calhoun, Clay, John Quincy Adams, Edward Everett, Seward, Sumner, form a valuable body of political writings. The works of Francis Lieber, a German by birth, and the treatise on Political Science by Theodore D. Woolsey, are important contributions to the branch of knowledge to which they relate.
PHILOLOGY IN AMERICA.—On the catalogue of students of language, the name of Noah Webster (1758-1843) is prominent, through his English Dictionary, the fruit of many years of arduous labor; a work that since his death has appeared in successive and improved editions. Another successful laborer in the same field was Joseph E. Worcester (1784-1865), likewise the author of a copious and valuable lexicon of the English language. George P. Marsh, an erudite Scandinavian scholar, wrote also on the Origin and History of the English Language. In the departments of classical learning, of Oriental study, and of general philology, there have appeared other American authors of acknowledged merit, e.g. William D. Whitney.
THEOLOGY IN AMERICA.—Theology has been cultivated with much fruit by a large number of preachers and authors, of different religious bodies. Moses Stuart, by his commentaries on Biblical books, and Edward Robinson, especially through his published Travels in the Holy Land, were widely known. Charles Hodge, long a professor at Princeton; Nathaniel W. Taylor, who broached modifications of the Calvinistic system; Henry B. Smith, an acute and learned theologian; and Horace Bushnell,—are among the influential authors on the Protestant side. To these should be added the name of William Ellery Channing, the most prominent leader of the Unitarians, equally distinguished as a preacher and as a philanthropist.
The Unitarian movement in New England, which began in the early part of the nineteenth century, included other theological writers, one of the most learned and scholarly of whom was Andrews Norton (1786-1853). Theodore Parker (1810-1860) subsequently went so far in his divergence from received views as to reject miracle and supernatural revelation altogether. He was one of the most vigorous combatants in the warfare carried on through the press and in the pulpit against slavery. Out of the Unitarian school there came a class of cultured writers in literature and criticism, of whom George Ripley (1802-1880) was a representative. The "transcendentalists," as they were popularly styled, with whom these were often at the outset affiliated, were much influenced by contemporary French and German authors and speculations. Emerson, was the most prominent writer in this vaguely defined class. A periodical called "The Dial" was issued by them.
One of the most ingenious and active-minded thinkers in the Roman Catholic Church was Orestes A. Brownson, a prolific author on topics of religion and philosophy.
LITERATURE IN GERMANY.—The German mind has been so productive in almost all branches of literary effort, that the annual issues of the German press have numbered many thousands. The political condition of Germany until a recent date was such as to attract large numbers to the pursuits of literature and science. It is possible to allude to but few of the principal authors. In imaginative literature, Heinrich Heine (1799-1856), of Jewish extraction, was a most witty yet irreverent satirist, and one of the principal song-writers of modern times. Gustav Freytag has written some of the best of the later German novels. Auerbach, Keller, and Spielhagen stand very high on the roll of novelists. Of numerous recent poets, Lenau and Freiligrath are among the few best esteemed. In the long catalogue of German historical writers, to whom the world owes a debt, are found the names of Schlosser (1776-1861), Heeren (1760-1842), Raumer (1781-1873); Ranke, whose numerous works are based on original researches, and are written with masterly skill; Gervinus, a critic as well as historian; Von Sybel, Droysen, Duncker, Weber, Giesebrecht, Mommsen, Curtius, Treitschke. A powerful impulse was given to the study of history by Niebuhr (1776-1831). German researches have been carried into every region of the past. In Egyptology, Lipsius, Bunsen, Brugsch, and Ebers are leading authorities. Neander, Gieseler, Baur, Döllinger, Hefele, Alzog, Harnack, Janssen, and Pastor are writers on ecclesiastical history. German travelers have explored many of the countries of the globe. Schliemann has uncovered the ruins of Troy. In mathematics and the natural sciences, in philology and criticism, in philosophy, in law and the political sciences, and in the different branches of theology, the world acknowledges its debt to the patient, methodical investigations and the exhaustive discussions of German students during the nineteenth century.
THEOLOGY IN GERMANY.—The history of religious thought in Germany includes the successive phases of rationalism, or that general theory which makes the human understanding, apart from supernatural revelation, the chief or the exclusive source of religious knowledge, and the umpire in controversies. In the age of Frederick II., the Anglo-French deism was widely diffused (p. 493). Lessing; the genial poet and critic (1729-1781), allied himself to no party. In his work on The Education of the Human Race, he set forth the view that the Scriptures have a high providential purpose as an instrument for the religious training of mankind, but that their essential contents are ultimately verified by reason on grounds of its own; so that the prop of authority eventually becomes needless, and falls away. Not radically different was the position of Kant (p. 545), who gave rise to a school of theologians that for a time flourished. This school made the essential thing in Christianity to be its morality. With Semler (1721-1791), the rationalistic Biblical criticism took its rise. From that day, a host of scholars have engaged in the investigation of the origin and interpretation of the Bible, and of the early history of Christianity. A middle position between the established orthodoxy and the Kantian rationalism was taken by Frederick Schleiermacher (1768-1834), a man of genius, alike eminent as a critic, philosopher, and theologian. He placed the foundation of religion in the feeling of absolute dependence. In laying stress on feeling as at the root of piety, he had been preceded by the philosopher Jacobi. From the impulse given by Schleiermacher, there sprung up an intermediate school of theologians, many of whom departed less than he from the traditional Protestant creed. This they professed to undertake to revise in accordance with the results of the scientific study of the Bible and of history. In their number belong Neander, Nitzsch, Twesten, Tholuck, J. Müller, Dorner, Rothe, Bleek, Ullman, and many other influential authors and teachers. In the department of Biblical criticism, Ewald, Tischendorf, Meyer, Weiss, are among the names of German theological scholars which are familiar to Biblical students in all countries. The critical works of De Wette (1780-1849) were extensively studied. The philosophy of _Hegel_connected itself with a new form of rationalism, which found expression in the Life of Jesus, by Strauss, published in 1835, in which the Gospel miracles were treated as myths; and in the writings of Ferdinand Christian Baur, in connection with his followers of the "Tubingen School," who attempted to resolve primitive Christianity into a natural growth out of preëxisting conditions, and held that the historical books of the New Testament were the product of different theological "tendencies" and parties in the apostolic and the subsequent age. The Roman Catholic system has not lacked in Germany able defenders, one of the most noted of whom was Möhler, the author of Symbolism (Symbolik), an ingenious polemical work in opposition to Protestantism.
PHILOLOGY AND LAW IN GERMANY.—Classical philology was founded as a science by Heyne (1729-1812) and Wolf (1759-1824). Their work was carried forward by G. Hermann (1772-1848), Buttmann (1764-1829), Jacobs (1764-1847), K. O. Muller (1797-1840), and by numerous contemporaries and successors of these. By this succession of scholars, not only have the tongues of Greece and Rome been accurately learned and taught, but classical antiquity has been thoroughly explored. Comparative philology, under the hands of Bopp (1791-1867), of Lassen (1800-1876), a Norwegian by birth, of W. von Humboldt (1767-1835), of Pott (born in 1802), of Schleicher (1821-1868), and their coadjutors, has grown to be a fruitful science. In the study of the German language and early literature, J. Grimm (1785-1863), W. Grimm (1786-1859), Lachmann (1793-1851), Simrock (1802-1878), have been among the pioneers. The study of law, especially of Roman law, was placed on a new foundation by the labors of Savigny (1779-1861), while a like thoroughness was brought to the exposition of German law by Mittermaier and others. In political science, Mohl (1779-1875), Bluntschli (1808-1881), Stahl (1802-1861), and Gneist (1816-1895) gained a worldwide celebrity.
LITERATURE IN FRANCE.—A class of vigorous young writers in France broke loose from the restraints of the "classical" school and its patterns, and composed dramas in the more free method of the "romantic" school. They drew their ideas of the drama from Shakspeare, rather than from Corneille. Among these writers were Alexandre Dumas, a most prolific novelist as well as writer of plays; and the celebrated poet and dramatist, Victor Hugo. The romances of Dumas comprise more than a hundred volumes. In his historical novels, incidents and characters without number crowd upon the scene, but without confusion, while the narrative maintains an unfailing vivacity. Of the authors of light and witty comedies, Scribe is one of the most fertile. George Sand (Mme. Dudevant) is one of the principal novel-writers of the age. Eugene Sue and Balzac are both popular authors in this department. The leading poets are the song-writer Béranger, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset. With the close of the first half-century romanticism began to give way before realism, from which, however, there was a reaction before the century closed. Among the greater poets are Sully-Prudhomme and Coppée; among the novelists, Daudet, Zola, Maupassant, and Bourget. In history some writers, as Villemain, are remarkable for their power of descriptive narrative; others, like Guizot, for their breadth of philosophical reflection, superadded to deep researches. Some, like Augustin Thierry, in his work on the Middle Ages, combined both elements. His brother, Amédée Thierry, depicted the state of society in Gaul and other countries in the period of the fall of the Roman Empire. Barante composed an interesting history of the Dukes of Burgundy. Among those, besides Guizot, who treated of the history of France, Sismondi, the spirited Michelet, and the thorough and dispassionate Henri Martin are specially eminent. Thiers, Mignet, Louis Blanc, Taine, and Lanfrey wrote on the Revolution or Napoleon. The most eminent of the newer school of scientific historians are Boissier, Sorel, Lavisse, Luchaire, and Aulard. In political economy and the science of politics, Chevalier, De Tocqueville (the author of Democracy in America), and Bastiat are among the writers widely read beyond the limits of France. Sainte-Beuve is only one of the foremost in the class of literary critics, in which are included Renan, Sarcey, Brunetière, Lemaître, Faguet, and others, themselves authors. The clearness of exposition which goes far to justify the claim of the French to be the interpreters of European science to the world, appears in numerous treatises in mathematics and physics. The qualities of lucid arrangement, transparency of style, and terseness of language have extended, however, to other branches of authorship; so that the French have presented a fair claim to precedence in the literary art.
SWEDEN AND RUSSIA.—There are Swedish authors who are well known in other countries. Such are the historian Geijer (1783-1847); and the novelist Fredrika Bremer, who wrote "The Neighbors," and other tales. The most famous of the Russian novelists is Ivan Turgenejff, some of whose stories contain admirable pictures of Russian life.
ARCHITECTURE.—The nineteenth century witnessed in Germany, France, and England a revival of the ancient or classic styles of architecture. This appears, for example, in edifices at Munich, and in such buildings as St. George's Hall at Liverpool. But a reaction arose against this tendency, and in behalf of the Gothic style, which is exemplified in the new Houses of Parliament in London. Many Gothic churches have been erected in Great Britain. Many-storied office buildings are characteristic of America.
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING.—One of the most original of modern sculptors was Schwanthaler (1802-1848), who carved the pediments of the Walhalla at Munich, and the bronze statue of Bavaria. French sculptors at the present day are fully on a level with the recent sculptors of Italy. Chantrey (1788-1841) and John Gibson (1791-1866), a pupil of Canova and himself an original mind, are high on the roll of English sculptors. A genius for sculpture appeared among Americans, and to the names of Powers and Crawford, of Story, Brown, and Ward, the names of other meritorious artists in this province might justly be added. The German national school of painting had Overbeck for its most eminent founder. Cornelius (1783-1867) revived the art of fresco-painting, and established the Munich school. Von Kaulbach, who painted the "Battle of the Huns" in the Berlin Museum, was one of his pupils. W. von Schadow is the founder of the Düsseldorf school. One of his eminent pupils was K. F. Lessing. Still more recent are Ad. Menzel, Liberman, and Lenbach. In Great Britain, Constable (1796-1837) painted English landscapes full of thought and feeling, and gave a fresh impulse to this branch of art. Stanfleld (1788-1864) was a master of the realistic school, which aims at a simple and faithful representation of the landscape to be depicted. Wilkie, a Scotchman (1785-1841), was chief among the genre painters, of whom Leslie (1794-1859), by birth an American, was one of the most forcible and refined. Eastlake (1793-1865) was a writer on art, as well as a painter. Landseer (1802-1873) was unrivaled as an animal painter. William Hunt (1790-1864) had decided skill as a painter in water-colors. The pre-Raphaelite school, professing to go back of Raphael to nature, included Turner, Hunt, Millais, and Burne-Jones. Other prominent artists have been Herkomer, Leighton, and Alma-Tadema. In France, Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) followed in the path of Horace Vernet (1789-1863), as a painter of battle-pieces and other modern historical scenes. Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), a Dutchman by birth, painted in a graceful and pathetic tone "Christ the Consoler," and other sacred subjects. The more recent French school, comprising Delacroix, Meissonier, Gérome, Cabanel, Millet, Rosa Bonheur, an artist of masculine vigor, the famous painter of animal pictures,—is distinguished for technical skill and finish, but also for a bold and peculiar method of treatment. Among the leading landscape-painters of this school, Corot, Daubigny, Rousseau, Diaz, are conspicuous. Still more recent are Bastien-Lepage, Chavannes, Bréton, Bouguereau, Dagnan-Bouveret, Lhermitte, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Dupré.
About the year 1825 an American school of landscape-painters was founded by Thomas Cole, many of whose pictures were allegorical. Durand is one of those who excelled in landscape painting. In other provinces of the art, Peale, Weir, Huntington, Page, Morse, Chase, Whistler, Sargent, Abbey; in landscape, Gifford, Kensett, Church, Bierstadt, McEntee, Inness, Winslow Homer, well represent what is best and most characteristic in the later productions of American painters.
MUSIC.—In music, Germany in the nineteenth century held the palm. Schubert, Spohr, Weber, Meyerbeer, and Wagner are names of world-wide celebrity, while in the works of Mendelssohn (1809-1849) and Schumann (1810-1856) the art of music reached its climax. Chopin (1810-1849), the founder of a new style of piano-forte music, was born in Poland: his father, however, was French.
In a survey of the course of recent history, notice should be taken of the increased activity of a humane spirit in the several nations.
1. SOCIAL SCIENCE.—The investigation of social evils and of their proper remedies, and of the laws which govern man in his social relations, has received of late the name of social science. In 1857 a meeting in London, over which Lord Brougham presided, resulted in the organization of a society of persons interested in different forms of social improvement, bearing the name of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. Its work embraced the consideration of these five subjects: law-amendment,—to promote which a society had existed, of which Lord Brougham was the head; education; prevention and repression of crime; public health; and social economy. Branches were established in various towns in England. Similar societies have flourished in the United States. An international society of the same character held its first meeting in Brussels in 1862. The wide range of special topics which these societies consider may give an appearance of indefiniteness to their aims. The movement at least indicates that social advancement has assumed the form of a distinct and comprehensive problem, and is drawing to itself the deliberate attention of thoughtful persons of diverse nations and creeds.
2. MITIGATION OF THE SUFFERINGS OF WAR: HOSPITALS.—If wars are still frequent and destructive, much more has been done of late to mitigate the sufferings consequent upon armed conflicts. The right of an invading force to ravage the territory of an enemy was seldom practically asserted in the nineteenth century. Non-combatants, according to the modern rules of war, are not to be molested. Their property, if it is taken, is to be paid for at its fair value. The doctrine that requisitions may be made by a commander is not yet abandoned. It was acted on by Napoleon on a large scale. It was not approved by Wellington. There is a growing opinion against it. It is not now held to be a crime for an officer to hold a fortress as long as he can. In the care of the sick and the wounded, there has been a great change for the better. The ambulance system, or the system of movable hospitals accompanying armies on the field, was established by the French, with the approval of Napoleon, in 1795. The name ambulance is also frequently given to the vehicles for transporting the wounded and sick. The whole ambulance system was completely organized in the American civil war, and defined by an Act of Congress in 1864. To a French surgeon is due, also, the establishment of a corps of stretcher-bearers. By the European Convention adopted at Geneva (1864), the wounded, and the whole official staff connected with ambulances, are exempted from capture as prisoners of war. For the more efficient organization of hospitals, a great service was rendered by the example of Florence Nightingale, an English lady, who, at the head of a company of volunteer nurses, during the Crimean war created a great establishment of this sort at Scutari (1854). The increased pains-taking in the method of building, in the ventilation and general management of hospitals, during the last half-century, has gone far towards freeing them from the dangers and evils to which they were formerly subject.
SANITARY SCIENCE.—Sanitary science, and the engineering connected with it, belong to the nineteenth century, and mainly to the second half of it. Systems of drainage have been devised which involve much mechanical skill, not to dwell on their usefulness in promoting health. Prior to 1815, in England, the law forbade the discharge of sewage in water-drains. The law of 1847 required that which up to 1815 was prohibited. The great change on this whole subject dates from the cholera of 1832, which awoke public attention to the sources of disease. The condition of the poor, and the discussions relating to it, lent a new stimulus to the inquiry. A series of English reports, from 1842 to 1848, had a great influence in producing a sanitary reform, in the particulars referred to, in England and in other countries.
3. PUBLIC EDUCATION.—During the nineteenth century, systems of general education were established in different countries. In a part of the United States, an effective common-school system has always existed. In Germany also, especially in Prussia, there have long been thorough provisions for the instruction of all the young in elementary branches. In France, in consequence of the laws requiring primary schools in all the communes of any considerable size, the average of illiteracy has of late steadily diminished. In 1881, in France, instruction in the public primary schools was made absolutely free. England has witnessed a very great change in the legal establishment of means of instruction in the rudiments of knowledge for the whole people. The Education Act of 1876 required that every child between the ages of five and fourteen should receive such teaching. In England, and in some other countries, the employment of children who have not had a certain amount of school instruction was prohibited by law. In the new kingdom of Italy, every commune having four thousand inhabitants was required by law (1859) to maintain a primary school. By subsequent legislation, the compulsory principle was adopted as far as the circumstances of the country would allow. The result has been a most remarkable diminution in the numbers of the wholly illiterate class. Other European states have made primary education compulsory. For instance, in Hungary, attendance at school was made obligatory for children from the beginning of the eighth to the end of the twelfth year. Such measures in behalf of general education as governments have adopted in recent times are founded, to be sure, partly on the conscious need of self-protection against ignorance and its baleful consequences to the state. A more directly humane impulse, however, mingles with this motive. The operation of benevolent feeling is seen in the multiplying of special schools for the benefit of the blind, of the deaf and dumb, and even of imbeciles.
4. REFORM OF CRIMINAL LAW.—The advance of humane sentiment has produced a reform of criminal law. In England, in the closing part of the eighteenth century, there were two hundred and twenty-three offenses that were punished with death. To injure Westminster Bridge, to cut down young trees, to shoot at rabbits, to steal property of the value of five shillings, were capital offenses. Vigorous and persevering opposition was made to the mitigation of this bloody code. Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818) began his effort at reform by endeavoring to secure the repeal of these cruel laws, one by one. His bills, when carried with difficulty through the Commons, were repeatedly thrown out by the House of Lords. One of the most strenuous opponents of the change was the Lord Chancellor, Eldon. Lord Ellenborough, the chief justice, stigmatized the proposed alteration of the statutes as the fruit of "speculation and modern philosophy." It was predicted that, if it were made, there would be a terrible increase of crime. Sir James Mackintosh continued with success the effort of Romilly. In 1837 the list of capital offenses had been reduced to seven. One consequence was the striking diminution of crime. Another reform in England was that of the police-system (1816). The officers of the police had encouraged crime in order to secure the reward of forty pounds offered by the government on conviction, in the case of crimes of a certain grade.
5. PRISON-DISCIPLINE REFORM.—One of the distinctions of modern philanthropy is the prison-discipline reform. When Howard began his labors (1773), the prisons in England were generally dirty, pestiferous dens, crowded with inmates of both sexes,—nurseries of loathsome disease, and of still more loathsome vice. Soon after this time, a serious effort began to make prisons a means of reform, instead of schools of debauchery and crime. There was a movement for the erection of penitentiaries of improved construction. This was aided by the exertions of Jeremy Bentham. The most successful efforts in behalf of a better system of management in prisons were made by members of the Society of Friends. Of these, the most useful person in this cause was Mrs. Elizabeth Gurney Fry (1780-1845), a woman of rare powers of mind and of the noblest Christian character. By her personal influence, she wrought such a transformation of character and behavior among the female convicts in Newgate Prison as it had been deemed impossible to effect. The reforms which Mrs. Fry effected spread to other places. Her labors were not confined to Great Britain. She visited France (1838), Belgium, Holland, and other countries. Her correspondence in the interest of the cause which she served extended to Russia and Italy. Her recommendations bore fruit for good in almost all parts of Europe. Signal improvements in plans of construction, and in the interior life of prisons, have been effected under the auspices of the Prison Discipline Society in England. In these changes, the example of changes and reforms in this matter in the United States has had a marked influence. The two great ends kept in view at present in the arrangements and occupations of prisons are the reform of the criminal, and the deterring of others from the commission of crime. Distinct establishments for the detention, reform, and training of juvenile offenders, who were formerly corrupted by association with criminals mature in vice, are peculiar to recent times. The transportation of English convicts to Australia began in 1787. As these multiplied, there sprang up cruelty on the part of supervisors in the colonies; and in the penal settlements where the worst offenders were guarded, there were found the most corrupt and degraded herds of criminals. The opposition in the colonial communities to transportation found support in England. In 1840 deportation to New South Wales ceased. At length Van Dieman's Land also refused to receive this forced emigration even of released convicts. The British Government was obliged to rely on other methods of punishment, especially on the graduation of the term of confinement according to the conduct of the criminal.
UNITY AMID DIVERSITY.—The path of human progress has led in the direction of unity as the ultimate goal. It is, however, a unity in variety toward which the course of history has moved. The development and growth of distinct nations, each after its own type, and, not less, the freedom of the individual to realize the destiny intended for him by nature, are necessary to the full development of mankind,—necessary to the perfection of the race. The final unity that is sought is to be reached, not by stifling the capacities of human nature, but by the complete unfolding of them in all their diversity. The modern era has made an approach toward this higher unity that is to coexist with a rich and manifold development. An enlightened man, Prince Albert of England, remarked in a public address (1850): "Nobody who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end to which, indeed, all history points, the realization of the unity of mankind! Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity, the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities."
In concluding this volume, it is proper to advert to some of the signs and means of this unification of mankind, which belong to the recent era.
1. INDUSTRIAL EXHIBITIONS.—The words quoted above from Prince Albert were spoken in anticipation of the Great International Exhibition in London, in 1854. The industrial exhibitions, in which the products of many nations are collected, and to which visitors are drawn from different parts of the earth, are one indication of the effect of manufactures and commerce in drawing mankind together. The first displays of this kind were for French manufactures alone, and were held in Paris in 1798, and, under the consulate of Napoleon, in 1801 and 1802. The first international exposition was in Paris in 1844; and it was followed by the "World's Fair" in London (1850), for which the vast edifice called "the Crystal Palace," made of iron and of glass, was constructed. Similar exhibitions were held in New York (1853), in Paris in 1855 and again in 1867, in Constantinople, Amsterdam, Vienna, (1873), in Philadelphia on the hundredth anniversary of American independence (1876), in Chicago in 1893, and in Paris in 1900. In these fairs, the products of the industry of the far East were shown by the side of the products of European and American manufacture.
2. ECONOMICAL ENLIGHTENMENT.—In connection with the wide extension of commerce, the better methods and ideas which have come into vogue in respect to commercial relations deserve notice. The system of credit, facilitating trade and forming a bond of confidence and of union between different nations, although it began in the Middle Ages, was not fairly established until the organization of the Bank of Amsterdam in 1609. This system, if it is "one of the most powerful engines of warfare," is likewise "one of the great pledges of peace." The stimulus given to manufactures by mechanical inventions has been an effective promoter of commercial intercourse. The teaching of Adam Smith, and of the political economists since his time, by which it is seen that the gain of one nation is not the loss of another, and that nations are mutually benefited by the interchange of the products of their labor, which is the true source of wealth, has operated as an antidote to discord. The ruin of a neighbor, or non-intercourse with him, has been discovered to be as contrary to the demands of a prudent self-interest as of a disinterested benevolence.
3. COMMUNITY IN SCIENCE AND LETTERS.—The community of literature and science has been growing more cosmopolitan. The barriers created by differences of language are overcome. The custom of learning foreign languages has become more diffused. The most important writings, in whatever country they appear, circulate through translations in all other civilized lands. All well-stored libraries are polyglot.
4. WIDENED POLITICAL SYSTEM.—In the political relations of countries, it is found necessary to comprehend all parts of the globe in the political system, in the right adjustment of which each country has a stake, and over which stretches an acknowledged code of international law. The establishment of an international tribunal of arbitration at The Hague is a long step toward making such a code effective and toward preventing war.
5. INTERNATION PHILANTHROPY.—The growth of humane feeling, of the interest felt in man as man, engendered a spirit of universal philanthropy. For example, the hostility to the slave-trade led to the treatment of it as piracy by the municipal laws and by the treaties of several nations, while it is prohibited and punished by nearly all of the countries of Europe. This is the direct result of a heightened respect for man and for the rights of human nature, however poor or degraded man may be. Instances have occurred in which help has been generously given to sufferers by fire or famine, by strangers in remote lands. A famine in Persia called out liberal contributions from America. Examples of the exercise of justice and kindness toward distant nations may remind the reader of opposite examples of wrong and cruelty. We are pointing out, however, only the drift of sentiment; and it must be remembered that the facts which have been referred to as illustrative of the growth of philanthropy, are such as never occurred in former ages.
6. CHRISTIAN MISSIONS.—The spread of the Christian religion by missionary efforts is one of the means of unifying mankind. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, the two great achievements of the Church were the conversion of the Roman Empire, and then of the barbarian nations by whom it was subverted. But, in the Middle Ages, there was also missionary labor, here and there among the Saracens and in the lands of the East. Since the thirteenth century, missions in the Roman Catholic Church have been chiefly prosecuted by the monastic orders. In this work, the Jesuits, from the first establishment of their order, were conspicuously active in all quarters of the globe. Of their missionaries, none have been more eminent and zealous than Francis Xavier (1506?1552), who died just as he was about to undertake the conversion of China. Protestants, in the period after the Reformation, were too busy in the struggles going forward in their own lands, to undertake foreign missions on an extended scale. Yet they were not indifferent to the importance of the work. Under the protectorate of Cromwell, an ordinance established a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England (1649). In 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was established in England. Later, the Moravians from the beginning evinced great interest in foreign missions, and planted missionary stations in several countries. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Congregation of the Propaganda was founded in 1622, for the general superintendence of missionary operations. Colleges for their training were established, the chief of which was the "Urban College" at Rome, where students from all nations have been educated for missionary service.
The nineteenth century was marked by an extraordinary outburst of missionary activity. In this sort of exertion the Roman Catholic body has kept up an unflagging zeal. Within the various Protestant denominations, a remarkable increase of fervor and of success in this department of Christian labor has been witnessed. In the room of seven societies for this purpose at the end of the eighteenth century, there were in 1880, in Europe and America, seventy organizations. At this last date, there were not less than twenty-four hundred ordained Europeans and Americans employed in this service, besides a great number of assistants, both foreign and native. The native converts numbered not less than 1,650,000. The yearly contributions for the support of the missions increased proportionately. In 1882 British contributions alone amounted to £1,090,000. It is not an exaggeration to say that the globe is now "covered with a network of Christian outposts."
The following passage, slightly abbreviated, from a German writer, presents a glowing sketch of the wide extension of recent missionary labors:—
"At the beginning of this century, the island world of the Pacific was shut against the gospel; but England and America have attacked those lands so vigorously in all directions, especially through native workers, that whole groups of islands, even the whole Malayan Polynesia, is to-day almost entirely Christianized, and in Melanesia and Micronesia the mission-field is extended every year. The gates of British East India have been thrown open wider and wider during this century; at first for English, then for all missionaries. This great kingdom, from Cape Comorin to the Punjaub and up to the Himalayas, where the gospel is knocking on the door of Thibet, has been covered with hundreds of mission-stations, closer than the mission-net which at the close of the first century surrounded the Roman empire; the largest and some of the smaller islands of the Indian Archipelago, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes, and now New Guinea also, are occupied, partly on the coast and partly in the interior. Burmah, and in part Siam, is open to the gospel; and China, the most powerful and most populous of heathen lands, forced continually to open her doors wider, has been traversed by individual pioneers of the gospel, to Thibet and Burmah, and half of her provinces occupied from Hong-Kong and Canton to Peking; and in Manchuria, if by only a thin chain, yet at many of the principal points, stations have been founded, while the population overflowing into Australia and America is being labored with by Protestant missionaries. Japan also, hungry for reform, by granting entrance to the gospel has been quickly occupied by American and English missionary societies, and already, after so little labor, has scores of evangelical congregations. Indeed, the aboriginal Australians have, in some places, been reached. In the lands of Islam, from the Balkans to Bagdad, from Egypt to Persia, there have been common central evangelization stations established in the chief places, for Christians and Mohammedans, by means of theological and Christian medical missions, conducted especially by Americans. Also in the primitive seat of Christianity, Palestine, from Bethlehem to Tripoli, and to the northern boundaries of Lebanon, the land is covered by a network of Protestant schools, with here and there an evangelical church. Africa, west, south, and east, has been vigorously attacked; in the west, from Senegal to Gaboon, yes, lately even to the Congo, by Great Britain, Basel, Bremen, and America, which have stations all along the coast. South Africa at the extremity was evangelized by German, Dutch, English, Scotch, French, and Scandinavian societies. Upon both sides, as in the center, Protestant missions, although at times checked by war, are continually pressing to the north; to the left, beyond the Walfisch Bay; to the right, into Zululand, up to Delagoa Bay; in the center, to the Bechuana and Basuto lands. In the east, the sun of the gospel, after a long storm, has burst forth over Madagascar in such brightness that it can never again disappear. Along the coasts from Zanzibar and the Nile, even to Abyssinia, out-stations have been established, and powerful assaults made by the Scotch, English, and recently also by the American mission and civilization, into the very heart of the Dark Continent, even to the great central and east African lakes. In America, the immense plains of the Hudson's Bay Territory, from Canada over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, have not only been visited by missionaries, but have been opened far and wide to the gospel through rapidly growing Indian missions. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of freedmen have been gathered into evangelical congregations; and, of the remnants of the numerous Indian tribes, some at least have been converted through the work of evangelization by various churches, and have awakened new hope for the future. In Central America and the West Indies, as far as the country is under Protestant home nations, the net of evangelical missions has been thrown from island to island, even to the mainland in Honduras, upon the Mosquito Coast; and in British and Dutch Guiana it has taken even firmer hold. Finally, the lands on and before the southern extremity of the continent, the Falkland Islands, Terra del Fuego, and Patagonia, received the first light through the South American Missionary Society (in London); and recently its messengers have pushed into the heart of the land, and are rapidly pressing on to the banks of the great Amazon, to the Indians of Brazil."
RESULTS OF MISSIONS.—In carrying forward missionary work during the nineteenth century, the Bible has been translated into numerous languages. Missionaries, as in the early days of the Church, have reduced the languages of uncultivated peoples to writing, and made the beginning of native literatures. Schools, colleges, and printing-presses follow in the path of the preachers. The contributions made to philology and to other branches of science by missionary preachers and explorers are of high value. As far as the number of converts is concerned, progress has been more rapid, as was the case in the first Christian centuries, among uncivilized tribes. The reception of Christianity is more slow in a country like China, and among the Aryan inhabitants of India. But the influence exerted by missions in such communities is not to be measured by the number of converts. Moreover, history has often shown, that, in the spread of the Christian religion, the first steps are the most slow and difficult: they are like the early operations in a siege. Sir Bartle Frere writes thus: "Statistical facts can in no way convey any adequate idea of the work done in any part of India. The effect is enormous where there has not been a single avowed conversion. The teaching of Christianity amongst a hundred and sixty millions of civilized, industrious Hindoos and Mohammedans in India, is effecting changes, moral, social, and political, which for extent and rapidity in effect are far more extraordinary than any that have been witnessed in modern Europe." Of the same tenor is an opinion expressed in strong terms by Sir Henry Lawrence, governor-general of India during the mutiny of 1857, and a most competent judge.
It is worthy of remark, as one characteristic of the Christian missions of the recent period, that the religions of the non-Christian nations have been studied more thoroughly, and the true and praiseworthy elements in them have been better appreciated.
The progress made in the past encourages the hope that the unity of mankind, a unity which shall be the crown of individual and national development, will one day be reached. That unity of mankind, in loyal fellowship with Him in whose image man was made, is the community of which the ancient Stoic vaguely dreamed, and which the apostles of Christ proclaimed and predicted,—the perfected kingdom of God.
LITERATURE. See lists on pp. Alison, Hist. of Europe, from 1815 to 1852 (8 vols.); Bulle, Gesch. d. neuesten Zeit, 1815-1871 (2 vols.); Flathe. Zeitalter der Restauration und der Revolution; Stern, Geschichte Europas (3 vols.); Debidpur, Hist. Diplomatique de l'Europe (2 vols.); Seignobus, Political History of Europe since 1814; Sears. Political Growth in the Nineteenth Century; Lavisse et Rambaud. Hist Gén., Vols. X., XI., XII.; Phillips, European History, 1815-1899; Müller, Political History of Recent Times (Peters's translation, 1882); Müller, Politische Gesch. d. Gegenwart (an annual, since 1867); Honegger, Grundsteine einer allgem. Culturgeschichte d. neuesten Zeit (5 vols.).
Works on the History of Italy. Thayer, Dawn of Italian Independence (2 vols.); Reuchlin, Geschichte Italiens (4 vols.); Stillman, Union of Italy; Probyn, Italy from 1815-1878; Lives of Cavour, by De la Rive (English translation), by E. Dicey, by Mazade (French); Life and Writings of Mazzini (9 vols.).
Works on the History of Germany. Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte; Von Sybel, Founding of the German Empire (6 vols,); Busch, Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War (2 vols.), Bismarck, The Man and the Statesman (2 vols.); Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs (2 vols.).
France. Hillebrand, Gesch. Frankreichs (1830-1870); Adams, Democracy and Monarchy in France; Stein, Gesch. der Sozialen Bewegung in Frankreich; Guizot, Memoirs of His Own Time (1807-1848) (4 vols.); Delord, Hist. du Second Empire (6 vols.); Zevort, Hist. de la 3'me Republique (4 vols.); Hanotaux, Contemporary France (Vol. I.); Bodley, France (2 vols.); Simon, The Government of M. Thiers (from 1871-1873) (2 vols.).
Works on the History of England. Harriet Martineau, The History of England (1800-1854); Walpole, A History of England, from 1815 (6 vols., 1878-1880); Molesworth, The History of England (1830-1874); Justin McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times (1878-1880); Kinglake, The Invasion of the Crimea (6 vols.); Seeley, The Expansion of England; Rutherford, The Fenian Conspiracy; Richey, The Irish Land Laws; King, The Irish Question; Morley, Life of Gladstone, 3 vols. (1903) (an able historical review).
Works on History of the United States. Benton, Thirty Year's View [1820-1850]; Johnston, History of American Politics; DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America (2 vols.); Thorpe, Constitutional History of the American People (2 vols.); Roosevelt, Winning of the West (4 vols); Stanwood, A History of the Presidency; Bryce, The American Commonwealth (2 vols).; Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Origin of Political Parties (2 vols.); Henry Adams, History of the United States (1800-1817, 9 vols.); Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (4 vols.); Wilson, Division and Reunion; Burgess, The Middle Period, The Civil War and the Constitution (2 vols.); Dunning, Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction; Bolles, Financial History of the United States (3 vols.); Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power; Blaine, Twenty Years in Congress; Histories of the Civil War, by the Count of Paris (2 vols.), by Roper, by J. W. Draper, by H. Greeley, by A. H. Stephens, by E. A. Pollard (The Lost Cause); Swinton's Twelve Decisive Battles of the [Civil] War; Memoirs of Gen. W. T. Sherman, by himself; Grant, Personall Memoirs (2 vols.); John Sherman, Recollections (2 vols.); Moore, The Rebellion Record (1861-1871); Biography of Gallatin, by H. Adams; of Jackson, by Parton, by W. G. Sumner; of Madison, by Rives; of J. Q. Adams, by Morse; of Josiah Quincy, by Edmund Quincy; of Webster, by G. T. Curtis, by Lodge; of Clay, by Schurz; of Calhoun, by Crallé; of Sumner, by E. L. Pierce; of Lincoln, by Nicolay and Hay, by Morse; of Seward, by Fr. Brancroft; of W. L. Garrison, by O. Johnson, by W. P. Garrison; The American Commonwealths, a series of histories of the separate States (edited by H. E. Scudder); writings of J. Q. Adams, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, E. Everett, C. Sumner, W. H. Seward; John Fiske, American Political Ideas.
Literary Biographies. Life of Walter Scott, by Lockhart; of Jeffrey, by Cockburn; of Macaulay, by Trevelyan; of Arnold, by Stanley; of Dickens, by Forster; of Carlyle, by Froude; of George Eliot [Mrs. Lewes], by Cross. Life of Irving, by P. M. Irving; of Bryant, by Parke Godwin; Life and Letters of George Ticknor; Life of Ripley, by Frothingham; Series of "American Men of Letters," including Washington Irving, by Warner; Cooper, by T. R. Lounsbury; Emerson, by O. W. Holmes, etc.
Argyll, The Eastern Question, 1856 to 1858 and the Second Afghan War; Taylor, Russia before and after the War [of 1877] (1880); Daily News Correspondence of the War between Russia and Turkey [1877-78] (2 vols.); Baker Pasha, War in Bulgaria (2 vols.); Wallace, Egypt and the Egyptian Question; Malleson, History of Afghanistan; Labilliere, Early History of the Colony of Victoria (2 vols.); Grant and Knollys, The China War of 1860; Scott, France and Tongking [in 1884]; Vambéry, Central Asia; Stanley, Congo and the Founding of its Free State (2 vols.).
Rae, Contemporary Socialism; Woolsey, Communism and Socialism; Laveleye, Le Socialisme Contemporain (10th ed.); Schaeffle, Quintessens des Socialismus; A. Menger, Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (2d ed.).
End of Project Gutenberg's Outline of Universal History, by George Park Fisher