M^Mi^i .# , c> Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress V O.V vV '^ **<*. ^ ^ o. 0 O http://www.archive.org/details/generalhistoryofOObrow « ^ ■ o- o- •V ^ ' • "'•- s " -s° . i . C. y o » fc ■* *A „ o, o , i ■* A -P, v v -7- ' -■ ft s < u . . . < s. ° ■♦ x . \ v _\\ A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD A GENERAL HISTORY OE THE WORLD OSCAR BROWNING, M.A. SENIOR FELLOW OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND LATE UNIVERSITY LECTURER IN HISTORY ; VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY; AND HONORARY ASSOCIATE OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME WITH MAPS AND GENEALOGICAL TABLES LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1913 [AIL Riglds Preserved) & 1>\i *t> \ PREFACE I have always been of opinion, as a teacher of History, that the study of that subject should begin with the General History of the World, as is the practice in every country but our own, and not with the history of England, which is usual amongst ourselves. I hope that the present book may be useful for this purpose. The book was written almost entirely out of England, and I wish to express my gratitude to my friend Mr. Gaskoin, of Jesus College, Cambridge, for having laboriously and carefully read the proofs, and thus helped to remove any errors which may have arisen from that circumstance. OSCAR BROWNING. CONTENTS BOOK I CHAP. PAGE I. Egypt to the time of the Hyksos, from the EARLIEST TIMES TO 1580 B.C. .... 1 II. Babylon and Assyria, from the earliest times to c. 1570 b.c .17 III. The Indo-Germanic Race — Egypt under the Empire, 1580-523 b.c. . . . . .35 IV. The Assyrian Empire 1850-606 b.c. : Jewish History to 537 b.c. . . . . .46 V. Medes and Persians — Greece and the Persian Wars, 780-479 b.c 69 VI. History of Greece, 478-387 b.c. ... 94 VII. History of Greece, 387-338 b.c. . . .112 VIII. Early History of Rome, 753-c. 350 b.c. . . 130 IX. Growth of the Power of Eome, 390-201 b.c. . 149 X. Alexander the Great and his Successors, 336-213 b.c 165 XI. Rome the Mistress of the World, 214-44 b.c. 181 XII. The Roman Empire, 44 b.c-96 a.d. . . . 203 XIII. The Roman Empire, 96-337 a.d. . . . 225 XIV. History of Europe, 337-565 a.d. . . . 244 BOOK II I. The Prankish Empire, a.d. 486-768 — Rise of Mohammedanism, a.d. 570-802 . . .261 II. Charlemagne and his Successors, a.d. 768-928 . 283 viii CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE III. The Norsemen — The Danes in England, a.d. 835- 1042 303 IV. The Empire Kestored — Henry the Fowler, a.d. 919-936— Otto I., a.d. 936-973 . . 319 V. The Empire, a.d. 973-1106 — The Crusades, a.d. 1096 and 1146 332 VI. Frederick Barbarossa, a.d. 1152-1191 — 'The Third Crusade ...... 349 VII. The Empire, a.d. 1191 - 1250 — The Fourth Crusade, a.d. 1204 362 VIII. The Fall of the Hohenstauffen, a.d. 1250-1268 — Naples and Sicily, a.d. 1268-1301 — End of the Crusades ...... 382 IX. The Hansa, a.d. 1150-1400— The Iberian Pen- insula, a.d. 1000-1344 — England, a.d. 1087- 1189 396 X. History of England, a.d. 1189-1377 . . .417 XI. France, a.d. 1180-1350 — Germany and Italy, a.d. 1271-1347 439 XII. France, a.d. 1350-1380 — England, a.d. 1377- 1421 — The Iberian Peninsula . . .451 XIII. The Empire and the Papacy, a.d. 1347-1449 . 469 XIV. The Great Cities of Italy — Eastern Europe . 482 XV. Florence, a.d. 1429-1492 — The End of the Middle Ages, a.d. 1453-1519 . . .499 BOOK III I. Charles V. and the Reformation, a.d. 1519- 1556 515 II. England, a.d. 1509-1558 — The Counter Refor- mation — The Revolt of the Netherlands, a.d. 1556-1609 527 III. France, a.d. 1560-1610 — The Reign of Eliza- beth, a.d. 1558-1603 539 CONTENTS ix CHAP. PAGE IV. The Thirty Years' War, a.d. 1608-1648— England, 1603-1649 557 Y. France, a.d. 1610-1656— England, a.d. 1649- 1660 . . . . . . . .573 VI. Louis XIV., 1661-1697 — Austria and the Turks, 1664-1699— England, 1660-1685 . 584 VII. The War of the Spanish Succession, a.d. 1688- 1714— England, a.d. 1689-1714. . . 601 VIII. The Northern War, a.d. 1700-1721 — England, a.d. 1714-1740 614 IX. Prussia, a.d. 1675-1786— Russia, a.d. 1762- 1776 — Austria, a.d. 1765-1790— England, a.d. 1740-1784 627 X. Pitt's Ministry, a.d. 1783-1801— The French Revolution, a.d. 1789-1795 . . . 644 XL Napoleon Bonaparte, a.d. 1795-1799— England and the French Revolution, a.d. 1790- 1799 658 XII. Napoleon, a.d. 1800-1805 . . . .671 XIII. Napoleon, a.d. 1806-1815 684 XIY. Reaction in Europe, a.d. 1815-1830 — England, a.d. 1815-1837— Europe, a.d. 1830-1848 . 703 XV. The Second French Empire, a.d. 1851-1852 . 718 XYI. The American Civil War, a.d. 1861-1865 . 731 XVII. Prussia and Austria, a.d. 1858-1866— The Franco-German War, a.d. 1870-1871 . 742 XVIII. Turkey and Egypt, a.d. 1875-1898— The South African War, a.d. 1895-1902 . . .754 Index of Persons . . . . . . , .767 General Index . . . . . . . .791 Index of Battles, Sieges, &c. ..... 795 LIST OF MAPS I. The Ancient World . Between pages 36 and 37 II. Alexander's Campaign . ,, ,, 166 ,, 167 III. Imperium Romanum . . ,, IV. Europe, a.d. c. 500 . . ,, V. Europe in the Time of Charlemagne . . . ,, VI. Europe, a.d. c. 1200 . ,, VII. Europe in the Time of Charles V. . . . ,, VIII. Europe in the Time of Napoleon ,, GENEALOGICAL TABLES I. The Family of Augustus. II. The Garlovingians. III.-V. The English Royal House. VI.-VII. The Royal House of France. VIII. The Kin of Charles V. IX. The Spanish and Austrian Successions. 214 T> 215 254 !5 255 292 ■>•> 293 348 1i 349 524 >> 525 676 5) 677 < i# CO £ H co D O P '-' < w 'j-.- J U pq >< < J H § j=. a) n Moo C °° 3 S • O O 13 J> " N H3 ^ ^W e TABLE III THE ENGLISH ROYAL HOUSE William I. (The Conqueror) 1066-87. Margaret, = Malcolm III., granddaughter of King of Scotland. Edmund Ironside. Robert of William II., Adela, Normandy. 1087-1100. m. Stephen, Count of Blois. Stephen , "35-54- Henry I. = Matilda. 1100-35. William Clito. Henry. Edgar, 1098-1107. Alexander, 1107-1124. David, 1124-1153. Emperor =(1) Matilda = (2) Godfrey of William, Henry V. or Maude. Anjou. drowned 1120. Henry II. = Eleanor of 1154-89. Aquitaine. Geoffrey. Richard I. , 1189-99. Joh?i, 1199-1216. Arthur of Brittany. He?iry III. , 1216-72. Richard, Earl of Cornwall. Edward I. , 1272-1307. Edward II. , 1307-27. Edmund, King of Sicily. Thomas, Earl of Lancaster. Henry, Earl of Lancaster. Edward III. 1327-77. Henry, Duke of Lancaster. Blanche, m. John of Gaunt (see Table IV.) E^ Q ^^ bo u, O-O -8S-S u Wo a Q S3* odd CO "<3 "£ 00 1 e \o ■«*- •^ H jH ^ aj a! to 0) - a ; i ai ■s O U72 ,5 3 03,5 I! 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W 1 •n On S ""> 8 M ^ CO "a h So -2 u ^ s I] w •■S-T- w£ -ShS s c ft "W oo "p; 8 >=;< S3 gv~ 62 "8. e w .2 a •a—- 4 s m w toa H H O •- 1 "--.' 5-g oS io Jl < g 5 -, * „ > q,a - s g M 03 03 ' "S~ ° rt on i ■ — ■ _e T" rt\ O (fl ' cS — °CQxJ « i— i O (U X bog tn .S g o 0) 2 a — 3 3 O a! JD B x K> > s'c X X w M .2 -23 ot fa 3 3 ■S 3 O O §« J j ^ A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE WORLD. CHAPTER I. EGYPT, TO THE TIME OF THE HYKSOS. FKOM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO 1580 B.C. The land of Egypt is the creation of the Nile, made and unmade every year by the inundation of the river. The country has had to be built up by increasing labour. The yearly rising of the Nile turned it into a huge th^N'/ 1 lake in the morasses of which lived crocodiles, hippopotami, snakes and elephants, while lions and panthers came down to slake their thirst. Marshes have had to be formed into fruitful soil, roads to be built like causeways through the swamps, and this could only be effected by strict organisation under a vigorous government. The Egyptians became a peasant people under a rigid monarchical rule, which alone could unlock the sources of prosperity and make the valley of the Nile one of the most favoured spots on the surface of the globe. King Menes, who reigned about 3500 B.C., was regarded as the first of the Pharaohs, but civilisation preceded him by many centuries. The oldest settlements are to be found at the spot where the Nile comes nearest to the East, whence roads lead to the Red Sea, in Abydos and Memphis. The inhabitants dwelt in huts of reeds and palm branches, the richer in houses of sun-dried brick, surrounded by a mud wall : the dead were buried in round or square graves, huddled up as if asleep, surrounded by objects cherished in life and useful in the other world. We find in this period a gradually develop- ing beauty in the decoration of vases, and a close connection A 2 A GENERAL HISTORY [to 1580 b.c. between the art of Egypt and the art of Crete. The difference in the richness of the decoration of the several objects shows a great difference in the wealth and position o f heir possessors, but at the same time the traditional char ?r or the ornamen- tation is strictly observed. The mass _ .^e people were sup- ported by agriculture and the breeding of animals. They possessed large flocks of sheep and goats, they had asses, but the horse was as yet unknown. More important than all was the breeding of cattle, which was the main peasant industry. Beer was brewed from grain and wine made from dates, linen and wool were worked, and mats were woven from papyrus. Even in the oldest times these operations were conducted, not by free labourers, but by serfs, in the possession of the great lords and especially the kings. The beginnings of Egyptian culture are lost in antiquity, and also the oldest forms of their political and social organisation, but in the earliest times we find the land divided into administrative districts each with its own capital, its own god and its own standard, kept together mainly by a religious tie. There was a strong division into Upper and Lower Egypt, the north and the south, with twenty districts or provinces in the first and twenty in the second, one distinguished by the lotus, the other by the papyrus. Among the multitudinous deities of early Egypt, two stand above the rest, the hostile brothers Seth and Hoi-us, one the god of darkness and destruction, the other of Religion 1 ^§ nt > having the sun and moon as his two eyes, sometimes worsted but never conquered. Seth was the divinity of Upper Egypt, with his seat at Ombos, Horus had his capital at Edfou, his symbol the sun's disc, with two mighty wings and the hanging snakes, the sign of sovereignty, born anew every day as he appears on the horizon. The wor- ship of Horus specially spread to Upper Egypt, and that of Seth predominated in the Delta. The foundation of the Egyptian religion is the worship of local gods, taken from the mass of deities of the spirit world by which the people are surrounded. They have their abode in animals of all kinds — cattle and geese, crocodiles and scor- pions, wolves and dogs and cats, the ibis, the vulture and the frog, also in trees, a worship closely connected with totemism. But above all there is the spirit, the ghost of the departed, who exists after death, and rules the living. Every god has two aspects, one the free will of an immortal spirit, the other bound up with natural objects, which can act and suffer, The double to 1580 b.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS 3 nature of the deity, partly spiritual and partly material, on the one hand reigning for ever in heaven, on the other buried with all activit 'n the earth, is the keynote of early Egyptian religion, which ort 'ved this characteristic to the latest times. Divine worship e8iA» Isshed an indissoluble connection between god and man, involving natural obligations and necessary to the existence of both. The god gave protection to the com- munity, and received in return all that he required — bread, meat, milk, wine, clothes, ornaments, flowers, and incense, as we read in their service books, all good and pure things which are laid upon the altar, " from which the god lives." Hence arose a ritual and a multitude of priests, formed into four tribes. The gods had to be propitiated with sacrifices and magical rites, the worship took a sombre tone, the early gods I were little better than malevolent devils. Egyptian records give us the gods as the earliest rulers of the country, and then kings, the sons of gods. Government first develops in Lower Egypt, at Heliopolis at the head of the Delta, and Busiris in the middle of it. Here is born Osiris, son of the earth god Geb and the heaven goddess Nut. His sister and wife is Isis, mother of Horus. Seth is the brother of Horus, and succeeds him as king. The calendar was of great importance for religious worship. It was a moon calendar, consisting of alternate months of twenty- nine and thirty days. To make things right, the year had to consist sometimes of twelve, sometimes if, of thirteen months. To remedy this, a sun calendar was introduced, the year consisting of three seasons, the inundation season from the middle of July to the middle of October, the winter or sowing season from the middle of October to the beginning of February, the summer or harvest season from February to June. For nine thousand years, the first rising of the Mle, from its lowest point in May, coincided with the first rising of Sirius in the early morning, fixed in the Julian Calendar as July 19, in the Gregorian as June 15. This was taken as the beginning of the new sun calendar, by which the year was divided into twelve equal months of thirty days, four for each season, five additional days being intercalated between the years. This was not correct, and it was found that Sirius rose every four years a day later in the year, and it required 1461 years before the rising of Sirius returned to its proper J position. We find from this that the earliest certain date in the history of the world is the day on which the reformed sun 4 A GENERAL HISTORY [to 15S0 b.c. calendar was introduced into Lower Egypt — that is, July 19, 4241 B.C., or according to the Gregorian reckoning June 15. The last dynasty recorded before Menes bears the name of the worshippers of Horus. They reigned over both king- doms, the north and the south, divided at Akanthus. Both sections of the kingdom worshipped Horus, who thus became the oldest national deity of Egypt, his cult starting' from Edfou and gradually dispossessing the cult of Seth in Upper Egypt. Horus is no longer the son of Osiris and Isis, but has become the sun-god, and is united with Seth in a common divinity. The records of these early times raise the question of the relations between Egypt and Babylonia, as we find in the earliest art of Egypt representations of hunting scenes similar to the Baby- lonian, similar writing in their hieroglyphics, and similar figures of winged griffons and lions with snake necks. It is certain that the two civilisations were connected, it is uncertain which was the older, but it is more probable that Egypt derived her religion and art from Babylon than Babylon from Egypt, Egypt being through the whole of her history rather an imitative than a creative power. We now come to the hieroglyphics, the peculiar form of Egyptian writing. This early art of which we have spoken represents the forms of men and animals. In the , ier £." time of Menes, hieroglyphics are fully established and developed ; they must therefore have come into being during the time of the Horus worshippers. They are obviously abstractions from the delineation of animals and other common objects, and they are first found on the cylindrical seals used for the purpose of shaping earthen vases which are falsely considered as peculiar to Babylon. A deed of violence is repre- sented by the two legs of a walking man, strength by the figure of a striking man. These signs also stand for words of similar sound ; the same sign signifies goose and son, the same lute and good. In this way symbolical drawing developed first into a dictionary of useful words, then into a syllabary, and then into an alphabet. This eventually consisted of twenty-four con- sonants, the vowels, as in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, being left to be added by the speaker according to certain con- ventional rules. The alphabet was, however, always helped out by hieroglyphics. The Egyptians were firm believers in the immortality of the soul, and the funeral ceremonies which expressed this belief have their roots in the time of the Horus worshippers and toI^Ob.c] EGYIT, TO TJME OF THE HYKPOS 5 lasted for more than three thousand years. The soul wandered in the lovely paradise of Jaru, with its fruitful cornfields, its copious rivers, its shaded avenues, while the spirit lingered near the place of the body's burial, long- Ritet^ ing to resume its lost activity, to eat, to drink, and to enjoy. The king had an immortality of his own : a god when alive, the gates of heaven were open to him after death, and he shone there as a star among stars, but he was subject to the jealousy and treachery of the deities of hell, and against them his burial rites must protect him. Osiris perished under the villainy of Seth, but he lived again in his son Horus, and with his help triumphed over his enemies. Each king, as he died, followed a similar course, and passed from death to a glorious resurrection. The elaborate ceremonies which typified this change are preserved in the Book of the Dead, and the ritual first intended for the kings was afterwards transferred to the common people ; but it is remarkable that these rites, which had their chief seat in Lower Egypt, are best preserved for us in the documents of the south. The two first dynasties, which lasted from 3300 to 2900 B.C., had their origin in This in Upper Egypt, and are known as the Thinite dynasties. Of these kings, Menes is the The Thinite greatest, and is supposed to have united the two Dynasties empires of north and south, and to have placed — Menes. upon his head the red and the white crowns which typified this sovereignty. But others may have done this before him, especially his predecessor, Narmer. This is now an obscure village, but the burial-place of the first dynasty lies in Abydos, a city well known to travellers, while Menes himself is interred at Negade. The reign of Menes and the founding of the new empire may be dated as 3315 B.C. His records, inscribed on ivory plates, show that he was a great conqueror. He not only ruled over Egypt, but extended his conquests to the south and the north-west. We find, strangely enough, indications that these early kings, holding a double sovereignty and a double deification, had also a double burying-place, one in Memphis and one in Abydos. The list of the successors of Menes is uncertain. His son was apparently named Atoti. Then comes Ghent, who gave to the hieroglyphics the form which they afterwards retained. Then follows Zet, but all authorities are agreed that the fifth king was Usaphais, with the Horus name of Ten. We need not follow out the bewildering catalogue of these monarchs with 6 A GENERAL HISTORY [to loso b.c. distracting names, who ruled Egypt for the four hundred years from 3300 to 2900, during which time, sovereigns from This sat upon the throne of Horus. There are few monuments left to relate their history, but we have abundant evidence of the condition of their civilisation. The characteristics of the art and the government founded by them remained unchanged to the end. But there was no stagnation — on the contrary, a vigorous life. Archaic dress and habits lingered long among the common people, but in the higher classes there was con- tinual progress, beginning with the sovereign and coming down to the aristocracy. We learn this from the graves which still exist, the most important of which is that of King Menes in Negade, an independent building surrounded by a massive wall. After Menes their graves are covered with inscriptions, so as to make the name of the dead live after his decease. The inscription of a king's name secured him immortality. Egypt under the Thinites was essentially a kingdom. The sovereign had the double title of Horus and King of the two countries. Court ceremonial was fully developed. K-fneshin "^" e was an i ncarna ti° n of Horus — indeed of Horus and Seth — and was represented as the lion-tailed sphinx, who tore the people with his claws. He was a living god in human form, who lived on an equality with the gods. He was lord of life and death. His name was never spoken ; in its place we find Pharaoh, the Great House, like the Sublime Porte. But, although a god, he has strict and definite duties to his subjects. He is surrounded by ritual like the Doge of Venice. In the festival of Set, which was celebrated twenty- five years after his accession, he mounts a lofty platform on which two thrones are placed, where he is crowned with the two crowns, white and red, the shepherd's crook and the scourge in his hands, clad in the shirt tunic of ancient times. There are many other festivals too numerous to describe. Each king built for himself a new capital, like Mogul sovereigns of India, a walled town with his palace in the centre. It was begun four years after his accession, and another was built four years after the festival of Set. There was an elaborate bureaucratic govern- ment, known to us chiefly by its seals, but its organisation is still obscure. Law was highly developed, and was certainly written. Annals were carefully preserved. A full account of all property in land and gold was kept by scribes to form a basis of taxation. Even the Thinites' art made great progress ; stone was superseded by copper. Gold and precious stones to 1580 b.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS 7 became common. There was an elaborate calendar, a minute study of the stars : the arts of reckoning and measuring were highly developed, also the practice of medicine. The Egyptians were surrounded by powerful neighbours, Libyans, Troglodytes, Nomads, Nubians. Crete— was well known to them, as were Cyprus, and Byblos on the coast of Lebanon. Incense, so much used by them in worship, came from Punt, now Somaliland. But the greatest of all their rivals was the mighty Babylon, which possessed a culture not inferior, perhaps superior, to their own. The history of Egypt after the Thinite kings, the worshippers of Horus, is divided into three empires — the Old Empire lasting from 2900 to 2000 B.C. and comprising nine dynasties ; the Middle Empire extending from Emrrires 66 2000 B.C. to 1580 B.C., containing five dynasties; and the New Empire, lasting from 1580 B.C. to 1090 B.C., con- taining four dynasties and representing the high-water mark of Egyptian power. As This was the seat of the first two dynasties, so Memphis was of the third. The great monarch of the third dynasty was the mighty Zoser, who raised Egypt to a high standard of power and * "r culture. He incorporated Nubia into his kingdom, and is known as the builder of the step pyramid of Sakkara, which he apparently erected for his own sepulchre. He reigned for nineteen years, and was succeeded by Zoser II., who reigned for six years, but of whom we have no records. The last king of the third dynasty was Huni, who probably built the great pyramid of Bashur. The first king of the fourth dynasty, which extended from 2850 to 2700 B.C. was Snofru, who built the pyramid of Medun, known by the Arabs as the false pyramid. Here ip^g jy^ he placed his residence, and here was erected a Dynasty mighty temple for his worship after death. The Pyra- Greater than Snofru was Cheops, with Chephren mids. and Mycerinus, the builder of the great Pyramids of Gizeh, which are known to all the world, travelled and untravelled, as "The Pyramids" par excellence. His residence was in Gizeh, separated from Cairo by the Nile. His pyramid, the largest building in the world, contains three grave chambers, in the uppermost of which he is buried. Close by is his temple and three smaller pyramids for the officers of his court. He reigned for twenty-three years, and was succeeded by Tetepe, who lived at Abu Roos, and in the eight years of his rule had not time 8 A GENERAL HISTORY [to 158u b.c. to finish his pyramid. His son and successor Chephren returned to Gizeh, and, like his son Mycerinus, built a pyramid inferior in size to his father's. In the temple of Chephren were found nine statues of the king in granite, diorite, basalt, and alabas- ter. The temple of Mycerinus was begun in granite, but hastily finished in limestone and brick. The Sphinx, carved out of the living rock, belongs also to this period. Mycerinus was succeeded by four kings of whom we know little. The whole dynasty lasted about 160 years. In the fourth dynasty, the whole government is concentrated in the person of the " Great God," as Pharaoh is called, and Govern- the efforts of the community are devoted to ment of the securing his worship both now and for all Pharaohs. eternity. His residence once chosen, his temple and his pyramid are built and his cult secured by a numerous priesthood. The tombs become gradually richer. The dead body being secured from decay by embalming, pains are taken to provide for its sustenance. Besides the statue and the pyramid, there is a mastaba or quadrangular fortress for the use of the departed. The walls of both are painted with the annals of the dead man's life. Every expedient is adopted to make the short human life eternal. All this apparatus of dead worship is confined to the limits of the Pharaoh's court, extending, however, sometimes to an enormous distance, the centralisation of the cult following the centralisation of political authority. The will of the king is all powerful. He has under him a chief minister, the interpreter of his divine purposes. His seal-bearer was at first a member of the royal family, then the office became hereditary in a certain clan, and was, at last, thrown open. Besides, there are a commander-in-chief and a master of the works. The state officials are educated partly at court, partly in the temples. The allotment of their offices is known, but it would take too long to enumerate them — they were generally hereditary. The king's revenue was derived partly from his domain, partly from taxes paid in money and kind. Accounts were made up every other year. Gold and copper were used for purposes of exchange, but barter was the usual practice. As in the Germany of the Middle Ages, the king could give away his land or lease it for a season. Eventually land could be in- herited or sold, and of this we have numerous records. The great officials became in time great land-owners, and huge estates came into existence, with their armies of artisans and to 1580 B.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS 9 other workers. Most of the land belonged to temples, which were built in great numbers by the kings of the Old Empire. The great god Ptah owed his divinity to his being the deity of the capital. The pyramids and mastabas of Gizeh were built from his quarries, and the stones hewed and shaped by his vassals. The government of the Pharaohs, however absolute, preserved a patriarchal and benevolent character. Together with occasional harshness of punishment, humanity prevailed. Life was genez^ally happy, and family affection was the rule. During the fourth dynasty, the strivings of the race were limited by the idea of Pharaoh. Worship had the single object of prolonging the material comforts of earthly Religious existence : transcendental notions of a future life changes were entirely absent. But a religion so consti- The Vth tuted was only possible with a powerful sovereign ; Dynasty, a weak ruler would shatter the fabric, and this was what occurred. After lasting 140 years, the dynasty came to an end in 2540 B.C. The fifth dynasty continued the practice of worshipping the dead, and building pyramids, but religion began to assert itself, and the sun-god Ke, already the ruling deity of neighbouring races, began to receive reverence. Re took the place of Horns, and Egypt became the capital of the sun worshippers. The first king of the dynasty was Userkef, and after him the sovereigns all bore names which ended in Re. Pharaoh became regarded as the son of Re. The sanctuaries and pyramids of the fifth dynasty are to be found at Abusir. The sanctuary of the sun is found at Abu Gureb, where there was a mighty obelisk, two hundred feet in height, an altar of alabaster, and provision for the slaughtering of animal victims. But there is no image of the god, no house of god, nor temple, as the sun-god has no abode on earth, but shines for ever in the heavens. A covered passage leads from the town to the summit of the mound from which Pharaolijsaluted-tbe rising of the sun every day at daybreak. The temple, like its sister shrine of Bubka is the embodiment of a great idea. The new worship of Re brought a higher spirituality into the mind of the Egyptians. It also affected the position of the king. Pharaoh is no longer the companion or the partner of the god, but his son : he is no longer the great god, but the good god. The three centuries of the Old Empire were a time of peace, although the Sphinx of the fifth dynasty holds in her claws Libyans and the inhabitants of Asia and Punt. The decorations of the buildings show a number of battle scenes. The presence of warships shows i io A GENERAL HISTORY [to 1580 b.c. conflicts with Phoenicia and the Lebanon. Palestine and the Phoenician coast had become a dependency of Egypt. These struggles were continued under the sixth dynasty. The boun- daries of Egypt were extended towards the second cataract. Large supplies of gold, precious woods, and myrrh came from Somaliland. The high-water mark of the Old Empire is found in the fifth dynasty, which lasted from 2700 to 2540 B.C. The massive hugeness of the fourth dynasty is now decorated Science ^y refined ornament, the monoliths and imposts of granite are replaced by graceful columns. The carving of reliefs takes a new development, their light colouring, although light and shade are unknown, gives life and even humour to the figures. The large statues in which the spirit of the dead is supposed to reside are dignified and impressive. In smaller works, the ivory statue of Cheops stands pre-eminent. Imagination and realism are shown in the scribe of the Louvre and the statue of the court dwarf. Similar improvement is shown in the production of smaller artistic objects which already distinguished the Thinite period. The progress of science goes hand in hand with that of art. The mining of huge stone masses, the measuring of fields, the careful keeping of accounts, the practice of medicine, the so-called wisdom of the Egyptians, consisting mainly in the practice of magic, the elaboration of ritual with songs and rnusic, the inculcation of morality and etiquette, are all characteristic of this period. The fifth dynasty came to an end with King Unos : the founder of the sixth is Teli, but whether he acquired the throne by succession or usurpation, we do not know. The VH"h Dvnastv ^ e neec ^ n0 ^ record the names of his successors, but only mention that one of them, Pepi II., is said to have lived a hundred years and reigned ninety-four of that time, by far the longest reign in history. The old traditions still continued ; the worship of the dead still pre- vailed ; the monarch still began his pyramid at his succession, the seat of the kings after Pepi I. being fixed at Sakkara. Stately graves were accorded to the great officials. Those of the monarchs or rulers of provinces are found in every part of Egypt. We find their offices becoming gradually hereditary and independent ; as their power increased, that of the crown diminished. It is true that Pharaoh could still equally exercise his authority over the vizir and the numerous bureaucracy which were under him, but it became more nominal than real. to 1580 b.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS n Yet the power of the empire over its subjects seemed iinim- paired. The mines of Sinai were still worked, ships sailed to Punt, intercourse with jSubia was active. There was war with the Bedouins of Palestine and Syria, amongst whom the Hebrews must be reckoned. In five campaigns the land of the Hinusi was wasted, their castles destroyed, the fig trees and vines cut down, their farms destroyed, many thousands slain, countless prisoners captured. We do not know whether this ended in the entire subjugation of Palestine. The long-lived Pepi II. is the last king of Egypt whose name is, for a long period, found in the inscriptions; Manetho, the historian of Egypt, closes the sixth dynasty with the name of the Queen Nilocris. The seventh dynasty is said to have reigned for seventy days, which probably implies an interregnum. The eighth dynasty, according to Manetho, lasted for 146 The Vllth. years. But our knowledge is very uncertain ; and VHIth what we do know is that the Old Empire is at an Dynasties, end about the year 2000 B.C., and the Middle Empire begins. It is easy to see that the authority of the Pharaoh who resided in Memphis had become a shadow. The unity of the king- dom still existed, but there were many conflicting claimants for the double crown, and the country had really broken up into a number of independent principalities. Further, the old lessees of the public land had now become proprietors. This season of trouble marked a decline in art. But it also marked the rising of a middle class, and we owe to it the numerous representations of the objects of daily household life which still exist. To this period belongs the Book of the Dead, the fullest account we have of the views of the Egyptians with regard to the relations of the present and the future life. We also see a fundamental change in the character of the Egyptian religion. The worship of the sun, begun at Heliopolis, and developed in the fifth dynasty, became more common, and resulted in the belief in one god. He is his own begetter and creator, and renews every day the mysterious operation. Every day the sun- child appeal's on the horizon and grows to a strong man, who begets himself again in union with his mother, the goddess of heaven, the great cow. He is the creater and awakener of all life, he forms and rules the world. All other deities are mere names, or are servants and assistants of the one. This is the sun monotheism of the Egyptian religion, pursued as a sacred mystery by the higher priesthood, 12 A GENERAL HISTORY [to loso e.g. and gradually disseminated through the country. No doubt the new learning greatly increased the influence of the priests. According to Manetho, the eighth dynasty is followed by two dynasties, the ninth and the tenth, consisting of nineteen kings, reigning at Herakleopolis, lying south, at the entrance The IXth °f the Fayum. Their founder was said to be and Xth Achtoi, worse than all his predecessors, who Dynasties. eventually became mad, and was killed by a crocodile. This, however, is all uncertain. To this period belong the graves of the nomarchs and high priests of Assiut. We learn much about the condition of affairs from the in- scriptions of the first of them, Achtoi, who was brought up at Herakleopolis, and learnt to swim with the king's children, while his mother administered the district. He governed Assiut well as nomarch, and was faithful to his sovereign, who reigned over the whole of Egypt. But he possessed both an army and a navy. Under his successor the army played an important part, armed with long lances with copper points and wooden shields, covered with skin. There was also a royal guard of dwarfish negroes, armed with bows and flint-pointed arrows, wearing nothing but a loin cloth. During this time Thebes bad risen to importance, and its sovereigns were regarded as the two Pharaohs. Thus the ancient Empire came to an end, losing itself like its own river in the sand. Karnak was the seat of the worship of Amon, the deity of generation, and, for unknown reasons, received from the Greeks the name of Thebes, the city of the hundred E e ■ * e gates. During the sixth and following dynasties, this district, which extended on both sides of the river, was in possession of a family, bearing alternately the names of Antef and Mentuhotep, which acquired great power and threw off the supremacy of the Pharaohs of Herakleopolis. The Xlth Here ruled the twelfth dynasty, which lasted and Xllth from about 2000 to 1788 B.C. The successors of Dynasties. these Antefs and Mentuhoteps, who founded what is called the eleventh dynasty, are not worth examining in detail. We know also little about the inner character of their rule. The first king of the twelfth dynasty was Amenemhet L, who won the crown not without a struggle. We know how he subdued his enemies with a fleet of twenty cedar ships. He was also subject to treacherous attacks, and with difficulty escaped being murdered. For the purposes of better government he fixed his residence at Lisht, at the to 1580 B.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS 13 frontier of the two countries, although he and his successors never forgot their attachment to Thebes. After the attempt on his life, he shared the government with his son, Sesostris I., who carried on wars whilst his father attended to the domestic affairs of the kingdom. Sesostris was in the field against the Libyans when his father died on February 3, 1971, and hastened immediately to the capital. But he succeeded to a troubled inheritance. Under Amenemhet and Sesostris, the power of the feudal nobility was by no means destroyed, nor was their hereditary character impaired, but the authority of the king Govern- over them was firmly established. Years were mental reckoned by the names of the sovereigns, and not changes, by those of the local governors. The government assumed the form of a feudal monarchy, very rich and prosperous, full of political and private life. The country was divided into three great provinces, North Egypt, comprising the Delta, Middle Egypt, and South Egypt. The authority of the king gradually became more despotic. Under Sesostris III. (1887 to 1853) the power of the nomarchs became gradually less, and the con- dition of the nobles was entirely changed under this monarch and his successor, Amenemhet III. The country was governed, as in the Old Empire, by a large bureaucracy. Under them were countless categories of artisans who were fed in the royal palace. Accounts were carefully kept, and money of the time is still preserved. The king was supported by a large standing army, and he always had with him a numerous personal following, whose bravery in war he rewarded by the gift of precious arms, or gold ornaments, or by promotion to the office of general. Yet the kings, the sons of Re, eventually retained only a power as limited as the Pharaohs of the Old Empire. At the same time they were differently regarded from Snofru and Cheops. It was no longer considered the duty of the country to build for each a huge pyramid sepulchre. The interest of the country was put first, and good government was the chief consideration. It was best served by the authority of the king as the head of the state, but his power was undoubtedly limited. The kings of the twelfth dynasty did their best to recover the position which had been held by the ancient Pharaohs, and they strove like the German Emperors to be not only guardians, but increasers of the ^{JJSJJ* empire. They fought against the Libyans and the Nubians. Sesostris the First boasted to have reached the 14 A GENERAL HISTORY [to isso e.g. end of the world — that is, the second cataract at Wady Haifa. Sesostris III. went beyond this, and attacked the Troglodytes. The conquest of Punt (Somaliland), which had been begun by the eleventh dynasty, was continued by the twelfth. From this they brought myrrh, oil, panther skins, apes, ivory, and other precious things. The mines of Sinai were carefully worked, and the Bedouins kept in order. The authority of the Pharaohs also extended to Syria, and they imported cedar wood from Byblos. Palestine was attacked, and we hear of the reduction of Sichem. We find that relations existed with Crete, the Cyclades, and Cyprus. The scarabaeus form of seal began to make its appearance at this time in place of the old cylinder. The twelfth dynasty had a very energetic character, derived from their founder. Sesostris III. was, apparently, a great _, .... warrior, his successor, Amenemhet III., a great builder. He enjoyed the possession of a power- ful and well ordered kingdom — a Solomon after a David. The dynasty built the Ptah temple at Memphis, the Amon temple at Karnak, the Hathor temple at Dendera, the mighty Labyrinth, and erected the obelisk of Heliopolis, the Osiris temple at Abydos, the temple of Hershef at Herakleopolis. Their names and statues are found all over the Delta. The pyramids of the first two kings of the dynasty are found at Lisht, others at Dashur and in the Fayum, which became their residence and owes its cultivation to them. Lake Moeris was used for the regulation of the Nile. The Middle Empire was as much distinguished in art and literature as it was in the power of its government. The Labyrinth is due to this period. Sculpture made L^fc ai t e g rea t progress, and began to take the forms of realistic protraiture. Painting was used in wall decoration, and jewelry became very beautiful and refined. A copious literature of the age is left to vis, written in a classical style. But these works, admirable as literature, are not so useful for history. We find treatises on Medicine, Geometry and Arithmetic, religious hymns and services for the dead. Philosophy and Theology are well represented, and the great problems of human existence form the subject of prose and poetry. Speculations on the mystery of the world, which, arising in Egypt, were transferred to Greece, have their origin in the Middle Empire. We find also prophecies on the future of Egypt, of impending catastrophes, after the style of the Hebrew prophets, but the spiritual and moral elements are sadly wanting. to 1580 b.c] EGYPT, TO TIME OF THE HYKSOS 15 The troubles of the thirteenth dynasty and of the Hyksos begin to cast their shadows. The brilliant period of the twelfth dynasty came to an end with the close of the long reign of Amenemhet III., which lasted from 1849 to 1801. His son, Amenemhet IV., The XHIth reigned only nine years, and was succeeded by to the his sister Sebeknofrure, who occupied the throne XVIIth from 1791 to 1788. We do not know whether Dynasty, the sovereigns of the thirteenth dynasty obtained the crown by marriage or by usurpation, but, thirteen in number, they only reigned for a short pei^iod. Their names are almost unknown, and their united reigns only number twenty-five years, 1785 to 1760. After them follow a number of kings, most of whom were probably usurpers ; amongst them the name Sebekhotep is very common. They were real or nominal sovereigns of the whole of Egypt, and we may attribute to them a period of about fifty years from 1760 to 1710. To them succeed a number of sovereigns, apparently thirty-four in number, to whom we may allot another fifty years from 1710 to 1660. Then follows the fourteenth dynasty, from Xois, in the north of the Middle Delta. Twenty-one names of them are preserved, and it is possible that their power did not extend over Upper Egypt, but that they ruled in the Western Delta as vassals of the Hyksos, whom we shall mention presently, who were settled in the Eastern. Although they fill up several of what are called dynasties, their rule was ephemeral, and we may say of them what Hallam says of the last Merovingians, " Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa " (" Let us not reck of them : look and pass by "). The natural result of this anarchy was the invasion of a foreign power, which is thus described by Manetho : " For reasons which I do not know, the deity became angry with us ; people from the east invaded Egypt, and be- J nva ^ ion ° f came masters of it. They conquered its guards, burnt its towns, destroyed the temples of the gods, and treated the inhabitants cruelly, killing some and enslaving others. At length they made Salitis their king. He came to Memphis, exacted tribute from Upper and Lower Egypt, and established garrisons in the towns, securing himself specially towards the east, in fear of an Assyrian invasion." Manetho then tells us that Salitis reigned for nineteen years, and that his people were called Hyksos— that is, shepherd kings. It is probable that the power of these kings lay in the north, and that native princes still continued to rule with precarious authority in the south. 16 A GENERAL HISTORY [to isso b.c. The Hyksos are elsewhere described as Syrian Semites, that is Canaanites ; but it is possible that they were Hittites, who came from Asia Minor and overran Syria and Egypt, connected with the invaders who destroyed the Babylonian empire in 1760. Many Semites were mixed up with them, as some of their kings bear Semite names and some not. The conquerors brought with them a national god, called by the Egyptians Seth, who is identified with the Canaanitish Baal. Although there is great divergence in our authorities, we may reckon that the dominion of the Hyksos lasted about a hundred years — that is, from 1680 to 1580 B.C. The best known of the Hyksos kings is Chian, who reigned over the whole of Egypt. He resided at Auaris, near Lake Menzala, and his power probably extended over Syria and Asia Minor. It is possible that Hebron Avas one of the principal fortresses for the subjugation of Palestine. Scarabs of Chian have been found in Gezer, and traces of him in Bagdad, Babylon, and Crete. The rule of the Hyksos had little effect on Egyptian culture. Native kings continued to reign as their vassals down to the seventeenth dynasty. At length a successful rebellion was organised against them, of which the centre was Thebes, which may be dated about 1590 B.C., and which led to the restoration of the Pharaohs. The scattered rulers of Upper Egypt clustered round Thebes, and the expulsion of the Hyksos is reckoned as the work of the eighteenth dynasty, who raised the power and splendour of Egypt to a height never before attained. The history of Egypt is from this time involved in the history of the other parts of the ancient world, the most notable of which was Babylon, and to this we must now direct our attention. l, CHAPTER II. BABYLON AND ASSYRIA FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO c. 1750 B.C. A little below the point where the two rivers Euphrates and Tigris approach each other in their course, is the territory of the ancient Ktesiphon and the modern Bagdad. The Euph- They enter upon a broad plain which owes its rates and origin to the alluvial soil of both rivers. The tiie Tigris. Euphrates, which is the higher of the two streams, sends numerous branches and canals into the lower-lying Tigris which irrigate the country. In the cold and rainless winter season the water is low and the canals nearly dry, but the Tigris begins to rise in March and the Euphrates in April, so that in June and July, after the melting of the snow in the Armenian mountains, the plain becomes a huge lake, like the soil of Egypt two months later. The consequence of this is that the whole district becomes intensely fertile, even more so than Egypt. But to render this useful requires a large expenditure of human labour. The river left to itself would, partly by haste and partly by stagnation, do more harm than' good, so that dykes must be made and carefully attended to and injury prevented. This needs a str^gj^vjrnjnjsnt ; anc ^ ' when this has been presentTSabyloii has prospered. In the course of time, large additions have been made to the ex- tent of the soil. The two rivers have united to form the Satt-el-Arab, which also receives the waters of the Choaspes and Euleus. The Tigris and the Euphrates have both altered their course : the level of the soil has been raised, and the course of the rivers lengthened. All these circumstances have been intensified by the neglect of the Mohammedans; so that the once flourishing country of Nebuchadnezzar and the Chalifs is scarcely to be recognised. Its ancient cities are represented by heaps of rubbish rising like islands in a barren waste. The increase of stagnant pools, desert soil, and the devastation of the Bedouins have gradually completed the 17 B 18 A GENERAL HISTORY [to c. 1750 b.c. destruction. Still it would be a mistake to suppose that the whole of the low-lying territory was in ancient times a land flowing with milk and honey. The plains of Sinear, of which Babylon is the capital, were in these ages of very limited extent, certainly of smaller dimensions than the territory of Egypt. The chief towns lay at a small distance from each other. Under the successors of Alexander, a much larger extent of soil was brought under cultivation. The country afterwards called Babylonia was in ancient times called Sinear or Sangar, and was divided into two parts, Akkad in the north and Sumer in the south. Sumeria 6 The principal cities of Sumer were Eridu, Ur, Erech, Larsa, Nippur, Lagash, and Ummur. Those of Akkad were Kish, Opis, Sippar, Babylon, and Cutha. The Sumerians were a non-Semitic stock, probably Mongolians. There is little doubt that they were among the most ancient recipients of culture and religion, and if this be true, both material and spiritual civilisation began with a Mongolian race. Indeed we are tempted to assume that the world was first covered with a layer of Mongol culture, traces of which still remain in China and Thibet, in Finland and the Caucasus, perhaps even among the North American Indians, and which was afterwards destroyed — first by the Semites and then by the Aryans. These, however, are questions of controversy, and cannot be regarded as settled. The Akkadians Akkadians were undoubtedly Semitic. There is, however, no doubt that Akkadian civilisation was mainly derived from Sumeria, and that, particularly, cuneiform writing originated in the southern kingdom. Also the Sumerians were an older race, physically different from their neighbours. Their noses are small and pointed, their cheeks thin. They have a small mouth, finely modelled lips, a short but well formed chin, Mongol eyes and a low forehead. Besides cunei- form writing, they invented a sexagesimal system of numera- tion, which formed the i basis of all counting and measuring throughout the whole extent of Babylonia. It is difficult to establish a date for the beginning of civilisa- tion in Sinear, when the first dykes were built or the first canals Early In- dug- The inhabitants were certainly peasants : habitants of their principal victim of sacrifice was the goat, Sinear. their best gift from heaven, water. When the gods were angry the waters assumed the dimensions of a flood, and the inhabitants were all destroyed except the few who took to c. 1750 b.c] BABYLON AND ASSYRIA 19 refuge in a ship and were saved upon a lofty mountain. There was no trace of the unity of social life : each settlement was constituted by itself. Their dwellings were made of mud compacted with sedge and straw. The houses of gods and nobles were constructed out of unburned bricks ; the art of burning bricks was discovered later. These constructions were easily carried away by rain or destroyed by fire. But the fallen villages gradually formed a solid foundation upon which new villages could be erected. The dead were buried in pots which were used over and over again. The rivers continually changed their courses and necessitated new arrangements. Metals and other objects which led to the amenity of existence were derived from foreign countries, and the necessity of this led to abundant foreign trade and commerce. Art was, in these early days, almost entirely absent, but the minds of the inhabitants were turned in upon themselves and their practical needs, and litera- ture and religion had their first beginnings. In the year 3000 B.C., the greater part of Sinear was un- doubtedly in the hands of the Sumerians. To what extent the population was Semitic, it is now impossible to say, but their dress does not show a Semitic char- pF?V: r1 ^ acter. The men were bald, the women wore long- hair, the dress was a loin cloth, the feet were bare, the priests in the presence of the god were entirely naked. The principal towns have been already mentioned. The chief deity of the Sumerians was Ellil, the Lord of Storms, who had his abode in the mountains. His wife was Ninlil, the goddess of genera- tion and fruitfulness. Ellil was the son of Ani, the father of the gods, who, in conjunction with Ellil, governed the world. Under these principal deities there was a copious Pantheon, and also a world of spirits who were not always distinguishable from the gods. Religion, however, played a far more important part in Babylonian life than in the Egypt of the Thinites or the Pharaohs of the Old Empire. The kings were favourites of the deity, and deities themselves. Religious observances dominated their whole life. The earliest Sumerian literature consisted largely of hymns. Every man, of whatever rank, was attended by a guardian angel who directed his destiny. Indeed it is probable that religion as we know it, the worship of an all-good 1 and all-wise creator, began amongst the Sumerians, and was \ borrowed from them by the Egyptians and the Jews. One of the most important contributions of the Sumerians to civilisation was the invention of cuneiform writing, which 20 A GENERAL HISTORY [to c. 1750 b.c. changed into a form of writing similar to our own, much quicker than the Egyptian or the Semitic. Even if Sumerian writing be instead of drawing Judah into the alliance attacks against the common enemy, preferred to reduce her Judah. to the condition of a vassal state. King Jotham did his best to withstand this intention, assisted by the fiery patriotism of the great prophet Isaiah. But on the succession of his son Ahaz, matters took a different turn. While the Syrians wasted all the country on the east as far as the Dead Sea, Pekah broke in on the west, and carried women and children, with much plunder, to Samaria. The Philistines occupied Bethshemesh, Ajalon, and Timna, and the Edomites made raids upon the south. Ahaz, the first king of Judah who exhibited a doubt as to the saving power of Jehovah, not only offered sacrifices to the gods who were assisting his enemies, but sacrificed his own son to Moloch. He did even worse than this by calling in the Assyrians against his enemies. He sent Ahaz in- a ^ ^he g' 01 ^ anc ^ silver out of the temple and the vokes the palace to the king of Assyria, and said to him, aid of "I am your servant and your son : come down and Assyria. help me out of the hand of my enemies, who have arisen against me." Tiglath Pileser answered to his call, con- quered Damascus, killed King Rezin, and carried off the inhabi- tants whom he made prisoners to the river Kur in Media. He then transported nearly half of the ten tribes, Naphthali in the north and Gilead in the east, partly across the Euphrates into Mesopotamia, and partly to the cradle land of the Assyrians beyond the Tigris. While the Ammonites took possession of the deserted districts, Pekah ruled over what remained as vassal of the king of Assyria, until he fell a victim to a conspiracy. to 537 b.c.] JEWISH HISTORY 65 Ahaz hastened to Damascus to ask the Assyrian king for his assistance, and robbed the temple at Jerusalem of its remain- ing treasures in order to reward him. He went so far as to establish the form of Assyrian worship in the holy city. The Jews were forced to become sun worshippers. The indignation of Isaiah was powerless to stop these abuses. Under Shalmaneser, the successor of Tiglath Pileser, matters became worse. He subdued a large portion of the Phoenician coast, but he could not succeed in taking the End of the island of Tyre, which resisted his efforts. Hosea, Northern the son of the murdered Pekah, was stimulated by Kingdom, the Tyrians to stop the tribute paid every year to Nineveh and enter into negotiations with Egypt, then under the rule of an Ethiopian dynasty. The Egyptians, who saw with dread the growing power of Nineveh, used the Jews as a convenient buffer to stop its advance. Isaiah, with statesmanlike insight, fore- saw that the might of Assyria was irresistible, that Phoenicia and Ephraim must fall before it, and saiah and that even Egypt could not stand against it. The result of this was to make Hezekiah, who had succeeded Ahaz, cautious in his proceedings. When Shalmaneser heard of the intrigues of Hosea, he hastened back to Samaria and threw him into prison. The people rose in rebellion, indignant at the treatment of their king. Sargon took Samaria after a three years' siege, and the people were either enslaved or banished. Some were sent to Egypt, or to Europe ; some were sold into slavery, or were carried off to Assyria. Samaria was occupied by new inhabitants. It is probable, however, that more of the original population remained behind than is actually recorded in history. While this was the fate of Israel, the southern kingdom enjoyed thirty years' rest under the government of Hezekiah, assisted by the advice of Isaiah. Sargon was succeeded by Sennacherib in 705 B.C., and under Assyrian him the Assyrians proceeded to new conquests. They subdued Cilicia, they overthrew Philistia to the frontiers of Egypt, they conquered the Arabian tribes to the south and east of Jordan. Hezekiah strengthened Jerusalem against the threatened attack, repaired the walls, strengthened Millo, and built an aqueduct. Then he withheld the yearly tribute paid to Nineveh, and sent to Egypt for assistance. Isaiah was entirely opposed to these proceedings, and the event proved him to be right. Sennacherib hastened to exact vengeance for 66 A GENERAL HISTORY [c. 2000 b.c. this treachery. Hezekiah tried to buy him off with all the treasure that he could collect, but in vain. Sennacherib in- sisted on the surrender of the capital, and Rabshekeh, the Sennacherib king's chief butler, was sent with a division to threatens attack the city. Then followed the wonderful Jerusalem. catastrophe which fired the imagination of the Jewish chroniclers and is immortalised in the verse of Byron. The insults heaped by Rabshekeh on the power of Jehovah roused the wrath of the Jewish population and the patriotism of Israel. Hezekiah took Sennacherib's letter into the temple, and invoked the assistance of his God, not in vain. Just as inevitable destruction seemed impending over the holy city, the invading army disappeared as if by magic. The retreat was probably due to the news that Nineveh itself was threatened, but we cannot wonder if future generations ascribed the marvellous salvation to the hand of an avenging angel Avho wrought destruction upon the invading army. In the year 697 B.C., Hezekiah was succeeded by his son Manasseh, a boy of twelve years old, who occupied the throne for fifty years. He deserted the religion of a ' Jehovah for the worship of the sun. He per- secuted the prophets who resisted him. This produced a condition of civil strife which exhausted the strength of the country, and we are told that Manasseh was carried off to Babylon in chains, but the historical dates of these events are not very trustworthy. The worship of Jahve revived again under the reign of Josiah, the son of Ammon eign anc | g ranc | son f Manasseh, a child of eight years old, whose reign lasted from 640 to 609. In his reign occurred an invasion of the savage Scythians, who laid land and cities waste, and drove the inhabitants of Canaan to take refuge in caves and forests, a prophecy recorded in the writings of Zephaniah. In his reign also the book of the law, which had been lost, was found by the high priest Hilkiah, in the temple, and was read to the people, who entered into a solemn agreement to observe its precepts. The spirit of this reform is to be found in the book of Deuteronomy. Unfortunately these reforms were hindered by the outbreak of new wars. Assyria was hastening to its fall. The Medes and the Chaldeans were advancing against it, wr Hri threatening Nineveh. Josiah took advantage of the opportunity to recover Samaria, and to restore the worship of Jahve. At the same time, Egypt began to to 537 b.c] JEWISH HISTORY 67 extend itself under Necho, and Josiah endeavoured to check him. A great battle took place in the plain of Megiddo, and Josiah was entirely defeated. The king was mortally wounded, and carried, as a corpse, in a chariot to Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah wrote lamentations over him which re- mained long in the mouth and memory of the prophets. This was indeed the end. Josiah was succeeded by his judah younger son Shallum, but when Necho heard of subject to it he summoned him to his camp at Eiblah and Egypt. sent him in chains to Egypt, where he remained for the rest of his life. He was succeeded by his elder brother, Eliakim, who, taking the name of Jehoiakim, reigned as a humble vassal of Necho. The king of Babylon was now Nebuchadnezzar, who, in the year 606, had entirely defeated Necho in the battle of Carchemish. As soon as he had leisure he E .., . directed his force against Canaan and besieged Carchemish Jerusalem. Jehoiakim died, and was followed — Judah by his son, who is called by the double name of subject to Jehoiachin or Jeconiah. After three months he Bab y lon - fell into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, who carried him off to Babylon, and then plundered Jerusalem not only of the trea- sure which remained in it, but of all its able-bodied popu- lation, 7000 in number, its armourers, smiths, and carpenters, its priests and prophets, amongst whom was Ezekiel. The miserable relics of the nation were enlisted to the cause of Josiah's third son, Mataniah, under the name of Zedekiah, who took the oaths and preferred the security of vassalage. The great prophet of this unhappy age was Jeremiah. As the material power of Judah sank, her spiritual strength and insight rose to a height of fervour which has Jeremiah since dominated the religious minds of all End of the ages, a striking evidence of the fact that matter Kingdom of is indeed nothing, but spirit is everything. Judah. Egypt now began to raise her head under King Hophra, who entered into communication with Zedekiah and stimulated him to rebellion. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who was in exile, sup- ported him in this policy, but Nebuchadnezzar was prompt in action. He invaded Judah with a large army, and laid siege to Jerusalem. Jeremiah prophesied failure, but the Jews con- tinued their resistance. All was in vain. Zedekiah fled from the city by night, but was captured in the plain of Jericho. A large number of Jews went to Egypt, accompanied by Jeremiah, who, however, had protested against this exodus into Egypt 68 A GENERAL HISTORY [to 537 b.c. instead of out of it. A residence near Pelusium was assigned to them by Hophra ; many of them also settled in Memphis. Five years after the destruction of Jerusalem, the few Jews who remained there joined the Ammonites and Moabites in an attack on the Chaldeans of Phoenicia, but they were entirely defeated, and the ruin of the country was complete. Jeremiah spent the rest of his days in Egypt, and it is said that he met his death by being stoned by his countrymen. We must now turn to the exiles in Babylon. It is not known what became of the ten tribes of Israel. England, The Jews America, and many other places have been put restored by forward as the seat of their refuge, but it is Cyrus. certain only that, wherever they went, they lost all traces of their origin. After the fall of Babylon, Cyrus sent the Jews of the southern kingdom back to their country. Ezra tells us that the train consisted of 736 horses, 245 mules, 435 camels, and 6720 asses. They set out in the year 537, forty-eight years after the destruction of Jerusalem — 42,361 free people, 7337 servants, all under the leadership of Zerub- babel. Some members of the ten tribes may have accom- panied them. After six months' travel, they reached the holy city. They found their country deserted, but their first care was to rebuild their temple and to create a new Jerusalem. The Samarians offered to take part, but they were not allowed to do so. The restoration took many years under different leaders, and the work was not completed until the middle of the fifth century before Christ, chiefly by the exertions of Nehemiah and Ezra. CHAPTER V. MEDES AND PERSIANS.— GEEECE AND THE PERSIAN WARS, 780-479 B.C. The centre of the Iranian tableland is a great salt desert with- out drinkable water, and without habitation, very hot in summer, and almost uninhabitable. Agriculture is only possible in a few places where there is water. i an d flran. In other parts, Iran is only habitable on its edges. A large portion of it has been scarcely visited by Europeans. The district inhabited by the Persians is of a different char- acter. It has a moderate temperature, and plenty of rain. An ancient traveller says of it : " Here reigns a mild climate : the country is full of plants and well irrigated meadows. It bears plenty of wine and all other plants, except the olive. It possesses fruitful pleasure gardens ; rivers with clear water and lakes irrigate the land. Horses are bred there, and beasts of burden, and the woods are full of wild animals." The most impor- tant of the Persian races were the Pasargadae, the Maraphians, and the Maspians, living mainly in " hollow Persis "—that is, in the valley of the Araxes and its tributary the Cyrus. The religion of Zarathrusta, the Zendavesta, became the property of all the settled tribes. On the other hand, the worship of Mazda was introduced into Media in the eighth century. The Magi were a priestly cast of the Medians. They practised the custom of having their dead consumed by dogs and vultures, whereas the Persians buried their kings. The Persians make their appear- ance in history at the beginning of the sixth century. In 596, the AchamenidTheispes,of thetribeof the Pasarga- dae, conquered a large part of Elam, with its capital , Me( j es Susa. It became subject to the Median kings, of whom Deioces founded in 780 the capital Ecbatana, and was succeeded by Phraates, Cyaxares, and Astyages. In 553, Cyrus the son of Cambyses rose against Astyages, overthrew the Median empire, and, in a little more than ten years, subdued the whole of Asia Minor. His son Cambyses added the valley 70 A GENERAL HISTORY [780 b.c. to of the Nile to his possessions. An attempted usurpation of the Magi, which threatened the existence of the Persian empire, was put clown by Darius, who grasped the reins of government with a firm hand. There is no doubt that Persia was a mighty and well governed empire, as may be gathered from the impression which it made on men like Aeschylus, Herodotus, and EmT>ire rSian Xenophon, w ho saw it at its prime. The sovereign was undoubtedly the king of kings. Aeschylus says that he might claim to reign over all men from sunrise to sunset, and evidently considers him the monarch of the whole world. And it was the maxim of the dynasty, as taught by Ahuramazda, to practise right and punish wrong — to reward friends and chastise enemies. The Medes held the first place in the empire next to the Persians. Cyrus adopted the Median dress and ceremonial. Ecbatana was a residence of the great king. It was soon found that Susa, in the fertile plain of Elam, was the best site for the seat of government. The custom was to dwell in Ecbatana during the hot summer months, to remove to Babylon for the winter, and to pass the spring in Susa. But Persia always remained a national state. However far its kings might reside from their native country, however motley a crowd of nations they might rule over, they never forgot whence they came. They were always buried in Per- sepolis. Autocratic sovereigns, they were attended by a council, who were treated with great honour. Indeed, the members may have considered themselves as the equals of the king. Judges were appointed by the king, and the office was some- times hereditary. The first duty of a Persian was to love his king. Every capable man obeyed the king's summons to arms — the rich man on horseback, the poor man on foot. The young Persian nobles were educated at the court, not only in manly exercises, but in the arts of government. The duty placed before them was to do right, and to speak the truth. At twenty years of age, they entered either the army or the public service. The king became very rich and spent freely, giving to his friends not only money but independent military commands „. and portions of territory. The Persians were a people healthy, strong and beautiful, religious, brave and loyal, generous and merciful in war, in contrast to the brutal Semites. Although they were fond of wine, they only had one meal a day. They had a special horror of debts and lies. The kings were not regarded as gods like the Pharaohs 479 b.c.] MEDES AND PERSIANS 7* in Egypt, but they stood high above their subjects. Their re- lative position was that of master and slave. Before the king, the subjects threw themselves into the dust. Any one speaking to him had to conceal his hands : the slave who worked his punkah was not allowed to^ breathe upon him. He wore a highly raised tiara. He dined alone, except on feast days. He always appeared in a carriage with a large escort. The days of his birth and his accession were kept as holidays, cele- brated with huge banquets with compulsory attendance. In a lion hunt, any one throwing a spear before the king was punished by death. He had a large harem. Marriage between near relations being considered honourable, it was common for him to marry his own sister. Darius married several of the daughters of Cyrus, and one of them, Atossa, who had previously married Cambyses, was the mother of the crown Prince. There was a very large court and a number of eunuchs. The King's personal doctor generally came from Egypt or from Greece. The kings had large domains called parks, or paradises, which are frequently mentioned in Xenophon. Government was administered by a huge bureaucracy. In all important discussions, the king was assisted by seven councillors. The king was the supreme judge, System of the fountain of punishments and of rewards. The Govern- highest honour was to be styled a " benefactor," merit, to receive a robe of honour and a horse of honour, together with land and subjects in private property. A law once pro- mulgated by the king could not be altered. The government was carried on, according to the old oriental practice, in writing. The official language was Persian, but other languages were employed in different districts, for instance, in the west Aramaic, which had taken the place of Aryan as the language of commerce and diplomacy. In contrast to the numerous small provinces of the Assyrian empire, Cyrus established large pro- vinces, governed by satraps, called in Babylonish, pashas. Cyrus divided Lydia into two provinces with the respective capitals of Sardis and Daskylium. Media was also formed into two satrapies ; Armenia formed one ; Egypt, to- gether with Libya and Crete, formed a single a a f ra nies province. The satraps had to provide for order and security in their provinces, to put clown any attempt at re- bellion, to punish thieves and robbers. Cyrus' greatest praise for a satrap was when any man might travel through his district wherever he pleased without danger. He was the chief judge 72 A GENERAL HISTORY [780 b.c. to in civil and criminal matters. He had also to raise the taxes, and to see that land was properly cultivated. To exercise these functions, he had troops of his own and a sturdy body- guard. Indeed, his position was almost royal, and was fre- quently hereditary. The court of the satrap was a copy of the court of the king, and was very large. When Nehemiah, in 445 B.C., was governor of the small province of Judaea, a hundred and fifty prominent Jews dined at his table, and there was provided for them a bullock and six sheep, as well as bread and wine. The satrap of Babylonia had a stable of 16,000 mares and 800 stallions, and four villages for the support of his hounds. We must not overlook the fact that, in the Greek republics under Persian influence, the government was in the hands of The Greek a resident, called by the Greeks a tyrant, that Subjects of is, irresponsible ruler, who for his own interest, Persia. combined with the interests of Persia, secured the obedience of the community. He paid the tribute to the empire, and commanded the ;irmy and navy, but in other respects the community was left to govern itself. These re- publics had their own coinage, weights, and measures ; they had their own town council and could levy taxes at their pleasure, and their own troops. But the Persians gradually rased their walls. They possessed a limited autonomy, but they could not forget that they were not really free. An important mark of civilisation was the existence of the great roads which met at Susa. The chief of them was the _ , Kind's Road which led from Ephesus and Sardis Roads ■ • to the capital. It was an ancient road of com- merce, which, starting from Sardis, in the valley of the Hermon, passed on to the table-land of northern Phrygia, and then over the Halys to Pteria in Cappadocia : then, crossing the Euphrates, it went through Armenia and Assyria, and then along the Tigris to Susa. Another road went from Babylonia through the Zagros mountains to Lebanon, and thence to the frontiers of Bactria and India. These roads were measured by parasangs, and were kept in good repair. On the King's Road there were, at equal distances, posting houses and inns. Gates also were erected at convenient places, so that no one could pass without being recognised. The king's orders were conveyed by pos- tilions riding day and night ; " quicker than horses," as the Greeks say. There was also telegraphic communication by fire signal. The satraps were not left to themselves, but were kept 479 b.c] MEDES AND PERSIANS 73 in order by inspectors, called the king's eyes, men of high rank who paid unexpected visits. There was, undoubtedly, an ela- borate system of espionage, but the empire was held together by a strong feeling of national pride. So long as the king commanded the confidence of his nobles and his people, he was certain to be obeyed by his troops. The Persian empire united in itself two methods of using gold and silver as means of exchange, one employing coins, the other bars of metal, or rings and other pieces . which could be weighed. Coins were, after a great struggle, introduced in Phoenicia and Carthage, but were scarcely found at all in Egypt and Babylon. After all, coins had only a legal circulation in the places where they were coined : elsewhere they must be valued by weight, and the bars were almost equally serviceable. In other parts barter alone prevailed. We find coins used on the Indian frontier, but in Persia itself money was very scarce, and was only found in large gold pieces. Coinage began with pieces of gold and electrum which could be easily carried about : the making of coins of a smaller value belongs to a later period. Into these arrangements Darius introduced a thorough reform. He made a new gold coin, a stater, of the value of a little more than a sovereign. It showed the image of the king on his knees shooting from a bow. Besides this there was a silver shekel of the value of a little more than a shilling, twenty silver shekels making one gold daric. The silver mina contained a hundred silver shekels or five darics, and was worth something more than five pounds. The silver talent was worth three hundred darics, and ten silver talents were equal to one gold talent, which was worth about =£3500. Gold became the standard in the Persian system of coinage, and this had a great influence over the whole of the civilised world. Copper was coined according to the requirements of each town. The subjects of the crown naturally paid taxes. Herodotus tells us that in the days of Cyrus and Cambyses the amount of the tribute was not fixed, but the subjects brought presents as they pleased. The government was assisted by the huge amount of spoil derived from successful wars. Darius saw that a different system was required, and that an organised taxation was necessary. He therefore de- termined the tribute to be paid by each of the twenty large satrapies, which depended upon the value of their respective territories. Herodotus reckons that the whole of the tribute paid 74 A GENERAL HISTORY [780 b.c. to amounted to about a talent a day, that is, about,£l ,250,000 a year. But tribute paid in kind was not given up. Cappadocia gave every year 1500 horses, 2000 mules, and 50,000 sheep ; Media about twice as much. Besides this, presents were made of carpets, robes, tents, sofas, gold and silver vessels, thousands of arms, beasts of burden, vegetables, silk, and pickled meat. Besides these resources the crown also took tolls for the use of the roads, and the products of mines and forests. The tribute thus paid was kept in treasure-houses, the gold and silver being cast in ingots. The expenses of the court were enormous. Fifteen hundred persons dined at the king's table every day : a thousand animals were slaughtered daily for the king, and their carcases divided amongst his guests. What they could not eat they took home. A name for a Persian official was one who ate the king's bread and salt. The present population of the Asiatic provinces of Persia is about thirty-five millions, but in ancient times it was un- doubtedly larger. If we add the six or seven r * ' millions of Egypt, the empire cannot have held less than fifty millions. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Persia itself, that is, the province of Persis, did not exceed half a million. The general rule of the Persians under Cyrus over their subjects was mild and tolerant, like that of the British in India. The practice of the transplantation of whole populations from one district to another, which was common amongst the Assyrians and Babylonians, was seldom exercised, and when it was, the people, like the Jews, were frequently sent back again. In religious matters, great regard Religious was f e lt for the native beliefs. Cyrus told the Policy. Babylonians that he regarded Marduk of Babel as their king. Cambyses and Darius performed sacrifice in the temples of Babylon and Egypt. Sacrifices were made in the name of the Persian king to the God of the Jews, to the gods of Greece, and to all the gods of the surrounding tribes. They not only believed and favoured the religions of their subjects, but they built and endowed temples for their gods. This policy of toleration, which now forms a part of every wise government of dependencies, undoubtedly began with Cyrus. He gave back to the Jews the vessels of the temple, which had been plundered by Nebuchadnezzar, and he ordered it to be rebuilt. Artaxerxes gave privileges to the Jewish priesthood, and estab- lished their authority over the people. Darius had already done the same in Egypt. 479 b.c.] MEDES AND PERSIANS 75 It was against this mighty empire, thus firmly constituted, that the Greeks had to exercise their strength. Since the fall of the Lydian empire, the Greeks of Asia Minor Maritime had been subjects of the Persians. Samos had Power of been captured by Darius, Barka by Aryandes. Persia. The eastern part of the Mediterranean had become a Persian lake. The ships of the peoples of the coast were combined into a great imperial navy, in which Phoenicians and Greeks vied with each other for the favour of the great king. Miletus was now the chief of the Ionian island cities, and was governed by Histiaeus, who was the leader of the Greek contingent in the war against Scythia. He was considered to be the most trust- worthy of all the Persian vassals, a position due to his faithful guardianship of the bridge over the Danube. It would indeed have been madness if he had acted otherwise. His object was to pass as the foremost man in the Greek world. The king, warned by Megabazus, invited him to the court, and his place was taken by his son-in-law, Aristagoras. In order to make our narrative clear we must now go backwards. The Medes had remained for five hundred years under the rule of the Assyrians, chiefly famous for their breeding of horses, when, as we have already mentioned, theyjdeclared in 780 their independence under Deioces, and built a new capital, Ecbatana. His successor Phraates (655-633) continued the struggle against the Assyrians, but was defeated. Under the rule of his son, Cyaxares (633- 593), Media was devastated by Scythian nomads, and kept in subjection for twenty-eight years. But Cyaxares not only succeeded in getting rid of the invaders, but in 606 B.C., in conjunction with Nabupolasser, king of Babylon, he destroyed Nineveh and thereby increased his own possessions. He is regarded as the founder of the new Median empire. He subdued the Persians who resided in Pasargadae and Persepolis, and extended his dominions as far as the Halys. His successor Astyages (593-529) married his daughter Man- dane to a Persian prince, and their son Cyrus (558-529) was the founder of the Persian empire, of which we have already given a description. In 549, Cyrus crossed the Halys and captured Sardis, the capital of Lydia, which was governed by the wealthy Croesus, the friend of the Athenian lawgiver Solon, who had warned Croesus against the instability of human fortunes. The con- 76 A GENERAL HISTORY [780-479 b.c. quest of Lydia made him master of the Greek settlements in Asia Minor. He then turned his attention to Babylon, which Conquests ^ e SUD dued in the reign of Belshazzar, other- of Cyrus wise known as ISTabonetus, and became master and Cam- of Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia. This was in byses. 539 B c ^g wa y ^ Egypt now lay open before him, but his designs against it were interrupted by another invasion of the Scythians ; he fell at the river Jaxartes in a battle against the Massagetes, and the conquest of Egypt was left to his son Cambyses (529-523). He was succeeded by Darius (522-485), but before mounting the throne Darius had to put down a rebellion of the Medes, who set up one of their number as a false Smerdis to represent the brother of Cambyses, who had been murdered by him. Darius was the son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid noble. He strengthened his position by marrying Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and his admirable government of his dominions has been already related. The narrow strait of the Bosphorus and Hellespont made no halting place for a conqueror's enterprise, and Darius now Darius carried his operations into Europe. Miltiades of invades the Chersonesus became his vassal : the Greek Europe. towns on the Black Sea submitted. Although the Scythian enterprise was a failure, Darius succeeded in organis- ing the Greek towns on the southern coast of Thrace. Byzan- tium, Chalcedon, and Antandros were conquered by the fleet of Otones. Lemnos and Melos were subdued : the army of Mega- bazus occupied Perinthus and the northern coast of the Aegean. The Persians acquired the fruitful country of the Strymon, with the gold mines of Pangaeus and the silver mines of Dysorus. Amyntas, king of Macedon,was forced to give earth and water to the great king. The Persians strengthened their possessions with numerous forts. An attack upon Greece became imminent, and we must now consider in what condition that country was when it had to undergo the trial. HISTORY OF GREECE TO 479 B.C. There is no doubt that the Greeks came into the country occupied by them from the north, but the accounts usually The Early given of the division of their tribes and of subse- Inhabitants quent invasions is of little or no historical value. of Greece. When they arrived in the Balkan peninsula they were nomads. Flocks of sheep and goats were their most 1300 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 77 precious possessions, giving them milk, cheese, and clothing. They were divided into tribes, each governed by a king who was both judge and leader in war, and was assisted by a council of old men, who stood between him and the assembly of the free people. Their first advance in civilisation came from their connection with the East, and gave rise to what is known as the culture of the Mycenean age, which undoubtedly was derived from that of Troy, and Myce- is deeply penetrated by the influence of Egypt and Babylon. The first place among the princes of the Mycenean epoch was occupied by the rulers of the Argive plain, the chief towns of which are Mycenae, Troezen, and, espe- cially, Argos. Next came the lords of Thebes and Orchomenus, and also Thessaly. Athens and the eastern coast of Greece occupied a position by themselves. The Trojan war, whatever may have been its cause, exhibits Mycenean civilisation at its highest point. Without this it would have been impossible for an expedition of such magnitude, composed of heterogeneous elements, to take place at all, still less to have a successful result. Military expeditions were also undertaken against Sardinia and Egypt. To this succeeds the age of Greek colonisation. New homes had to be found for the surplus population of a niggardly country, and the extension could only be made by sea. The first great stream of Greek colonisation colonie 1 belongs to the Mycenean period, following the usual course into the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. The settlements in Cyprus are the natural consequences of the expeditions against Egypt and Syria in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries. Cyprus owes its civilisation partly to its mines of copper, partly to its position between Asia Minor and Phoenicia, and not far from the mouth of the Nile ; early mariners who needed to rest in a safe harbour every night could not neglect so convenient a halting-place. In Cyprus, the culture of the East and West mingled as they did nowhere else. We do not know where its inhabitants originally came from. We find there Trojan, Babylonian, and Hittite influences. The king of Cyprus also paid tribute to Pharaoh, and it was undoubtedly closely connected with Syria. At the same time it played no merely passive part, but exercised a considerable influence over both Syria and Greece. Another stream of colonisation proceeded from northern Greece, stretched in the first instance towards Lesbos, the colonists bearing the name of Aeolians, the origin of 78 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to which is unknown to us. Another stream consisting of Ionians came from Middle Greece, and occupied the islands of the Aegean and the coast near to them. It is generally agreed that they proceeded mainly from Athens, but it is probable that other parts of Greece were associated with her. We may lay down as a general truth that the first epoch of Greek colonisa- tion should be placed in the years 1300-1100 B.C. It is the culmination and also the close of the first period of Greek history. The next fact that meets us is an invasion from the north, known in legends as the return of Heracleidae and in history as the Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus. The e onan Dorians are believed to have been originally settled in northern Thessaly, and this is prob- ably true, but whether they entered the Peloponnesus as a body or filtered into it gradually, it is difficult to say. At any rate, from their time dates a new era. The power of nobles and of certain select families increases ; towns and municipal governments make their appearance ; kings of the old type disappear, and their place is taken by an aristocracy. A new kind of colonisation appears which we may place in the eighth century, directed towards the Hellespont, Pontus, and Cilicia, as well as to Sicily and Italy. A new era begins in the seventh century. The democracy and the power of the towns become developed ; the military state of Sparta arises ; new laws are passed corresponding to new social exigencies. Literature reaches a high standard of excellence, in the elegy, in Iambic verse, and in lyric poetry. We find also tyrants or autocratic sovereigns in Ionia and the Lydian empire, in Corinth, Sicyon, and Megara. This is the age of Solon, who, be- coming archon at Athens in 594 B.C., found himself entrusted with the duty of solving the question of a new social order, and drawing up a new code of laws. The future of the country lay in his hands. He is the first Greek statesman with whose personality we are well acquainted, and he has left an account of himself in his own poems. Above everything, he sought after moderation. He was no radical, but an intelligent statesman who knew what he wanted to obtain, and the way to obtain it. He enjoyed unbroken cheerfulness and power of enjoyment to an advanced age. His first duty was to rescue the peasantry from a condition of hopeless debt. He abolished all debts which were secured on the land or on the person of the debtor, and declared them illegal for the future. He also 479 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 79 bought back at the public cost many citizens who had been sold into foreign countries. These proceedings were revolutionary, but they were carried out without bloodshed. The democracy would have preferred a division of the country and the plunder- ing of the great land-owners, but Solon left them in the posses- sion of their estates, though, at the same time, limiting their use of them. To this period also belongs a further stage of Greek colonisa- tion, and the foundation of the power of the Carthaginians and the Etruscans. The most important colonies were founded in the Black Sea. The towns of " Great Co i e oni gg e Greece " in Italy, on the coast of Naples, as well as Cyrene, entered upon a period of great prosperity. Sybaris, Croton, and Metapontum became world renowned. Milo, the prize-fighter, was the special glory of Crotona, having gained thirty-one prizes in the four national games, and, indeed, no town in Greece possessed so many Olympic victors. Sybaris did its best, but probably preferred spiritual to animal culture, and from this the name Sybarite has come, very unjustly, to be used as a term of reproach. A similar development took place in Sicily. Agrigentum was founded in 580 B.C., and the whole south coast fell into the hands of Dorian colonists. A great part of the west coast of Italy fell into the hands of the Etruscans, so that the sea which washed it re- Q ree jj S ceived the name of Tyrrhenian. They made con- Cartha- tinual war on the Greeks. They aimed at the ginians, and possession of Corsica, as the Carthaginians aimed Etruscans, at Sardinia. These two powers formed an alliance, and in the year 540 B.C. made a joint attack on the colony of Alalia in Corsica, which had been founded by the Phocaeans. Although the event of the battle was doubtful, the Phocaeans were com- pelled to evacuate their town, and retreated to Rhegium in the south of Italy. The battle of Alalia was the first important blow struck against the development of Hellenism, and the Phocaeans, who had founded Marseilles, fell from their high position. While the Carthaginians, the Etruscans, and the Dorian cities in Sicily were contending together in unrest, the East, in the middle of the sixth century, seemed to be in a condition which promised a long duration of 55 Q B( f peace, as the large powers had found a condition of equilibrium. The advance of the Medes had been stopped by Nebuchadnezzar ; peace reigned between Egypt and Babylon ; So A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 B .o. to Amasis had returned from the conquest of Syria. The develop- ment of Sardis under Alyattes and Croesus had reached its goal : Miletus was at the height of its prosperity, which was shared by Mitylene, Chios, Samos, and Rhodes. Attica was extending her territory, having incorporated Eleusis, annexed Salamis, and established herself in the Hellespont. Sparta was aiming at supremacy in the Peleponnesus, chiefly by its victory over Tegea. Indeed, the military community of Sparta was by far the strongest power in the Greek world, and foreign powers began to make alliances with it. Croesus sent gold for a statue of Apollo, and Amasis a breastplate ; both powers desired the assistance of Sparta for their wars in Asia. Cyrus rose against the Medes in 553, and in 550 Astyages fell into his hand. All the powers banded themselves against the upstart — Neboned of Babylon, Amasis of "Risp of . Persia -Egypt, Croesus of Lydia, who had secured the help of the Spartans. In 546, Croesus advanced into Cappadocia, with an army as yet unconquered. Cyrus drove him back, and followed him, and, before" any of his allies could come to his assistance, completely defeated him, the Lydian cavalry being terrified at the Persian camels. A fort- night later, Croesus fell into the hands of Cyrus, and the great Lydian empire was at an end. This is one of the great crises Fall of the of history. Croesus, the noble, benevolent, gener- Lydian ous prince, suddenly fell from his elevation, and Empire. remained ever afterwards to the Greeks an em- blem of the mutability of fortune. The result was that, about 545 B.C., the whole of the mainland of Asia Minor was subject to the Persians. This had a profound effect on Grecian life. The Lydians were so closely connected with the Greeks that The Greeks they could easily mingle with them ; the Persians of Asia were entirely different. The great king was Minor. a f ar ff ; anc l was represented by officials who had no sympathy with republican governments. So the Asiatic Greeks became discontented, and left their country. The Phocaeans went first : the Chians founded settlements at Mar- seilles and Alalia. The Teans went to Abdera ; Bias of Priene proposed that the whole Ionian race should leave Asia Minor and found a settlement in Sardinia. But this scheme, which might have changed the face of the world, was not carried out. Cyrus became master of Syria and the Phoenician coast after the fall of Babylon in 539, ancl died in 529. Cambyses 479 B.C.] HISTORY OF GREECE 8r completed the conquest of the East by the conquest of Egypt in 525. Then followed an interval of twenty years, which was occupied by the creation of a Persian fleet and by preparation for the attack on the West. It was p h ® il Persian also the epoch of the development of Athens. The mastery of this city which Pisistratus had won for himself in 561 was not of long duration ; he was driven from the country by a combination of the nobles and the people Athens of the coast. Ten years later he returned with under Pisis- a large army, landed at Marathon, and, supported tratus. by Thebes, defeated the Athenians at Pellene. In 545 B.C. he established a strong government resting on the support of the peasants in the mountains. His rule was prosperous. He supplied Athens with water, and built many temples. He favoured commerce and founded colonies. He established a kind of monarchy which was superior to party, and lived on the Acropolis like the ancient kings. His position resembled that of the Italian princes of the Renaissance. The nobles were attracted to his court. He kept the form of the old constitution and preserved the law courts, but took care to keep all power in his own hands. The loss of political freedom was compen- sated by the increase of material prosperity. Pisistratus died peacefully in 528 B.C., and was succeeded by his son Hippias. Notwithstanding his large colonial possessions, he did not create an Athenian navy, but he established close relations with the islands of the Aegean, especially with Samos. This island, the queen of the Aegean, had been acquired by force and fraud by the chief possible rival of Pisistratus in the Grecian world — Polycrates — who had an army of a thousand archers and a fleet of a hundred and fifty oared ships, and whose reign was brilliant in every respect. The balance between these conflicting powers was held by Sparta, which had risen to a position of great authority. She was the strongest military power in the Grecian world, and was rightly regarded as the sword of ^ ar a " Greece, having the last word in all disputes. She did her best to avoid foreign complications and to confine her attention to the Peloponnesus. She established a Peloponnesian league, a confederacy of a very loose character, a type of those leagues which came afterwards. The constitution of Sparta was peculiar ; there were two kings, belonging to two different houses, and five ephors, who were originally civil judges but attained great political power. Even the kings were obliged F 82 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to to appear in their courts. They naturally restricted the limits of the royal power, a fact which was deeply resented by the kings of the house of Agis. In the meantime literature and art flourished greatly under the family of Pisistratus. The founder had done a great deal Art and f° r religion. Besides building on the Acropolis, Literature where he lived, the Erechtheum, which may be in Athens. regarded as a family shrine, he erected there a new temple, a hundred feet long, for the purpose of the Pana- thenaic festival. He introduced into Athens the worship of the Olympic Zeus and the Pythian Apollo. He made in the market place an altar to the Twelve Gods, and built a temple to Dionysus, and was the founder of the huge shrine of Demeter in Eleusis. He also established the great Panathenaic festival and the cult of Dionysus, which was the origin of the Athenian theatre. His younger son, Hipparchus, took poetry under his especial protection. He invited to Athens Anacreon of Samos and Simonides of Ceos. He favoured Lasos of Hermione, who was the inventor of the choric part of the Athenian drama and the first student of musical theory. To this age belong the beginnings of Greek tragedy, which has exercised so profound an influence over the art of the world. Also the sculpture of this time, which we style archaic, was a worthy forerunner of the great school of Pheidias. The autocratic governments of this time, glorious and magni- ficent as they were, were put an end to by the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, and the consequent fall of the Egyptian monarchy. The fall of Polycrates followed as a natural conse- quence. When Darius Hystaspes had established his authority in Persia and crushed the Magi, he wielded his power with a firm hand, and became master of the Ionian coast. Political life was dead, but literature still survived. Memorials of this age are the writings of Anaximander of Miletus, of the historian Hecataeus, of Heraclitus of Ephesus, and Hipponax of the same city, who in his bitter satire represented faithfully the unhappy circumstances of his time. A natural result of these events was the fall of the house of Pisistratus. In 515 Darius crossed the Bosphorus, subdued Thrace, and attacked the Scythians. Miltiades, Revolutions t ^ e g 0vernor f the Chersonesus, became his vassal, and even Hippias did homage to him. In 514 a plot against the Pisistratids by Harmodius and Aris- togiton caused the death of Hipparchus; but Hippias resisted 479 B.c] HISTORY OF GREECE 83 for four years longer, and it was not till 510 that Athens could be called free. Then Harmodius and Aristogiton became the heroes of the democracy; their statues were erected in the market place ; their descendants were feasted at the public expense in the Prytaneum, where songs were duly sung in their honour. Unfortunately, Athens owed her freedom not to a rising of the people, but to the efforts of exiled nobles, supported by the assistance of Sparta. However, Cleisthenes placed himself at the head of the people and introduced a new constitution, corresponding to the new state of things, and Constitu- aiming at the entire destruction of the power of tion of the nobles. The old tribes, which were based on Cleisthenes. strict family connections, were abolished, and ten new tribes brought into existence, founded not on race but on population and habitation. The territory was divided into three sections, the city, the coast, and the interior, and by an ingenious arrangement each of these parts was represented in every tribe. The fiction of blood relationship was kept up, each tribe being presided over by a divinity. The unit of political organisation was the deme. Each of these villages, large or small, possessed a form of self-government and had a clemarch at its head, who was responsible for the list of the citizens, each of whom bore the name of his deme. The children of settlers and slaves might become citizens. The ancient phratries still existed, chiefly for religious purposes. The upper chamber or Boule was increased in number from four hundred to five hundred, fifty from each tribe. In 502, ten strategi or generals were chosen from each tribe, who, with the third archon, called the polemarch, formed a council of war, the command of the army changing from day to day. The ancient court of the Areopagus preserved much of its power. The archons were elected by vote, and only the richest citizens had access to the higher offices. A meeting place for the popular assembly was provided in the Pnyx. In order to prevent the recurrence of despotism, a system of ostracism or banishment was introduced by which a dangerous citizen might be compelled to leave the country. This was first used in 487. Attica thus became a democracy, a country governed for the people and by the people, with a constitution of which those who partook of it were proud, and which was admired by those who lay outside it. It rested on the Athenian broad foundation of the middle classes, and was, therefore, in a later age regarded as conservative. This 84 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to momentous change was effected not without severe political conflict, but without bloodshed. A number of emigrant nobles joined Hippias, hoping to return by the aid of the Persians. But Athens was for the time set free from the stasis, the strife of parties, which was the ruin of so many Greek states. The popular party had never failed in having men of noble birth at its head, Solon the Medontid and Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid, and they were supported by many of their own rank. The nobles still retained their landed property, and this strengthened the material and intellectual position of their city. For at least a hundred years more the people saw in their aristocracy the chosen leaders of the government, and they on their side were ready to devote their property, their capacity, and even their lives to the service of their country. The struggle which had been so long impending between the Persians and the Hellenes broke out in consequence of the Ionian revolt. The aristocrats were driven out of e oman Naxos an( j found a refuge in Miletus, where they were well received by Aristagoras. He proposed to Artaphernes, the brother of Darius, who was satrap of Sardis, that he should conduct an expedition for their res- toration, and in consequence, in the spring, a fleet of five hundred ships sailed against Naxos. The expedition ended in disaster, and the position of Aristagoras was threatened. He determined to meet the danger, and to lead a rebellion against the Persians. He saw that his only hope lay in the support of the democracy, so he laid down his aristocratic position and placed the government of Miletus in the hands of the popular assembly. The spirit of rebellion spread to the whole of the west coast and to the islands ; the democracies were restored, leaders chosen, and troops collected. Aristagoras sought assistance in Sparta and Athens. Sparta, with some hesitation, refused ; but the Athenians, confident in the strength of the Cleisthenian constitution, sent to the Ionians twenty ships under the command of Melanthus. It was strange that they did not see that this small force was insufficient to do any good, but would inevitably draw down the wrath of the Persians upon the head of Athens. In the spring of 499, the insurgent troops, together with the forces sent by Athens and Eretria, marched upon Sardis. Artaphernes defended the citadel, but he could not prevent the town from being burned. The Ionians, however, were soon compelled to retreat, overtaken at Ephesus, and defeated. The 479 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 85 Athenians and Eretrians returned home. In the meantime a Phoenician fleet, manned by Cilicians, sailed to attack Cyprus, which had ioined the insurrection. The Persians gained a decisive victory in the plain of Salamis, £™g« of and it was of little use that on the same day the Ionian fleet defeated the Phoenicians at sea. Cyprus fell entirely into the hands of Persia. Persian forces were now advancing on all sides against Miletus. Aristagoras died in 496, and Histiaeus, whom Darius had sent to Miletus to quell the insurrection, met with a melancholy end, three years later. The Phoenician fleet which had operated against Cyprus now made its appearance in the ^Egean, strengthened by additions from Egypt, Cilicia, and Cyprus. The Ionians collected what ships they could lay their hands on in a large bay, close to Miletus, shut in by the island of Lade. For some time the two fleets watched each other in idle- Battle of ness, but, when the decisive moment came, the ships of Samos sailed home and were followed by the Lesbians and others. The rest of the fleet was destroyed after a brave resistance, and Miletus was first besieged and then stormed in 494 B.C. In the following year the insurrection was put down. The inhabitants of Miletus were carried off in exile to the Tigris, and the country given up to Persians and Carians. Mardonius, who was sent to Asia Minor as Persian governor in 492, adopted a popular policy, and established democratic constitutions. It is at this time that we first hear of the founder of the Athenian naval power, Themistocles, the son of an Athenian father and a foreign mother, a man of extra- Athens and ordinary ability but contemptible private char- the Persian acter. Themistocles saw that it was absolutely Peril, necessary to meet the Persians at sea, and when he became archon, probably in 493, took the first step towards the foundation of a fleet by making the harbour of Piraeus. In the same year Miltiades came to Athens with a large following and a plentiful supply of money. The arrival was not popular with the political chiefs, but the populace saw in him their chosen leader against the Persians. He believed that he could withstand the Persian attack with the Greek phalanx, but he had no respect for the naval plans of Themi- stocles. The hoplites naturally belonged to the ruling classes, but the fleet was manned by men of a lower class, who would, in return for their services, demand political rights, and so 86 A GENERAL HISTORY U300 b.c. to the question of defence by land or sea became affected by political considerations. Mardonius made elaborate arrangements for the attack upon Greece. His first attempt failed partly through the difficulty Persian °f marching through Thrace, partly through the Prepara- destruction of his fleet in rounding the promontory tions. f Mount Athos. The command of a new army was now given to a Median, Datis, who was accompanied by Artaphernes, a nephew of Darius. His army was much smaller than that of Mardonius, certainly not more than 20,000 men and a few cavalry. The ships were used merely for transport. Datis set out from Samos in the summer of 490. After passing JSTaxos and sacrificing to Apollo in Delos, he reached The Eretria, which he occupied and destroyed. He Persians then sailed to Attica, and landed in the plain of in Attica. Marathon. The Athenians were taken by surprise, and had to depend upon their own resources. They sent to Sparta for help, which could not come for a long time, but a thousand Plataeans joined them on the field of battle. Miltiades collected a force of ten thousand hoplites ; but had neither light armed troops nor cavalry. The rich men who had horses gave them up, and served as hoplites. The Athenians were full of patriotism, but were terrified at the number of their enemies, their appearance, and their reputation for being invincible. Could not the struggle be deferred ? Miltiades was convinced that it must be decided now or never, and persuaded the polemarch Kallimachus to march to Mara- thon. Yet for several days the armies remained in Battle of position, the Greeks fearing to fight in the plain, the Persians desiring it. At the same time, the Persians could not wait, and they heard that the Spartans were approaching. Datis determined to attack, and Miltiades pre- pared to receive him. He was not able to pursue the usual Greek tactics of outflanking the enemy, but he strengthened his wings as much as he could at the risk of depleting his centre. As soon as the Persians came within striking distance, he ordered an advance at the double, and a violent struggle took place between man and man. The Persians broke through at the centre, but the Greeks conquered on the wings, and were then able to unite and restore the balance in the centre. The Persians fled, and were driven into the marshes in the northern part of the plain, where most of them escaped to their ships or threw themselves into the sea. The Athenians captured seven 479 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 87 ships, while Datis sailed away with the rest. It is said that the Persians lost 6400 men, the Athenians 192. Datis hoped to round Sunium and renew the attack at Athens, but he soon found that this was impossible, and he sailed away to Asia. The Spartan contingent Retreat of 2000 men arrived shortly after the battle, of the but they could only visit the battle-field and Persians, offer congratulations. The Athenians were indeed covered with glory, and the name of Miltiades was in every mouth. It was not likely that the Persians would give up the task they had set themselves, but the preparations for it would occupy several years. Besides, in 486 B.C. there was a rebellion in Egypt, and in the autumn of 485 Darius died and was succeeded by Xerxes, the eldest son of Atossa. In 484 „ Xerxes succeeded in recovering Egypt, and in the following year he began his preparations for the invasion of Greece. In the meantime, Miltiades had died. An ostracism took place in 487 by which Hipparchus, son of Charmos, was exiled, and a similar fate befell Megacles, the son of Democratic Hippocrates, in the following year. The constitu- Changes at tion was now altered, so that the archons were Athens, chosen by lot, thus becoming mere officials, and a consider- able step was made towards pure democracy. The people became sovereign. They were, indeed, checked by the Council of five hundred, which was chosen from the three richest classes, but its members too were chosen by lot, as were also its president and his council. The Areopagus had a most conservative influence. It consisted of men of weight and experience, chosen for life ; it was independent of the popular assembly, and had the duty of protecting the laws against violation. It also had a certain authority over finance, and in some respects resembled the Senate of Rome. However, the fact remained that political power was placed in the hands of the people, and that the Areopagus had little but a re- tarding authority. The people had full power of decision, though none of initiative. The principal safeguards against unrestricted democracy were the strategi or generals. These were chosen for their merits, and they had the privilege of attending the council whether elected to it or not. Xerxes began his preparations for the expedition against Hellas in 483. He took every precaution against its being unsuccessful. Mardonius again assumed the position of chief 88 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to adviser. Army and fleet were to co-operate together. In order to avoid the dangerous coast of Athos, a canal was cut Second through the isthmus, which took three years to Persian make. Bridges were thrown over the Strymon and Expedition, the Hellespont. Stores of provisions were laid down, ships were built, and munitions collected. The army had orders to assemble in Asia Minor in the autumn of 481, in order to begin operations in the following spring. No expedition of the great Napoleon was more carefully and thoughtfully organised. Xerxes found a good deal of support in Greece itself. The nobles of Thessaly and Thebes were on his side, as well as Argos. Demaratus, king of Sparta, and the Pisistratidae accompanied the expedition. If Gelon, king of Syracuse, who had a powerful fleet and great treasure, had been able to assist Athens, it might have been a cause of great difficulty to Xerxes. But, unfortunately for the Greeks, an alliance was made in 480 between Persia and Garthage, so that the whole of Eastern civilisation, from the Atlantic to the Indus, was banded together for the destruction of Hellenism in the person of Athens. In the presence of clanger, the Athenians pursued an energetic naval policy. N fAth P ° liCy Aristides was ostracised in 482, and Themistocles was given a free hand in building his fleet. It was to consist of 200 triremes, of which 180 were completed, each of them costing a talent, paid for by the state from the produce of the mines of Laurium. The ships were small and undecked, and could only hold fourteen hoplites and eight archers. They were manned by 7000 rowers, taken chiefly from the thetes, the lowest class of citizens, with perhaps a few metoeci and selected slaves. A corps of light armed bowmen, composed also of thetes, was added to the force of hoplites. By the policy of Themistocles, Athens was now the possessor of a fleet far superior to that of Corinth, Aegina, and Oorcyra, and probably to that of Gelon. But, in creating the fleet, Themistocles had also founded the demo- cracy of Athens. Old aristocratic traditions were broken up for ever. The horny hands to which were entrusted the oar which was to save the community could no longer be excluded from voting in the ballot-box. In the autumn of 481 Xerxes sent to all the Grecian states, with the exception of Athens and Sparta, a demand for earth and water, the refusal of which would be his pretext 479 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 89 of iwar. How was the Hellenic world, which stretched, a scattered and unorganised collection of states, from the Rhone to Cyprus, from the Crimea to Cyrene, to meet this danger ? The burden of its defence fell on Athens and Sparta alone. Even the Delphic oracle failed in this crisis to inspire a patriotic courage. A congress of Hellenic states was held in the Isthmus of Corinth, to form a league for the purpose of self-preservation. The names of the states who attended it are engraved on the bronze serpent pillar which was once at Delphi, but is now at Constantinople. Besides the two great leading states it contains the names of Euboea, Colchis, and Eretria, of many of the Cyclades, of Thespiae and Plataea, of the Corinthian colonies of Leucas, Anactorium, and Ambracia, of the Phocians and other small colonies of Middle Greece. It was resolved that the states which surrendered to the Persians should in case of victory, be devoted to destruction, and their property divided among the allies after paying a tithe to the Delphian deity. The command of both fleet and army was entrusted by the congress to the Spartans. But fortunately the ephors of the day were wise and generous enough to leave the burden of the defence to Themistocles and the fleet, and to keep the army back in a position of reserve. Xerxes left Sardis in the spring of 480, crossed the bridge over the Hellespont in May, marched along the coast of Thrace, and reached Salonica in July. Here he met the fleet, which had passed safely through the Athos Canal. Xerxes We may assume that the army did not number more than 100,000, and that the fleet, perhaps over a thou- sand at full strength, did not at Salamis largely exceed the force of the Athenians. The Greeks at first intended to occupy the pass of Tempe, but it was soon seen that this could not be defended. It was therefore determined to sacrifice Thessaly, and to take up a position at Thermopylae, where the sea between Euboea and the coast of Thessaly makes a narrow fiord, which rendered the action of the Persian fleet impossible at its mouth. On the south side of the fiord, beyond the mouth of the Spercheios, the spurs of Oeta run down to the sea, and leave space only for a narrow road. A small body of men occupying Thermopylae might delay the land army for a few days, and give time for the decisive naval battle. The Grecian fleet, commanded by the Spartan Eurybiades, took up a position at the north of Euboea, between the promontory of Sepias, which forms the southern extremity of the Magnesian 90 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to coast, and the island of Skiathus. Thermopylae was occupied by King Leonidas of Sparta, with an army of 4000 Pelopon- nesians, among whom were 300 Spartiates ; together with 700 Thespians from Boeotia, 400 Thebans, and a few others from Locris and Phocis — an army quite sufficient to defend the pass. The Persian fleet met on the coast of Magnesia with a terrible storm which raged for three days, and destroyed on those iron shores about 400 ships. The two fleets and armies Battles of now s ^ ooc ^ °PP ose d to each other, Xerxes before Thermo- Thermopylae, the fleet before Artemisium. On pylae the fifth day, Xerxes attacked the position of and Arte- Leonidas, and the Greek fleet advanced against mismm. the p ers i an ^he Persians had attempted to send a detachment of their fleet round through the Euripus to attack the Greeks in the rear, but a heavy storm ruined all their combinations. The two battles lasted long without any success on the Persian side, but Xerxes at last succeeded in crossing the mountain and surrounding the Greeks. Leonidas and his Spartans determined to defend the pass till the last man, and, if necessary, to die at their posts. Indeed, the last survivor perished on a hill which commanded the entrance to the pass. The sea battle was indecisive, but the Greeks suf- fered serious losses, and determined to preserve their remaining ships for a more favourable occasion. When the news of the catastrophe of Thermopylae arrived, they retreated at night through the Euripus and reached the Ionic Gulf. The Greeks had failed both by sea and land, but the heroic death of Leonidas and his Spartans had strengthened their determin- ation and inspired them with the resolution to conquer or to die. The victories of Thermopylae and Artemisium left central Greece open to the army of Xerxes. They brought him many friends, including the oracle of Delphi, whose guardians were afraid lest their temple should be plundered. The only defensible point was now the Isthmus of Corinth, where a strong Peloponnesian army assembled under Cleombrotus, the brother of Leonidas. Greece, north of the isthmus, even including Athens, was surrendered to the enemy. Of the Athenians, the women, children, and slaves took refuge in Salamis, Aegina, and Troezen, the men went to man the fleet. Only the poorest part of the population was left behind, and fortified themselves in the Acropolis. When they refused to surrender, the rock was stormed by the Pisistratid emigrants, 479 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 91 and the temples were burned. In the meantime the Greek fleet assembled at Salamis. The losses of Artemisium had been repaired, and Aeschylus, who was present, reckons the number of the ships at 310. Their position prevented a Persian advance upon the isthmus, because the invaders would be exposed to an attack on both flank and rear. The hearts of the mariners sank within them when they saw the Persian fleet anchored in Phaleron, and the smoke rising from the ruins of the Acropolis, but, under the influence of Themistocles, they held a firm countenance. But would the Persians risk a sea battle ? — would they not prefer to land immediately in the Peloponnesus 1 There was a great deal to be said for this, and perhaps it was the wisest course. But Xerxes felt that if the galamis Greek fleet were destroyed, the war would be at an end, and he determined to attack. To strengthen his resolution, Themistocles sent him a crafty message that the Greeks were discontented and inclined to run away, and that he would have an easy victory. He therefore gave orders at night to close up all passages and to begin the attack in the morning. The Grecian fleet was posted in a bay on the east coast of the island, enclosed by a tongue of land on the north, which was separated by something less than a mile from the main- land, and on the south by a ridge about two miles long, bearing the name of Cynosura, the little island of Psyttaleia lying be- tween them. Thus the sea between Salamis and the mainland was almost entirely enclosed, and turned into a sound about three miles long and a mile broad. This sound was in the night completely enclosed by the Persian ships, drawn up in three lines. The island of Psyttaleia was occupied by Persian troops, with the object of seizing the shipwrecked Greeks, and the small bay between Megara and Salamis was also occupied in order to prevent the Greeks from escaping. The king took up his position on Mount Aegaleos to see the issue of the fight. At daybreak on September 28, 480, the whole Hellenic fleet advanced with shouts of battle to attack the enemy, the right wing led by the Spartans, and the left by the Athenians, who were opposed to the Phoenicians. The battle was not long in doubt. The Persians, embarrassed by their numbers, and crowded into a close position, were quite helpless, although they fought bravely under the eyes of their king. They had no chance ; the sea was full of wrecks and corpses ; the Athenians, taking the lead on the left wing, drove the disabled 92 A GENERAL HISTORY [1300 b.c. to vessels into the arms of the Corinthians and Aeginetans on the right. Aristicles destroyed the troops in Psyttaleia with Athenian hoplites and archers. When, after the battle had lasted twelve hours, night put an end to the conflict, the Persian fleet was entirely destroyed, and the freedom of Hellas was secured. Themistocles advised the pursuit of the Persian army and the destruction of the bridge over the Hellespont, and, though the bridge had been destroyed already, the appearance of the victorious Greek fleet on the coast of Asia Minor would have dealt a death-blow to Persian supremacy. But his advice was rejected by the allies, and he thought it too dangerous to lead the Athenians by themselves. Hence the fruits of the victory of Salamis were, to a great extent, lost. Xerxes determined to retreat. Cleombrotus thought of attacking him, but was prevented by an eclipse of the sun, which took place on October 2. We are told that on the very day of Salamis a battle of nearly equal moment took place in Sicily. Here the Carthaginians had collected a large army of mercenaries, Phoenicians and Libyans, Sardinians and Corsicans, Iberians from the Ebro, Ligurians from the Alps. They were under the command of Hamilcar, son of Mago, the creator of the Carthaginian army. In the spring of 480, this „* e ° army landed at Panormos, and marched on Himera, which lay towards the east. The Greeks gained a complete victory, the Carthaginian army was annihi- lated, and Hamilcar met his death. The position of the Greeks in Sicily was secured : Hellenism had prevailed over Semitism. In 479 was fought the battle of Plataea, but, before this took place, Themistocles, the blue water champion, was de- prived of his command, and his old enemy, pfat8ea° f Aristicl es, established in his place. At the end of June 479, Mardonius advanced against Attica, hoping to win over the Athenians to his side, but Aristides was staunch. The Spartans hesitated for a long time, but determined at last to cross the isthmus and to attack Mardonius. He was compelled to retire into Boeotia, having first laid waste the country. The army of Athens under the command of Aristides joined the Spartans in the plain of Eleusis. After many changes of fortune, which we have not space to recount, the Greeks gained a complete victory. Mardonius fell with the flower of his Persians, and the rest fled. The camp of the Persians was stormed, and booty beyond belief fell into 479 b.c] HISTORY OF GREECE 93 the hands of the Greeks. Pausanias gained a victory which has immortalised his name. The struggle between lance and bow was decided, and the supremacy of the disciplined hoplites assured. While Pausanias and Mardonius stood opposed to each other at Plataea, the fleet of Leotychides left Samos for the coast of Asia. The Persians were afraid to risk a sea fight ; partly warned by the result of Salamis, partly because they could not trust their Ionian allies, they determined to send the Phoenician ships home, to march to Mycale, and there to intrench themselves. The ^cale^ Persian army at Mycale was under the command of Tigranes. The Greeks advanced to the attack apparently on the same day as the battle of Plataea. The Persians fought bravely, but their officers had lost their heads and Tigranes fell. The Persian army was destroyed, and the fleet burned. The flame of insurrection burst forth in Ionia, the tyrants were overthrown, and the Persian garrisons driven out. The impossible had taken place. The onslaught of the mightiest sovereign in the world and his Carthaginian allies had been shattered by the heroic resistance of a small portion of the Hellenic nation, and the crisis of the world's history had been decided. CHAPTER VI. HISTORY OF GREECE, 478-387 B.C. In the spring of 478 the fleet of the Hellenic League crossed the sea under the command of Pausanias. Aristides and Oimon, the son of Miltiades, commanded the Attic contingent. The Greek towns of Asia Minor had been really set at of cypniT libert y b y the battle of Mycale, so the fleet went to Cyprus, where it had little difficulty in per- forming the same office for that island. It was still more important to open the Black Sea to Greek commerce and to liberate the straits which led to it. Pausanias took Byzantium, Pausanias ar >d spent the winter there. It was soon found at Byzan- to be a mistake to entrust the command to the tium. power which had the smallest fleet. But Pausa- nias felt himself to be the military commander of Hellas. He surrounded himself with a bodyguard of Persians and Egyptians, and assumed the dress of an Eastern sovereign. The Ionians who had been set free from one tyranny would not submit to another, and they finally joined the Athenians. The rest of the Greeks, with the exception of the Peloponnesians, followed The Delian their example, and Pausanias was recalled. The Con- Spartans made the best of a bad job. The result federacy. f this was the formation of the Delian confede- racy, which was organised on the principle that the states comprising it should pay money instead of a contribution of ships. The treasury was placed in Delos, and the accounts were to be kept by a commission of ten. Aristides fixed the sum required every year at 460 talents, that is, about £120,000, and decided what portion of it was to be contributed by each member. The first object of the league was the entire expulsion of the Persians from Europe. It was only natural that a confederacy of this kind could not be carried on without a certain amount of jealousy and suspicion, and Athens had to use force in keep- ing her authority over Naxos, Erythrae, and Colophon. In 94 478-387 e.g.] HISTORY OF GREECE 95 Athens, after the battles of Plata ea and Mycale, there was a truce to party strife. The city seemed disposed to enjoy her greatness, to glory in her past, and to look for- ward with hope towards the future. The return Athens 11 ° of the emigrant nobles was regarded as impossible ; the original statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton had been carried off by Xerxes to Susa, but new statues were erected in their place. Phrynicus and Aeschylus vied with each other in representing the victory of Salamis on the stage. The bones of Theseus, the founder of Athens, were brought by Cimon in triumph from Scyros to Athens. The people were reminded that Menestheus, an Athenian, had fought with distinction in the Trojan war, and that his name had been immortalised in the Iliad, the Bible of the Greeks, and that the Athenians were autochthons — the original inhabitants of the soil, not imported from elsewhere. But amongst so active-minded a people the cessation of party spirit could not last for long. Cimon and Cimon, the son of Miltiades, was the undoubted Themi- leader of the constructive party, but he soon found stocles. an antagonist in Themistocles. This statesman had remained behind in Athens, leaving the foundation of the Delian League to Aristides and the conduct of the war to Cimon, which rather increased than diminished his influence. Cimon was a most attractive personality. Tall, with a copious crop of hair, full of the lust of life, a friend of wine and sport, but yet not a stranger to culture, generous with his princely fortune, deco- rating the city with groves and buildings, which were open to all, he was the undisputed master of the state. Themistocles was a complete contrast to this. An interloper amongst the nobles, stingy with his wealth, in manners rather repellent than attractive, he was marked out for the leader of an opposi- tion, and a ground for party differences was found in the support or denunciation of the war against Persia. Themistocles turned his eyes towards the West, and called two of his daughters Italia and Sybaris. He wished to place the commercial prosperity of Athens upon a broader basis, to make peace with the East, to seek new developments in the West, and to prepare for the inevitable conflict with Sparta. If Sparta was to retain her supremacy in the Peloponnesus, it was necessary for her to secure the assistance of Athens, and for the purpose she supported the party of Cimon. Themi- stocles was ostracised in the spring of 470 ; the Athenian fleet lent its aid in driving the rebellious Pausanias out of Byzan- 96 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to tium, where he had established himself as a forerunner of Wallenstein. He was denounced by the ephors, and was at Deaths of ^ as ^ s ^ arve d to death in the temple in which he Pausanias had taken refuge. Letters from Themistocles andThemi- were found among Pausanias' papers, and the stocles. Spartans determined on his destruction. He was accused of high treason and condemned. He was hounded from city to city by the two rival states, who now acted together for the last time. At last he fled to the court of Susa, where in 465 Artaxerxes had succeeded the murdered Xerxes. At length he died at Magnesia in the valley of the Meander ; his bones were brought back to Athens and secretly buried there. He was, in many respects, the greatest statesman of his time, and he has left a permanent impression upon the history of the world ; but he had not the strength or the good fortune to secure himself by the attainment of a dominant position against the attacks of those who detest genius and originality, and who hate rather than admire qualities and capacities which they do not possess themselves. The great battle of Eurymedon, won by Cimon against the Persians, was fought in the autumn of 466. It was an attempt to secure Lycia and the south coast of Asia Minor Battle o against Persian domination. Cimon had increased Eurymedon. „" . „ ,, , . . . ,, . A , the size or the triremes and covered them with a deck, so that they were superior to the Phoenician vessels. Cimon gained a great victory both by sea and land, and carried home enormous booty. The result was the entire destruction of Persian pretensions and the making of the Aegean into an Athenian lake. The extent of the Delian confederacy was The jar g ei y increased. In a single generation Athens Athenian had been transformed from a mere province, with Empire. a f ew possessions outside, into the ruler of an empire extending over the whole of the islands and coasts of the Aegean as well as the passage of the Hellespont, with a definite and energetic policy which could set its face against the widely extended power of the great king. This had a powerful effect upon the social position of the city. Athens dominated the commerce of a large portion of the world : Pontus, Sicily, Italy, the northern coast of Asia Minor, Cyprus, and Cyrene, and their trade was protected by her powerful fleet. Carthage alone had an independent position. The Piraeus was, next to Carthage, the principal port of the Mediterra- nean. Athens was crowded with foreigners seeking commercial 387 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 97 gain. It became the chosen home of culture. Its praises were sung by Simonides, Bacchylides, and Pindar ; philosophers took up their abode in it, especially Anaxagoras of Clazomenae ; Polygnotus of Thasos, the great wall painter, came to live in Athens, together with his pupils. Attic art became famous throughout the whole of Greece, and crowds from every part of the Grecian world thronged the Dionysian and Panathenaic festi- vals. Attic drama became the model for all dramatic art ; the plays of Phrynicus and Aeschylus were performed in Sicily. Towering above all stood the genius of Pheidias, the creator of a new idea of Pallas and of Zeus. When the people of Elis had completed their temple of Zeus in 455, they wished Pheidias to make the great ivory and gold statue of the " Father of the Gods." The city itself assumed a new appearance. Oimon had planted the market-place with plane trees, and had adorned the groves of Academus with stately walks and open spaces. A colonnade was built in the market-place, which Polygnotus decorated with paintings at his own expense. He represented there the battle of the Amazons, the destruction of Troy, the battle of Marathon. Athens was connected with her harbour so as to make a single city. The Acropolis was made into a mighty shrine for Pallas Athene, the tutelary goddess of the city. A great temple was begun for her, the completion of which was deferred by political differences for ten years. The government of Athens still lay in the hands of the well- to-do, but the prosperity of the country had been caused mainly by the successes of the fleet, which was manned p ... . . by the working classes. Victory, even on land, an( j had been mainly owing to the fleet and the pro- economical letariate. Agriculture lost its prosperity by the position of importation of foreign corn. It was found more Atnens - profitable to grow vegetables, and the chief article of export was olive oil. Athens, like England, had to live on the produce of foreign countries, and therefore the command of the sea, especially the entrance of the Hellespont, which secured the control of the Crimea, became a matter of life and death. The great land-owners lost their position; the town took the place of the country, commerce of agriculture ; artisans became masters of factories, shopkeepers became merchants, money- lenders became bankers. It is calculated that in the year 460 the Athenian citizens numbered about 60,000. The employ- ment of capital became necessary to meet the increased com- plexity of social needs. The usual interest was 12 per cent., G tj8 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to but in case of sea risks this was increased to 20 per cent, or even 33 per cent. During the Peloponnesian war, the usual wage was a drachma a day. As all citizens were required to serve in the fleet or in the army, the metoeci and the freedmen, who were generally artisans, became more numerous than the citizens. Foreign slaves were also purchased in very large numbers. Next to Chios, Athens had more slaves than any other city in Greece. The result of this was that the citizens were gradually withdrawn from manual labour, and yet they required servile assistance both for their own comfort and for their financial prosperity. There naturally arose two parties, one the party of wealth and position, who wished things to remain as they were, the other the party of progress, who wished for radical changes ; and the struggle raged, as has always been the case in England, round the question of altering the constitution. The first object of the radicals was to get rid of the Areopagus, which was a strongly conservative institution. It was, like the House of Lords in England, the great hindrance to democratic advance. Of the two parties, whose views were very similar to those held by the corresponding parties in England, the con- servatives were probably the more numerous, but the liberals were better organised. After the ostracism of Themistocles, Cimon was the foremost man in Athens, and after the death of Pausanias there was no one in Greece who could compare with him. But he was an aristocrat from head to foot, the born champion of the conservative party. He also desired the preservation of the Delian confederacy, friendship Policy ot w ith Sparta, war with Persia, and a moderate treatment of the allies. Themistocles had been overthrown by a coalition between Cimon and the Alcmaeonids, but, its object obtained, this unnatural alliance came to an end. A powerful leader, one of the greatest statesmen of all times, now began to make his appearance. Pericles, son of Xanthippus, was on the spindle side the great nephew of Cleisthenes. His political teacher is said to have been Damonides of Oa, a man of great ability, who combined the teaching of theory and practice. Under his influence Pericles became gradually the political successor of Themi- stocles. He joined himself with the remnants of the Themi- stoclean party, the foremost of whom was Ephialtes, the son of Sophonides. We know little about his personality except that he was an honest man of blameless character, but one who 387 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 99 supported democracy with a fiery zeal which earned the hatred of his opponents. The struggle between the two parties seems to have begun after the battle of Eurymedon, when the absence of Cimon from Athens for three years gave his enemies Attack an opportunity. Ephialtes commenced with an on the attack upon the Areopagus. When Cimon re- Areopagus, turned to Athens he found that his popularity was diminished, and that he was suspended from his office. However, the attack upon him, in which Pericles took a prominent part, failed, and he was again elected strategos for the next year ; indeed, in the summer of 462, he was allowed to lead a large force to assist the Spartans against the Messenians. His absence gave Ephialtes an opportunity which he did not hesitate to use. He proposed to deprive the Areopagus of its political power. A law to this effect was passed. Ephialtes was shortly after- wards murdered, which shows the bitterness of the conflict. When the Spartans knew that the radicals had conquered in Athens, they distrusted the presence of Athenian hoplites in their country, and feared lest they might make common cause with the Messenians. They were therefore anxious for their departure, and asked Cimon to withdraw, although the need of their presence was as great as ever. This behaviour of the Spartans confirmed the victory of the democratic party at Athens. When Cimon attempted to repeal the law passed about the Areopagus, he was ostracised in 461, and had to leave Athens. A number of radical measures were now passed, the principal of which was the payment of all officers appointed by lot, in- cluding the members of the council and the Complete judges. Judges for each action were chosen by Democracy lot out of a number of 6000, who changed every established. year, to which every citizen of good character could be admitted. As each court contained several hundred judges, thousands re- ceived the pay on every day that the court sat. Their pay was two obols, that is, threepence, but it must be remembered that those offices which required skill and education for their conduct were still unpaid, such as the office of general. The theory was that all ordinary offices imposed mere duties of routine, which one citizen could perform as well as another, and on this prin- ciple even the third class — the zeugitae — became eligible for the archonship. Other measures of a democratic character were also passed. The functions of the Areopagus were partly ioo A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to assigned to the Boule, which had very important duties— that of deciding what measures should be introduced into the popular assembly, the supervision of all officials, and the care of the finances. It had also charge of the police ; it could im- pose fines, and in some cases inflict the punishment of death. But the main duties of the Areopagus fell to the share of the Heliaea, who had the care of the laws and complete control over the executive, having to subject public officers to examina- tion both before the acceptance of office and on laying it down, and, in conjunction with the Boule, to revise the laws every year and to see if they required alteration, so that the council and the judges became the chosen representatives of the govern- ment. The government of the people by themselves existed in Athens as it had never existed before in history. The Ecclesia, the assembly of the people, was the supreme authority in the state. But the weakness and the mobility which are the dangers of a democracy were limited and checked by a number of ingenious arrangements which, so long as they kept their validity, were fully efficient for their purpose. Athens was ruined, not by its democratic institutions, but by the arrival of unprincipled men to power. As we have before said, in the summer of 465 Xerxes was murdered by his grand vizier, Artabanos, his later years having been spent in lust and idleness. Darius, his eldest son, was accused of being privy to the crime, so he was killed by his younger brother Artaxerxes, who assumed the crown. The Athenians thought this a good Athens opportunity for an attack upon their hereditary attacks enemy, and in 409 they sent an expedition to Persia. Cyprus, which proceeded thence to Egypt, sailed up the Nile, destroyed the Persian fleet, and took Memphis. A war broke out between Argos, the democratic ally of Athens, and Mycene, in which the Spartans assisted Mycene, but they were defeated with the help of the Athenians at Oenoe. The victory was recorded on the painted colonnade by a picture which was a pendant to that representing the battle of Marathon. Great hopes were excited by the alliance between Argos and Athens. Mantinea also became democratic and anti-Spartan, whilst Tegea adhered more closely to the Spartans. Megara also joined democratic Athens, its nobles remaining true to Sparta. For this step, Megara was attacked by Corinth, but defended by Athens. The old friendship between Athens and Corinth was turned into bitter hatred. 387b.c] HISTORY OF GREECE lot Corinth could expect little immediate help from Sparta, but she determined to avenge herself. The Athenians now sent a fleet to the Peloponnesus, which resulted in an attack upon Aegina, and caused the intervention Corinth. of the Corinthians, who, however, suffered a severe defeat in the autumn of 459. Battles also took place at Tanagra and Oenophyta, and Boeotia became Attic. At last, in 456, the Aeginetans had to submit, and joined the Delian confederacy. Troezen also joined the Athenians, and they were now at liberty to attack the colonies of Corinth. Up to this time, Corinth had been the predominant power in Western Greece, and had been able to retain the island empire founded under her tyrants. Leucas, Anactorium, The and Ambracia, which had been founded by Corinthian Corinth in conjunction with Corcyra, were all Colonies, supporters of Corinth, and were ready to give her assistance in time of need, and had all taken part in the Persian war. Apol- lonia, far up in Illyria, held a similar position. The states lying in the neighbourhood of these colonial possessions were generally favourable to the mother city. It now seemed as if Corcyra, whose relations with Corinth had been strained for the last hundred and fifty years, was ^ r likely to join Athens in an attack upon the mother who had produced her. Corcyra owed her importance to being upon the high road between Greece, Italy, and Sicily, as all ships had to stop there. Her constitution was moderately demo- cratic : the government lay in the hands of the great wine merchants who owned the vineyards in the centre of the island. She possessed a large navy, about 120 triremes, manned to a great extent by slaves, and was therefore strong enough to pursue a policy of her own. She had taken no part in the Persian war, and she now desired to be neutral in the struggle between Athens and Corinth. In the year 455, Tolmides, an Athenian admiral, led an expedition round the Peloponnesus. He burned the arsenal of Gythion, secured the alliance of Zakynthos and Cephallenia, captured the Corinthian town of Chalcis, in Aetolia, defeated the army of Sicyon, and settled in Naupaktos the Messenians from Ithome, who had lately made peace with the Spartans. Just at this time the Athenians suffered a severe defeat in Egypt. Inarus was occupying Memphis with Athenian troops to assist the Egyptians in maintaining their independence against the Persians ; but in 456 he was attacked by the 102 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to Persian general Megobyzus. After resisting for a year and a half, he was defeated in the spring of 454 by the diversion Athenian 0I an arm °f the Nile. A large number of the Reverses in Athenians were slain, but a few succeeded in Egypt. escaping to Cyrene and in reaching their homes. Inarus surrendered to Megobyzus, and made him promise that his life should be spared, but, five years later, he was murdered. Egypt returned to the position of a Persian province. To make matters worse, an Athenian fleet of fifty ships, which was bring- ing reinforcements to Egypt, fell into the hands of the Persians and was destroyed. This was the first serious reverse which the Athenians had suffered after so many victories. The Phoe- nician fleet commanded the Mediterranean : Cyprus again became Persian. Until a new fleet was built, the Aegean was at the mercy of the Phoenicians. The treasure of the League at Delos was removed to the Acropolis. Sparta, however, refused to join the Persians, and the Athenians recovered their confidence. In 453, Pericles set out with a contingent of ships and a thousand hoplites to repeat the operations of Tolmides. He again defeated the Sicyonians, and the Achaean communi- ties on the north coast of the Peloponnesus, thinking the cause of Corinth lost, joined the Athenians. Pericles also attempted to seize Oeniadae, the last Corinthian possession on the Ambra- cian Gulf ; but he could not take the citadel, and was obliged to retreat. Further, an attempt of the Athenians to occupy Thessaly up to the Macedonian frontier failed from the superi- ority of the Thessalian cavalry. The expedition of Pericles was the last enterprise in a war which had cost Athens great losses both in men and treasure. Temporary The richer Athenian citizens were much reduced Peace in in numbers. There was great discontent amongst Greece. the allies, and they showed signs of rebellion. It was clear that the ambitious designs formed by the democracy in 461 could not be carried out. Argos also became tired of an adventurous policy. She was thoroughly democratic in feel- ing, but she had no political ambition. She even sent an embassy to Susa to propose a renewal of her old friendship with Persia, which was favourably received by Artaxerxes. The feeling of Sparta against Athens was very bitter, but she could do little so long as Argos, Boeotia, and Megara fought on the other side. At length peace was made between Argos and Sparta for thirty years, but Athens could not be persuaded to make any further concessions than a five years' truce. When Cimon 387b.c] HISTORY OF GREECE 103 returned from his ostracism, he recognised the leadership of Pericles and the new order of things. At the same time he urged the view that it was necessary to do something to recover the prestige of Athens in the East, and in 449 he was placed at the head of an expedition against Cyprus. He LastExpedi- sent sixty of his two hundred ships to Egypt, tion against with a view of exciting an insurrection in that Persia, country ; with the rest he attacked Kition, the Phoenician capital. The Greek cities, of which Salamis was the chief, would have joined him, but, just as he was in the act of captur- ing Kition, he died. After his death, the peace party in Athens had their own way, being led by Pericles, who was the un- disputed master of the government. The fleet was recalled from Cyprus and Egypt, and Callias was sent to Susa with proposals of peace. A last glory crowned the final efforts of Athens. A Phoenician and Cilician fleet which attempted to prevent the withdrawal of the Athenians from Cyprus was entirely defeated, and a similar success attended them on land. This was the last battle and the last victory of the Persian war. Negotiations for peace now began in Susa. Callias offered to renounce Cyprus and Egypt, and to leave the great king master of the eastern Mediterranean, on the condition that he recognised the position of Athens and the , n a ii; aa freedom of the Persian Greeks. The great king was unwilling to surrender a Persian province, but he did not object to recognise the fact that the Athenians were masters of the coast of Asia Minor. Peace was made in these terms. The great king promised to send no ships from the Black Sea to the passage of the Bosphorus, nor in the ,south farther than the eastern frontier of Lycia, nor to bring an army nearer than a horse's gallop to the Asiatic coast, so that the coast of the Aegean and the Propontis was practically left to the Athenians. Nothing was actually surrendered, and there was no delimitation of frontiers ; there was nothing to prevent Greek cities from joining Persia if they pleased, a liberty which was used later in Cilicia and the Black Sea. Towns like Smyrna, which had not joined the Delian League, remained as before under Persian rule, but a limit was set to the tribute which might be exacted. The peace of Callias was not a formal treaty, nor was it announced at Athens as such. It was nothing more than an honourable understanding. Indeed, Callias was condemned to a fine of fifty talents for having been bribed by the great king. At the same time, he had gained all that could be expected. The 104 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to peace, if not a brilliant .success, was at least a substantial advantage, and when, years afterwards, it was seen to be so, there was a disposition to give it a higher place in the roll of Athenian success than it had any right to occupy. The Peace of Callias gave Athens time to breathe. She was able to turn her attention to internal affairs. Pericles set him- self to continue the buildings which had been begun by Cimon. At the same time, Athens lost some of her possessions on the mainland. Boeotia, with the exception of Plataea, which re- mained faithful to Athens, formed a league of its own of a moderate aristocratic character. This was the result of the battle of Coronea, fought in 447, in which Tolmides attempted, with an insufficient force, to defeat the anti- Athenian party, but was entirely routed. Tolmides himself fell, and with him the flower of the Athenian youth. Euboea and Megara fol- lowed the example of Boeotia. The Peloponnesians marched into Attica, and were only persuaded to depart by the bribes of The Thirty Pericles. At last, in 446, negotiations were Years' opened in Sparta. Athens was prepared to give Peace. U p a n ner possessions in the Peloponnesus. Even Corinth was satisfied. The peace, which bears the name of Pericles, was established for thirty years, perhaps a better plan than our own, which allows a treaty made for all eternity to be gradually violated till none of it exists. Aegina was left to Athens on the condition that she should enjoy practical autonomy with the payment of a tribute, the only advantage retained by Athens except the establishment of the Messenians in Naupactos. There was to be free intercourse between the contracting parties, and any disputed questions which might arise were to be submitted to arbitration. Now begins what is called the Periclean age, one of the most remarkable and brilliant periods in the whole history of the world. During that period, for fifteen p e - i^f ° years, Pericles was undisputed leader of the state, " wielding at will that fierce democratie," first citizen of the town, without force or fraud, without flattery or falseness, in a country governed by the lot, with no other weapon than that sweet persuasive eloquence which still sits on the lips of his marble bust, and, with the deep tenderness of his eyes, explains his magic power over the hearts and wills of men. The only advantage which he had over other citizens was that of being constantly chosen strategos, or general, which gave him an official seat in the Boule. We have already 387b.c] HISTORY OF GREECE 105 spoken of his origin and of his earlier measures, but it must be remembered that he was not only a general and a statesman, but a man devoted to the study of philosophy and art. In his hospitable house, where the brilliant Aspasia of Miletus kept her salon, all the great spirits of the time found their meeting place — Anaxagoras, Gorgias, Protagoras, Pheidias, Polygnotus, and the youthful Socrates. The strained relations which had existed so long between Athens and Sparta, between the supporters of the principles of aristocracy and democracy, will have prepared Renewal of us for a war. It came about in this way. War — Battle Corcyra attacked a colony of her own, Epidamnus, °f Sybote. on the Illyrian coast. Epidamnus sought assistance from Corinth, who retaliated on the Corcyreans. Corcyra turned for help to Athens, who did not refuse it. The result of this was the battle of Sybote between the Corcyreans and the Corinthians, in which the Athenians also took part. The battle was indecisive. At this time Potidaea, a Corinthian colony, which had joined the Athenian confederacy, was anxious to secede from it, but was coerced by the Athenians. The Corinthians urged the Spartans to intervene with the sword, and also to assist Aegina and Megara, who were im- patient of Athenian rule. The Spartans held a council for deliberation, in which ambassadors from Corinth and others were present. They decided against Athens, and the oracle of Delphi took the same side. A further council was held, to which all the allies of Sparta were summoned, and, in the autumn of 432, war was practically determined upon. The real cause, however, was the jealousy of Athenian power, and the natural opposition which arises in all communities, great and small, against the promoter of a new and higher ideal. The Spartans continually desired the fall of Pericles, the illustrious founder of the spiritual greatness of Athens, and the Athenians, who owed everything to him, were slack in his defence. Pericles succeeded in defending himself. Seeing that war was inevitable, he was in favour of taking up the challenge, and the popular assembly agreed with him. The war began in April 431 by three hundred Spartan aristocrats making a night attack on the city of Plataea in Boeotia, which belonged to the Athenian League. The Plataean democrats defeated them, and p\it a hundred and eight of them to death. The Athenians sent a garrison to Plataea, to defend it against the inevitable vengeance, although they 106 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to did not approve of the hasty action of their allies. There- upon Archidamus, king of Sparta, marched with sixty thousand First years troops into Attica, upon which, by the advice of the Pelo- of Pericles, the population left the country and ponnesian sought refuge in the Acropolis. Attica was laid War. waste. When those who had fallen in the first year of the war were buried in the Ceramicus, Pericles made over them a funeral oration which is, at once, a masterpiece of literature and the clearest exposition of the conflicting principles of the Athenian and Spartan governments. It re- mains for ever a monument of the aims which an enlightened democracy should strive to realise. The next year, 430, was taken up by the plague, which broke out with great violence in Athens and destroyed large numbers of citizens. Amongst them were the two brothers and the sister of Pericles, and, in September 429, Pericles himself fell a victim Pericles ^° ** a ^ ^ e a » e °^ ^- He was one of the greatest statesman that the world has ever seen ; his dying words were that no Athenian had ever worn mourning by his misdeeds. The death of Pericles was an irreparable loss, and the struggle now loses all interest. The aristocratic Nicias was opposed to the demagogue Cleon. Mitylene revolted from Nicias an Athens, but was recovered, whereupon Cleon had a thousand of the Lesbian aristocracy put to death. On the other hand, the Spartans captured Plataea after a three years' siege and rased it to the ground. In 427, Demosthenes occupied Pylos on the coast of Messenia, so that 400 Spartan hoplites were cut off in the island of Sphacteria. The Spartans asked for peace, which was refused them, and the whole garrison were brought as prisoners to Athens. But in 424, the Athenians were defeated at Delium in Boeotia, a battle in which Alcibiades saved the life of Socrates. A worse disaster befell them in Chalcidice, where, in the battle of Amphipolis, fought in 422, the Athenians, who were led by Cleon, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of Brasidas, the best of the Spartan generals. Both Brasidas and Cleon were killed. This led to the Peace of Nicias, signed in April 421, to last for fifty years, in which both sides gave up their conquests and released their prisoners. Disputes were to be settled by arbitration, and divided Greece was to be again one. The six years which followed, however, were full of trouble, caused chiefly by the conduct of Argos, which formed a league 387 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 107 of her own, and entered into alliance with Athens. They were also marked by the rise of Alcibiades, a man of daemonic brilliancy, but with passions and temper little under control —a personality born for the redemption or the destruction of his country. In August 418 was fought the battle of Mantinea, which insured the supremacy of Sparta over Argos. We now come to the terrible catastrophe of the Sicilian expedition, which put an end to the war. It was the work of Alcibiades, and bore the impress of his fatal genius. Nicias did all he could to prevent it, Expedition. 11 but the people were excited by the prospect of conquering, first Syracuse, then Sicily, and then Italy, and lastly Africa. It was commanded by Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lamachus, but Alcibiades was unhappily recalled for private reasons, and the enterprise lost its most competent leader. The Spartans sent Gylippus, a forerunner of Todleben, to assist the Syracusans, and in 413, after a struggle of two years, the Athenians were entirely defeated in a battle in the great harbour. Nicias and Demosthenes were captured and executed, and 7000 Athenian prisoners were confined in the stone quarries, where the greater number of them perished by a miserable death. After this, Alcibiades obtained some bril- liant successes on the Aegean coast, and recovered for Athens the towns of Byzantium and Chalcedon. In 408, he returned to Athens after an absence of six years, was received with acclamation, and was made general with unrestricted power ; but his enemies overthrew him, and the command of the fleet was entrusted to Conon with nine others. In 406, they suc- ceeded in gaining a brilliant victory at Arginusae over the Spartans, who were commanded by Callicratidas, the last success of Athens in the war. But in the following year Lysander avenged this by the entire destruction of the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami, and the fate of Athens was Battle of decided. Conon succeeded in escaping with Aegos- ten ships to Cyprus, but Lysander immediately potami. sailed to the Piraeus and blockaded Athens, whilst Pausanias attacked it from the land side. In 404, the city had to yield to the pressure of famine. The Athenians were compelled to deliver up all their ships excepting twelve, to End of the rase the long walls and the fortifications of the Pelopon- Piraeus to the ground, and to set up an oligarchy of nesian War. thirty men, generally called the Thirty Tyrants, whose authority was supported by a Spartan garrison. The territory of Athens io8 A GENERAL HISTORY [478 b.c. to was restricted to Attica, and she was compelled to enter the Spartan League. Thus, after thirty years, the Peloponnesian war came to an end, and the hegemony of Greece passed to the hands of Sparta. The government of the Thirty was a reign of terror. With Critias at their head, they exercised their wrath against the adherents of the democratic party, and attacked rnVjp fPVjj T*tv • L */ > T rant ^ e ^ ves an( ^ property of all those whom they suspected of being opposed to them or who were denounced by informers. Alcibiades was a victim of their vengeance. He first withdrew to his possessions in Thrace, but was obliged to take refuge with Pharnabazus, the Persian satrap, by whom he was received with kindness, but was after- wards murdered at the instance of Lysander. At last, Thera- menes, one of the Thirty, was overthrown by Critias, just as Danton was overthrown by Robespierre, and had to drink the hemlock. However, in 403, the oligarchy was attacked by Thrasybulus, who, at the head of a body of exiles, occupied Democracy Ph} 7 l e > and, attacking the Piraeus, in the de- restored in fence of which Critias was killed, put an end to Athens. th e reign of terror, granted a general amnesty, and re-established the Solonian constitution. Three yeais later, in 399, under the restored democracy, ocra es. ^ e g re at Socrates was tried as a corrupter of youth, and was condemned to drink the hemlock. The Delphic oracle, with more than usual truth and insight, had declared him to be the wisest of Greeks. It is difficult to understand why he was murdered, except that it is a fate which befalls most prophets who are before their age, and who spend their lives in benefiting humanity. Perhaps it is more remarkable that he was allowed to live till he was seventy years of age. But, during the 2300 years which have succeeded his execution, his spirit has reigned over the minds and hearts of men with a despotic supremacy. His defence and the story of his last days are masterpieces of literature, and his disciple Plato remains as the most powerful assertor of ideal optimism. After the fall of Athens, Sparta not only became the head of all the states of the Greek continent, but also reduced by her fleet the islands and the colonies of Asia Minor, Spartan ^ made them dependent upon her. At this time a civil war took place in Persia. Cyrus the Younger, who was viceroy of Asia Minor, attacked his brother Artaxerxes, with a view to dragging him from the 387 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 109 throne and taking his place. In this expedition he was assisted by 14,000 Greek mercenaries, chiefly Spartans, whom he had taken into his pay. He was entirely defeated in the battle of Cunaxa, in the neighbourhood of Babylon, in 401, and he met his death at the hands of his brother. c Tissaphernes, the chief general of Artaxerxes, promised the Greeks a safe return to their country, but during the negotiations he treacherously murdered the Greek generals, including Clearchus, the commander-in-chief. Xeno- phon, an Athenian, took up the command, and led the ten thousand men who remained safely back. He himself wrote an attractive account of the exploit in the well known "Ana- basis." The Greeks of Asia Minor had supported TVio 4i Ana Cyrus in his revolt, and they were therefore r . ,, cruelly treated by Tissaphernes. They turned for assistance to Sparta, who, in 399, sent Thymbrotus and Dachyl- lydes to Asia with a force to assist them, and afterwards King Agesilaus himself, who carried on the war with such success that he defeated the satraps Tissaphernes and Pharnabazus in two battles, and even threatened Sardis. In order to create a diversion, the Persians used Timocrates of Rhodes to stir up a rebellion against the supremacy of Sparta, for which Persian gold was freely used. In 398, Boeotia, Corinth, and Argos were gradually, by means of bribes, induced to rebel against Sparta and to join the Persians. This gave rise to what is known as the Boeoto-Corinthian war, which lasted till 387, Athens eventually taking part in it. In order to suppress it, the Spartan general Lysander was sent into Boeotia, but was completely defeated at the battle of Haliartns . .. and was himself slain. The victory of Haliartus Spartan filled the enemies of Sparta with confidence and League- courage. A league was formed between Thebes, Battle of Athens, Corinth, and Argos, of which the capital Haliartus. was placed at Corinth, with the object of overthrowing the supremacy of Sparta. It was joined by another league com- posed of other Greeks, especially from the north, and Medios, dynast of Larissa in Thessaly, brought his forces to the common stock. The important island of Rhodes was also induced to desert the Spartan League, mainly by the influence of the Athenian Conon, who had gone to Susa, and persuaded King Artaxerxes to support him with money and ships. The Spartans were obliged to recall Agesilaus from Asia ; though they occupied Sicyon, and inflicted a severe defeat on the allies at Nemea, no A GENERAL HISTORY [478 B .c. to which, to some extent, repaired the disaster of Haliartus. Agesilaus left Asia Minor with a heavy heart, and on his way Battles of home heard of the entire destruction of the Spartan Nemea, fleet, by Conon and Pharnabazus, in the battle Cnidus, and of Cnidus. Nothing dismayed, he attacked the Coronea. allies in the plain of Coronea, and gained a signal victory, putting the Argives to flight and entirely breaking up the Thebans. The field was soaked with blood, and strewn with the corpses of friend and foe, with broken shields and spears and swords, some lying on the ground, some in the dead hands of those who had wielded them. Agesilaus, who was himself wounded, retired home by Delphi, where he made an offering of a hundred talents, and was received with enthusiasm at Sparta. In this manner, while Sparta regained her supremacy by land, she lost the mastery of the sea. Conon and Pharnabazus Exploits of pursued their victorious course, and the Athenian Conon and admiral was able to return in triumph to Athens Iphicrates. and to mark his success by the restoration of the Ions walls and the reunion of Piraeus with Athens. The Athenians were now excited to new efforts. They regained their influence in the Hellespont ; their general, Iphicrates, formed a body of light armed troops, called peltasts from the light round shield which they carried, which became formidable opponents to the heavily armed hoplites ; in 392, though the allies were defeated by the Spartans at Lechaeum, the effects of the battle were neutralised by Iphicrates, who did wonders with his peltasts. After all, the last hopes of victory lay in securing the assistance of the Persians, and, for this purpose, the Spartans sent to Sardis a clever and astute diplomatist, Antalcidas, who promised that the towns of Asia Minor should be left to the mercy of the great king, provided that he put an end to the civil war in Greece. Conon rejected with scorn the unworthy proposal, but was put in prison by Tiribazus. Meanwhile the war continued. Iphicrates gained some suc- cesses in the Hellespont, but the Spartans made an attack on Aegina and the coast of Attica, where they were opposed by Chabrias, a general of the school of Iphicrates. But there was a widespread desire for peace. The astute Antalcidas was working in Asia, and succeeded in bringing the Persians over to his side. In Athens, the orator Andocides strove in favour of peace. In Corinth and Argos, the wasted fields spoke elo- quently on the same side, a,nd even Thebes and Sparta required 387 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE in rest. In 387, Tiribazus issued invitations for a general con- gress at Sardis. Artaxerxes made the proposal that the towns in Asia should belong to him together with Clazo- menae and Cyprus, and that the rest of the Greek frit, ? °d states, great and small, should all be autonomous, with the exception of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which should belong to Athens as heretofore. These disgraceful proposals were accepted in the autumn of 387, and the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor, which had been the cradle of Greek culture, from which the Greeks of the mainland had learnt what they knew of literature and art, became subjects of the Persian empire, against which Greece had contended for freedom for more than a hundred years. But Greece itself was saved, and the progress of Asiatic power towards the west was stopped for ever. CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF GREECE, 387-338 B.C. The Peace of Antalcidas seemed to promise Greece a period of rest for many years, but this condition was threatened by the Tyranny ambition of Sparta, and the narrow and repulsive of the character of its government. Diodorus, the his- Spartans. torian, tells us that the Spartans, loving mastery and war, could not endure the peace, which was a heavy burden to them, but desired a change which should restore to them their previous mastery over Hellas. Their feelings found powerful expression in the person of Agesilaus, who said that in the peace the Spartans had not Medised, but rather the Persians had Laconised. The first victim of this spirit was the Arcadian city of Mantinea, which was attacked and entirely destroyed by the Spartans in 385. Another democratic city, Phlius, was attacked in the following year, and after a gallant resistance of four years was obliged to submit to aristocratic government. The Spartans, not content with their hegemony over the Peloponnesus, attempted to extend their influence over the triple peninsula of Chalcidice, which lay at the door of Macedonia and Thrace. To meet this, Olynthus placed herself at the head of a Chalcidican confederacy, which was, however, resisted by Acanthus and Apollonia, when Olynthus endeavoured to extend the arrangement to them. Acanthus applied to Sparta, which determined to intervene, and the Olynthian war, which lasted for three years (383-380), began. The Olyj 1 - Eudamidas hastened to the scene of action, sup- ported by Amyntas, king of Macedonia, a country which now became entangled with the politics of Greece ; and he would probably have subdued Olynthus had not circum- stances arisen in Thebes of which we shall presently give an account. Teleutias, king of Sparta, and his distinguished brother Agesilaus devoted themselves to this enterprise in suc- ceeding years, and, in 360, Olynthus was compelled to submit. But the unexpected happened in Thebes. Here, as in other 387-338 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE ii3 cities; the aristocrats were supported by Sparta, but the town was now democratic. When Phoebidas,the brotherof Endamidas, was marching towards Chalcidice, Leontiadas, the leader of the Theban aristocracy, approached him . ^h"*) 1011 with a proposal that the city should be seized by a coup d'etat and restored to Spartan influence. On a hot summer day in 383, when the women were holding a festival on the citadel of the Cadmeia, and the town council was de- liberating in the market hall, Phoebidas marched through the deserted streets, occupied the Cadmeia, and took the women as hostages. He also broke into the council hall, seized the polemarch Ismenias, and put him in prison in irons. The democrats, to the number of 400, led by Pelopiclas and Andro- cleidas, marched off to Athens, while Leontiadas took the opportunity of establishing a strong oligarchical government, and went to Sparta to seek the support of the ephors. Sparta sent a garrison of 1500 men, and established a reign of terror, while Ismenias was condemned to death under a false accusation. The defeat of Olynthus and the capture of Thebes produced great excitement throughout Hellas, which saw in these events a breach of the Peace of Antalcidas. This feeling was supported by the Athenian orators Lysias and Isocrates, and was strongly condemned by Xenophon. The Theban exiles were well received in Athens. Pelopidas did his best to stir up the youth' of Thebes to resistance, as Mazzini, in our own day, stirred up the youth of Italy. Pelopidas acquired a valuable colleague in the person of Epaminondas, both of ^ them belonging to distinguished families in the city. At last, at the close of 379, about three or four hundred exiles assembled in the neighbourhood of Thria, on the frontier between Boeotia and Attica. About twelve of them, including Pelopidas, Mellon, and Damocleides, were chosen to go forward and murder the tyrants of their home. They crossed Citheron in disguise, and reached Thebes on a winter's day when a snow-storm was raging. They entered the town singly, by different gates, and met in the house of one Charon, where they passed the night. It was arranged that, in the following night, Phyllidas, who was trusted by the oligarchs, should invite the polemarchs to a banquet, where the deed should be perpetrated. When every- thing was ready, knocks were heard at the door, and Charon was summoned before the polemarchs. Charon, leaving his young son as a hostage, hastened to the house of Phyllidas, and found Archias and Philippus drinking heavily. He succeeded H H4 A GENERAL HISTORY [3S7 b.o. to in allaying their suspicions, and returned. Scarcely had he left the house when a letter was brought denouncing the con- spirators and giving their names. But Archios put the letter aside with the remark, " Business to-morrow." Phyllidas had promised the revellers that they should have women for their entertainment, and he now introduced into the banqueting hall some of the conspirators, Counter- - n women ' s clothes and veiled, including Mellon Revolution. . _.. m . . ' ,, . ° , and Charon. I he conspirators drew their daggers, and fell upon their half -drunken victims. Archias and Philippus fell at once, but Cabeirichos gave them some trouble. Leontiadas was attacked by Pelopidas, while he was lying in bed with his wife sleeping by his side. He defended himself bravely, but was at length overcome. After the chiefs of the oligarchy had fallen, the conspirators proceeded to the prison, and set the prisoners free, 150 in number, among them one who was destined for execution on the following day. They then proclaimed in the market-place that the tyrants were murdered and the town was free. When all was confusion, Epaminondas and Gorgidas appeared upon the scene and restored order. Epaminondas had been careful not to stain his hands with blood. The break of day witnessed a scene of jubilant excitement. The popular assembly met again after a long suspension. The leaders of the conspiracy were publicly thanked in the name of the gods, and decorated with garlands. Pelopidas, Mellon, and Charon were appointed Boeotarclis, a formal sign that the arrangements of the Peace of Antalcidas were at an end. The political emigrants returned from exile. Athens sent a con- tingent of 5000 men under Demophron. In a short time an army was got together of 12,000 hoplites and 2000 cavalry, and at last the Lacedaemonian garrison on the Cadmeia was compelled to evacuate the citadel. The Boeotian war now followed, which, after lasting for seven years, was terminated by the battle of Leuctra in 371. At the beginning of the war, Sphodrias attempted to The Boeotian g a j n possession of the Piraeus by a night attack, but failed in his enterprise. The Athenians made an offensive and defensive alliance with Thebes, and strengthened Anti- their navy. In the new league which was now Spartan formed, all states, large and small, had the right League. f sitting and voting at the assembly, which met regularly at Athens and provided for the sinews of war. This league consisted of seventy towns ; which included Chios, 338 B.c.l HISTORY OF GREECE 115 Rhodes, Byzantium, Mitylene, and Leuctra. New financial arrangements were made by the creation of symmories, which increased the speed and activity of collecting the smaller con- tributions. As generals, Iphicrates and Chabrias were very prominent, and also Timotheus the son of Oonon. Thebes on her side strengthened her army by the creation of a Sacred Company of three hundred young warriors, bound together by love, friendship, and similarity of opinions, who were a pattern and a stimulus to the other soldiers. Agesilaus invaded Boeotia in 378. Besides the Thebans, he now had to contend against a body of 5000 mixed citizens and hoplite mercenaries, sent by Athens under the command of Chabrias. He could do nothing against them, and was obliged to retire, leaving Phoebidas, the original author of the war in Thespise, but he was eventually slain by Gorgidas. In the following year, Agesilaus invaded Boeotia again, but had no more success than in his previous attempt. More was effected at sea, where Chabrias, and his young lieutenant, Phocion, gained a brilliant victory over the Spartans at Naxos in 376. In the following year a similar disaster befell the Spartans at Leucas. The Athenians, how- ever, began to wish for peace, as the cost of the war was very heavy, and the Thebans did not pay their share. Their own sympathy with the Boeotians, too, began to cool, and they felt some jealousy at their success. The consequence of this was an approach towards Sparta. Both countries took the matter in hand, and Jason of Pherae, a powerful prince with a fine army of 6000 men, p eace q 011 and large possessions, acted as mediator. The gress at result was that a peace congress was held at Sparta- Sparta in June 371, the upshot of which was a Thebes peace from which Thebes was excluded. King isolated. Cleombrotus now marched into Boeotia with a large army, and Epaminondas, to intercept him, occupied the passes of Coronea. But, hearing that he had gone by another road into the plain of Leuctra, he marched to meet him, having only six thousand hoplites against ten thousand, and four hundred cavalry against a thousand. Epaminondas did his best to revive the courage of his troops. There was a legend that Leuctra was to be the grave of the Spartan hegemony, and this inspired them with confidence. The same legend demoralised the Spartans, and they desired to wait for reinforcements, but were overruled. The battle began on July 3, 371, immediately after breakfast. Against the right wing, where Cleombrotus was posted with his n6 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 b.c. to Spartans, Epaminondas placed the kernel of his troops, formed in a phalanx fifty men deep and protected by the Sacred Com- pany of Pelopidas. The right wing of the Theban Batt e o army, which was opposed to the Lacedaemonian allies, was refused, as if Epaminondas wished to avoid the struggle on this side. The battle opened with a con- test of cavalry, in which the Spartans, although superior in numbers, were defeated and driven back on their supports. The general then ordered his phalanx to advance, the Spartans opening their lines and wheeling round as they came so as to take them in the flank. Not being able to do this, they retired to their previous position, and Epaminondas continued his attack. The Spartans fought bravely, and phalanx rushed against phalanx, neither party being able to advance. " Only give me a foot ! " cried Epaminondas. The slaughter in the neighbourhood of the king was terrible, and Cleombrotus himself fell. As the polemarchs, Deinon and Sphodrias, had already been killed, the Spartans began to give way, and the Lacedae- monian allies on the left followed their example. The defeat of the Lacedaemonians was complete. The news of the disaster reached Sparta while a public festival was in progress, which it was determined not to interrupt, and hence it was- not published till the next day. But Epaminondas had allowed a free departure to the conquered army, and when they reached their homes in haste they fell under the ban of deserters, whose punishment was to be deprived of civic rights and to be subjected to universal contempt. But their number was so large that King Agesilaus was obliged to say, " Let the law go to sleep to-day and wake up again to-morrow morning." Epaminondas was intent upon the destruction of the Spartan power, and the outlook was, indeed, favourable. A third of the Spartiates had perished in the battle of Leuctra, the helots and the Messenians began to throw off the Spartan yoke, the democrats in Elis and Mantinea took up arms. The aristocrats in Tegea were murdered or exiled, and in Argos the mob rose, and knocked on the head with clubs 1200 or 1500 of the respectable citizens, oligarchs and democrats alike. This club law was called Skytalismos, and filled the Athenians with such horror that they broke off all communication L h a B ue 0tian with tbe city wllicn nad so disg^ced itself. As Sparta fell, Thebes began to rise, and the Boeotian League took the place of the Lacedaemonian. It was joined by Pbocis, Aetolia, Locris, Acarnania, Euboea, and other places, and 338 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 117 Thespiae, which opposed it, was destroyed. Jason of Pherae, its principal antagonist, was murdered. As the Boeotian League formed a democratic counterpoise to the power of the princes of Thessaly and the kings of Macedonia, so a rival to the power of Sparta was formed by the pastoral Arcadians, who lived a simple life in their mountains, the Swiss of the Peloponnesus. They formed a democratic confederacy, and, as it was necessary to have a capital, they united forty villages into a city and called it Megalopolis, the Great City, just as Alessandria was founded as the capital of the ^? a °" Lombard League. The republic was governed by an assembly of " Ten Thousand," who elected archons with power over peace and war, diplomacy, finance, and justice, and who nominated the generals. It had a standing army of Eparitoi, or selected troops, and its revenue was derived from a hut tax, paid by the possessors of cattle for the use of the almends or common lands. It was not likely that this republic would be allowed to come into being without a struggle, and Megalopolis, like Ales- sandria, had to fight for its existence. The oligarchs of Tegea and Orchomenos rose against it, but the Arcadians, with Mantinea at their head, sought the assistance of Thebes. Agesilaus marched into the territory of Tegea and Mantinea, but retired at the approach of the Theban allies. Indeed, Epaminondas, Pelopidas, and their adherents came Epami- to Mantinea with a force of 15,000 heavy armed nondas in troops. They ought, properly, to have retired the Pelo- when their object was accomplished ; but the ponnesus. opportunity was too favourable to be missed, and they deter- mined to attack Sparta and destroy her for ever. The allied army, with 10,000 hoplites and other troops besides, marched into the Laconian plain. Sparta shook with terror and anguish, for no hostile army had violated her territory for five hundred years. Epaminondas, marching south along the eastern bank of the Eurotas, wasted the country with fire and sword, and the sight of the destructive flames was accompanied by the cries of women and children and the lamentations of the old men. But Agesilaus once more proved himself the saviour of his country ; assisted by his knowledge of the ground, he de- Agesilaus feated Epaminondas in several engagements, so saves that, when he heard that Sicyon, Epidaurus, Sparta. Corinth, and Phlius were marching to the assistance of Sparta, he thought it prudent to retreat. Thus the town of Sparta was n8 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 b.c. to saved, but Epaminondas crossed the range of Taygetus and carried out a long cherished plan of restoring Messenia to freedom. He rebuilt Messene at the foot of Ithome, sacred to liberty, and collected together the scattered Messenians, who had been without a home for three hundred years. They were now able to take part in the Olympian games as an independent state. The restored Messenia, together with Megalopolis, Tegea, and Argos, encircled Sparta, and made her powerless for evil; but, in spite of this, there was no force which could unite the scattered communities and arm them for a single effort. It can hardly be believed that the victorious Epaminondas was attacked on his way home by Athens, who was acting as an ally of Sparta, and that when he reached Thebes he was subjected to an accusation for a breach of the laws, and was with some difficulty declared innocent. Such was the jealousy of the rising power of Thebes that Athens and Sparta formed an alliance against her, and Epami- nondas was obliged to march a second time into the Pelopon- nesus with an army of 8000 hoplites ; but in accordance with the Boeotian constitution he had to lay down his command and return to Thebes, where he was not restored to the office which he had held, but was given the charge over roads and canals. Pelopidas In the meantime, Pelopidas was engaged in the in Northern north, where he had gone, partly to put a stop Greece. to the rebellion of Alexander of Pherae, and partly to settle a dispute in the royal house of Macedonia. Here he placed Alexander on the throne of his father Amyntas, made an alliance with his kingdom, and carried back to Thebes thirty hostages, among whom was Philip, the brother of Alexander. The settlement he had made lasted but a short time. Alexander of Macedon was murdered by his step-mother Eurydice, and his second son, Perdiccas, was placed on the throne, while the other Alexander, of Pherae, renewed his atrocities. Marching again into Macedonia, Pelopidas was able to effect an arrangement, but on his return he was intercepted by Alexander of Pherae and thrown into prison. Eventually Epaminondas was able to set him free. It is worth mentioning that Gallic and Spanish mercenaries in the pay of Dionysius of Syracuse fought on the side of Epaminondas in his second expedition to the Pelopon- nesus. In the meantime, Persia was anxious to reconcile the Greeks, and to give effect to the provisions of the Peace of Antalcidas. Philiskos of Abydos went to Delphi, representing the viceroy 338B.C] HISTORY OF GREECE 119 of Lydia and Ionia, with this object, but failed because Thebes would not dissolve the Boeotian League or surrender Messenia to Sparta. Upon this a number of Greek states, Athens and Sparta among them, sent embassies p 1C 7 ° to Susa with the same ob 4 The supremacy of Thebes had been recognised at the Persian court ever since the battle of Leuctra, and Artaxerxes now said that all the Greek states, including Messenia, should be free and independent, that the Athenians should surrender their ships, and that any one who disobeyed should be coerced by force, that is, by Thebes. This was of course rejected by the other states, and the con- dition of anarchy continued. In 361, Epaminondas undertook a third expedition to the Peloponnesus, but was recalled by the action of his own countrymen. Greece ^ "* It is needless to continue this description of the battle of kites and crows. A sign of the lawlessness of the times is to be found in the fact that a war between Arcadia and Elis was actually continued during the holy time of the Olympian games. Pelopidas was killed in an expedition against the bloodthirsty tyrant of Pherae. He set out on the day of an eclipse of the sun, which science fixes on June 13, 364. An end was put to the stormy life of Alexander by his wife Thebe, who persuaded her brother to murder him. The sea power of Athens began to exhibit signs of recovery, and Epaminondas conceived plans for the building of a Theban fleet, which indeed succeeded in securing the revolt of Kos, Chios, Rhodes, and Byzantium from Athens. But, unfortunately, the Theban leader did not possess the art of forming a strong confederacy, for he lacked political insight and the power of making wise compromises. In 362, Epaminondas was compelled to undertake another expedition to the Peloponnesus, where he was joined by the troops of Argos, Arcadia, and Messene, while his opponents collected in Mantinea. In the absence Mantinea, of Agesilaus, Epaminondas attacked Sparta, and, indeed, penetrated as far as the market-place, but was driven back from the higher ground. A decisive battle took place at Mantinea in August 362. Epaminondas was superior in strength to his opponents ; he commanded 30,000 hoplites and 3000 cavalry, against 20,000 hoplites and 2000 cavalry of the enemy. He attempted to use the tactics which had been so successful at Leuctra, placing his strength on his left and making a feint with his right. The plan was successful, 120 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 b.c. to and the enemy retired in confusion at the first onslaught, but, in the very moment of victory, Epaminondas was pierced by a spear, which broke off in the wound. He was carried off the battle-field, but his fall disorganised his troops, and the battle Death of remained undecided. Both sides claimed the Epami- victory. Epaminondas lay on a wooded height nondas. overlooking the battle, having been told by the doctor that the drawing out of the spear would be fatal. At last they brought his shield, which had been lost in the battle, and told him that the Thebans had won the victory. He said, "Now it is time to die." When he heard that his generals, Diaphantos and Iolaidas, were dead, he advised that peace should be made, and, with a cheerful countenance, drew out the spear from his heart and gave up the ghost. His darling friend, Kephisodorus, had fallen by his side, and was buried with him. When his friends complained that he had no children, he said, " I leave behind me two blooming daughters, the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea." Thus perished the most gifted general, the noblest character, the staunchest patriot, but perhaps not the greatest statesman, of the Greek world. He was surrounded by friends, and even his enemies praised him. He died as a sacrifice for Hellas' independence. After his death, peace was made according to his advice, but Sparta continued in her position of isolation. Agesilaus did not long survive his great adversary. In the following year he went to Egypt to assist Tachos and Nektanabis in a revolt against Persia, to avenge the conduct A^es'laus °^ Artaxerxes, who had proclaimed the independ- ence of Messenia. But the expedition resulted in failure, and Agesilaus, now eighty years of age, having re- ceived rich revenues from Nektanabis, set out to return home by way of Cyrene, but died in the passage. Athens took the opportunity of restoring her fleet, and recovered Euboea, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, and most of the islands of the Aegean. She also strengthened her position in Chalcidice, Macedonia, and the Thracian Gulf, and made propositions for extending her power to the Hellespont and the Black Sea. But the revival of prosperity brought with it the recrudescence of jealousy. The influence of the Greek, and especially of the Athenian character again showed itself, and the second Athenian League ended, as the first had done, in a social war, although it had, at one time, included seventy cities in its embrace. Macedonia now becomes the most important power in Greece. 338 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 121 It consists of a high tableland surrounded by mountains, with a number of fruitful valleys, and well-watered pastures. In the south there is a difficult pass over the Cam- . bunian mountains, of which Olympus is the highest point, into the valley of the Peneus. It is separated from Epirus by Mount Pindus, which afterwards turns to the north with a rocky ridge, whose summits reach from 5000 to 8000 feet, whence it has the name of Skardos. In the east, we find the mountains of Rhodope, with Pangaeus, forming the water- shed between the Strymon and the Hebrus. Rivers flow from these heights, bearing the names of Haliacmon, Lydias, Axios, and Strymon. The interior is raw and cold ; rivers and lakes are covered with ice in winter ; but some valleys are very fertile and beautiful. It was originally inhabited by a number of tribes of whose origin we know little, but at last the supremacy came into the hands of the Macedonians, a small, vigorous community, who had, from time immemorial, pastured their herds in the upper valleys of the Haliacmon and Erigon, whether they were of Hellenic or of barbarous origin being uncertain. At any rate their kings were supposed to belong to the race of the Heracleidae, and were therefore admitted to the Olympic games. Edessa, otherwise called Aegae, was regarded as the original home of the kingdom, the holy hearth of the state, with the burial-place of its kings. It was described as a lonely spot at the foot of Mount Bermios, the seat of the garden of Midas, where every rose had sixty petals and a ravishing smell. Perdiccas is mentioned by Herodotus as the first king and the founder of the Macedonian empire. He lived at the beginning of the seventh century B.C. He and his four immediate successors extended their dominions from Aegae, over the valley of the Axios and the coast land, subduing the Pierians, the Bottioeans, and the Mygdonians. In this manner, the boundaries of the Macedonian kingdom were extended to Olympus and the Cambunian mountains in the south, to the Strymon in the east. Amyntas I., who reigned from 540 to 498, checked the advance of the Persians. His son Alexander (498 to 454) whom we have already mentioned, was a most noble and charming personality. Under the reign of Perdiccas II., one of his four sons, who reigned from 454 to 413, the Albanians succeeded in getting possession of Thrace and Chalcidice, and in founding Amphipolis, which was almost surrounded by the Strymon. For a time Macedonia paid a tribute to Athens, but 122 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 b.c. to Perdiccas put an end to this, and used the Peloponnesian war to recover his independence. He also gained considerable power over Thrace. Macedonia entered more closely into the stream of Grecian life in the reign of Archelaos (413 to 399), who conquered Pydna with the help of Athens, and changed the capital Archelaos °^ ^ e kingdom from Aegae to Pella. He did a great deal for the civilisation of his country, and introduced Greek culture. Many distinguished Greeks visited his court — among them Hippocrates the physician, Zeuxis the painter, Euripides the dramatist, as well as Agathon, Choerilos, and Timotheus, the harp player. Thucydides probably visited Archelaos, and Socrates was invited, but answered by saying that in Athens four measures of meal cost only an obol, and that good water could be had for nothing. Plato was also very intimate with Archelaos. This excellent king was murdered by two of his favourites, and, after a short period of anarchy, was succeeded by Amyntas III. (389 to 369), who is buc- married Eurydice, a daughter of the prince of the Lyncestians, a tribe who lived in the mountains. He is said to have been murdered, at the instigation of his faithless wife, by her lover, Ptolemaos. Alexander II., who succeeded his father, was opposed by the favourite of his mother, but was established in his rights by Pelopidas ; but no sooner had Pelopidas turned his back than Ptolemaos divorced his own wife, married Eurydice, and murdered the young king. They reigned together for three years as guardians of the two younger sons of Amyntas, Perdiccas and Philip. Perdiccas III., as soon as he was old enough, seized the throne, and held it for five years, but he also perished by the baleful arts of Eurydice, leaving a child Amyntas. Philip, his 1 1 **' younger brother, had lived for three years as a hostage in Thebes, and was destined to become the saviour of his country and the creator of its greatness. He assumed the government at the age of twenty-three, as the guardian of his young nephew, and, in two years, set it free from the numerous enemies who surrounded it. Pie was a past master in the art of subduing his enemies by dividing them. He bribed the Thracians, flattered the Athenians, attacked the Illyrians, and conquered their king Bardylis, and compelled him to surrender all his territory as far as Lake Lychnis. The claims of Amyntas the child were disregarded, and when he attempted to enforce them under Alexander he was put to death. 338 b.c.] HISTORY OF GREECE 123 The first necessity for Philip was to create a powerful army, and for this his residence in Thebes had taught him the superiority of the phalanx ; but he also surrounded The himself with a chosen bodyguard formed out of Macedonian the young nobles of his court. The phalanx was army, armed with a short sword, a spear twenty feet long called a sarissa, and a large shield, and proved nearly irresistible. Besides this, he had light armed bowmen from the mountains, and a smaller body armed with a light shield, called aspis. He devoted himself to the care of his army with the greatest energy, knowing that his salvation depended upon it. He was a remarkable personality, endowed with every bodily and mental excellence, untiring in labour, a friend of statesmen and warriors, a powerful orator and a cheery companion, a master of all the arts of war and government from his first occupation of the throne. At this time, the condition of Greece was one of great confusion. In the Peloponnesus the cities distrusted and hated each other and were full of alarm against Sparta, who would not acknowledge the new y°^ usi0n creations of Megalopolis and Messene, and was yet not strong enough to destroy them. In Arcadia, these two cities were in constant feud. Corinth was subjected to a kind of tyrant, by name Timophanes, who occupied the fortress of Acrocorinthus with a body of mercenaries until he was slain by his brother Timoleon. Athens was better off. By the energy of Iphicrates and Timotheus, the number of towns in the league had been increased to seventy, and it was further strengthened by the adhesion of Euboea. But Athens exercised her power with great severity, and her army was largely com- posed of mercenaries instead of citizens. This state of things was denounced by Phocion and Demosthenes, the great orator, who now began to make his appearance. Athens suffered a serious loss in the death of Chabrias, who fell in a battle against Mausolus, the powerful sovereign of Caria. He might have saved himself by swimming, but was too proud to leave his ship. In the war with her allies, which lasted three years (358 to 355), the results were very unfavourable to Athens. Her navy was destroyed, the tribute which she received from members of the league was reduced to forty-five talents, and Philip took advantage of her weakened condition to increase his empire. He began by taking Pydna, Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and, 124 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 b.c. to when he knew how easily the Greeks were accessible to bribery, used this weapon to the largest extent. The occupation of the gold mines of Mount Pangaeus gave Designs ot ki m pj en ^y f money, and he founded a new town close to them called Philippi. He married Olympia, the daughter of the king of Epirus, of the race of Achilles, and held a brilliant court at his new capital Pella. Olympia was given up to the secret mysteries of Orpheus and Dionysus, and practised the magic cult of the Thracian women, and she could be seen with the thyrsus on her head ranging nightly through the mountains in wild orgies. In the autumn of 356 she bore to her husband the mighty Alexander, one of the greatest men known to history. It is said that on the very day on which Philip received the news of the birth of a son and heir, he was also told that his general Parmenio had conquered the Illyrians, and that his horse had won the prize in Olympia. He began to aim at the supremacy over the Grecian world. In the abasement of Athens, the Thebans now raised their heads, and aimed at the reduction of the Phocians, the old Thebans allies of Sparta. They also roused into new and life the Amphictyonic League, which had existed Phocians. long before. The Phocians, a mountain race, devoted to their independence, were summoned before the council of this league, on the ground that they had appropriated and cultivated a portion of the sacred territory belonging to Delphi, and they were condemned to pay a large fine and were subjected to a curse. The Phocians resisted, mainly under the influence of Philomelos, a wealthy and power- ful citizen, who advised in the assembly that they should not allow themselves to be deprived of their property and their freedom. He obtained the assistance of Sparta, whose king, Archidamus, advanced him fifteen talents, and, after a few engagements, the sanctuary of Delphi was occupied by a Phocian army. Philomelos erased the judgment of the Amphictyonic Council, but announced to the Greeks that the treasures of the temple should be undisturbed, and that the Phocians were only acting as the historic protectors of the Delphic shrine. To confirm his action, he held the Pythia by force upon the sacred stool, until she cried with prophetic emphasis that he might do what he pleased. These actions were the cause of the Sacred War, which lasted from 355 to 346. The Athenians and Lacedaemonians 338 b.c] HISTORY OF GREECE 125 supported Philomelos, but the Locrians and the Boeotians de- clared for the Delphians, and determined to support the Amphic- tyonic sentence. The Locrians were the first to move, but were defeated. Yet the Phocians ^. SaCred were now in evil case. They were attacked on three sides by the Thebans, Thessalians, and the Locrians, and were only feebly defended by Athens and Sparta. Philomelos and Onomarchos, his lieutenant, had to depend on mercenaries, who exacted a large sum for their services. The war which ensued was full of horror ; as the cause for which they fought was holy, no quarter was given on either side. At last, in 354, Philomelos was defeated in the battle of Neon, and, to escape a worse fate, threw himself down the rocks. But Onomarchus still continued the struggle. The treasures of the temple were no longer respected ; the copper and iron were forged into arms, the gold and silver were coined into money. Onomarchus carried on the struggle with vigour. He conquered the Locrians, laid waste the little state of Doris, seized the pass of Thermopylae, and projected an in- vasion of Boeotia. As he returned, he suffered a check at Chaeronea, but this did not prevent him from assisting Lycophron of Pherae, the successor of Jason and Alexander, to become master of Thessaly. The Thessalians applied for help to Philip, who was only too glad to accede to their invitation. He had previously occupied in +™y eneg Methone, the last possession of the Athenians on the Thermaic Gulf. But he found Lycophron more formid- able than he had expected, and had to retire to Macedonia for reinforcements. The lord of Pherae was desirous of becoming master of the whole of Greece. The treasures of Delphi enabled him to maintain an army of 20,000 hoplites and 500 cavalry. Chares, the Athenian, received from him a sum of sixty talents to provide a fleet, but he preferred to spend it in entertaining his fellow-citizens in the market- place. The activity of the Phocians stirred their enemies to new efforts. The Thessalians applied again to Philip, and sent him such assistance that he was in command of an army of 20,000 foot and 3000 horse. A JJJJjJ 1 battle took place on the coast, when the Mace- donians and Thessalians, covered with laurels to show that they were fighting in the service of the god, killed 6000 of their enemies and took 3000 prisoners, Onomarchus fell, 126 A GENERAL HISTORY [387b.c to and Philip emphasised the holiness of the war by crucifying his corpse and drowning all the prisoners in the sea. Philip then marched upon Pherae, took the town of Pagasae, and, after declaring himself lord and master of Thessaly, occupied the pass of Thermopylae. Demosthenes now succeeded in rousing his countrymen to a sense of their ancient glories and present responsibilities. Efforts of Nausikles occupied the southern end of the Holy Athens— Gate, with a force of 5000 foot and 400 horse, Demo- which was strengthened by the arrival of 1000 sthenes. Spartans and 2000 Achaeans. They even went so far as to ask the excommunicated Phocis to help them against the common enemy, and Phayllos, the brother of Onomarchus, joined them with a strong contingent. The gold and silver offerings of Croesus to the shrine of Delphi were used in the last extremity to hire mercenaries at an exorbitant price, and Philip was compelled to retire, retain- ing, however, possession of Thessaly, which he organised under an oligarchical government. The Euboeans now deserted Athens and joined Philip, but they were defeated by Phocion in the battle of Tamynae in the year 350. To this period belong the Philippic speeches of Demosthenes, which have added a new word to the languages of Europe, but produced little effect upon the sluggish audiences to which they were addressed. Philip now cast covetous eyes upon Olynthus, which in 349 B.C. applied to Athens for assistance, a request supported by the powerful speeches of Demosthenes. Athens estruc ion eventually sent seventeen triremes, and 2000 armed citizens under Chares, but they arrived too late. Philip used to the full the crafty advice of the Delphic priestess : " Use the silver lance in fight : nothing can withstand its might." By bribing the commander of the Olynthian cavalry, Philip obtained possession of the town, which he plundered and destroyed, selling into slavery those of the inhabitants whom he did not put to death. The rich and flourishing Chalcidice was entirely ruined. The Athenians, weary of the war, now took the step of sending an embassy to Philip, of which Demosthenes and his rival Aeschines formed a part. They were received with the most splendid hospitality, and on their return the ambassadors could not praise Philip enough, his stately presence, his charming manners, his clever conversation, and his boisterous fun at the banquets. This was 338 B.C.] HISTORY OF GREECE 127 followed by the despatch of Parnienio and Antipater to Athens, where they were received with equal honour, and after two days completed a peace known as the " Peace of Philocrates" on the basis of " uti possidetis," D f , ce ° , 1 , • p i-ii • -j i * rhuocrates. that is, or each side keeping its conquests. A defensive alliance was also concluded between Philip and Athens and their allies. While these negotiations were proceeding, Philip was in Thrace engaged in subduing the Thracian prince Kersobleptes, who was an ally of the Athenians, and the towns Athens on the coast which were garrisoned by Athens overreached before her hands were tied by the conclusion of b Y Philip, the peace. It was therefore desirable to get the peace ratified as soon as possible. Demosthenes advised that the ambassadors should go to the king by the short road of Euboea ; but in fact they travelled by Thessaly to Pella, where they awaited the king's return, and this did not take place until all his objects had been accomplished. He further contrived to get possession of Thermopylae, and, when this was done, solemnly ratified the treaty. He sent the ambassadors back with a nattering letter to Athens, and won the hearts of the Athenians by releasing the Athenian prisoners in his hands without ransom, in order that they might be able to be present at the Panathenaic festival. Philip now proceeded to the punishment of the Phocians, who were summoned for that purpose before the Amphictyonic Council. They were expelled from the Amphic- tyonic confederation as accursed, and the two Fate of the votes which they had possessed were given to Philip and his successors. All their towns, excepting Abae, twenty-two in number, were destroyed, and the inhabitants transferred to villages which might not contain more than fifty houses. Those who had fled from their country were declared outlaws, and might be killed at pleasure ; those who remained were -condemned to pay a yearly tribute of fifty talents to the shrine of Apollo, and were deprived of their arms and horses until that treasure was repaid. Philip was made protector of the Oracle. This terrible sentence was carried out with the utmost severity ; indeed, the whole country became a desert. When Demosthenes visited it a few years later, he found ruined houses and walls, no men of fighting capacity, a few women and children, every one in mourning, and a scene of indescribable misery. The Athenians were shocked beyond 128 A GENERAL HISTORY [387 e.g. to measure at this news. Trusting to Philip's promises, they had delivered the Phocians bound hand and foot to their destroyers. They felt no sympathy with the magnificent festival with which Philip celebrated in Delphi his new position. They expected to see in Attica the king of Macedon ; they received the Phocian fugitives, regardless of the curse which they incurred by doing so. They brought all their women and children from the country into the Acropolis, and concealed their treasures as they had done at the time of the Peloponnesian war. At the same time they did not dare to attack their main enemy, and Aeschines was able to say that the shouters were many, but the strikers few. A new embassy, with Aeschines at the head, assured Philip of the respect of the Athenians for the Amphic- tyonic sentence, and pledged them to enter the Amphictyonic League. Philip now celebrated the Pythian games with unusual splendour, and retired to Macedon, leaving a garrison in Phocis. The years which followed the peace of Philocrates were used by Philip to strengthen his position in Thessaly, to make an alliance in the Peloponnesus with the Argives and Messenians, and dexterously to undermine the liberties of Greece ; but when he besieged the towns of Perinthus and Byzantium, in order to close to the Athenians the entrance to the Black Sea, their eyes were opened. Influenced by the third Philippic of Demosthenes, they sent assistance to Byzantium under Phocion, which com- pelled Philip to raise the siege. In order to divert the attention of the Greeks, Philip now devoted himself to other enterprises, fighting against the Thracians, who lived on the borders of his kingdom as far as the Danube and the Black Sea, and en- deavouring to advance his frontiers as far as the Adriatic and the Illyrian coast. But the Greeks soon gave him an oppor- tunity of mixing himself up in their affairs and marching with an armed force into the heart of Greece. In 339 the Locrians were accused of committing a similar offence to that of the Phocians by cultivating some land which had belonged to the Delphian Apollo. When s dWar they WCR dd n °t P av the fine imposed upon them by the Amphicytons, Aeschines, who was then in the Macedonian service, proposed that the punishment of the Locrians should be committed to King Philip. Philip readily undertook the responsibility of this second Sacred War, which he thought would bring him nearer to his main object, the subjection of Greece. He advanced hastily through Thermo- pylae, conquered Amphissa, and occupied Elateia, which gave him 338 e.g.] HISTORY OF GREECE 129 access to Boeotia and Attica. The Athenians had been at last convinced how shamefully they had been betrayed by Philip, and by the advice of Demosthenes made an alliance with Thebes. But in 338 took place the fatal battle of Chaeronea, which put an end to the freedom of Greece. The chaeronea terms imposed upon Athens were not hard in themselves, but she had to recognise the supremacy of Mace- donia. Thebes was treated much more harshly ; she was com- pelled to renounce the Boeotian League and to admit aMacedonian garrison into the Cadmeia. Philip even succeeded in extending his power over the Peleponnesus, and wasted and plundered Sparta, who resisted him, and diminished her territory. He then summoned the whole of the Grecian states to a congress at the Isthmus of Corinth, where a common attack on the Persians was determined upon, in which Philip was to be the leader. But just as he was making his prepara- tions, and was also preparing to celebrate the p^iir, marriage of his daughter, he was murdered by one of his bodyguards at his palace at Aegae, as an act of private vengeance. CHAPTER VIII. EAELY HISTORY OF ROME, 753— c. 350 B.C. Having given an account of the Greeks up to the time when they began to take an important part in the politics of the world, it will be well to turn our attention to that The Italian other nation which, commencing with a humble origin, ended eventually by drawing the whole of the known world into itself. The peninsula of Italy falls naturally into two parts — a long and broad plain in the north, between the Alps and Apennines, and a mountain district in the south stretching far down towards Africa, terminated by Sicily, which is scarcely separated from the mainland. At the beginning of history we find the plain, with the exception of the Veneti on the Adriatic and the Ligurians in Piedmont, and the coast of Genoa, occupied by Celts who adopted the Roman speech and dress, and were properly called " Gauls with the toga." They were divided into several tribes : the Insubrians, who founded Milan ; the Cenomani, who founded Brescia and Verona ; the Boii, who founded Bologna ; and the Senones, who spread from Rimini as far as Ancona. It seems that the Gauls learnt the first elements of their higher civilisation from the Etruscans. The long chain of the Apennines, which forms the backbone of the lower portion of Italy, reaches its greatest height in the high land of the Abruzzi, the ancient home of the Samnites, and then divides into two branches, one forming the mountainous country of Calabria, the other reaching close to the point where Italy is separated by a narrow strait from Sicily. There is little doubt that the inhabitants of Greece and Italy came from the north-east, and were originally closely connected. We find the Italians consisting of many tribes with different appellations ; but the main divisions, which will ™ e alone concern us, are those of the Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins. Of the Etruscans we know little or nothing, although we possess countless specimens of their art and language, and know that they exercised a powerful 130 753-c 350 b.c.] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 131 influence over the development of Rome. It is strange that, notwithstanding the labour spent upon the investigation of them, they should still remain a mystery to us. They extended apparently from the mouth of the Po to the northern banks of the Tiber ; they formed a league of twelve independent cities, from Cortona and Arezzo in the north to Yeii in the south. They were in the beginning, like the Romans, governed by kings ; but they got rid of them before the fourth century before Christ, and entrusted themselves to the guidance of noble families for the transaction of their temporal and spiritual affairs. In earlier periods their harbours were visited by Phoenician, Car- thaginian, and Greek ships, and they had a free port at Agylla at the mouth of the Tiber. This is not the place to discuss the questions with regard to them upon which scholars are so much divided. The Sabines, who were settled in Central Italy, include the tribes of the Samnites, the „ ®. ~ ,. . 11 -»„ . 1 11 1 Sabines. Pehgni, and the Marsi, who are all known as Sabellians. Their original home was in the high mountainous country which is now the Abruzzi. They were a strong hardy people, living in villages in a patriarchal manner, and were good fighters. They practised a patriarchal system of govern- ment. We find in the writings of the Augustan age constant allusions to the virtues and simplicity which had been corrupted by the luxury of a later time. The race which lived south of the Tiber in the hills of Algidus and the banks of the Liris were known as Oscans, worshipping apparently Diana as their principal goddess. Their chief divisions, whose names frequently occur in Roman history, were the Yolscians in Terracina and Antium, the Rutulians in Ardea, the Ausonians between the Liris and the Yolturnus, the Aequi at Tivoli and Palestrina, the Hernicans at Anagni and Ferentino. The languages spoken by these tribes were very similar, and are known by the common name of Oscan ; their writing resembled the Etruscan, and ran from right to left. The Latins occupied the broad plain to the south of the Tiber. They seem to ms ' have been organised originally in a league of thirty cities, the head of which was Alba Longa on the shores of the Alban Lake. They appear to have had a king and a senate, and the habit of assembling the whole of their warriors in arms. They met every year in the wood of Ferentinum, at the holy spring, and sacrificed to their common deity, Jupiter Latiaris, whose temple stood in the Alban Mount, now called Monte Cavo. Tradition, which was believed to be true in the Augustan age, 132 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to said that Rome was governed originally by kings, the first four of whom reigned from 753 to 617 B.C., and bore the names of The early Romulus, Numa, Tullus Hostilius, and Ancus Roman Martius. It is impossible to say how much truth Legends. and how much falsehood lies in this account, but it is certain that the narrative usually given is not historically correct. The story is that Numitor of Alba Longa, a descend- ant of Aeneas and lulus, was deprived of his throne by his brother Amulius, and his daughter, Rea Silvia, was dedicated to the service of Yesta, in order that she might have no more children. However, by the fatherhood of Mars, she became the mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, ^ir whom her uncle Amulius ordered her to throw into the Tiber. They were placed in a box, which the stream cast on the shore at the foot of the Palatine, where they were suckled by a wolf until Faustulus, the king's hunts- man, found them, and had them brought up by his wife, Acca Laurentia. At last, hearing of their royal origin, they restored Nurnitor to the throne of Alba Longa, and determined to found a city on the seven hills upon which Rome is now built. Romulus wished to found the city on the Palatine, Remus, on the Aventine ; but omens decided in favour of the first-named, and the city was built there and called Rome. Romulus sur- rounded it with a wall, which Remus leapt over in scorn, upon which Romulus stabbed him, and said, " So may every one perish who dared to cross over these walls ! " The population of Rome consisted entirely of men, and they were anxious to have wives, so they invited the neighbouring Sabines, with their wives and daughters, to a feast, and ran off with the women. The Sabine king, Titus Tatius, who reigned at Cures, made war upon them, and Tarpeia, corrupted by the desire for the gold ornaments which the Sabines wore, opened the gate of the capitol to them, but was treacherously killed. Romulus at last conquered, and reigned till his death in 716. After a short interregnum, Romulus was succeeded by Numa Pompilius, whose name is obviously connected with Nomos, law, as Romulus is with Roma, Rome. He was of Numa Sabine origin and avoided war, so that during his reign of forty-three years the temple of Janus, whose door stood open in time of war, was closed. He estab- lished the religion of Rome on a firm basis, and was a great lawyer. He was assisted in these arrangements by the nymph Egeria, who met him by night in a sacred grove. When he c 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 133 died in peace, he was mourned like a father. After a short interregnum, Numa was succeeded by Tullus Hostilius, a Latin of warlike disposition. In his time a war took place between Rome and Alba Longa, which is 4- rf" marked by the story of the fight between the three Horatii and the three Ouratii, who contended with each other to avoid the slaughter of a general battle. The Romans won, but the king of Alba Longa, Mettius Fufetius, anxious to avenge the disgrace, took advantage of a struggle between Rome and the neighbouring cities of Fidenae and Veii to attack the Romans, when he thought they were going to be defeated. The Romans were again victorious, and they punished the traitor by having him torn asunder by horses, and ordered the population of Alba to remoye to Rome. From this time Rome became the head of the Latin League. Tullius is said to have been killed by lightning after a reign of thirty-two years. Ancus Martius, the last of the four kings, was re- garded as the grandson of Numa, and followed m^ in his footsteps. He included the Aventine in the city, and founded Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. He made a bridge over the Tiber, and fortified the Janiculum as a bridge-head. The next king was Tarquinius Priscus, who is said to have been a distinguished lucumo or prince of Tarquinii in Etruria. He came to Rome with his wife Tanaquil. who was skilled in magic arts. He was the son of Tarquinius Demaratus of Corinth, who, fleeing from the tyranny of Cypselus, came to Tarquinii, and married an Etrurian wife. Finding his foreign origin a hindrance to his advance- ment, he removed to Rome, and, becoming a great friend of Ancus Martius, was chosen to succeed him. He was an able and energetic king ; he made war with the Latins and the Sabines, and eventually with his own people, the Etruscans, whom he compelled to accept the Roman sovereignty. He was a great builder, and constructed the Cloaca Maxima to drain the marshy ground in the market-place, where he made a Forum, and a Comitium or meeting place for the people. He also constructed a circus between the Palatine and the Aventine, where games were held every year on the Ides of September. When he was hoping to erect a great temple on the Capitol to Jupiter Capitolinus, he was murdered by the two sons of Ancus Martius, having reigned from 617 to 579 B.C. He was succeeded by Servius Tullius (579 to 535), who has more claim than the i34 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to other kings we have mentioned to be considered as an historical personage. He was said to be the son of a slave. He entirely transformed the government and the Tum'us position of Rome. To the original hills on which Rome was said to have been built — the Palatine, the Capitoline, Quirinal, Caelian, and Aventine — he added the Esquiline and the Viminal, thus making up the legendary seven hills of Rome. He surrounded the city with a wall, portions of which still exist, and gave Rome a new con- stitution of a more democratic character, dividing the people into classes and centuries. It is said that he was murdered by the son of Tarquin. He was succeeded by Tarquinius Superbus (535 to 510), Tarquin the Proud, a violent and tyrannical nature, who abandoned the statesmanlike management of his arquimus p ref j ecessor- jj e extended the frontiers of Rome, by the conquest of Latium and the reduction of Gabii. He subdued the Hernici and some cities of the Volsci, and founded the colonies of Signia and Luceria, to confirm his conquests. He gave its final form to the Cloaca Maxima, and built the Capitoline Temple. He also acquired the Sibylline Books, which contained oracles about the future of Rome, and placed them in a subterraneous sanctuary. At last, when the tyranny of himself and his sons became insupportable, he was driven from the throne by the instrumentality of Brutus, and settled in Coere. The royal dignity was abolished — the name, indeed, of king became in Rome an object partly of detesta- tion and partly of derision — and a republican government, with two consuls at its head, was established in its place. In 529 B.C., the Roman republic, the most famous government which has ever existed in the world, began its triumphal career. Instead of discussing at length what amount of truth there is in these legends, it will be better to state at once what is the Early final conclusion of competent scholars with re- Roman gard to the early condition of Rome. It is History. probable that in early times three tribes occupied the territory of the city of Rome, each living in a separate and independent community. It is said that they bore the names of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres. The Ramnes were of Latin origin, and were probably the first comers, having perhaps seceded from Alba Longa. The name looks as if it were associated with the names of Roma, Romulus, and Remus. They were established in a fortified position on the Palatine Hill, c 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 135 surrounded by walls in the form of a square, and called Roma Quadrata, traces of which still remain. The ground on which Rome was built was called the Septimontium, consisting of seven hills or rnontes, although it possibly meant a district as well as a hill. The names of these seven montes were Palatium, Velia, Fagutal, Subura, Germalus, H .,1 even Oppius, and Gispius. The seven hills of modern poetry, as defined in the Middle Ages, were Palatine, Capitol, Aventine, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, and Caelian, although several of these bore the name of Collis and not of Mons. The Tities were of Sabine origin, and were settled in the Collis Quirinalis, the Luceres were probably the last comers, and were established on the Mons Caelius. Livy says that their origin was uncertain, and there are two modern theories about them, one that they were of Etruscan origin, the other that they are Latins who came to Rome under Tullius Hostilius after the destruction of Alba Longa. There was always a jealousy between the Montani and the Oollini, the Mount men and the Hill men, but eventually the three communities came together to form a single state, with the Capitoline as the seat of the common sanctuary, under the name of Civitas Roma. At a later period, Servius Tullius surrounded the community over which he ruled with a wall, which included, besides the old Septimontium, the Quirinal, Viminal, Caelian, Wall of Aventine, and Capitoline, and many fragments of Servius which now exist. The space thus included is Tullius. the most famous in history, as it held the Forum, which lies between the Palatine and the Capitol, the Comitium, the Arx or citadel overlooking the forum, on the site now occu- pied by the church of Ara Coeli, and the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at the other end. A new wall necessitated a new pomoerium — that is the space immediately outside the walls, which separated the consecrated city, the urbs or templum, from the territory of Rome, the Ager Romanus. It was a rule that no army should come within the walls of Rome ; if the people had to assemble in arms, they met in the Campus Martius, the flat ground lying between the Tiber and the Capitol, on which a large portion of modern Rome is now built. The official name of the Roman citizens was quirites, which has received many explanations, but is probably con- nected with a Sabine word, curis or quiris, signi- Q uirites - fying a lance or a spear — quirites, therefore, meaning the men of the spear. In later times it signified citizens instead of 136 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to soldiers, Caesar once quelling a mutiny by addressing his soldiers as quirites. The quirites were again divided into two classes, patricii, citizens with full rights, and citizens with Patricians inferior rights called clientes and plebs. The and patricii comprised those who were by birth Plebeians. members of the three original tribes. The word signifies those who have fathers, that is, those who derive their descent from fathers in distinction from those who, like the plebs, derived their descent from mothers. The clientes were persons residing at Rome who had to be represented in all matters which had to do with the duties of citizenship by a patronus, who must be a patrician. The plebs differed from the clientes in the fact that a plebeian had no patronus. It is not pre- cisely known how they came into existence. The clientes gradually disappeared, and the plebs became more and more important. Each of the fundamental divisions of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres was divided into ten curiae. There were, therefore, thirty curiae in the state. The curiae were com- Gentes an posed of a number of gentes, which were originally local, but afterwards ceased to be so. The gens was a most important institution, and exercised a great influence over Roman life. If there were no other heirs, the members of the gens succeeded to the estate, and each gens was under the pro- tection of an especial divinity ; indeed, the fact that they attended the family sacrifices was a sign that men belonged to a gens. The members of the gens were buried in a common cemetery. A number of changes which took place in the times of the kings bear the name of Servius Tullius. The city was divided into four regions, and each of the four tribes corresponding to these comprised all citizens of full age who lived in one region. The tribe became the administrative unit for taxation and Taxation military service. Servius also made the taxation and Military and the military service imposed upon the citizen Service. depend upon his taxable property, which was assessed every five years. Military service was made compul- sory upon all citizens, excepting the very poorest. They were divided according to their wealth into five classes, each of which furnished to the army a fixed number of centuries or companies. They had to arm themselves and to feed themselves in the field, and those who were too poor to do this were employed as military artisans or as musicians. The King was elected for life and was irresponsible. He was c. 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME i37 chosen by the Comitia, accepted by the Senate, consecrated by an augur, and he received the supreme authority of the imperium by the vote of the people. The imperium remained throughout Roman history the reservoir from which all authority flowed : it comprised all military and judicial power, including the power of life and death. The king was treated with great honour, but he was a constitutional and not an absolute monarch, as his power was limited by the well defined authority of the paterfamilias, the gens, and the senate, by the power of the people exercised in the comitium, and above all by the conventions of government as expressed by what was called the Mos Majorum, or traditional custom. The principal officers of the king were the Tribunus Celerum, who commanded the cavalry, and the Praefectus Urbi, who governed Rome in the king's absence. The Senate was at this time nominated by the king from among the heads of the patrician families. It consisted at first of a hundred members, but was afterwards raised to three hundred. It acted as a royal council, especially in matters where tradition was concerned, and it had the right of ratifying or annulling the votes of the people. The Senate was never, strictly speaking, a legislative body ; it merely gave advice expressed in decrees ; but these decrees often had the force of law. The only representa- tive assembly was the Comitia Ouriata, in which all citizens voted — patricians, clients, and plebeians, curiata Their votes were always given by curies, each curia consisting of a number of gentes. They decided on peace and war, and conferred citizenship. They voted separately in an order determined by lot, and so when sixteen curies had voted there was no reason to call upon the rest. This assembly existed after the abolition of royalty, but it had then no political power. Under the republic, the social unit of the state was the Family, at the head of which stood the paterfamilias, the father of the family. He had almost unlimited authority ; he was the head of the family religion, and the sole owner of the family property, including slaves. He had over the members of his family the power of life and death. These powers were afterwards modified by law and custom. One of the first acts of the new republic was to pass a law by which no citizen could be killed or scourged by a magistrate without having the power of appealing to the people. This was the Habeas Corpus Act of Rome. 138 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to By the organisation ascribed to Sevvius Tullius, the citizens were divided into five classes according to their wealth. These Classes classes were further divided into 188 centuries for and military and political purposes. Of these centuries Centuries, the first eighteen consisted of those persons who had the money and the permission to provide themselves with a horse and to serve on horseback, called in Latin Equites, which . is generally translated by the name of Knights. q * The first class was further divided into eighty centuries, the second, third, and fourth classes into twenty each, and the fifth class into thirty. There was also a division between elder and younger, the line being drawn on the age of forty-seven. Other citizens who did not belong to a class were not altogether excluded from the centuries or from the right of voting. There were the four centuries of the workers in wood, the workers in brass, the military bands, and the unarmed substitutes. The citizens who did not belong to a class, or to one of the four last mentioned centuries, were collected into a single century and «.,".. called proletarii, a name which seems to imply Proletarii . that their only function was that of adding to the population of the country, and which is the origin of the word proletariate with which we are familiar. They were also called Capite censi, or counted by heads. They took no part in military service, but they had a vote, and thus the whole number of the centuries was 193. It is obvious that, if the equites and the first class voted together, the number of 98 centuries would form more than a majority of the whole, so that they could carry anything they pleased. Also the centuries of the younger and the older had equal votes ; whereas, according to modern statis- tics, the younger would have been twice as numerous. Thus we see that the Servian constitution, although it gave every one a vote, also gave great preponderance to wealth and age. We can see this by the effect of the more democratic measures carried about 241 B.C., when the number of the local tribes Constitu- was raised to thirty-five, and the value of the tional copper as was reduced. The local tribe now became changes. the basis of the division into centuries, five senior and five junior. The eighteen centuries of the horsemen re- mained, but each of the other classes had seventy centuries, the five subordinate centuries remaining as before. This made a complete number of 373 centuries, of which the absolute majority was 187. Under this new arrangement, the equites and the first class together had only 88 votes out of 373, instead of 88 c 350B.C] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 139 out of 198, so that the privilege of wealth was greatly reduced, but that of age preserved. The constitutional history of Rome is to a great extent the story of a struggle of the plebeians with the patricians, first for an equal, then for a predominant share in the government of the state. When the republic first came into existence, all magistracies belonged exclusively to the patricians, but when the plebs seceded to the Aventine in 494 B.C., * and demanded a share in the administration, two ijff^ifihg ° magistracies were created which were exclusively plebeian. These were the Tribuneship, which afterwards became the most important office in the state, and the Plebeian Aedile- ship, which gave the plebeians a share in the government of the city. At this time the most powerful office in Rome was the Consulate, and for this the plebeians naturally desired to be eligible, and fifty years after the secession a compromise was effected by which they could be elected to an office called a Military Tribunate with consular power. It was not till 367 that a law was passed, in the consulate of Licinius, that not only might plebeians be admitted to the . e ^ C1 „ Consulship, but one of the consuls must always be a plebeian, so that there might be two plebeian consuls, but there could only be one patrician. In the year 421, plebeians were admitted to. the Quaestorship, but no plebeian quaestor was elected till the year 409. After the passing of the Licinian Law, the opposition of the patricians rapidly disappeared, and plebeians were made eligible to the Curule Aedileship in 364, to the Dictatorship in 356, to the Censorship in 351, and in 339 a law provided that one of the Censors must be a plebeian. But the conservatism of Rome was such that two plebeian censors were not elected until more than two hundred years after it had become legally possible. The last conquest of the plebeians was admission to the Praetorship — indeed, we find that the privilege most jealously guarded by all classes is that of being judged by the order to which they belong, and no plebeian might be Praetor till the year 337. We thus see that, at the beginning of the republic, the patricians formed an aristocracy of birth, which had the exclusive possession of complete civic rights. Clients and plebeians could not intermarry with patricians, they could not be admitted to the Senate, they could not be magistrates or priests. It required a bitter struggle of more than two hundred years to place these two orders in a position of political equality. The horsemen, who formed a lower aristo- 140 A GENERAL HISTORY L753 b.c. to cracy of wealth, holding a position something like that of baronets with reference to peers, were altered by the title being given to wealthy men of no particular extraction, especially to the publicans, the wealthy farmers of the public revenue. Rome also contained a large number of foreigners and slaves, who were, of course, not citizens. The slaves were very numerous — at a later period more than double the number of citizens. They were under the absolute power of their masters. We will now give an account of the origin and importance of the various Roman magistrates whom we have already men- tioned. These were, in the chronological order of e agis- their institution, consuls, quaestors, tribunes and aediles of the plebs, censors, praetors, and curule aediles. There were also magistrates only occasionally appointed, such as the dictator and the master of the horse. Magistrates were invested with certain powers and attributes, the more important of which were majestas and imperium. Majestas, which is imperfectly translated by Majesty, first belonged to the kings, then passed to the people, and was conferred by the people upon its magistrates. Any one who did not respect their majesty was guilty of a crime and must be punished. The crime of laesa majestas, or Use majeste, as it was called in the Middle Ages, took a large extension in the Roman empire, and is now of importance in Germany. In the presence of a magistrate the people rose from their seats, uncovered their heads, got out of his way in the streets, and, if they were on horseback, dismounted from their horses. Similar respect was shown by magistrates of lower rank to those of higher rank than themselves. The word imperium, which we have already mentioned, requires careful consideration. Imioer'um ^ n ^ e fi rs ^ place it implies high military command. Magistrates invested with this power commanded in chief the armies entrusted to them by the Senate, conducted war, disposed of budgets, concluded truces with the enemy, and could coin money in their own name outside Rome. It also gave certain judicial powers — at one time indeed, the power of life and death, which was afterwards confined to the dictator. The imperium also gave the right of summoning or arresting a fellow-citizen, but his home always remained inviolable. The different magistrates possessed different degrees of imperium, the dictator having the highest, the consul less, and the praetor still less. The extent of their imperium was shown by the number of lictors who went before them, carrying axes tied up in c. 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 141 bundle of rods. The dictator had twenty-four, the consul twelve, and the praetor six. The competence of a magistrate was known as his potestas ; indeed, at a later period, the word potestas meant a magistrate in Latin, and the title passed to the podesta, the supreme judicial officer in the cities of medieval Italy. The first magistrates in Rome were, of course, the Consuls, the word probably meaning colleagues. There were two of them, possessing equal power. One of the most remarkable characteristics of the Roman govern- „ e . ment was the existence of a number of colleges of magistrates, all of whom had equal power and were in- dependent of each other. This would certainly have produced frequent deadlocks if it had not been for the strong political sense of the Roman people ; indeed it sometimes did, as when Bibulus said that he intended to observe the heavens during the whole period of his colleague Caesar's consulship ; but, as a rule, it worked extremely well. When first created, the consuls were invested with the whole of the royal authority, excepting that which pertained to the kings as priests, which was mainly given to the Pontifex Maximus. They had the imperiwm regium and the potestas regia, the only difference being that the imperium belonged equally to both the consuls and that it only lasted for a year. But by the creation of other offices, and by the growing power of the Senate and the plebeian assemblies, it was gradually circumscribed, though it always remained very considerable. At times they were the administrative heads of the state, presiding over the Comitia and the Senate. They watched over the public security, and were the natural representatives of the people ; they con- trolled the enrolment of the army, and nominated the princi- pal officers. When out of Rome and beyond the pomoerium, each consul had the right to command a consular army, con- sisting of two legions, and of as many allies, which command was assigned to him by the Senate. As a rule, the two consuls remained at Rome for the first months after their election, and then went simultaneously to their provinces. When the plebeians were admitted to the Consulship in 367, the patricians asked for and obtained a compensation for the sacrifice which they were making ; therefore the power of civil jurisdiction was taken away from p r£ f e to s the consuls and given to a new patrician magistrate called a Praetor, the patricians naturally objecting to being tried by any one but their peers. However, thirty years later, 142 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to the plebeians were admitted to the praetorship. From 242 B.C., in consequence of the influx of foreigners to Rome, two Praetors were elected annually, one being called the Praetor Urbanus, and the other the Praetor Peregrinus. This number was eventually increased to eight. The praetor, who was regarded as the colleague of the consuls, could act as their deputy, during their absence from Rome, but his special function was to try civil suits between citizens. The ancient civil law of Rome, partly codified in the XII. Tables, was seldom altered by direct legislation, so that it was left to the praetor to supply its deficiences, in the same way as the Common Law of England has been modified by the decisions of the Court of Chancery. The Praetor Peregrinus had the special duty of deciding suits in which foreigners were in- volved, and his decisions had therefore a greater extension and a greater novelty than those of his colleague the Praetor Urbanus. The Censors were established in the year 443 as a patrician magistracy, to undertake certain duties which had up to this , „ time been performed by the consuls. As a rule the censors were chosen from people of consular rank. They were elected, in principle, for five years, but some years after their creation it was decreed that the office should only last for a year and a half, leaving an interval between the abdication of each censor and the election of a successor, which we may imagine as a welcome relief to the Roman people. Their power gradually grew in import- ance. It at first only concerned the census of the population, but it eventually developed into a general right of superinten- dence over the morals of the citizens, a duty which became more important when they were entrusted with the formation of the Senate. The censors thus became the guardians of the material and moral basis, the mos ma jorum, the traditional morality on which the greatness of the Roman republic was founded. They were spoken of as the most holy magistrates, and they were distinguished by wearing a toga entirely of purple. The great census took place in the Campus Martius. Every father of a family had to appear before the censors and to declare, to the best of his belief, the names of himself and his family, his age, and his fortune. This information was written down on a roll, and the taxation was based upon it. After this a review was held in the town of all the equites possessing a horse provided at the public expense. Each horse- c. 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 143 man of all the eighteen centuries led his horse past the censors. If everything was satisfactory he was allowed to pass on, but if he was too old or too fat, or not respectable, he was ordered to sell his horse, and he ceased to be an eques. Careful lists were then prepared of all the citizens, which were kept in the archives of the censors, authentic copies being deposited in the librarium and in the Capitol. The censors in the capa- city of inquisitors, or of inquirers into the private life and moral conduct of the citizens, might condemn and punish cowardice, perjury, luxury, celibacy without due cause, criminal conduct, bad administration of property, lax education of children, cruelty towards slaves. As a punishment they might remove a man from the Senate, from the Equites, or from his tribe, or they might give him a bad mark, a nota censoria, as it was called, which was in the nature of a moral rebuke. The census was closed by a great act of national purification in the Campus Marthas, in the presence of the newly consti- tuted army. At this there was a solemn sacrifice of pigs, sheep, and bulls — a stiovetaurilia as it was called — and the whole ceremony bore the name of Lustratio, and the five years' taking of office of the censors was called a lustrum. By these ceremonies the censors were said condere lustrum — to close the lustrum. Can we wonder at the supremacy gained by a people which conducted its affairs with such carefulness and dignity ! The Tribunate of the Plebs, which now claims our attention, was one of the most remarkable magistracies which ever existed in any government. The Tribunes, whose crea- tion has already been mentioned, were originally i, :? two, but they gradually increased in number, and, after the year 457, less than forty years after their first establishment, they were always ten. Their primitive object was to assist the plebeians against a too forcible exercise of the consular authority, and they did this by intercession and by veto. Indeed, they introduced the latter word into political language. They had no actual competence in either administrative, judicial, or military affairs, but they had a certain right of coercion. Their persons were inviolable, and they were irresponsible for their actions. They had the right and the duty of protecting any plebeian who asked for their assistance, and for this pur- pose their doors were always open, and they could not absent themselves from Rome for more than a single day. Their assistance might be claimed by the patricians as well as by the plebeians. Their Veto was applicable to all official acts, as 144 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to well as to decisions of the consuls and of the Senate. They could even arrest magistrates and compel them to answer ques- tions in the forum. It was an opposition crystal- e e lised into an office, and unless the Romans had been gifted with a genius for compromise it would have made all government impossible. It is indeed difficult to see how the Roman government can have been carried on with the double difficulty of the colleges of officers and the Tribunate of the plebs. There is no record of a similar office having existed elsewhere, and it remains an enigma in political science. The Aediles were at first nominated by the tribunes, but after 471 they were elected by the Concilia Plebis. Their duties were to look after the buildings of the city, the supply of corn, and the solemn games. The duty of the Quaestors was to guard the public treasury, and their number gradually increased from two to twenty. Every military commander and governor of a province was attended by a quaestor, who had charge of the commissariat and of the military chest. The office was generally held by young men, and was, indeed, the first to which a candidate for public life aspired. Having described the important parts of the Roman republic, it remains to narrate how the citizens conducted their affairs in the public meetings which are necessary parts M u }? of a free government. The meetings of citizens in Rome for public purposes bear three names — Concilium, Contio, and Comitia. A meeting of any kind which was not contio or comitia was called concilium ; a meeting duly summoned at which there was only discussion but no voting was called contio ; a meeting at which there was voting but no discussion was called comitia. Of the comitia, there were three kinds, the Curiata, the Centuriata, and the Tributa ; there were also the Concilia Plebis, which gradually assumed an increasingly great importance. The Curiata had been the Comitia mos t important meeting under the kings, but under the republic it gradually fell into desuetude, and was only held for the purpose of passing the lex de imperio. In this case it consisted of thirty lictors and three augurs. The Centuriata had now become the leading Comitia assembly, and it could only be summoned by some one who possessed the imperium. It re- presented the people in arms, just as in the national meetings, held once a year in some of the Swiss cantons, the citizens who come together have an umbrella in one hand and a rusty old c. 350 B.c.l EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 145 sword in the other. It was held in the Campus Martius out- side the city walls, as no armed force might meet within the city. At the time of meeting a red flag was hoisted on the Janiculum on the other side of the Tiber, which was also occupied by a military post. The moment the flag was with- drawn the meeting stopped, a survival of the time when the right bank of the river was enemies' territory, and the with- drawal of the flag meant a possible invasion of the Etruscans. The Oomitia Tributa was a meeting of the whole T]ae c om iti a people assembled in tribes. The Concilia Plebis Tributa and were meetings of the plebs alone, summoned and Concilia presided over by their own magistrates. They P lebis - passed resolutions, called plebiscite or plebiscites, which were, in the first instance, binding on the plebs only. The Comitia could only meet on days which were legal for this purpose. The night before they met, the auspices had to be consulted. The assembly came together at daybreak, and the meeting could not be continued after sunset. In the Comitia Curiata and Tributa the curies and tribes voted simultaneously, but in the Centuriata a y e ^ ods of different method was adopted. Under the old arrangement, the centuries of the knights were called upon first and then the centuries of the first class, and if they agreed there was no need to call on any more, as they formed a majority by themselves. But after the reforms of 241, of which we have given an account, one century of the first class was chosen to vote first by lot, and this was called the centuria pre- rogativa, the prerogative century ; then followed the sixty -nine remaining centuries of the first class, the twelve centuries of the equites, and the centuries of the second class, and, as soon as a majority had been obtained, the voting ceased. As the majority required was 187, it was necessary to go clown as low as the third class. It is a remarkable fact that all the Comitia might be interrupted in a manner which would seem to make it impossible to carry on business at all. Indeed, ]y[ eans f as. has been before remarked, unless the Romans obstructing had been gifted with an unusual share of political Business, capacity, the government must have come to a stop. A magis- trate might not hold the meeting on the day named, or might break it off at any moment. It might be interrupted by a case of epilepsy, a diversion easily feigned by a little soap and water, or a sudden storm of thunder and lightning, or by an augur's declaring that the omens were unfavourable, or by a 146 A GENERAL HISTORY [753 b.c. to magistrate's announcing that he intended to watch the sky, in which case nothing could he done until he had finished. Also if a magistrate said that he was going to hold a meeting, the first meeting must be broken up, as it was impossible to hold two meetings at the same time. A tribune of the plebs might also break up a meeting at any time. Just as the power of the Comitia Curiata passed to the assembly of the centuries, so that of the centuries passed to that of the tribunes, but the more important magistrates were elected at the Comitia Oenturiata, the lesser at the Tributa, while the plebeian magistrates were chosen at the Concilia Plebis. The Centuriata was by far the predominant power of the state till the passing of the Lex Hortensia in 286 B.C., after which its influence declined. The Roman Senate is the most important political body which has ever existed in the world, not excepting the British Parliament. The Senate had originally been e e ' instituted by the kings, but when they were expelled his duty passed to the consuls, or to the dictator when there was one. The Senate was at first exclusively patrician, and no plebeian senator is mentioned till P. Licinius Calvus, who was consular tribune in the year 400 and was the first plebeian who held a consular office. In the early part of the fourth century the choice of the Senators was transferred from the consuls to the censors. Thus the election became quinquennial instead of annual. The censors were bound by oath to choose the most worthy citizens to fill up the vacancies, for a senator was elected for life. They first took all persons who had been elected to offices, down to the Quaestor- ship, since the last election, and these were generally sufficient to fill up the original numbers. As the magistracies were succes- sively opened to the plebeians, the Senate gradually assumed a plebeian character, and the censors had little to do beside ratifying the popular vote. They therefore took the list, from which they removed all who had died or had been degraded since the last election, and any whom they might consider.as unworthy of the distinction, adding the names of those who, by virtue of their office, had been allowed to be present at the Senate since the last election without being actual senators. They then declared the number of vacancies and filled them up, it being necessary that both censors should concur in any election or omission. This being done, the official list of the Senate, the Album Senatorium as it was called, was solemnly read from the c. 350 b.c] EARLY HISTORY OF ROME 147 rostra and exhibited for public inspection, the reasons for the exclusion of any one being stated. The person whose name stood at the head of the list was called Princeps Senatus, a purely honorary distinction, although it is probably the origin of our title prince. The number of the Senate was 300 until Sulla raised it to 600. The senators wore a gold ring, a tunic with a broad purple stripe, and a peculiarly constructed shoe, so that to change shoes was equivalent to becoming a senator. They had special seats reserved for them in the theatre and in the games. The Senate usually met in the Curia Hostilia in the Forum, but occasionally in different temples ; the building which served for its meetings at the close of the republic still exists as a church under the name of Sant' Adriano, one of the most interesting buildings in the world. The bronze gates which belonged to it are now the portals of St. John Lateran. To carry a motion, a certain number must be present, and therefore a count out was possible. A motion made in the Senate was called a relatio or a reference, and a vote passed was not a law but a Senatus consultum, that is, not an order, but a piece of advice. Indeed, the Senate was not a legislative but an advising body. It was a consultative body which assisted the executive in the administration of the government, and to tlle^enate it all executive officers were bound by traditional custom to submit all important measures, administrative or political, before their execution. Thus the influence of the Senate grew as the number of the magistrates increased. Even the highest magistrates shrank from engaging in a conflict with the Senate, composed, as it was of ex-magistrates, the elite of the citizens, who preserved their dignity for life. Therefore any advice it gave was certain to be accepted, and this is the secret of the immense power which the Senate exercised in the three last centuries of the republic, not only over general policy but over the administrative departments. The Senate had, among other things, the control of foreign affairs. The right of declaring war or making peace rested with the people ; but the Senate was charged with the preliminary negotiations. Foreign ^s & ^ U embassies were introduced to the Senate, and the Senate sent embassies to foreign countries ; it also assigned the provinces to the several governors, regulated the budgets, and declared the honours they were to receive. Thus while, tech- nically, the Senate only gave advice, and did not pass actual 148 A GENERAL HISTORY [753-c. 350 e.g. laws, the persons of whom it was composed, and the remarkable complex of powers which was included in its grasp, and a few of which we have mentioned, made it, as I have said, the most distinguished and important political body which has ever existed in the world. Two important functions of the Senate we have not mentioned. One was the power, in an extreme crisis of the state, of passing a vote that the consuls should take care that no Law tlal harm snould befa11 the republic. This established a state of martial law, during which time all laws were suspended, and naturally the use of it and the duration of it were jealously watched. The other was the creation of a dictatorship, an extraordinary office, the holder The Die- Q £ wn j cn exercised absolute and almost royal power. It was first established about 500 B.C., shortly after the expulsion of the kings, and was found a very useful expedient to have recourse to in a constitution where the ordinary magistrates were subjected to such a number of checks. The official name of the dictator was Master of the People, and the manner of his appointment was peculiar. When the Senate had declared its opinion that a dictator ought to be appointed, the consul got up in the middle of the night, and, in absolute silence, nominated a dictator. After his appointment, he re- ceived the imperium by the vote of the curies. His importance was the same as that of the consul, but he had no colleagues to interfere with him, and he was more independent of the senate. His imperium was superior to that of the consul : there was no appeal against his actions, and he was irresponsible. He was supported by twenty-four lictors, carrying the rods with the axes. During the existence of a dictator, the ordinary magistrates did not abdicate, but they lost their independence of action, as they could only act with the dictator's consent. The tribunes preserved their veto, but could only use it if the dictator violated the law, as he was still bound by law ; but they retained their other powers, and the dictator was bound to respect their inviolability of person. Every dictator, after his appointment, nominated a master of the horse, who had the importance of a consul, but not the imperium. He abdicated simultaneously with the dictator. The last dictator of the original kind was appointed in 216 B.C. The dictator- ships of Sulla and Caesar were of a widely different character. CHAPTER IX. GROWTH OE THE POWER OF ROME, 390-201 B.C. The first important step in the subjugation of Italy by the Romans was the conquest of Yeii, a city about twelve miles from Rome, surrounded by walls seven miles in The circumference, pierced by nine gates. The siege Conquest is said to have lasted for ten years, like that of of Veii - Troy, and, for the first time in the existence of the city, a Roman army remained in the field year after year, till its object was accomplished. Veii surrendered in 346 B.C. to the energy of Marcus Furius Oamillus, who thus, as Mommsen says, opened to his countrymen the brilliant and perilous career of foreign conquest. The conquest of Veii gave Rome the possession of the teiritory as far as the Ciminian forest. The fateful year 390 B.C. witnessed the invasion of the Gauls, the defeat of the Roman army at the Allia, the capture and the sack of Rome, and the submission of its inhabitants. This victory, however, produced no lasting effect. It deeply im- pressed the imagination of the Romans as the most terrible crisis of their youth, but it left them stronger for action than before. Within twenty years of the destruction of the city, the colonies of Sutrium and Nepete were founded. A Roman colony was merely a military settlement, a handful of soldiers placed with their wives and children, in the midst of a hostile population, to guard the interests of the majesty of Rome. Caere, twenty- seven miles from Rome, was annexed twenty years later, but its inhabitants did not obtain full civic rights for the next fifty years. During the next half century, Rome turned her attention principally to the south. The two most dangerous enemies of Rome, beyond the plain of Latium, were the The Aequi Aequi, who lived in the mountains behind Tivoli, and the and the Volsci, who were settled in the hill beyond Yolsci. Monte Gavo. Of these the Aequi were the weaker. In order to plant a wedge between these two adversaries, the Romans 149 150 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.c. to built the formidable fortresses of Cora, Norba, and Signia. Cora, on its mountain crag, still shows the massive Roman walls of this period, built upon the remains of the former circumvalla- tions. The whole is crowned by a delicate temple dedicated to Hercules, which dates from the time of Sulla. At Norba, now called Norma, the Cyclopean walls of the Volscians, with their four gates, form a more conspicuous object than the later Roman fortifications. Segni has a huge gate which recalls the wonders of Stonehenge, and bears the curious modern name of the Gate of the Saracens. The Volsci were finally defeated by M. Furius Camillus, the conqueror of Veii, and the low country gradually submitted as far as Terracina. Colonies were estab- lished to keep the newly acquired districts in order, and the country was incorporated with Rome. Rome had now nothing more to dread from the enemies which a hundred years before imperilled her very existence. The Latins Within the limits of the lowland country which and the extended from the Ciminian forest to the shores Hernicans. f Terracina, she was by far the strongest power. She had achieved this position with the assistance of her ancient allies, the Latins and the Hernicans, and she was now to turn her arms against these allies themselves. Disputes arose in the Latin League which naturally led to war. The most important Latin fortresses, which crown the spurs of the Apennines and are visible from Rome, fell one by one into the power of the warrior city. The Hernicans, defended by their mountain strongholds, submitted after a conflict of four years, and Rome was now the leader, almost indeed the mistress, of these subject communities. This marks the close of the first stage of the union of Italy under the supremacy of Rome. In the year 343 B.C. Rome ^ e authority of Rome was obeyed from the supreme in Monte Cimino in the north to the Circeian Central promontory of Monte Circello in the far south, Jtaly. which overlooks the Bay of Naples. She was protected by a circle of dependent allies and colonies, reaching from Sutri in Etruria to Sora on the upper Liris. Rome had become, to a great extent, a world power. The news of her capture by the Gauls had reached even Athens, and in 343 she made a commercial treaty with the Cartha- ginians, by which they bound themselves to attack no Latin town which was subject to her, but if any should have re- nounced their allegiance they might be plundered and sacked 201 b.c.] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 151 by the Punic invaders, and then handed back to the mistress whose majesty they had contemned. The Romans now found themselves face to face with the Samnites, and a struggle for the mastery of Italy ensued between these two nations, which lasted for nearly a hundred and fifty years. The Samnites gamnites in their earlier history had to contend both with tne Etruscans and with the Greeks, and they conquered by sei2ing Oumae from the one and Capua from the other. Thus it came about that there were two sections of the Samnite race, one dwelling in the hills, and preserving the hardy habits of their forefathers, the other corrupted by the Greek demoralisation of the plains. Capua, which has become a proverb for luxurious sloth, was the chief town of this later division. The Capuans adopted Greek art, Greek writing, and Greek extravagance. The Samnite stock, thus divided by a deep chasm of conflicting principle and practice, fell an easy prey to the compact assault of Rome. In the first Samnite war the Romans were assisted by the Samnites of the plains against the Samnites of the hills. The Romans were victorious, but a terrible revolt followed which threatened the very existence of the ruling city. All the Latin towns, even Tusculum, which was a portion of Rome itself, threw off the Roman yoke. From the Campagna and the Latin hills, the flame of rebellion spread to Antium and Terracina, and to the most remote allies of the Romans, the cities of the Campanian plains. The position of Rome was critical ; the legions which had crossed the Liris were cut off from home, and only a decisive victory could save them. This was gained at a place called Trifanum, somewhere near the mouth of the Liris, in 340 B.C., when the Consul Titus Manlius Torquatus entirely crushed the united Latins and Campanians. Two years more sufficed to bring the whole country into complete subjection. The result of the crushing of this rebellion was to change entirely the nature of the position of Rome towards the Latin confederacy. The historic Latin League End of the was abolished, and its memory was only preserved Latin by the yearly Latin festival upon the Alban League. Mount. Most of the common land of the league became Roman territory ; Antium and Terracina, the two most im- portant of the Volscian coast towns, were settled as colonies, and the orators' platform in the Forum, which has perpetuated 152 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.c. to to our own time the name of rostra, derived its title from its being decorated with the beaks of the galleys which were taken in the port of Antium and were found to be unservice- able. The Latin communities were forbidden to intermarry or to hold commercial relations with each other. They were not allowed to hold federal councils or to combine together in any way. The only tie which existed between them was a common connection with Rome, and this was based upon separate treaties between the capital and each individual state. The submission of Campania was secured by Campania. -, , L m, .• e even harsher measures. Ihe creation . of new tribes implied incorporation with Rome, and colonies vere established at Oalvi in the centre of the Campanian plain, and at Ceprano, to secure the passage of the Liris. The settlement of the lowlands was now complete. The second Samnite war, as it is called, lasted for twenty-two years. After a six years' struggle, which was, on the whole, The Second unfavourable to the Samnites, the Romans suf- Samnite fered a disaster the memory of which was never War — The forgotten. Their forces, under the command of Caudine the two consuls, were encamped in the plain of Naples between Caserta and Maddaloni. Hear- ing that the important town of Luceria was invested by the Samnites, they broke up and marched to its relief. Their route led through the country of the enemy by a road which was afterwards the post-road to Beneventum. Between the villages of Arpaja and Montesarcbio there lies a flat meadow, enclosed by steep wooded hills and shut in at either end by narrow defiles. The Romans entered the valley without sus- picion, but found that the extremity of it was blocked by broken trees. They endeavoured to retreat, but their march was cut off in that direction also. The hills were occupied by some of the enemy. They had fallen into a trap : nothing was left to them but to capitulate. The best course for the Samnites would have been to take the whole beaten army prisoners, but Pontius, their general, thought that this was an opportunity of making an honourable peace. He proposed that Rome should rase certain fortresses and renew her ancient alliance with Samnium. The Roman generals agreed to the terms ; they and their principal officers swore solemnly that they would observe them ; and six hundred Roman equites were left with the Samnites as hostages. The rest of the army were subjected to the disgrace of laying down their arms and 201 b.c.] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 153 passing under the yoke. Such was the great calamity of the Caudine Forks. As might have been expected, the Roman Senate rejected the terms, and prepared to avenge the disaster and the dis- grace. Within two years, the Consul Papirius Cursor re- covered Luceria, which had been captured by the Samnites, liberated the hostages who had been shut up in the city, and subjected the garrison to the same ignominious fate which his countrymen had before suffered. The war continued for many years longer, but the Romans pursued their undeviating pur- pose of becoming the masters of Italy with stubborn firmness and relentless energy. Luceria, the key of Apulia, received a permanent garrison of half a legion : the island of Ponza was occupied to secure the possession of the Campanian waters, the Romans not being indifferent to the power of the sea. The censor, Appius Claudius, constructed a great military road from Rome to Capua, known to all the civilised world as the Appian Way — the Queen of Roads — the mother, as it were, of all the great roads which in ancient w e PP ian and modern times have bound countries together in the bands of civilisation, and the grandmother of our rail- roads. The straight unflinching line, passing to its goal through plain and mountain, piercing the crag and filling up the marsh — hard as a road of adamant, yet open to the use of all the world — stern with the strength of simplicity, yet adorned in its course with the memorials of the great ones who had passed away — is a fitting emblem of that career of Rome which has been already described. Due north of Naples, just under the precipice of the Matese, with its eternal snows, lies the town of Bojano, which recalls the name of Bovianum, the capital of the Samnites at this period. In 307 it was attacked by the consular armies, one marching along the coast of the Adriatic, the other through the mountain passes from Cam- pania. A decisive victory was gained, the Samnite general was made prisoner, and the city was taken by storm. This put an end to the war, and the ancient treaty of alliance between the Romans and the Samnites was once more renewed. The third and last Samnite war broke out in the year 298 B.C., and lasted for eight years. It was a desperate attempt of the Samnites to unite with the enemies of Rome, the Third Etruscans and the Kelts, and to make a dash for Samnite freedom. They got together three armies, one for War. the invasion of Campania one for the defence of their own 154 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.c. to territory, and the third and largest for the support of their allies, the Etruscans. The decisive battle was fought at Sen- tinum, a place in the Umbrian hills, not far from Sasso Ferrato, in the year 295 B.C. The Etruscan a tie o contingent had been weakened by an incursion of the Romans into their territory, but the Keltic allies stood firm. On the right wing, Quintus Fabius, with two legions, fought against the Samnite allies, and the battle was long and undecided. On the left the Roman cavalry were thrown into confusion by the Gallic war chariots, and the Roman legions began to give way. Then the consul, Publius Decius Mus, called to his side Marcus Livius, the priest, and bade him devote to the infernal gods the head of the Roman general and the army of the enemy. Like Arnold von Winkel- ried at the battle of Sempach, he plunged into the mass of the Gauls, and was slain. The soldiers rallied, the reserves came up, the Campanian cavalry charged, the Gauls fled, the Samnites yielded. ISTine thousand men were killed, but the victory was won. The struggle was prolonged for five years, but the Samnites were at last compelled to submit. Their conquest was marked by the foundation of the strong colony of Venusia, placed at the point where the territories of Samnium, Lucania, and Apulia join, on the high road to Tarentum. The Appian Way was continued from Capua to this colony, eventually to reach Brundusium. Rome was no longer merely the first, but the ruling power in the peninsula. The next enemy with whom Rome had to contend was of a very different character. King Pyrrhus of Epirus, a man now The War about forty years of age, was a brilliant general, with His father was a kinsman, and had been a vassal Pyrrhus. f Alexander the Great, and he had been trained in arms from his earliest youth. He was the handsomest man of his time, and his beauty was not impaired by the wildness of his look or the stateliness of his stride. He determined to found an empire in the West and to subdue the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily, and then to turn his arms against Carthage, the natural enemy of the Greeks in the West, as the Persians had been in the East. Of Rome it is probable that he knew little or nothing. A quarrel had broken out between Rome and the Greek city of Tarentum. The Tarentines applied for assistance to Pyrrhus, who, after some hesitation, agreed to give it on the condition that he should have supreme command of the Tarentines and of all the Italians who were arrayed 201 b.c.] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME i55 against Rome, and that he should be allowed to keep a garrison in Tarentum, the city bearing the expense. He crossed the Adriatic with an army of 20,000 heavily armed troop3 to form the phalanx, 2000 archers, 500 slingers, 3000 cavalry, and 20 elephants. The first battle fought ended in favour of Pyrrhus, chiefly in consequence of the elephants, which the Romans had never seen before. They frightened the horses, broke the ranks of the Roman infantry, and trampled upon „. ^ rr . 1C the fugitives. The Romans lost 15,000 killed and wounded, but Pyrrhus suffered nearly as much. He, indeed, said that such a victory was not much better than a defeat, and the proverbial expression, " Pyrrhic victory," pre- serves the memory of this to our day. After this lesson, Pyrrhus tried to make peace with the Romans, being anxious to turn his attention to Sicily and Africa ; but the Romans would not listen to his proposals, and he was forced to under- take a new campaign in the following year. In the meantime, he mai-ched against Rome, and arrived within forty miles of the city. No one came out to meet him, but the towns of Campania closed their gates against him and the Consul Lavinius hung upon his rear. He was forced to retire, and wintered in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. In the next year was fought the battle of Ausculum, in which, after two days' fighting, the Romans retreated and left Pyrrhus in possession of the field. But the result was another Pyrrhic victory, and Pyrrhus was as far as ever from effecting his object. Therefore, leaving garri- sons in the Greek towns, he retreated to Sicily. After three years he came back again, but was no longer treated as a de- liverer. A battle fought at Beneventum terminated in a victory for the Romans. The elephants, terrified by the archers, attacked their own people ; four of these strange beasts were captured, and were exhibited in triumph at Rome. Pyrrhus left Italy and retired to Greece, to perish in a street brawl three years later. After the death of Pyrrhus, Tarentum was captured, and the Lucanians and Bruttians submitted to Rome. The last city to yield was Rhegium, now Reggio, at the very ex- R ome tremity of Italy, just opposite Messina. This was Mistress of in 270 B.C., and with the submission of Reggio Italy, the conquest was complete, and Rome was the undisputed mistress of Italy. Her northern frontier was marked by a line drawn from the mouth of the Arno near Pisa to the mouth of 156 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.o. to the Esino between Ancona and Sinigaglia. After the conquest of the Senones, a Gallic tribe who gave their name to the city of Sens in France and the river Seine, the frontier was removed to the Rubicon, a little stream just north of Rimini, whose name has become proverbial for the turning point of all great crises. When Rome had become mistress of Reggio and southern Italy, it was only natural that she should desire to cross the straits and occupy the island of Sicily. But here Carthage. ghe foun(J herself face to face with tlie Cartha- ginians, who had already become master's of a lai^ge part of that island. Carthage was situated on the northern coast of Africa, close by the modern Tunis. It was a powerful com- mercial state, a colony of Tyre ; the government was that of an autocracy of merchants. At its head were two Suffetes or judges, corresponding to the Shofetim or judges of the Jews, who were elected every year. There was also a Senate with legislative powers. A committee of thirty chosen from the Senate formed the executive, but there was also a Council of One Hundred, who, like the Spartan ephors (though these were much fewer in number) exercised supervision over the whole of the officials and the great concourse of state officers. As in Venice and Sparta, the ordinary citizens had very little share in the government. The Carthaginians worshipped Baal, Ashtaroth, and Moloch, but they did not reject the worship of foreign gods, and the priests had no influence on their community. There are among the Carthaginians few traces of intellectual life, although the picture given of them by Vergil, who must have known them well, does not exhibit any neglect of culture. They were devoted chiefly to the material gains of commerce, and it has been genei-ally supposed that they were cruel, treacherous, and false. Such charges should be received with caution. Such vices as these are generally attributed to a fallen foe, and their noble struggle against Rome is an evidence that they must have possessed many virtues, whereas nothing can be more cruel or heartless than their treatment by the Romans. They were very wealthy, and possessed, at one time, 300 colonies in Africa. They had a fleet of from 150 to 200 large ships, and their army consisted of mercenaries from Numidia and Mauretania. But their energies were not devoted to commerce alone ; they were also conquerors. They subdued all the country round them, and became masters of Sardinia, Cumae, and a portion of 201 b.c.] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 157 Sicily, besides planting colonies on the coasts of Spain and Africa to secure their commercial interests. With their splendid navy and their capacity as sailors they became masters of the sea. They were jealous of the growing power The Cartha- of Rome, and when, in 264, the Romans passed ginian into Sicily to assist the Mamertines against King Empire. Hiero of Syracuse, a war naturally broke out, and the result was the three Punic wars which occupy so important a place in the history of the world and ended in the entire destruction of Carthage. They lasted respectively from 264 to 241, from 218 to 201, and from 149 to 146. We shall now give an account of the two first only, leaving the third to be narrated in a later chapter. Syracuse, which was founded by Corinth in 735 B.C., reached under Gelon, who reigned from 491 to 478, a high degree of prosperity. When, in 480, the Carthaginians Carthage attempted to establish themselves in the island, and they were defeated by Gelon in the battle of Syracuse. Himera, as has already been mentioned. We have also heard of the disastrous expeditions of the Athenians to Syracuse which brought about the fall of Athens. After this, the city was subject to the despotic government of Dionysius I. (406 to 365), who fought bravely against the Carthaginians, but was obliged to cede to them the western part of the island. He was suc- ceeded by his cruel son Dionysius II., against whom the Syracusan patriots summoned Timoleon to assist them. In the battle of Crimissus (343) he defeated the Carthaginians, who had been allies of the tyrant, and drove Dionysius from the throne, re- establishing democratic rule. In 317 Syracuse fell into the hands of Agathocles, a condottiere, who contended against the Car- thaginians with success, but after his death the Carthaginians regained their power. The Syracusans and their allies then invited to their assistance Pyrrhus, whose exploits in Italy have been already related, but he had little success, and was forced to retire. The Carthaginians now extended their dominion over the whole of Sicily, excepting the city of Syracuse, which kept its independence under Hiero II. He had an excellent army, with which he defended himself not only against the Carthaginians, but also against the maraud- ing Mamertines, a body of mercenaries who had been in the service of Agathocles. Mamers is another form of Mars, so that their name signified the sons of Mars. Pursued by Hiero, they threw themselves into the city of Messana, opposite 158 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.c. to Rhegium, and naturally invoked the aid of the Romans from the neighbouring coast. In answer to this invitation, a Roman army crossed the straits under the command of Appius Claudius. Hiero and his Carthaginian allies were defeated. Messana irs .runic wag 0CCU pi ec i ? an( j tn e Carthaginians driven from the citadel. The Romans then advanced to Syracuse. Hiero now cast himself loose from the Cartha- ginians, and made an alliance with the Romans, with whom he remained friends till the end of the war. In the great struggle between Indo-Germanic and Semitic civilisation, he could not but take the side of enlightenment and progress. In 262 the allies conquered Agrigentum, a Punic arsenal, and, finding there a warship of the enemy, built in sixty days a fleet of 120 ships on its model, with which Gaius Duilius defeated the hostile fleet in the first sea battle fought by the Romans. Four years later, in 256, Regulus vanquished the Carthaginians, in another sea fight, and the Romans were able to pass over into Africa. In Africa, the Romans pressed the Carthaginians so hard that they sued for peace ; but the Romans would be content with no other terms than the evacuation of Sicily and the acknowledgment of Roman suzerainty. So the Carthaginians continued the struggle with the help of the Spartan Xanthippus, and defeated the Romans in the battle of Tunis, in which Regulus was taken prisoner, so that the Romans were forced to leave Africa and retire to Sicily. In 250, the Consul Cecilius Metellus gained a brilliant victory at Panormus, which induced the Carthaginians again Victory of ^° as ^ ^ or P eace - ^ ne y sent Regulus to Rome Home The as their messenger, but he advised the Romans to Province of continue the war, after which he nobly returned Sicily. t Carthage, according to his promise, and died in captivity. The Romans, after several maritime disasters, which nearly induced them to give up the struggle by sea, placed Lutatius Catulus at the head of a new fleet of two hundred ships provided by public subscription, and with these, in 242, he gained a decisive victory at the Aegates Islands, so that the Carthaginians were compelled to make peace and to evacuate Sicily. Hamilcar Barca, however, succeeded in forti- fying himself in Monte Pellegrino, which overlooks Palermo, and afterwards in Eryx, and holding out for six years. The western part of Sicily became a Roman province, the first possession of the kind outside Italy. After the first Punic war, the Romans 201 b.c.] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 159 gained possession of Cumae and Sardinia, and of a portion of Illyria. They also defeated the Gallic tribes of northern Italy, who had made an invasion as far as Clusium. The first to be subdued were the Insubrians : then aues t s j n the Boii were conquered in 222 by Claudius the North. Marcellus at Clastidium. The capital of the In- Province of subrians, Mediolanum, now the powerful city of Gallia Milan, was taken, and the Romans became masters isa P man- of Italy as far as the Po. Northern Italy was organised as a province under the name of Gallia Cisalpina, and was secured by the creation of the military colonies of Cremona, Mutina, and Bononia. The Via Flaminia, which went to Ariminum, was continued over the Apennines, and was afterwards pro- longed to Placentia under the name of the Via Aemilia. In the meantime, the Carthaginians had not been idle, but, while the Romans were occupied in Cisalpine Gaul, had turned their attention to Spain, and had conquered the ip^ q^^. whole country as far as the Ebro. When the ginians in Romans were at liberty, they determined to put Spain — an end to this, and made an alliance with Hannibal. Saguntum. The Punic conquest of Spain had been effected by Hamilcar Barca and his son-in-law Hasdrubal. But, when Hasdrubal was murdered by some Gauls, Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar Barca, was chosen to command the Cartha- ginian army, being then twenty-nine years old. He was assisted by his two younger brothers, Hasdrubal and Mago. This remarkable man is generally admitted to be one of the greatest generals the world has ever known. Brought up in the camp by his distinguished father, by whose side he stood when he received his death wound, he inherited all the virtues and capacities of a warrior. He surpassed his comrades in running, riding, and fighting, and his well trained body was able to bear every kind of fatigue. He was an excellent horseman, and secured the love and confidence of all who came into contact with him by the sweetness and strength of his character. To the older soldiers he seemed the image of his father, — the same countenance, the same fiery eyes, the same capacity both to command and to obey. Neither his body nor his mind was ever tired. He bore heat and cold with equal ease : his waking or sleeping hours were never defined by night or day. When his business was done, he rested, throwing himself down in the bivouac covered with his cloak. His arms and dress were simple j he was the best rider and the 160 A GENERAL HISTORY [390 b.c. to best marcher in tbe army. He was always the first to attack and the last to retire, and failed in none of the qualities of a general. The stories of his cruelty and his falsity are inventions of his enemies. He was fond of literature and art, and spent his leisure hours with learned Greeks, especially the Spartan Sosilas. Like Napoleon, he possessed great personal fascination. His chief characteristics were his fervent patriotism and his untiring exertion for the welfare and the happiness of his country. Hannibal saw that a conflict between Rome and Carthage could not be avoided ; he therefore determined to take the initiative. In 219 he attacked Saguntum, which was in alli- Punic War ance with the Romans, and utterly destroyed it as a warning to the Spaniards not to make alliances with Rome. The Romans sent an embassy to Carthage, and asked that Hannibal might be delivered to them. When they hesi- tated, Quintus Fabius offered the choice of peace or war, and with enthusiasm they chose war. Hannibal determined to attack the enemy in his own country, and in 218 crossed the Alps into Italy. He took with him an army of 50,000 infantry, 9000 cavalry, and 37 elephants ; but when he reached Turea he found in a review that he had only 20,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry, the rest having perished on the road. One of the consuls, Tiberius Sempronius Longus, had been sent to Sicily with the idea of crossing over to Africa ; and the other, Publius Cornelius Scipio, after some difficulties and loss of time, landed at Pisa and went to meet Hannibal. Scipio was defeated, and nearly taken prisoner at the battle of the Ticinus; and his colleague, Sempronius Longus, who had hastened back to Italy, met with a similar disaster at the river Trebia. These victories secured to Hannibal the possession of northern Italy, as the people in the valley of the Po left the Romans and joined him. Scipio now went to his brother in Spain, where he had recovered from the Carthaginians the country between the The Battle Pyrenees and the Ebro, and Hannibal advanced of Thrasy- up the valley of the Arno towards central Italy. mene. Here he fought the battle of the Thrasymene Lake, and defeated the Consul Flaminkus, who lost half his army. He was tempted to march against Rome, but did not feel strong enough to do so. Therefore, he returned to Ancona on the east coast, and, marching round Rome to the south, reached' Campania, where he excited the subjects of Rome to revolt, but without much success. The Romans in their time of need had 201 b.c] GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 161 recourse to a dictator, and appointed Quintus Fabius Maximus to the post. He adopted the course of not risking a battle, but of following Hannibal on the heights and continually threatening him. By this policy of en tat delay he gained the title of Cunctator, the man who delays ; and this has become so famous that " a Fabian policy " has become a part of every European language and has given its name to a party. At length he succeeded in shutting Hannibal up in a narrow pass near Oasilinum, but the Carthaginian saved himself by a cunning stratagem. Hannibal, after escaping from this trap, marched into Apulia. Here he circumvented Minucius, who was master of the horse to Fabius, who saved his subordinate by an act of noble generosity. In the following year, 216, the democratic party, tired of the dilatory proceedings of Fabius, elected as consul Caius Terentius Varro, who was known to be a man of enterpris- ing disposition. The senate succeeded with dim- Battle °* culty in giving him as his colleague the cautious Aemilius Paulus. The command of the army fell alternately to the lot of the two consuls, and Varro's impetuosity brought about the catastrophe of Cannae, the worst defeat the Romans had ever experienced since the disastrous day of the Allia. Cannae is in Apulia, close by the Aufidus. Here Aemilius fell with 89 senators and 70,000 soldiers, and Rome stood on the verge of ruin. The Roman army numbered 80,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry ; the Carthaginians 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry ; but the superiority of 4000 horse gave the victory to Hannibal. The spirit of the Romans rose with their misfor- tunes, and they prevented Hannibal from attacking the capital, weakened as he was by receiving no reinforcements from Carthage, where the spirit of party was too strong to agree to his support. However, at last, he received 4000 Numidians under Bomilcar, 40 elephants, and about 1050 talents ; and was able to attack the Lucanians and Samnites as well as to gain possession of Capua, where he wintered. It has always been supposed that the luxurious idleness of Capua corrupted the strength of his troops. New generals arose in defence of Rome by the side of the veteran Fabius — Marcellus, " the sword of Rome," and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. At this time Hannibal was assisted by an alliance with Philip III., king of Macedonia, and by the revolt of Syracuse, which joined the Carthaginians after the death of Hiero at the age of h i6 2 A GENERAL HISTORY [390.b.c.;t<5 ninety. The Romans, however, built a fleet, and carried on the conflict with Philip, which is known as the first Macedonian war (214 to 204, see chap, xi,), while Marcellus Marcellus wag despatched with another fleet to recover Syra- cuse. The king of Macedonia was defeated by Valerius Laevinus, and Marcellus took Syracuse after a two years' siege, the town having been ingeniously and bravely defended by the science of Archimedes. Agrigentum also fell, and in 206 the whole of Sicily became a Roman province. Rightly did Horace say that his country, like the holm oak in Algidus, grew by lopping, and gained strength and vigour from the steel which was wielded for its destruction. In 212 Hannibal occupied Tarentum, with the exception of the citadel, and the Romans besieged Capua. Hannibal attempted a diversion by marching right up to the gates of Rome, but he produced no effect, and Capua was forced to surrender. Marcellus gained further successes, and Hannibal was obliged to withdraw to Bruttium, at the extremity of the peninsula, and wait until his brother Hasdrubal could bring him reinforcements from Spain. To that country Publius Cornelius Scipio the Younger was sent in 214, to recover the territory which had been first won and then lost by his father. Two years later he Scipio the in fli ctec j suc h a defeat on Hasdrubal that he deter- * oun2T6r. mined to leave Spain and to join his brother in Italy. The duty of holding Hannibal in check had fallen to Fabius and Marcellus. Fabius, at the age of eighty, succeeded in recovering Tarentum ; but Marcellus, who had been chosen consul five times, was unfortunately killed near Verona while he was attempting to force Hannibal to a pitched battle. His place was taken by the consul Claudius Nero. Everything now depended upon the success of Hasdrubal. He had success- fully crossed the Alps, and was already in central Italy when he was attacked by the two consuls — Claudius Nero and Livius Salinator, who had already marched to his col- M^taurus & league's assistance before Hannibal was aware of his design — at Sinigaglia, on the liver Metaurus in Umbria. After a stoutly contested battle he was defeated and killed. Hannibal first learnt of this disaster by seeing the head of his brother, which had been cut off and thrown into the camp, and recognised that the doom of Carthage was at hand. In the same year (267), Scipio defeated Hanno and Mago at Baecula, and 201 b.cJ GROWTH OF POWER OF ROME 163 forced Syphax, the king of West Numidia, into an alliance with Rome ; and in the following year he conquered Gades, the last possession of the Carthaginians in Spain. He returned with much spoil to Rome, having organised Spain into two provinces divided by the Ebro. It was now time to carry the war into Africa, and the youthful Scipio was chosen consul and given Sicily as his province, although he was under the legal age. He landed _ . . . at Utica in 204, but was besieged there by Africa. 1 * 1 Hasdrubal, the son of Giskon, assisted by Syphax, who had again joined the Carthaginians. Massinissa, however, the king of Eastern Numidia, came to his assistance, and he was able to escape. There was a feud between Syphax and Massinissa because Sophonisba, the beautiful daughter of Has- drubal, who had been promised to Massinissa, was now married by Syphax. Scipio, with the help of Massinissa, defeated Syphax and took him prisoner, and his capital Cirta, together with his wife, Sophonisba, fell into their hands. Massinissa now married Sophonisba, who was nothing loth, but Scipio was determined to lead her, together with Syphax, in his triumph. To avoid this disgrace Sophonisba received a cup of poison from the hand of Massinissa, and put an end to her life — a dramatic catastrophe which has afforded material for poetry. The Carthaginians now recalled Hannibal and Mago from Italy for the defence of their country, and, in 203, Hannibal, with a heavy heart and forebodings of evil, left Battle of the peninsula, where he had fought so bravely for Zama— End fifteen years. Mago did the same, but died on the of the War - voyage from his wounds. Hannibal, on reaching Africa, first took up a strong position in Hadrumentum, but, when Scipio advanced upon Carthage, he marched out to oppose him. A conference took place, where the two great generals met for the first time. They, however, came to no decision, and the result was left to the sword. On the following day the battle of Zama gave the victory to Scipio, and by it the Romans became the masters of the world. Hannibal now went to Carthage, which he had not seen since he was nine years old, and earnestly advised the Senate to make peace. Scipio would have preferred to conqtier Carthage, but he was not supported by Rome; he came to terms, and the war came to an end in 201. Carthage had to renounce all her possessions outside Africa ; to give up all her ships excepting ten, and all her elephants ; to pay ten 164 A GENERAL HISTORY L390-201,b.c. thousand talents in fifty years, and to promise not to make war in Africa or anywhere else without the consent of the Romans. Scipio made Massinissa king of both Numidias, and returned to Rome, where he celebrated the most magni- ficent triumph ever seen in the city. He also received the title of Africanus. CHAPTER X. ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 33G-213 B.C. Alexander, rightly called the Great, one of the most remarkable men who were ever born into the world, succeeded to his father's throne at the age of twenty. He combined the warlike courage and the reckless activity of his Alexan der father with the exuberant fancy and the enthusi- astic excitability of his mother, and to these qualities was added an admirable training. His physical education was en- trusted to a Macedonian, Leonidas, his mental and spiritual to Aristotle, " the first of those who know." He was prominent in all manly sports, and alone could tame the wild horse Bucephalus. He combined marked energy and ambition with a romantic love for the marvellous and the uncommon. He was born in the year 356, on the night when Herostratus set fire to the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. In early youth he was inflamed with admiration for Homer, whose works he always kept under his pillow : he longed to be an Achilles and chose Hephaestus for his Patroclus. His desire was to conquer the world, and he was afraid that his father would leave him nothing more to do in this respect. When he had annihilated the Holy Company of the Thebans at Chaeronea, his father said to him, " My son, seek some other empire which is worthy of you. Macedon is too small." Immediately after his succession had been recognised in Macedonia, he hastened to attend the meeting of the league at Corinth, where he was elected absolute commander- Greek in-chief of the Greeks. His first exploit was to Revolt reduce to obedience the wild tribes of the north, suppressed. the Triballi, the Paeonians, the Illyrians, and others. When he was fighting on the Danube, a false report reached Greece that he was killed, and Demosthenes advised a rebellion. The Thebans were the only nation to hear this advice and to drive out the Macedonian garrison. Suddenly Alexander appeared in Greece with an army of 20,000 men, conquered Thebes, and, 165 166 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 b.c. to by the decision of the Corinthian League, ordered it to be entirely destroyed ; only the citadel, the temple, and the house of Pindar were preserved. The inhabitants, to the number of 30,000, were sold into slavery. Alexander now began the attack upon Persia which his father had left unaccomplished, and, after entrusting the care of .pkg Macedonia and Greece to Antipater, he set forth Invasion of with an army of 30,000 infantry, and 4500 Persia. cavalry. The phalanx, which was the kernel of his host, was formed of 12,000 Macedonians under Perdiccas and Craterus. The cavalry were commanded by Philotas, the son of Parmenio, who was made commander-in-chief. He was also accompanied by 160 ships, of which twenty were Athenian. The king of Persia at this time was Darius III., called Codomannus, who had succeeded in 336. Darius placed in Asia Minor a mercenary army of Greeks under the command of the Rhodian Memnon, and sent his Phoenician fleet to the Hellespont to prevent the landing of the invaders. However, Alexander crossed the strait without difficulty, celebrated games and offered sacrifices to the memory of Achilles, occupied Lamp- sacus, and reached the river Granicus, where he gained a brilliant victory, fighting so bravely himself that his life was with difficulty saved by his officer, black Clitus. The whole of Asia Minor was now open to him. However, before he penetrated into the interior of Asia, he wished to make sure of the coast, so that he might not be cut off from Europe by the Phoenician fleet. Therefore, after occupying Sardis, he secured the Greek towns on the coast, who promised to close their harbours to the Persian fleet. He met with no important resistance except in Miletus and Halicar- nassus, which he speedily overcame. Memnon now attempted to induce the Spartans to make a diversion by attacking Macedonia. He succeeded in conquering Chios and Lesbos, and obtained other small successes, but was prevented from carrying out his larger plans by bis death in 133. Alexander now divided his army into two sections, despatching one under Parmenio into Phrygia, while he marched along the coast with the other. But the difficult passes of Cilicia compelled him to join Parmenio and to winter in Gordiana, where he dis- tinguished himself by cutting the knot which bound together the ancient war chariot of King Gordias with his sword, an exploit which, according to prophecy, secured him the dominion over Asia, When the winter had passed, he crossed the Halys, 213 b.c.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 167 and then proceeded by the Cilician Gates to Tarsus, where he -nearly died from a fever produced by his bathing in the ice- cold water of the river Cydnus. Darius was awaiting his approach in Syria with a countless host in the broad plain of Onchae. It it said that he commanded an army of 600,000 motley troops. Perhaps, if he had waited with patience in the low country, . ^ j ssas his enormous forces might have overwhelmed the much smaller body of the Greeks, but he let himself be persuaded to advance into the mountains, where his numbers were rather a hindrance than an advantage. The result was the battle of Issus, fought at the beginning of November 333, in which the whole army of Persians was put to flight, and Darius only saved himself by the sacrifice of his chariot, his shield, and his royal mantle. Darius fled over the Euphrates, but his camp was captured, where Alexander found the children of Darius, his mother Sisigambis, and his wife Stateira, the most beautiful woman in Persia, whom he treated with the greatest respect, for which Darius thanked him, offering him peace and half his kingdom, which Alexander declined. At the same time, Parmenio conquered Damascus, where he found the chest of war, the gold and silver vessels, the silken carpets, and all the appurtenances of the court, which the great king had sent there for security, and of which he took the undisputed possession. Parmenio said that if he were Alexander he would, after this, abstain from any further conquests; "So would I," said Alexander, " if I were Parmenio." Alexander had no difficulty in subduing the Phoenician towns ; the only city which offered any serious resistance was Tyre, the chief part of which was situated on an island. Seven months were spent in besieging it, and its Twf ° destruction put an end to the supremacy of its commerce, which naturally passed into the hands of Carthage. From the coast, Alexander then proceeded to Palestine and visited Jerusalem. He offered in the temple a sacrifice to Jahve, according to the Jewish ritual, released the Jews from the payment of taxes in every Sabbatical year, and did not interfere with their theocratical government. He next, with some difficulty, subdued Gaza, which opened up to him the road to Egypt, where he was well received by the priests, and 'explained to them his plans for the Hellenising of Egyptian life. With this view he founded Alexandria at the western mouth of the Nile, a city which has had a profound effect upon the civilisation 1 68 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 b.c. to of the world, and may have it again. It was a stroke of genius to discover a site for a new city which has never since its founda- tion been obscure, which has not only been a place Alexandria Q f commei . eia i exchange between India and Europe, but the focus of an Hellenic culture less pure, indeed, than the original production of Hellas itself, but better calculated to influence the world. Even now there is no more interesting spot than Alexandria. No one can see without emotion the harbour closed on one side by the grave of Cleopatra, or travel along the mounds of sand which lie between it and Aboukir, strewn at every step with the relics of an exuberant civilisation. The city destroyed by the Mohammedans is marked by the column of Pompey, but the ground may some day yield its secrets, and a new race under a better government may make Alexandria and its neighbour, Port Said, again the meeting place of East and West. From Alexandria the young conqueror went with a chosen body of troops to the frontier of the Cyrenaic kingdom, from which he received ambassadors and presents. From Cyrenaica he made an expedition with a small chosen band to the shrine of Zeus Ammon, the oracle temple of the mysterious divinity in the oasis of Siva. The small body of troops reached the oasis led by ravens. The high priest greeted the conqueror in the vestibule of the temple as the son of God, which greatly enhanced his reputation. A legend grew up that Alexander was the son of Zeus Ammon, who had visited his mother Olympias in the form of a dragon. Alexander now received the welcome news of the destruction of the Persian fleet by his admiral, Hegelochus, upon which he left Egypt, returned to Phoenicia, and, holding Arh I ° festival in honour of his victories, crossed the Euphrates by two bridges at Thapsacus. Darius was now awaiting him with a very large army composed of Persians and Medes, the hosts of the Caucasus, Bactrians, and Armenians, the inhabitants of the Indian mountains and the Babylonian plains — indeed the whole population of the East — countless myriads of infantry, 40,000 cavalry, and 200 scythed chariots. Europe and Asia armed themselves for a decisive battle, of which the mastery of the East was the prize. Alexander- crossed the Tigris a few miles above Mosul, and, on October 1, 331, fought the battle of Arbela, gaining a brilliant victory over an army twelve times as numerous as his own. At the head of the Macedonian knights, he drove a powerful wedge into the centre of the huge mass, and threw it into confusion. 213 b.c.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 169 Darius fled as at Issus, and everything was lost. He reached Ecbatana, leaving all his treasures in Arbela as the booty of the conqueror. Alexander advanced to Babylon. Here the inhabitants, led by the priests, greeted him with joy and decorated him with flowers. Here too, as in Egypt and in Palestine, he sacrificed to the national gods. He stayed thirty days in Babylon, giving himself up to luxurious delights. He then went to Susa, which made no resistance, and seized all the treasure, fifty thousand talents of gold and silver, precious stones, purple robes, and costly fabrics. He also sent back to Athens the original statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton, which had been carried off by Xerxes. His next objective was Persepolis, the Sublime Porte of the Persians, the cradle of their race, the burial-place of their kings. The Susan Pass was de- fended by 40,000 Persians under the command of Ariobarzanes, but he attacked them bravely on the snow and ice, and forced the passage, while Ariobarzanes escaped to join Darius at Ecbatana. Ten thousand pairs of mules and 3000 camels were required to carry off the treasure of Persepolis and Pasargadae. He burnt Persepolis, lighting, it is said, the cedar gates of the palace with his own hands, when he was drunk with wine and stimu- lated by the dancer Thais, in revenge for the destruction of the Greek temples by the Persians, a hundred and fifty years before. He was now accepted as Lord of Asia, and the Alexander drachma, coined on the Athenian model, became the standard coin of the world. He found in Persepolis eight hundred Greek prisoners, who had led a wretched life, blinded and mutilated, and the sight of these stirred him to fury. In May 330, he set out for Media, hoping to find Darius in Ecbatana, but he had fled through the Caspian Gates into Bactria, the original home of the Iranians. How- ever, the traitor Bessos, who was a relation of Darius° the king, formed a plan of murdering him and seizing his throne. Alexander, hearing of the conspiracy, hastened after Darius, marching day and night over mountains, deserts, and waterless wastes. At last he came up with him on June 3 at Hekatompylos. As he approached, Bessos and his fellow conspirators murdered the king, and made off. Alexander, on reaching the king's chariot, found him a corpse. He covered him with his mantle, and brought his body back to Persepolis, where he delivered it to his mother Sisigambis. So perished Darius Codomannus, the last of the Achaemenids. Alexander now advanced into Bactria, where Bessos had 170 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 b.c. to made himself king. He founded here the Asian Alexandria, where the roads from Hyrcania, Parthia, Margiana, and Bactria Alexander meet, and the inhabitants of Herat recognise in Central to-day Alexander as the founder of their city. Asia. Proceeding farther through unknown countries, he founded a third Alexandria at Kandahar, which he hoped would assist his plans for uniting the East and the West by the bands of Hellenic culture. His army now became discontented, partly at the hardships of the march, and partly at the Eastern magnificence with which Alexander began to surround himself. Unfortunately Parmenio and his son Philip were at the head of the malcontents. A conspiracy against the life of Alexander was formed, which came to the knowledge of Philotas, but which he did not reveal. He was tried by court-martial, sentenced to death, and killed by the lances of his comrades. Parmenio, who was also implicated, was now at Ecbatana, and it was feared that when he heard of his son's death he might renounce his allegiance and oppose the retreat of the army. Orders were therefore sent to kill him, which was done, and his head was dispatched to Alexander. After inflicting on Bessos the punishment of crucifixion, Alexander advanced to the Jaxartes, where he made himself master of the frontier fortress of Cyropolis, and founded on the river the farthest of the Alexandrias, Alexandria Eschate, represented to-day by the caravan city of Kodjhend. This was the farthest limit of his conquests, but he crossed the Jaxartes to put down a rising of the Scythians. In the remote citadel of Sogdiana, he found, among other treasures, the lovely Roxana, the pearl of the East, the daughter of Prince Oxyartes. Overcome by her charms, Alexander made her his wife. During the winter of 328 to 327, he reduced the country to a condition of complete tranquillity. His reputation was now marred by the hasty murder, in a drunken brawl, of the faithful Clitus, the man who had saved his life at the Granicus, and whose sister had been his nurse — a sudden outburst of passion which he bitterly regretted. He now determined to march to India at the invitation of the prince of Taxila, to assist him against Porus, who had founded a kingdom beyond the Hydaspes with more than a of India 11 hundred cities. At the end of the spring of 327, he set out with an army of 100,000 men for Kabul and the Indies. He crossed the mountain chain of Paripamisus and the rivers Kophen and Choaspes, and reached the Indus, 213 b.c.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 171 where he built a fleet, with which he crossed the Indus in the spring of 326. Here he met his ally, and confirmed him in his dominions. He swam the Hydaspes on his horse Bucephalus, and inflicted a severe defeat on Porus, whose army was defended by three hundred caparisoned elephants. He treated Porus with great generosity, set him at liberty, and gave him back his dominions. He also founded two towns at the most important crossing of the Hydaspes. Shortly after this he came into the country of the so-called free Indians, who had no king and offered a vigorous opposition. On reaching the Hyphasis, he was informed that he was only twelve days' march from the Ganges, where he would find a splendid country with populous towns, industrious inhabitants, and a settled government. He longed to reach the promised land. But it was the end of his expedition. His Macedonians refused to go any farther. Alexander failed to move them. He remained for three days sullen in his tent, but when, on the fourth day, the auspices for crossing the river were unfavourable, he gave orders for the retreat. Before he retired he built twelve huge altars on the banks of the Hyphasis, to remind posterity that a giant race had visited these regions. He offered sacrifices on these altars, while his soldiers disported themselves in the meadows with military games. Having constructed a fleet of 180 ships, he sailed down the Hydaspes, the rest of his army marching along the two shores. When he reached the confluence of the Hydaspes with the Hycrates, the Multan of to-day, he spent some time in subduing the warlike Mallians, and stormed their capital. Here he conducted himself with such reckless bravery that he nearly lost his life. At last, in February 325, he reached the Indus. Here the inhabitants brought him countless presents and invoked his mercy. He founded here another Alexandria on the southern frontier of the Punjab. He conquered the Sogdiani, and the Praestians, with their powerful prince Musikanos. After his departure, a rebellion took place which Alexander . put down with great severity, which induced the prince of Patala to submit himself without trouble. Patala, situated at the water-parting of the Indus Delta, was strongly fortified by the Macedonians, and provided with docks and harbours. Alexander remained at Patala for some time, occupied with matters of administration, and endeavouring to bring the countries of India into commercial connection with Persia. When he left, he sailed down the Indus to its mouth, 172 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 e.g. to and set himself to explore the country and to see whether he could make a connection between the Indus and the Persian Gulf. He then explored the other arm of the river, and returned to Patala. The retreat was as masterly as the advance. Nearchus was sent in command of the fleet to find his way along the coast of India into the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the from India 1 Euphrates, while Alexander determined to proceed through Gedrosia, the modernBeluchistan, partly with the view of subduing the inhabitants and partly to keep in touch with the fleet. After conquering the Orites on the coast and crossing the passes of the Gedrosian mountains, he entered upon the terrible sandy desert, where the army suffered from hunger and thirst, heat and dust, sickness and depression. It was only Alexander's untiring energy which brought his army, after a march of sixty days, and the loss of a quarter of his men, to the city of Pura, from which he reached Carmania. Here he met Craterus, and shortly afterwards Nearchus, who told him that the fleet had reached a safe harbour, with plenty of pro- visions. On hearing this, Alexander burst into tears. Nearchus related all the wonders he had seen during his voyage of eighty days, the narrow passages through which he had sailed, the storms which he had encountered, the want of food among the fish-eaters, the whales and sea monsters, the pearl islands, and other marvels, which seemed to recall the stories of the Odyssey. A week was spent in uproarious enjoyment. When the festivities were over, Nearchus continued his voyage to the Persian Gulf, and Hephaestus, with the greater part of the army, marched along the. coast to Susa, to meet Alex- ander who, with the Macedonian knights and the light-armed troops, took the way through Persepolis and Pasargadae. There he found that those whom he had left behind had behaved very badly, and he punished them with great severity. Harpalus, the treasurer, fled to Athens. There, too, Alexander carried out his scheme of effecting a union of East and West by a number of mixed marriages. He took two wives to himself, the elder Attempted daughter of Darius, by name Stateira, and the Fusion of younger sister of Artaxerxes III., called Pary- East and sates. Hephaestus married the younger daughter West. f Darius, and eighty other Macedonian nobles were united to Persian wives. Besides this there was a sort of group marriage of 15,000 Macedonians with an equal number of Persians, these marriages being richly dowered by the king. 213b.c] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 173 When Alexander went further than this, and incorporated 30,000 Persians in the Macedonian army, there was a mutiny among the veterans, who asked for their dismissal. Alexander said that he could do without them, and sent them back with plenty of money, under the command of Craterus. All this occurred in the camp of Opis on the Tigris. He was anxious to found a kingdom in which Persians and Macedonians should have equal rights, but in which the Hellenic language and culture should prevail, and to this noble end he devoted the last years of his life. From Opis he went to Media, to establish the security of the caravan road from the attacks of the Cossaeans ; he visited the sculptured rocks of Baghistan ; he spent some time in the capital Ecbatana, where the autumn was brightened with feasts and speeches of all kinds, including character performances and poetical contests. It is said that three thousand Greeks were assembled there. But suddenly a terrible blow fell upon him in the death of Hephaestus. He sat for three days by the side of the corpse without food or drink, sometimes weeping aloud, sometimes dumb with sorrow. The body was taken with much ceremony to Babylon. In the winter of 324 to 323, he again attacked the tent- dwelling Cossaeans, but the death of his friend had broken his spirit and impaired his energies. At the begin- ning of the year 323 he went to Babylon, which ^t Babylon. he had destined for the capital of his new empire. Here he found ambassadors of all nations, from Greece, Asia, Libya, Aethiopia, and Italy, some to flatter the conqueror, some to invoke his aid in their disputes. He showed himself espe- cially favourable to the Greeks. Whilst he was preparing for the funeral ceremonies of Hephaestus, he found leisure to build a fleet to explore the Caspian, and projected an expedition to Arabia. He sailed down the Euphrates to inspect the great barrage of Pallakopas, and to consider the building of a com- mercial town on the lower part of the river. In May he returned to Babylon, to celebrate the funeral of his friend. The burning bier of Hephaestus was raised to a height of 200 feet at enormous expense, crowned with gold and purple, decorated with pictures and statues. These were all consumed by the flames, and the ceremonies ended with a great funeral banquet, to which the whole army was invited. But the strain was too much even for the iron constitution of Alexander. He became seriously ill, and removed to the garden palace of Nebuchadnezzar, on the other side of the river. Here he 174 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 e.g. to lingered for a week, and at last died on June 13, 323, at the age of thirty-two years and eight months, a hero and a con- „. n queror without a rival in the history of the world. No one, excepting perhaps Napoleon, has so deeply affected the imagination of mankind — certainly not his great rival, Julius Caesar. He lives in history, poetry, and legend. The name of Iskander is as powerful in the East as that of Alexander in the West. He named no successor at his death, but, when he felt that his end was approaching, he drew the signet ring from his finger, and gave it to his old and trusty servant Perdiccas. There arose after Alexander's death, in the very chamber of death itself, a conflict as terrible and more distressing than any which he had taken part in during his life. Roxana was to bear a child, and it was eventually decided that Perdiccas should be regent until the child was born, and perhaps after- wards. She bore a son, and gave him the name of Alexander, but his fate need not concern us. The history of D A h" ^ e Diadochi, the successors of Alexander, is a weary tale, full of changing dynasties and obscure conflicts — important, no doubt, in its general aspect to the history of the world, as it determined what form Hellenism should finally take, but involved in detail — until the empire of Alexander fell once more under the power of Rome. We can only sketch it in outline. Indeed, the true history of the period is not precisely known, and still awaits the hand of the excavator and the skill and insight of the historian to penetrate its secret and to give it life. The dead body of Alexander lay in the palace of Babylon until his son was born. The funeral was celebrated even with more pomp than the obsequies of Hephaestus had been, and it was intended that his body should be carried back to Aegae and buried in the place from which his race had originally come ; but there was a conflict for the honour of possessing his remains, which were supposed to have a magical value, and it is generally stated that he was buried at Alexandria. But the whole subject is involved in mystery. What matters where his body lies, when his spirit is still alive in every portion of the civilised globe ? When it had been decided that Perdiccas should rule in Asia, and Antipater with the help of Craterus in Europe, it was arranged that Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, should govern Egypt and Libya ; Antigonus, Phrygia, Lycia, and Pamphilia ; Leon- 218 b.c.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 175 natus, the Phrygian Hellespont ; Cassander, Caria ; Lysimachus, Thrace, with the Chersonese ; and Eumenes, the only great man among them, Pontus, Paphlagonia, and Cappa- First Divi- docia. When the news of Alexander's death sion of the reached Athens, Demosthenes thought that the Empire, opportunity should be used to re-assert Grecian independence, and the result was the Lamian war, so called because Antipater controlled it from the fortress w J 3 amian of Lamia in Thessaly, where he awaited the arrival of his allies Leonnatus and Craterus. Leonnatus was killed, but, with the help of Craterus, Antipater won the battle of Crannon in 322, which put an end to the war. Demosthenes, greater as an orator than as a statesman, poisoned himself in the temple of Poseidon, in the island of Kalauria, near Troezen. When Perdiccas was slain by his own troops in 321, the idea of a single ruler of the whole empire came to an end, and a struggle for supremacy began, and lasted nearly two hundred years. This became more accen- rjiadochi & tuated by the death of Antipater in 318. The conflict was continued in Europe by the struggle between Polysperchon, whom Antipater had named as his successor, and Cassander, the son of Antipater, and in Asia, between the faithful Eumenes and Antigonus and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes. Polysperchon was defeated by Cassander, and Eumenes was betrayed by his own troops to Demetrius, who had him executed in 315. In 311 Cassander also killed Roxana and her son Alexander. After this, Seleucus appeared on the scene, whom Antipater had made viceroy of Babylon, and Cassander, Lysimachus, Antigonus, and Ptolemy were all fighting together. Eventually Seleucus prevailed, and Ptolemy kept his position, so that we have for some time a rule of Seleucidae in Asia and of Ptolemies in Egypt. In 307 Athens was captured by Demetrius Poliorcetes from another Demetrius, called Phalereus because he resided in Phalerum, to whom the city had been given by Cassander in 317. Antigonus was soon afterwards summoned by his father to Asia, to assist him against Ptolemy, whom he defeated at the Cyprian Salamis. Antigonus now assumed the title of king, and his example was followed by his rivals. Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy now united against Antigonus, and in 300 a battle was fought at Ipsus, in Phrygia, in ?^™ e of which Antigonus was slain, and the result was the foundation of four independent kingdoms, of which three 176 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 b.c. to only are of importance. Lysimachus had Thrace, Pontus, and nearly the whole of Asia Minor ; Seleucus Mesopotamia, Syria, and the rest of Asia Minor ; and Ptolemy Egypt with Coele-Syria. Of these Lysimachus disappeared, and the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies alone remained. When the first Ptolemy (Soter) died Final Divi- a ^ the age of 83, Seleucus made war against sion of the Lysimachus, and defeated him in the battle of Empire. Kuropedion in 281. Lysimachus fell, and Thrace came into the hands of Seleucus, who destined it for the chil- dren of Agathocles, the son of Lysimachus. But Seleucus was murdered by Ptolemy Keraunos, the elder son of the first Ptolemy, who thereupon seized the throne of Thrace. The scene now shifts to Macedonia, where Antigonus andSeece Gonotas > the son of Demetrius Poliorcetes, laid claim to the country. But Keraunos, supported by the power of Egypt under his brother Ptolemy Philadelphus, seized the throne and was acknowledged as king. In 279, Greece, already a much afflicted country, was again invaded by the Gauls, or Kelts, who had already occupied England, Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, a large portion of Austria, and lllyria. Keraunos threw himself bravely against them, but was slain, and his work was completed by Sosthenes. A period of anarchy succeeded until, in 277, Antigonus Gonotas was recognised as king of Macedonia. Antigonus proved a wise and statesmanlike ruler, and was really master of Greece until a hope of liberty began to dawn for that country under the Achaean League, which began by a union of twelve democratic towns, who made for themselves a kind of federal republican constitution. This league assumed more importance from the accession of Sicyon, which had, in 252, been set free from Macedonian rule Achaean and by Aratus. In 246, he also liberated Corinth and Aetolian attached it to his league. The spirit gradually Leagues. spread to the rest of the Peloponnesus, and the Macedonian rule disappeared. A similar league, but less powerful and important, came into existence in Aetolia. In order to oppose this, Aratus had recourse to Sparta, which was then ruled by a young and energetic king, Agis IV. Unfortunately, the Aetolian League was assisted by Antigonus, but Aratus succeeded in subduing them both in 241, when Antigonus made peace with him. In the same year Agis was murdered by the oligarchical party in Sparta. Antigonus died in 240, an excellent monarch, who had sue- 213 b.c.] ALEXANDER THE GREAT 177 ceeded in making Macedonia the third great power in the Hellenic world. The throne fell first to his son, Demetrius II., who reigned for ten years, and then to Antigonus Doson, the man who was always going to give but never did. In Sparta, an effort was made to resist the Aetolian League by the young king, Cleomenes II., who followed the example of Agis. He tried to make the constitution a real eomenes. monarchy by abolishing the ephors, and to make Sparta once more the mistress of the Peloponnesus. He succeeded in de- feating Aratus, and in killing the ephors, banishing the friends of an oligarchical party government, and restoring the constitution of Lycurgus. He carried on a war with the Aegean League for six years, from 227 to 221, with such success that Aratus was obliged to throw himself into the arms of Macedonia. Doson marched into the Peloponnesus, put himself at the head of the Achaean League, conquered Arcadia, destroyed Mantinea and Megalopolis, and at length defeated Cleomenes in the battle of Sellasia, thus putting an end to what is called the Cleo- menian war. Cleomenes fled to Egypt, where, instead of friendship, he found imprisonment and death. In Sparta, Doson restored the oligarchy, and induced the city to enter into the Macedonian confederacy, but both it and the Achaean League had lost all power. After the death of Doson, Aratus was poisoned by his successor Philip III. In 213, Philopoemen succeeded in restoring the Achaean League and obtaining the adhesion of Sparta. But this belongs properly to the history of Rome, to which we must presently devote our attention. The fall of the Achaean League was the end of Greece. We can now follow the fortunes of Syria under the Seleucidae and of Egypt under the Ptolemies. After the battle of Ipsus, Seleucus Nicator reigned over the largest portion of Alexander's empire, but it was deficient in unity and was weak on the northern frontier, so, in order to give it strength, he organised its Empire of government in seventy-two satrapies. The king- dom, however, began to find a natural separation into the countries hither of and beyond the Tigris, and in each of these divisions a new city was founded, Seleucia on the Tigris, and Antiochia on the Orontes, both of which were instinct with Hellenistic culture. Antioch was the rival in art and science of Alexandria and Pergamum. Among the towns of Asia Minor and its neighbourhood, Byzantium, Heraklea, and Rhodes re- nounced the allegiance of the Seleucidae, and were given up M 178 A GENERAL HISTORY [336 b.c. to by Antiochus Soter, the son of Antigonus. Although he had conquered the Celtic hordes who had settled in Galatia, and were now subject to Nicomedes of Bithynia, he had himself been defeated at Sardis by Eumenes, king of Peigamum. He also had to surrender Phoenicia and Coele-Syria to the Ptolemies of Egypt. His successor, Antiochus Theos, lost still more terri- tory both on the west and on the east, and Seleucus II., who bore the inappropriate name of Kallinicus, after the third Syrian war, had to sacrifice Syria and Palestine, and in the civil war with his brother Antiochus Hierax, who was supported by Egypt, what remained to him of Asia Minor. The glory of the Seleucid kingdom was restored by Antiochus III., who was Uie^Great i ustl y cailed tue Great ; he won back much that had been lost, and made expeditions, which, how- ever, had no permanent effect, against Parthia, Bactria, and India. He also, eventually, came into conflict with the Romans. The kingdom of Egypt, founded in 322 by Ptolemy I., Soter, included Cyrene, Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus. He ipjjg reigned admirably for forty years. He made Ptolemies Alexandria the seat, not only of a world-wide in Egypt. commerce, but of a universal Hellenistic culture. His court was the home of all the poets and men of learning of his age. He founded the famous Museum, the world-known Alexandrian library of 400,000 books, which was afterwards entirely destroyed by the Moslem conquest. There was a second library of 300,000 volumes in the Serapeum. Egypt was covered by 30,000 towns, defended by an army of 400,000 men and a fleet of more than 3000 vessels, and supported by a treasure of nearly five millions of our money. His work was continued by his son and successor, Ptolemy II., Philadelphus (285-246), with even more magnificence. He built the har- bour of Myos-kormos and dug out the Nile Canal, but he was too much given to extravagance and sensuality, which has been the curse of Egypt to our own day. His son, Ptolemy III., Euergetes (246-221), was a more energetic character, and suc- ceeded in dealing a fatal blow to the Seleucid kingdom, which, however, he was not able to govern. He extended the dominion of Egypt to the shores of the Nile. With him ends the period of the (iolden Century, a name which is given to the reigns of the first three Ptolemies. Under his successors, the country, ruined by the extravagance and licentiousness of its kings and nobles, lost one province after another, and eventually became a part of the Roman empire. 213 B.c.1 ALEXANDER THE GREAT i?9 We must not omit all mention of other portions of Alex- ander's empire. Some separate kingdoms in Asia became important. Bithynia, with its capital Nicomedia ; Pontus, governed by the Persian dynasty of states the Mithradates, which, under Mithradates "VI. , fell into the power of the Romans ; Cappadocia, under the dominion of Ariarathes, controlled by the Magi ; Pergamum, under Attalus and Eumenes, well known for its great wealth and the encouragement of learned men, and for having given its name to parchment ; Armenia ; Parthia, the home of the powerful Arsacidae, who made their kingdom into an empire until it was destroyed by the Romans ; and Bactria and Atropatene. Palestine deserves more attention. Judaea, which had fallen to Egypt in the struggle between the founders of the Syrian and Egyptian kingdoms, was a perpetual bone of contention between the Ptolemies and the a Seleucidae. However, its religion and its constitution were respected by both parties, and all internal affairs were governed by the seventy members of the Sanhedrin. Both the con- flicting powers invited many Jews into their countries, and gave them many privileges and favours. A special school of Jews grew up in Alexandria, whose teaching consisted in a mixture of biblical and heathen erudition. As Greek culture began to penetrate into Judaea, it was naturally regarded in a different light by the two parties of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the first conservative, the second liberal. Ptolemy Philadelphia provided for the translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, which was called the Septuagint, be- cause the translation was made by seventy Jewish scholars. Antiochus the Great treated the Jews with great consideration, which perhaps made them too lax in their observances, and more inclined to adopt the customs of the Hellenes ; but Antiochus Epiphanes, wishing to introduce uniformity of religion into his dominions, marched against Jerusalem, plun- dered the temple, and gave orders for the entire destruction of the Jewish religion. He compelled them to worship the Greek gods, and those who neglected this were punished with death. While this persecution was going on, the family of the Maccabees, consisting of Mattathias .L . and nis nve noble sons, who lived in the moun- tains of Modin, between Joppa and Jerusalem, determined to resist. One of them, Judas Makkab, the Hammer, a name i8o A GENERAL HISTORY [336-213 b.c. given to him for his bravery, defeated the Syrians, restored the Jewish worship, and compelled the Syrians to make peace. But, when the Syrians began a new oppression, he conceived the unhappy idea of invoking the assistance of the Romans, and thus the affairs of this portion also of Alexander's empire were involved in the politics of Rome. CHAPTER XT. EOME THE MISTRESS OF THE WORLD, 214-44 B.C. We have seen how Rome gradually made herself mistress of Italy, and then, in two Punic wars, destroyed the rival power of Carthage. The inevitable impulse towards expansion which affects all empires while they Z'i? m ^ a ? 4-1 A A A l, 4. 4- A the EaSt - are on the upward grade, now drove her to extend her conquests towards the east, and brought her into connection with that world the condition of which we have been describing in our last chapter. The first Macedonian war First and (214-204) took place immediately after the dis- Second aster of Cannae, and was waged with Philip III. of Macedonian Macedon, who made an alliance with Hannibal. Wars. The war came to an end because the Romans desired to con- centrate their whole attention on the defeat of Carthage. Philip surrendered some portions of Illyrian territory to Rome, but remained in possession of Thessaly, Euboea, and Acro- corinthus, promising to respect the friends and allies of Rome, in which the Italians were not included. He, how- ever, continued to assist the Carthaginians, and some of his troops fought against Scipio at the battle of Zama, so that, when her hands were free, Rome began the second Mace- donian war in 200 B.C., being incited to do so by the enemies of Philip in Pergamum, Rhodes, Athens, and Epirus. Her efforts against him were at first unsuccessful, but at last Titus Quinctius Flamininus, a brave and able general of the school of Marcellus, stormed the passes of Epirus and occupied a portion of Greece. He then made an alliance with the Achaean League, which had been reorganised under Philopoemen, and in 197 defeated Philip in the battle of Cynoscephale, Battle of in Thessaly. Philip had to surrender all his Cynosce- possessions outside Macedonia, to deliver up phale. his fleet with the exception of five ships, to reduce his army to five thousand men, to pay a war indemnity of a thousand talents, and to promise to undertake no war without the leave 182 A GENERAL HISTORY [2U b.c. to of the Romans. He was also compelled to send his son Deme- trius as a hostage to Rome. The Greeks were able now to celebrate in safety the Isthmian games, which had been pre- vented by the Macedonian occupation. Flamininus also assisted the Achaean League against their enemy Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, from whom they took Argos and some possessions in Laconia and Crete. Nabis, however, was craftily left in power to act as a counterpoise to the Achaean League. The Romans now turned their arms against Antiochus the Great, king of Syria. He had been in alliance with Philip, had assisted Hannibal and received him when he S r^a W1 was cu 'i ven ou ^ °f Africa by the Romans, and had in 191 begun the so called Syrian war by attack- ing Rhodes and Pergamum, the allies of Rome, and making an expedition against Greece with the assistance of the Aetolians. He was, however, defeated by Glabrio and his lieutenant Marcus Porcius Cato, in the battle of Thermopylae, and also worsted at sea, so that he was compelled to return to Asia. Lucius Scipio, with his brother Scipio Africanus as lieutenant, was sent to attack him in his own country, and, in 189, de- Bat e o feated him entirely in the battle of Magnesia on Mount Sipylus, and reduced him to subjection in the same way in which Rome had treated the king of Macedonia. He was obliged to surrender Asia Minor from the mountains of Taurus to the Halys, to give up his fleet, to pay 15,000 talents, (over £3,000,000) to Rome, and 400 to Eumenes, and to send his son Antiochus to Rome as a hostage. The Aetolians, who had assisted him, were sentenced to pay 500 talents, and to deliver up statues and other works of art. The Romans, with a shameful want of generosity, required Antiochus to surrender their noble enemy Hannibal, now seventy Deaths of years of age, whom they ought to have treated Hannibal with the greatest honour. He sought refuge with and Scipio. Pmsias, king of Bithynia, and, when the Romans again insisted upon his surrender, he took poison, which he had for a long time carried about with him for that purpose. Other important deaths occurred in this year 183. Publius Scipio Africanus died, banished to his country house of Linternum by the attacks of his enemies, of whom Marcus Porcius Cato was the chief. He was, indeed, acquitted in the law courts, but his brother, Lucius Scipio, had to pay a large fine which entirely ruined him. Philopoemen also died, the last competent head of the Achaean League. He also was compelled to poison him- 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 183 self. The restless Aetolians, who had again rebelled against Rome, were at last subdued by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. The third Macedonian war now ensued, and lasted from 171 to 168. Philip III., also called V., of Macedon had assisted the Romans in their struggle against Antiochus, but, disgusted with his want of recognition, and donianWar jealous of the favours which had been acceded to Eumenes and the Rhodians, made war against them. His younger son, Demetrius, who had lived for some time at Rome as a hostage, was well disposed to the Romans, and was a friend of Flamininus. Hence Perseus, his wild and untame- able illegitimate brother, poisoned him, in 181, breaking his father's heart. Two years later Philip died. Perseus succeeded and proved a good sovereign, but his efforts for the aggrandise- ment of his country and the independence of Greece naturally excited the enmity of Rome, and war was declared. Itwas brought to an end in 168 by the victory of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, whose father had fallen at Cannae, in the p a d e ° battle of Pydna. Perseus was captured, carried in triumph through the city, and imprisoned in Alba, where he died. Macedonia did not, however, become a Roman pro- vince until 148. The year 146 is always regarded as the end of Grecian liberty. When the Achaean League, which had received a certain re- cognition from Rome, began to exert itself to obtain greater independence, Metellus was sent Subjection . of Greece, to suppress it, and defeated Critolaus, the general of the league, at Scarphea in Locris. But the real blow was dealt by the Consul , Lucius Mummius, who stormed and de- stroyed the rich and noble Corinth, and declared Greece to be a portion of the newly created province of Macedonia under the name of Achaia. It did not become a separate province until the time of Augustus. Corinth, so long the chosen seat of culture and art, was treated with revolting barbarity, although Mummius is said to have been a man of mild and gentle Char- ts acter, and was certainly very dull and stupid. He said that, if any works of art were destroyed, they must be replaced. The male inhabitants were killed, the women and children sold into slavery, the town plundered and burned. The priceless pictures and statues were carried off to Rome. The defeat of Perseus at Pydna in 168 decided the supremacy of Rome over the East. Epirus and Illyria fell into the hands of the Romans. In the first named country, seventy towns were destroyed in 184 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to one clay, and 150,000 of the inhabitants sold into slavery. Thousands of Achaean hostages, amongst whom was the his- torian Polybius, were carried off to Rome, and Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, was compelled to desist from his conquests and to surrender Palestine to the heroic Maccabees. Even the faithful Eumenes of Pergamum, and Rhodes, its old ally, were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. The same year (146) saw the final destruction of Carthage. Since the conclusion of the second Punic war, Carthage had recovered a large portion of its prosperity, although i ir . ~ it was continually harassed by Massinissa, who was an ally of Rome. Cato the censor, a strong but narrow-minded man, was continually urging his country- men to its destruction, and concluded every speech he made with the statement that he was of opinion that Carthage ought to be destroyed. At last, on a paltry pretext, Rome declared war against the doomed city. Carthage did her utmost to avoid the fate which threatened her. She sent three hundred hostages to Rome, and received a promise that her territory should be respected, but unfortunately no men- tion was made of the city itself. "When the Roman army landed in Africa in 149, the Carthaginians were first required to deliver up their arms and to burn their ships of war, upon which they surrendered 200,000 stand of arms and 2000 war catapults. They were then ordered to leave the town and to build one at some distance from the sea, as Carthage was to be destroyed. This reduced them to a con- dition of despair, and they determined to defend themselves to the last. They turned all their theatres and public buildings into workshops for the making of arms, and the women gave up their hair to make bow strings. The city at this time had a population of 700,000. The defence was undertaken by two Hasdrubals, one of them a brother of Massinissa. For two years the city held out against all attacks, notwith- standing the treacherous disarmament, which had weakened it from the first. At last Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus, the son of the conqueror of Pydna, and the adopted grandson of the great Scipio, succeeded in cutting through the isthmus on which the town was built, thus preventing all communica- tion with the interior, and in shutting up the harbour by a dam, and at last, after a struggle of four years, Carthage was destroyed. We need not dwell upon the horrors which accompanied the victory. The whole story is a disgrace to 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 1 85 the Roman character, and the recital of these crimes, from which no nation has been free, makes us sometimes doubt whether the rules of right and wrong have an operation in public affairs, and whether there is a God in heaven who exacts punishment for crime. The territory of Carthage was now formed into the Roman province of Africa, with Utica as its capital. At the same time the Romans became masters of Spain. The Oeltiberi in Northern Spain had been defeated by Marcus Porcius Oato in 195, and conquered by Tiberius . Sempronius Gracchus in 179. Across the Ebro q^^I^ 11 the Lusitanians offered a vigorous resistance, at last, under the noble Viriathus ; but he was treacherously murdered by the device of the Roman consul, Quintus Ser- vilius Oaepio, in 140. A war ensued called the Numantine war, which lasted till 133, when the Lusitanians submitted. Numantia, on the upper waters of the Douro, held out against a siege of fifteen months, during which the inhabitants suffered from a famine which has become proverbial. It was at last taken and destroyed by Scipio, who received the name of Numantinus. The whole of the Spanish peninsula now became a Roman province. A piece of good fortune befell Rome in this very year by Attalus III., king of Pergamum, making the Romans heirs to his enormous fortune and to his large territory, which included nearly the whole of Asia Minor, so that they were now able to establish a province of Asia. The power of the republic was also p rov inces of extended in Gaul by the founding of Narbo Martius Asia and (Narbonne) and Aquae Sextia (Aix) in 122, Southern and by new conquests which enabled it to form Gaul. Southern Gaul into a province which was afterwards known as the " province " par excellence, and to-day bears the name of Provence. The Arverni were received as allies, but the Allobroges were subdued. Further successes were also gained over the Oarnians, the Istrians, and the Dalmatians. Thus, at the close of the second century before Christ, most of the countries which surrounded the Mediterranean Sea acknow- ledged the authority of Rome. Her empire included Sicily, Spain, Macedonia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Carthage. By these rapid advances, the conditions of Roman life had been entirely changed. The Romans, formerly exclusively occupied in war, agriculture, and the duties of government, began to receive a tinere of Greek culture, a movement en- i86 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.o. to couraged by the greatest Romans — the two Scipios, Flaminius, and Aemilius Paulus. A great effect was produced by three Rome and thousand Achaean hostages, whose arrival in Greek Rome has been already related, amongst whom Culture. were sophists, rhetoricians, philosophers, and historians. One of them, as we have said, was the historian Polybius, the friend of Scipio, who wrote the history of the three Punic wars in Greek. The play writers Plautus and Terence began to imitate Greek models, while the plundering of Syracuse and Corinth enriched the capital with many of the best examples of Greek art. At the same time, the rapid increase of Avealth, accompanied by the introduction of an extravagant and corrupting luxury, did much to impair the strength and simplicity of the Roman character. This also led to a conflict between the aristocratic and the democratic parties, the Optimates and the Populares, the Economic ^^ an( j ^ e poor, as, according to the operations of unequal economic laws, the rich became more wealthy and the needy poorer. The nobles, composed partly of patricians, partly of rich plebeians, arrogated to themselves all the highest offices, and the lucrative government of the provinces. They also purchased, with their newly acquired wealth, huge estates, known as latifundia, which were culti- vated, not by free labourers, but by slaves. At the same time, the poor citizens thronged to the towns, and swelled the numbers of those who were in want. The two Gracchi set themselves to remedy this disastrous state of things, and to establish, between the very rich and the very Reforms of P°o r > a sound and healthy middle class. One of Tiberius the first steps necessary was to secure a fairer Gracchus. division of the public property, the ager publicus, which was now in the exclusive possession of the rich. The mother of the two Gracchi was Cornelia, the daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus, and the elder, Tiberius, when he became tribune of the plebs, endeavoured to follow Scipio's lead by re- establishing the old arrangement of the Licinian Laws by which no citizen might hold more than five hundred acres for himself, and two hundred and fifty for a grown-up son, or more than a thousand acres in all, while all the rest was to be divided in small allotments amongst the poorer citizens. The aims of Tiberius Gracchus were in every way admirable, but the means which he adopted were illegal. In order to carry his proposals through, he obtained the deposition of his 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 187 colleague, Octavius, who was opposed to his views, by a decree of the people, thus undermining one of the fundamental safe- guards of the Roman constitution, the inviola- Violence bility of the tribunes. His scheme having been and Death carried, a committee of three was appointed to of Tiberius, carry it out, consisting of himself, his brother Gaius, and his father-in-law, Appius Claudius. The Optimates naturally did their best to prevent his being elected tribune for the following year. When he attempted to secure the prolongation of his office by force, he was attacked by a crowd of ruffians hired by the aristocracy, and was killed at the foot of the Capitol, together with three hundred of his friends. Ten years later his plans were revived by his brother, Gaius Gracchus, with the addition of a scheme Gracchus for founding colonies both in Italy and beyond, in which Roman citizens might be settled. Gaius also had a Corn Law passed, which provided a supply of grain from the state to the poorer classes at a lower price. He also made a change in the judicial arrangements, by which the judges in the standing courts were to be drawn from the equites instead of from the senators. Having thus won the support of the equites, he brought forward a bill to give the rights of citizen- ship to all the Italian allies. This was rejected by the people, and his popularity suffered a still more severe blow by the Tribune Livius Drusus going over to the side of the Optimates. Gracchus now went to Africa with the object of founding a colony at Carthage, and, in his absence, Drusus endeavoured to outbid him in the production of popular proposals, with the effect that Gracchus was not elected tribune on his return. The result of this was a serious battle between the Optimates, led by the Consul Opimius, and the popular party, in which Gracchus with three thousand of his adherents perished. In this way the endeavours of the Gracchi to establish a middle class entirely failed. The result of the whole conflict was to strengthen for the time the power of the Optimates and to encourage them to new efforts of overbearing violence. After the death of Massinissa, his son Micipsa became king of Numidia, a country which extended from Mauretania, the modern Morocco, to the great Syrtis, which lies between Tripoli and Cyrenaica. Micipsa had in- ^^J 1 ' tended that after his death his country should be divided between his two sons, Hiempsal and Adherbal, and his nephew Jugurtha. Jugurtha, however, was an ambitious and i88 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to unscrupulous man, who desired to obtain the whole country for himself. He therefore killed first Hiempsal and then Adherbal, and, when he was called upon by the Roman Senate to answer for his conduct, he contrived to purchase their connivance with the judicious use of money. Memmius, who was tribune of the plebs, brought this scandal into public notice, and an army was despatched to Africa, commanded by the consul Lucius Cal- purnius Bestia. Bestia, however, was himself not proof against corruption, and, in the year 111, allowed Jugurtha to purchase peace. Memmius insisted upon Jugurtha being summoned to Rome, but his wealth would probably again have secured him immunity from punishment had he not murdered his nephew Massiva almost under the eyes of the Senate. He was promptly banished, and another army was sent to Africa, but the corrup- tion and incapacity of the Roman generals was so great that the Roman army, after having been lured into the desert, was obliged to pass under the yoke. At last a competent general was found in Metellus, who, in 109, defeated Jugurtha in the battle of the Mulucha. After this, the war continued for some time, and Jugurtha was driven from Numidia, but he had re- course to the wild Gaetulian tribes in the south, and stirred up Bocchus, king of Mauretania, whose daughter he had married, to help him in a national war against Rome. There was serving as a lieutenant at this time in the army of Metellus, a plebeian, Gaius Marius, the son of a peasant. He was born at Arpinum, where the Cistercian monastery of Oasa Mari, the house of Marius, preserves the memory of his name and the site of his father's farm. He had, some years before, attracted the attention of Scipio Aemilianus in the Numantine war. His was a strong but rough nature : he was a thorough soldier, an ardent democrat, full of indignation at the corruption of the aristocracy. He sur- prised Metellus with a request that he might be allowed to go to Rome to stand for the consulship, and Metellus did not dare to refuse. He was, at this time, forty-eight years old. When he arrived at Rome, he attacked Metellus, and said that, with only half his army, he would, in a short time, have Jugurtha in his power, and that the aristocratic generals allowed the war to drag on that they might prolong their commands. His fil - s * He boasted that he had no images or triumphs of consular ancestors to exhibit, that his creden- tials were his lance and his sword, and the scars on his breast — those were his images, those his ancestors, not inherited 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 189 from others, but won by himself. He succeeded in his object, and was not only elected consul, but entrusted with the African command, and crowds of his democratic supporters flocked to his standard. He did away with the old Servian classes, and founded a new model army of a thoroughly popular character, in which wealth had no privilege. He kept a strict discipline, but was adored by his men. Proceeding to Africa in 107, he entirely defeated Jugurtha and Bocchus in the battle of Oirta, the modern Constantine. But the honour of his victory had to be shared with Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who had recently joined his army as quaestor. Sulla was a man of noble birth, well educated, and of great ability, but corrupted by sensual in- dulgence. He was energetic and generous, and, notwithstanding his noble origin, knew how to make himself beloved by his troops. He was extremely ambitious, and, notwithstanding his self-in- dulgent habits, never spared himself in the labours of the field. He was aware that Bocchus was not averse to making peace with the Romans, and he persuaded him to betray his son-in- law. Jugurtha was treacherously captured, and the Jugurthan war, which had lasted for seven years, came to an end. On January 1, 104, the day on which Marius entered Marius' upon his second consulship, he rode in triumph Second to the Capitol. Jugurtha, with his two sons, Consulship, walked in chains before his conqueror's chariot. Then he was carried off into the ghastly prison of the Tullianum. " This is a cold bath chamber ! " he said. For six days of a Roman winter, his sturdy frame held out against cold and hunger, till he was at last mercifully stifled. Bocchus received part of Numidia as the reward of his treachery, the rest of the country being given to Jugurtha's half-brother, Gauda. The Gaetulians entered into the position of allies. The close of the war left Sulla and Marius rivals and enemies — the one was a " novus homo," the representative of the democracy, the other the champion of the Optimates. Marius was now to gain new laurels in a more dangerous conflict. In the year 113, the Cimbri, apparently of German, not of Celtic origin, impelled by one of those forces which, as has been before explained, broke out from „ . time to time from the human volcano of central Asia, attacked the Roman province of Noricum, the modern Styria. They defeated at Noreja the Consul Papirius Carbo, who was sent against them, and, in their victorious progress KjO A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to through Gaul and Switzerland, destroyed four Roman armies. The worst of these defeats was suffered by Gnaeus Servilius Oaepio on the Rhone in 105, a battle in which 80,000 Romans were slain. The Cimbri now crossed the Pyrenees, and plundered Spain, but were driven back by the Celtiberians into Gaul. Here they joined another German tribe, the Teutones, and then threatened Italy, the Teutones taking the road of the coast, the Cimbri of the Eastern Alps. The Romans, thoroughly frightened, summoned Marius to their aid. The e ea e y war con -tinu.ed for five years, during which time Marius was re-elected consul without a break. He took great pains with the discipline of his army, and estab- lished a fixed camp at the spot where the Isere flows into the Rhone, gradually accustoming his soldiers to the sight of the wild barbarians with whom they had to contend, and at last, in 102, completely defeated the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae, the modern Aix. The Cimbri had by now penetrated into Italy, and driven the consul, Lutatius Catulus, across the Po. Marius hastened to his assistance, and together they routed the Cimbri in the Raudian plains, in the neighbourhood of Yercelli. This danger, so happily averted, did not prevent Rome from being agitated by internal troubles. The democratic party Riot and found new leaders in Apuleius Saturninus, tribune Disorder in of the plebs, and the praetor Servilius Glaucia, Rome. who had won the favour of the people by distri- butions among them of corn and public land. One of their objects was to diminish the authority of the Senate, the strong- hold of the power of the Optimates. Glaucia became a candi- date for the consulship in 98, being opposed by Gaius Memmius, but the supporters of Memmius were driven violently out of the Forum by the mob of Glaucia and Saturninus, armed with clubs. Marius was ordered by the Senate to put down this riot, and he could not disobey, although Saturninus, the leader of the rioters, had been his friend. Both Glaucia and Saturninus per- ished in the conflict. This increased the power of Sulla, who was soon to gain greater distinction in the war with the Allies. The Social or Marsian war, which lasted from 91 to 88, was caused by the fact that a number of Sabellian tribes — the Peligni, Marsi, Samnites, Apulians, and Lucanians War ° Cia — ^ ac ^ taken their full share in the victorious wars of Rome which we have described, but had not been rewarded with either the rights of Roman citizens or a share of the public lands. Gaius Gracchus, as we know, had 44B.C.1 ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 191 attempted to remedy this case, and in 91 the tribune Marcus Livius Drusus followed in his steps. He was, however, victori- ously opposed by the Senate, and was murdered at the entrance to his own house as he was returning from a public meeting. The Allies took up arms, and determined to found a new state in opposition to Rome. They chose as their capital Corfinium, situated in the mountainous country between the two seas, an example which was followed with equal unsuccess by the Emperor Frederick II. many centuries later. The Marsi were led by Pompaedius Silo, and the Samnites by Pontius Telesinus, the Romans by Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. But peace could not be made until the demands of the Allies had been conceded, and the rights of citizenship had been given to all who dwelt from the Macra and Rubicon to the farthest extremity of Italy. In 89, the Consul Lucius Julius Caesar carried a proposal that the Latins who had remained loyal should have the citizenship, but in the following year the tribunes Plautius Silvanus and Papirius Carbo extended the privilege to all Italian towns who should ask for it within the space of sixty days, and by this the war was brought to an end. Immediately after this, the powerful Mithradates VI., king of Pontus, whose dominions extended from Paphlagonia to Colchis, who possessed the Euxine and had the whole of Armenia as his ally, made an incursion f -BWraaa.- into the Roman provinces lying to the west of his empire. He had, indeed, gained possession of Bithynia and Cappadocia, and there was a danger that the whole of Asia Minor might fall into his hands. The corrupt and covetous behaviour of the Roman proconsuls had made their rule detested, and, in 88, at the instigation of the Pontine king, eighty thousand Romans were massacred in Asia Minor on the same day. The Romans declared war, and the Senate gave the charge of it to the Consul Sulla ; but, on the proposition of the tribune Publius Sulpicius Rufus, the popular assembly deprived him of it, and transferred it to Marius. Upon this, Sulla marched with his army from Nola to Rome, and Marius had to flee for bis life. After numerous adventures, he was Marius captured in the marshes at the mouth of the driven from Liris, and taken to Minturnae. From this he Rome, fled to Africa, and took refuge, according to a commonplace of history, in the ruins of Carthage. Sulla now had a free hand in Rome. He divided the consulship between Gnaeus Octavius, TQ2 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to an Optiniate, and Cinna, a democrat, and then set out to meet Mithradates, who, having subdued Asia Minor, had attacked Greece. He took Athens by storm, defeated in Sulla" S ° * wo Sliccess i ve years Archelaus, the general of Mithradates, first at Chaeronae and then at Orcho- menos, and finally passed over to Asia Minor. Meanwhile, the popular party in Rome, determined not to be beaten, sent an army to Asia Minor, under their consul Flaccus, who was, however, murdered by the traitor Fimbria. When Sulla arrived, Fimbria's army passed over to Sulla, and Fimbria had no other resource than to kill himself. Sulla then, in the year 84, defeated Mithradates, compelled him to surrender all his con- quests in Asia Minor, and his whole war navy, and to pay an indemnity of about half a million, which, from his enormous wealth, he was easily able to do. This was followed by a so- called Second Mithradatic war (83 to 81), in which Sulla's lieutenant, Murena, foolishly invading Pontus, was defeated by Mithradates on the Halys. It was after this that the victorious king conquered the Crimea and established his capital at Panticapaeum, the modern Kertch. The treasure of Kertch, preserved in the museum at St. Petersburg, gives startling evidence of the magnificence of the Pontic sovereign and of the exquisite art which flourished in his dominions. During the absence of Sulla from Rome, the democratic consul, Cinna, had procured the adoption of many liberal laws, and amongst them one which provided for the Cinna s reception of the new citizens into all the thirty- five tribes, and their being placed on an equality with the old citizens. The result of this was that the new citizens crowded into Rome to vote, and increased the power of the democratic party. Octavius and the Optimates could not suffer this, so they took up arms against Cinna and drove him from Rome. He, however, collected an army and forced his Deaths of wa }' Dac k into the city, being assisted by Marius, Marius who had been recalled from banishment. For and Cinna. five days there was fighting in Rome between the two parties, with the loss of many lives. In 86, Marius was elected consul for the seventh time, but died immediately after- wards, and Cinna, after having procured his election as consul four times in succession, was murdered by his own soldiers at Ancona, just as he was about to attack the victorious Sulla in Greece. Sulla, having finished the Mithradatic war, marched to Rome, having to fight his way through a number of Marian 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 193 soldiers, who were assisted by the Samnites. The most serious battle took place at the Colline Gate, in which 4000 Samnites were taken prisoner, and three days later were slaughtered in the Campus Martius, together with s]] Urn their leader, Pontius Telesinus. Sulla was now master of Italy. The remains of the Marian party in Sicily and Africa were subdued by the young Gnaeus Pompeius, generally known as Pompey the Great, who, on Sulla's return, had collected an army of three legions for his support at his own expense. Sulla now set himself to work entirely to destroy the popular party, and to secure the rule of the Optimates. He established a reign of terror by drawing up a list of proscrip- tions, containing the names of citizens who were ~ u r 1? 1C " °, t -, r. tatorsnip. to be put to death and their property confiscated. He was created perpetual dictator, which, as has been before explained, had nothing to do with the old dictatorship, but gave him further power to remodel the constitution. He re-established the power of the Senate, the numbers of which were increased ; diminished that of the tribunes by enacting that no one who had been tribune could be afterwards elected to any higher office ; took away from the Comitia Tributa and the Concilia Plebis the power of initiating laws, which remained solely with the Comitia Centuriata ; and increased the number of standing tribunals from four to eight. He gave the right of serving as judices back to the Senate, and made the office of senators to last for life, taking away from the censors the power of removing them. He attempted to destroy the demo- cratic feeling of the provinces by placing 120,000 of his veterans in military colonies. He liberated 10,000 slaves who were devoted to his interests, and made them citizens. They were called Cornelians, and formed his bodyguard in Rome. Having thus, as he thought, established the constitution of Rome on its old aristocratic footing, and having given himself the title of Felix in 79, he laid down his office of dictator of his own accord, having held it for two years, and retired to Pozzuoli, where he died in the following year. After Sulla's death, Pompeius, who had already received the title of Great (Magnus), became the leader of the party of the Optimates. In order to complete the work of destroying the Marian party, he was sent to Exploits of Spain, where a formidable rising had taken place under Sertorius. The struggle continued in the mountains of the peninsula for seven years (79-72), until Sertorius suffered N 194 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to a not uncommon fate by being treacherously murdered by his lieutenant, Perpenna. When this was over, Pompeius had to suppress a rising of slaves and gladiators under Spartacus. This man, a Thracian gladiator, had escaped from his training school at Capua, and collected an army of 100,000 slaves and gladiators with the idea of throwing off the yoke of the Roman government. He defeated the first four armies which were sent against him, but was at last conquered by Licinius Crassus at the river Silarus, where he lost his life. Pompeius on his return from Spain fell in with a body of 5000 slaves who had escaped the slaughter, and were marching towards Gaul. He entirely destroyed them, and got the glory of having put an end Consulship to the war. In the following year, Pompeius and of Pompey Crassus were elected consuls, and attempted to and Crassus. make terms with the democratic party, although they continued to be the leaders of the aristocrats. They restored the power of the tribunes on its old footing, and settled the vexed question of the judges by dividing them between the Senate, the equites, and what were called the Aerarian Tribunes, who represented the popular party. They restored to the censors their former power over the Senate, and in other ways mitigated the stringency of the Sullan constitution. Pompeius ingratiated himself so much with the democratic party by these measures that he found himself elected as general, first against the pirates, and then in the next year against Mithradates, each time on the proposal of a tribune, who did not seem afraid of placing these large powers in his hands. The Mediterranean was at this time infested with pirates, as it has been almost up to our own day, especially after the Pompey destruction of Carthage put an end to the police suppresses of the seas. Their chief seats were Cilicia and the Pirates. Crete : they harassed the coasts of Italy and Spain, interfered with the supply of corn to Rome, and even dared to destroy a Roman fleet in the harbour of Ostia. In 67, the praetor, Caecilius Metellus, had taken possession of Crete, for which he received the title of Creticus. But their ravages still continued ; like the Barbary pirates of recent times, they captured distinguished persons and held them to ransom, Julius Caesar himself having suffered this fate in his youth. But with the attack upon Ostia, the cup of Rome's indignation was full. In 67, Pompeius got together a large fleet of 500 ships of war, 120,000 infantry, and 5000 cavalry, and in three months cleared the seas of pirates, and defeated the Cilician fleet at the pro- 44 b.c] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 195 montory of Coracesium. Ten thousand of them were killed, 20,000 taken prisoner, 1000 of their ships were burned, and 120 of their castles captured, in Isauria, Pamphylia, and Cilicia. Merchants could now traverse the Mediterranean in safety. Pompeius next turned his attention to Mithradates, in the Third Mithradatic war, which lasted for ten years (74-64). It had begun in 74, by Mithradates attacking the Third province of Bithynia, which had been bequeathed Mithradatic to the Romans by its king, Nicomecles. He War. defeated the Consul Aurelius Cotta at Calchedon, and besieged Cyzicus. Licinius Lucullus, a Roman general of the highest distinction, whose talents should have ■, uculhis S ° obtained for him a more prominent name in history, was sent against him. He defeated Mithradates in 72, at Cabira, in the neighbourhood of the Halys, and compelled him to take refuge with his father-indaw, Tigranes, king of Armenia. When Tigranes refused to deliver him up, Lucullus crossed the Euphrates and the Tigris, and defeated both kings at Tigranocerta in 69, and at Artaxata in 68. He was pre- vented from going farther by a mutiny of his soldiers, and was recalled to Rome by the Senate, it is supposed by the intrigues of the tax-gatherers, to whose dishonesty Lucullus was violently opposed. Thus, in 67, the conclusion of the Mithradatic war was committed to the hands of Pompeius. He succeeded in defeating Mithradates on the river Lycus, at the place where the city of Nicopolis was afterwards founded, and compelling him to take refuge in his recently acquired country of the Crimea. Pompeius, justifying his appellation of the " Great," did much more than had been expected of him, and put the affairs of the East on something like a basis of per- p mpey's manent security. After conquering Tigranes in Settlement Armenia, he marched by way of the Caucasus to of the East. Asia Minor, made Pontus a Roman province, as well as Syria and Cilicia, and placed Galatia and Cappadocia in the position of protected states. He settled the affairs of Palestine, making Hyrcanus, of the house of the Maccabees, king under the suze- rainty of Rome and liable to tribute. Here he heard that Mithradates, betrayed by his son Pharnaces, had killed himself in Kertch, upon which Pharnaces was made king of the Crimea, and recognised as a friend and ally of the Roman people. When Pompeius had thus arranged the affairs of Asia, he returned, with a huge amount of plunder, by way of Ephesus, 196 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to Athens, and Brundisinm to Rome, where he celebrated a triple triumph for his victories in Europe, Africa, and Asia. It was said that he had subdued sixteen countries, a thousand for- tresses, and nine hundred cities. During the absence of Pompeius from Italy the conspiracy of Catiline took place at Rome in the year 63, which has perhaps received more attention from Roman historians C ^racv than it deserves, partly from the fact that it has been narrated by Sallust and partly from its con- nection with the name of Cicero. Lucius Sergius Catiline, a dissolute young patrician, formed a conspiracy with a number of his boon companions, like-minded with himself, with the design of killing the consuls, setting Rome on fire, burning the ancient books, and overthrowing the constitution. The conspiracy was discovered by the great orator Cicero, one of the consuls, who made a number of speeches about it in the Senate. Cati- line fled from Rome and collected some troops at Fiesole ; but was defeated at Pistoria, and slain by Marcus Petreius, the lieu- tenant of the consul Gaius Antonius. His fellow-conspirators in Rome, who included the senator Cethegus and the praetor Lentu- lus, were arrested by Cicero's order and strangled in prison. This action was supported by Cato, but opposed by Julius Caesar and Crassus, who objected to their capital punishment, and preferred that they should be imprisoned and deprived of their property. To take the life of a Roman citizen was indeed a serious thing. Cicero, who firmly believed that he had saved Rome, received the title of " Father of his country." Pompeius, on his return from Asia, called upon the Senate to confirm all Po ^ey ^ ne ari ' an g emen 'ts he had made for the govern- ment of the East ; and when they hesitated to do this, he made a coalition with Julius Caesar, who had obtained great favour with the people. Gaius Julius Caesar — probably the greatest man of whom we have any knowledge, " the foremost man of all mankind," as Shakespeare calls him — was born in the year 99 Ju ms B c ^ anc | was therefore at this time thirty-six years old. He came of the ancient family of the Julii, but attached himself in early youth to the popular party, seeing probably that the cause of the aristocracy was hopeless and that Rome needed a new kind of government. He married the daughter of Cinna, and naturally fell into disfavour with Sulla, and fled to Asia. Pardoned with difficulty, he did not return to Rome until after Sulla's death, and soon afterwards 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 197 went to Greece and Asia Minor to complete the studies which were necessary to fit him for a statesman's life. He became a complete master of style — his Commentaries, which are de- graded to the position of a lower form schoolbook and form a part of almost every entrance examination, being one of the most perfect examples of literary composition which the world possesses. Returning again to Rome, he was elected aedile, and won popular favour by the exhibition of splendid games. He was recklessly extravagant ; but his debts, amounting, it is said, to 800 talents, were paid by Crassus, and he went as praetor to Lusitania, where he distinguished himself in war. Being con- scious of his great talents, he was naturally ambitious, and set himself to rise to power by crushing the authority of the Senate and the Optimates and obtaining the favour of the people. The coalition formed with Pompeius, which we have already men- tioned, gave him influence with the army ; and they both found it desirable to join themselves with Crassus, who was possessed of enormous wealth. In this manner, in the year The First 60, the First Triumvirate was formed, consisting Trium- of Caesar, Pompeius, and Crassus, a party rather virate. for the attainment of their private ends than for the further- ance of any public policy in which they were all agreed. In the year 59, Caesar was elected consul, and passed a law by which all impecunious citizens, and amongst them the veterans of Pompeius, should receive portions of the public lands, and all the arrangements made by Pompeius in Africa should be enforced. At the same time, Pompeius married Caesar's daughter Julia. When his consulship was at an end, Caesar was appointed as proconsul to the two Gallic provinces, the Cisalpine and the Transalpine. The power of the Senate was also wrecked, by the removal from Rome of two important members of the party, Cicero and Cato. Cicero was attacked by the Tribune Publius Clodius for having put the Catiline conspirators to death without a formal decree of the Comitia Centuriata, and Cato was despatched to clear the island of Cyprus of the pirates who had made it their home. The conquest of Gaul by Caesar is one of the notable events in the history of the world. In eight successive campaigns, he entirely reduced to order and made subject to the Romans the great country of France, and it Caesar m has never lost the form which he then impressed upon it. France is now the most homogeneous country in Europe, and it owes that to the genius of Caesar. What he did 198 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to once, he did for ever ; and the settlement of Gaul bears the impress of the same powerful mind as that which wrote the narrative of his deeds in the Commentaries, where there is not a word which could be altered without loss. In these campaigns Caesar did many cruel things, but he did them completely, and we may suppose that it is in this way that the progress of the world is brought about. He fought against many tribes and different races in several countries, by land and sea. He first attacked the Helvetii, a Celtic race, who, pressed by the Germans, had crossed the Jura to find a new habitation in Gaul, and drove them back to Switzerland. He did the same to Ariovistus, a German Suevian who had also invaded Gaul, and made him recross the Rhine. He found worthy antagonists in the Belgian Nervii, whom he broke on the Sambre, and then subdued with greater ease the tribes dwelling on the shores of the Atlantic and the English Channel. He crossed the Rhine, and marched into Germany ; he built a fleet, and sailed twice to Britain. He put down revolt after revolt, and smote the dwellers near Trier, Namur, Orleans, and the Scheldt. Having fought them hard and con- tinuously during the two terrible years of 54 and 53, he had in 52 to contend with the greatest of all his opponents, Vercinge- torix, who collected against him nearly all the inhabitants of Gaul, in the inaccessible mountains of Auvergne, and gained the undying distinction of having defeated Caesar. But at last Caesar subdued the stubborn patriot by famine at Alesia, and scattered to the winds an army of a quarter of a million Gauls, who were coming to the assistance of the beleaguered city, and in 51 the conquest of Gaul was complete. Yercinge- torix adorned the triumph of his conqueror, and was, to the disgrace of the Romans, put to death. Thus Caesar executed in the West what Pompeius had attempted, with far less success, in the East. He had won for himself a great reputation as a general, but had also created a devoted army which he could use as an instrument to conquer the world and to place himself at the head of it. Whilst Caesar was thus engaged, the other members of the Triumvirate found themselves quite incapable of coping with the civil disorders which agitated the capital, Rome der 1U with the violence of Clodius and the bloodthirsty outrages of Milo. The weak Senate found that it alone could preserve some appearance of order, and was able to recall Cicero from exile in 57. The three Triumviri met at 44 b.c.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 199 Lucca in 56, and renewed their party coalition. Pompeius and Crassus were to be made consuls in 55 : after that Pompeius was to have the province of Spain, and Crassus that of Syria, while the command of Caesar in Gaul was extended for five years from 55 to 50. Crassus brought confusion Break up of and ridicule upon the coalition by going to the the Trium- wealthy Syria before his time, eager to exploit virate. its riches, crossing the Euphrates to attack the Parthians, and being conquered and slain at Carrhae in 55. Pompeius, more worldly wise, did not go to Spain, but remained in Rome. He was becoming afraid of his powerful rival, and the bonds between them were weakened by the deaths of Crassus and of his wife Julia, Caesar's daughter. He was gradually drawn to his natural ally, the Senate, which indeed at that time was the only defence against anarchy in Rome. When matters came to a crisis in the murder of Clodius on the Appian Way, by the prize-fighter Milo, who was a candidate for the consulship, Pompeius was made a kind of dictator, with the strange title of "consul without a colleague," a contradiction both in letter and in spirit of the fundamental constitution of Rome. Caesar was too prudent to venture as a private citizen into the hornets' nest, where he would probably have been slain, but determined to stand for the consulship, so that he might take up that office as soon as the Gallic «?„ Senate command was over. The Senate met this by declaring that no one might stand for an office in his absence, and, under the influence of Pompeius, called on him to resign. Caesar said that he was willing to do so, if Pompeius would do the same, but at last the Senate, becoming aware of the danger which threatened them, passed a decree that Caesar, unless he laid down his command by a certain day, should be regarded as the enemy of the republic. The intercession of the tribunes Antonius and Cassius against this decree was disregarded, and the constitution was again violated. Pompeius was entrusted by the Senate with the defence of the capital. The two tribunes, one of them afterwards to be Caesar's murderer, the other the avenger of his death, fled to his camp at Ravenna, and Caesar, with the words " Jacta „ f . est alea " (the die is cast), with only one legion and three hundred horsemen, crossed the tiny stream of the Rubicon, making it a synonym for ever afterwards for all the forcible actions of the world. The civil war had begun. Pompeius had not expected this stroke. He left Rome with 200 A GENERAL HISTORY [214 b.c. to Cicero and Cato, and the rest of the Senate, and crossed from Brindisi to Epirus to await his antagonist in Greece. Caesar did not immediately proceed to the capital. He the Senate wen ^' D y wa y °f the coast, to Corfinium, the heart of Italy, where the consul Domitius Ahenobarbus submitted to him with his army and stores. Then he came to Rome, seized the money in the treasury, which Pompeius had neglected to take with him, and in sixty days became master of Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. Still avoid- ing his chief antagonist, he proceeded to Spain, Ler'da. S ° where he conquered, at Lerida, a Pompeian army commanded by Afranius and Petreius, secured possession of Marseilles, and returned to Rome in December 49. Not till the beginning of 48 did he cross hi stormy weather from Brindisi to Dyrrachium, and attack the fortified camp of Pompeius. Twice was he defeated, and then he traversed the range of Pindus into Thessaly, whither Pompeius was foolish enough to follow him. The decisive battle came unexpectedly at Pharsalia on June 16. Caesar was preparing to retreat when Pompeius attacked. " Well ! " he cried, Pharsalia " 0lu task 'is at last fulfilled. It is better to fight against men than against famine." Pompeius had every advantage — twice as many infantry, six times as many cavalry — but Caesar, with his seasoned veterans, gained a decisive victory. Pompeius escaped first to Cyprus, and then to Egypt, where he was murdered, as he stepped upon the shore, by his old comrade, Lucius Septimius, in the sight of his wife and child. Three days after the murder of Pompeius, on July 27, 48, according to our modern style, Caesar landed in Egypt, and decided the dispute about the succession EjrvDt m between Cleopatra and her brother Ptolemy, in favour of Cleopatra, one of the most striking figures in the ancient world and one of the most unfortunate. In Alexandria he was attacked by the opposite party, and had to remain seven months in the citadel, till he was rescued by King Mithradates of Pergamum. Then, having secured Cleopatra in . . the possession of Egypt, he went to Asia Minor Minor ^° crusn the rebellion of Pharnaces, son of the great Mithradates of Pontus. He defeated him in the battle of Zela, about which he coined the expression, . . " Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered), and gave his dominions to the other Mithradates, of Pergamum. He then returned to Rome. His next campaign was in Africa, where he defeated the Pompeians, who were 44 e.g.] ROME, MISTRESS OF THE WORLD 201 assisted by King Juba of Numidia, at Thapsus in 46. Cato, despairing of the republic, killed himself in Utica. It only now remained to deal with the sons of m ^ Pompeius, Gnaeus and Sextus, who had assembled an army in Spain, but were defeated in the battle of Munda in 45. On his return to Rome, Caesar was made dictator for life, and became an absolute sovereign, by uniting in his own person the powers of consul, censor, tribune, praetor, and pontifex maximus, which had been intended Dilator to be mutual checks on each other. He as- sumed the airs of a king. He sat in the Senate on a golden throne between the two consuls ; he wore the purple mantle of a general in his triumph, with a laurel wreath on his head ; he coined money with his image and superscription ; he took the title of Imperator. These changes in the constitution will be more minutely described in the next chapter. For the empire which he governed, he did much and projected more. Like the young Napoleon, he introduced a spirit of generosity and conciliation. He allowed his enemies to return from exile ; he gave the hungry citizens of the capital bread ; he cleared Rome of robbers, and adorned it with spacious buildings ; he relieved hopeless debtors from their burdens, and repressed corrupting tyranny with a strong hand. He introduced great agrarian re- forms and founded numerous colonies. He extended his prudent care to the provinces, and did his best to encourage Greek learning and science. He began to codify the law : he reformed weights and measures, and introduced the Julian calendar. When he died he was preparing for a great war with Parthia which should bring that savage and warlike nation within the bounds of civilisation. When he had avenged the defeat of Carrhae, and secured the Roman frontier in the East, he would have subdued the Dacians and the Getans on the banks of the Danube, and then, returning to Italy through Germany, would have done for these countries what he had previously done for Gaul. Had Caesar lived, there would have been no invasion of the barbarians, no violent destruction of the Roman empire. But it was not to be. Nbtwithstancline: the benefits of Caesar's rule, the republicans could not see a monarchy arise in their midst, however necessary it mi^ht be for the salvation of Rome and the civilisation of the * ... world. A conspiracy was formed by about sixty of the Optimates, who were, perhaps, ill disposed to Caesar as the enemy of Pompeius and the leader of a democratic party, 202 A GENERAL HISTORY [214-14 b.c. but were also warmly attached to republican institutions. Among the leaders of the plot were the two praetors, Gaius Oassius and Marius Junius Brutus, the intimate friend of Caesar, who was persuaded to join the conspiracy against him with great difficulty. Probably, at first, he and the others only intended an open rising and not a treacherous murder. The deed took place. A sitting of the Senate had been summoned for the Ides of March, B.C. 44, in the theatre of Pompeius. Caesar ^ * s sa ^ ^ ia ^ Calpurnia, Caesar's wife, terrified by dreams and omens, begged her husband not to attend the meeting ; that Spurina, a soothsayer, had especi- ally warned him against the Ides of March ; and that Arte- midorus had given to him, on the way to the Senate, a paper containing an account of the conspiracy, which, however, he left unread. He arrived late ; indeed he had made up his mind not to go, partly for the sake of Calpurnia, partly because he felt unwell, but Brutus, who was in the confidence of the murderers, persuaded him to attend. When he took his seat on the golden throne, the conspirators crowded round him. Trebonius kept Antonius, who might have defended him, engaged in conversation at a distance. As they pressed upon him to see whether he wore arms or concealed weapons, Caesar, to escape their importunity, stood up. Cimber gave the signal, by tearing the toga from his shoulder, and Casca stabbed him in the back. He sank at length, at the foot of the statue of Pompeius, pierced by twenty-three wounds, covering his head and his body with his mantle, that he might not fall indecorously, He was fifty-two years old. The murder of Caesar is probably the most fatal deed which has ever been wrought in the history of the world, and it is certainly one of the most dastardly. Had he lived — and he might have lived many years — he would prob- ably have consolidated the Roman empire with a stronger hand than Augustus was able to use, and secured that its marvellous government and organisation should pass without a break into the progress of mankind. Political prophecy is always idle, but this forecast is more probable than most. But the vileness of the treachery by which the catastrophe was brought about is indescribable. Not without reason has Dante, who thought treachery the worst of human vices, placed in the three mouths of Lucifer, as he stood imprisoned in the centre of the globe, the three great traitors of the world — Judas Iscariot, who betrayed his God, and Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed and murdered their master. CHAPTER XII. THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 44 B.C.-96 A.D. The empire of Rome, which succeeded the republic, was developed out of it by gradual steps. As the territory of Borne, beginning with a city and its suburbs, From extended itself first to Italy and then to Republic to the whole world as it was then known, the Empire. machinery of government devised for it in its earlier con- dition became incapable of doing the work which was ex- pected from it, and a change became necessary. Before the final crisis, the constitution had to be strained, in order to accommodate itself to the new order of things. In this manner, not only were powers given to the existing magistrates which they did not originally possess, but new magistracies were created, which were precursors of the imperial power. Sulla and Caesar were both made dictators of an entirely new kind, and the triumvirate was a phenomenon unknown to early Roman history. In the first dictatorship, 82 B.C., Sulla was invested with unlimited powers of inflicting capital punishment and the confiscation of property, of forming colonies, of establishing or abolishing communes, of conferring or taking away kingdoms ; and this ample authority, which Cicero marks with the fatal title of regnum, was assured to him until he had pacified the Roman state. As dictator, Caesar presided at the Electoral Council, at which he was him- self elected consul for the year 48. He was afterwards created dictator for ten years, and then for life. On several occasions he held the consulship and the dictatorship together. At various times, the Senate and the people imposed on him the following powers — the supreme decision of peace and war, the tribunician power for life, the privilege of presiding over the elections of patrician magistrates, the control of the praetorian provinces, the power of censor, under the title of praefectus mormn, for three years, and the right of designating candidates for plebeian magistracies. Thus Caesar gradually 203 204 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to became an absolute monarch for life, and when he was murdered on March 15, 44, it mattered little whether he had the title of king or not. The first triumvirate, of Pompeius, Caesar, and CVassus, was a purely political coalition, but the second, of which we shall The Second have to speak, was regularly constituted by law. Trium- It was first created at the end of 43, to last up virate. to January 1, 37, and then renewed for a second period of five years, but came to an end by the dissensions of those who held it, and was followed by the establishment of the empire by Caesar Octavianus, better known as Augustus. This was effected in the following way. In 40 b c. he had assumed the title of Imperator as a praenomen, considering that he inherited it from his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. Elements of Being sole master of the empire after the battle the Imperial of Actium, he gradually organised the imperial Power — The power, having a number of important duties Principate. delegated to him by the Senate and the people. In 28 B.C., in his sixth consulship, he revised the list of the Senate, and became Princeps Senatus, from which time the title Princeps designated the emperor as the first magistrate of the state, although it never became one of the imperial titles officially, and the new form of government was called the Principatus, whether the title of Princeps meant princeps senatus or not, which is uncertain. But the kernel of the empire lay in the union of the two antagonistic , e . ew powers of the imperium and the tribunicia potestas, which were originally intended to balance each other, and the most conspicuous title was that of Augustus. Octavius was invested with the imperium in 27 B.C., and obtained the title of Augustus a few days after- wards. This imperium was of a new kind. It included not merely the chief command of all the armies, but the decision of international questions, an important part in legislation, certain judicial functions, and the government of certain pro- vinces. This power was further extended by the jus consulage, conferred upon Augustus in 23 B.C. On the other side, he ■Phg renewed the tribunicia potesfas without limit of Trihunician time or place in 30 B.C., having been previously Power. declared sw.rosanctus in 36, his person being rendered inviolable. After 23 B.C., this power was rendered both perpetual and annual, so that Augustus began to date the years of his reign by the years of his trihunician power. a.d. 961 THE ROMAN EMPIRE 205 Besides this, he held the consulship several times, he became a member of all the important colleges of priests, and, in 12 B.C., obtained the dignity of pontifex maximus. He was called Imperator Caesar Divi Filius, and, in 2 B.C., was invested with the honorary title of Pater Patriae. The imperial power came to an end by the death of the emperor, by his voluntary abdication, or by his deposition. It was not hereditary, nor could the emperor name T^g succes- his successor. On the demise of the emperor, sion to the the imperial power passed into the hands of the Empire. consuls, who were the presidents of the Senate. But, if the emperor did designate a successor in his lifetime, his known desire had great influence over the choice of the Senate, although it did not bind them. The candidates naturally marked out for the choice of the Senate were the Caesars — that is, the legitimate, natural, or adopted sons of the emperor, without any right of primogeniture. The emperor might mark his preference for any particular Caesar by making him heir of his patrimonium. After the time of Hadrian, the cognomen Caesar was reserved for those princes of the imperial family whom the emperor recommended as candidates for the imperial dignity. The emperor could also pave the way for the appointment of his successor by securing for him the proconsular imperium and a minor degree of the tribunician power, just as in the German empire the future emperor was first created king of the Romans. If no candidate had been designated by the preceding emperor, a candidate was generally imposed upon the Senate, either by the Praetorian Guard, or by the legions, in the provinces, so that the choice of the Senate was rarely free. No especial franchise for the post of emperor was prescribed by law, but the emperors of the Julian and Claudian houses were patricians by birth, and, if a plebeian were chosen emperor, the Senate made him a patrician. The two principal acts by which Augustus was made emperor were the Lex de Imperio, by which he was recognised as emperor, and received the official title of Augustus, Formalities and the Lex de Potestate Tribunicia, which was of Acces- also conferred later than the imperium. These sion. two laws were Senatus consulta, submitted for confirmation to the will of the Comitia in the Campus Martius, with the regular interval of the trinundinum or three market days, during which the proposed law was publicly exposed. But 206 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to before long acclamation was substituted for the regular votes, and after the third century this formality took place immedi- ately after the meeting of the Senate. Every year, on the first of January, the Senate, the magistrates, and the legions took an oath to the emperor, by which they bound themselves to the observance of his acts, and also those of his predecessors unless their acts had been annulled. After the death of the emperor, the Senate made an inquiry into his conduct and his public acts. If the opinion were unfavourable, the acts were rescinded, and his memory was condemned. If it were favourable, he re- ceived the consecration of apotheosis and the title of Divus. This consecration had to be proposed by the emperor who suc- ceeded, and after the third century was done by the emperor alone, without the intervention of the Senate. We will now proceed to a further examination of the im- perial power, and first consider what rights were conferred by the Lex de Imperio. By this the emperor was The Lex de constituted commander-in-chief of all the forces of the empire by land or sea, inside or outside the pomoerium. The emperor had the sole right of recruiting or dismissing soldiers, although perhaps the recruiting in the senatorial provinces may have been subject theoretically to the jurisdiction of the Senate. All troops took an oath of allegiance to the emperor, and were paid in his name. He had the nomination of centurions and of all effective officers of senatorial or equestrian rank. He distributed all decorations except the triumph, and that fell into his hands after a time. He had, as we have said, the right of deciding on peace or war and of concluding treaties. He also had the right of disposing of the ager publims, the public land, and of assigning it to the veterans, and he possessed the exclusive right of admin istering the imperial provinces. Besides this, he had considerable Legislative power of legislation. This could be effected in and Judicial various ways, either directly by the power given Powers. to him for passing laws on various subjects, called leges datae, or by interpreting laws by what were called Im- perial Constitutions, analogous to decrees or ordinances. Not The Em- only was the emperor a criminal and a civil peror and judge, and an arbitrator, but he could revise the otherMagis- decisions of all the other magistrates. The rights trates. which he possessed for nominating magistrates, he did not use to the full. He presided over the meeting of the Senate, and was dispensed from the operation of certain ad. 96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 207 laws: Besides this, the jus proconsulare, with which he was invested, gave him a high authority over senatorial provinces, because he possessed by it an imperium superior to that of the proconsuls themselves. On the other hand, the potestax tri- bunicia, the other focus of his power, given to the emperor for life, without limit of time or place, was superior to the potestas of the ordinary tribunes, because the emperor could intervene against them, but they could not intervene against him. It assured to the emperor the inviolability of his person, the presidency of the Concilia Plebis, and the power of giving auxilium, or special assistance, to all the citizens. It was, as we have before said, both perpetual and annual, and Augustus and Tiberius reckoned the years of their reigns from the com- mencement of their tribunician power. The position of pontifex maximus and a clause in the Lex de Imperio, conferring on the emperor authority to do anything which he thought advisable for the dignity of The Em- religion, gave him supreme superintendence over peror and the state worship and the nomination of a certain Religion, number of priests. He also had other powers. The supervision of the equites, which was one of the duties of the censors, was taken over by him, and also the p owers general superintendence of public works, which properly belonged to the aediles. These duties he delegated to different colleges of curators, and the duties of the aediles, such as the high police of the city of Rome, and the superin- tendence of the supply of corn, came into the hands of the emperor and were committed to various public functionaries, — the high police to the praefertus urbi, the night police to the jyraefedus vigilum, the supply of corn to the praefectus annonae. In this manner, the emperor united in his own person an important share of powers which were exercised under the republic by the Senate, the Oomitia, and the Magis- trates. The emperors were surrounded by much pomp and circum- stance, which gradually grew in intensity. They could sit either on the curule chair of the consuls, or on the little stool of the tribunes. They were ac- (^emonial. companied by twelve lictors, and after the time of Domitian by twenty-four, with their fasces wreathed in laurels, also by running footmen, very necessary in a crowded city, by servants to shout before them, as is seen now in India, and by linkmen carrying torches. They wore a laurel crown and 208 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to embroidered robe, and a special triumphal dress on feast days, and from the time of Septimius Severus they wore the purple military cloak even in Rome. Their statues or busts were set up in the headquarters of the legions, and their portraits deco- rated their coins. On the first of January each year, solemn vows were offered for the life and health of the emperor. His birthday and the day of his accession were observed as festivals. He was protected by a Praetorian guard, one cohort of which was always present wherever the emperor was staying, and by foreign guards, generally Germans or Batavians. About the beginning of the third century the emperor came to be con- sidered as above the laws, and took the title of Dominus, and after Aurelian he was called Dominus et Deus (Lord and God). The members of the imperial house included the agnatic de- scendants of the emperor and their wives, who enjoyed the privilege of personal inviolability and the title of Caesar. The citizens who were admitted to the presence of the emperor were called the emperor's friends, and a selection of these who accompanied the sovereign on his journeys outside Italy re- ceived the designation of his comites, or travelling companions, a name preserved in our modern title of Count. The powers entrusted to the emperor required the assistance of a large bureaucracy, which was divided by Claudius into different de- partments called scrinia. The government which we have described is known as the Dyarchy — that is, the double rule of the emperor and the re- public. Whatever might be the fate of republi- Repubhcan can institutions, Augustus was careful to respect their forms. He maintained the Comitia as they had been before his time, and, in some ways, endeavoured to make them more efficient • he completed the Saepta Marmorea or ranges of marble pens in the Campus Martius, for the purpose of voting, which had been begun by Julius Caesar ; and he built a diribitorium for counting the votes. The Comitia, however, lost their judicial character, while their legislative authority was much curtailed by large powers being given to the emperor and the Senate. After the reign of Augustus, the intervention of the people in legislation became more and more rare, and it did not survive the first century of the empire. The Comitia Centuriata and Tributa exercised their electoral functions under Augustus, but the right of presenting candi- dates was reserved to the emperor, and from the beginning of the reign of Tiberius* the power passed to the Senate and the a.d. 96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 209 emperor. However, until the third century, the solemn an- nouncement of the names of successful candidates was still made in the Campus Martius. The numbers of the Senate, whose members were nominated first by Caesar as dictator, and then by the Triumvirs, had enormously increased, and very unfit persons had been nominated, and Augustus, during his reign, held three revisions of the Senate, in order to reduce its numbers and to purify it. The normal number of the Senate was fixed at 600, the age for becoming a member at twenty-five, and a certain property qualification was enforced. The emperor natur- ally had great power over its deliberations. He presided at its meetings, and could propose motions even in his absence, by writing a letter to that effect. The Senate met regularly twice every month, excepting in the months of September and October. The usual meeting-place was the Curia Julia, on the eastern side of the Comitium, which still exists in the church of St. Adriano. But, under Caesar and the Triumvirate, the Senate lost its power and all independence. It recovered these powers, to some extent, under Augustus and Tiberius ; but its essential character, as the great consultative body in all important affairs of state, was lost for ever. It was indeed, theoretically, the principal legislative body of the empire, and under the Dyarchy the Senate by right shared the sovereignty with the emperor ; but the part which it really played in legislation depended on the personal character of the emperor — upon his strength and weakness. The Dyarchy was changed to a monarchy in the third century, not without some resistance from the Senate. An important institution was founded by Augustus in 27 B.C., the permanent deputation of the Senate. It consisted of fifteen senators drawn by lot, and sitting for six months, with the consuls and representatives of other magistrates. It was in- tended to fulfil the province of the preliminary discussion of matters which were to be brought before the Senate. It was afterwards enlarged, and its decisions became equal in value to decrees of the Senate. This delegation of the Senate may be regarded as the forerunner of the various royal councils, and councils of state, which meet us in different forms of monarchies, both in medieval and modern times. The old magistracies of the republic underwent important changes under the empire. The order in which the different offices might be held was rigorously observed — first the aedile- ship, then the quaestorship or the tribunate, then the praetorship, 210 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to and lastly the consulate. The censors lost nearly all their power, and under Domitian ceased to exist altogether. The The Old duration of the consulship was generally shortened, Magis- and eventually it was held only for two months, trades. there being thus six sets of consuls in the year. This arrangement was afterwards imitated by the Italian cities of the Middle Ages. At the same time, the first elected were regarded as the regular consuls, the others as supernumeraries. The consuls retained their high dignity even under the empire, but they had very little power excepting as presidents of the senate. The administration of the empire had passed entirely from their hands into those of the emperor, on Avhom they were completely dependent. The murder of Caesar was received with horror by the people of Rome : they admired and loved him, and were proud to serve under him, and they had neither sympathy nor *f a , understanding for the policy of the conspirators. Antonius seized the occasion. He ordered the dead body of Caesar to be carried into the Forum, and made an impassioned speech, immortalised by the genius of Shakespeare, to the assembled crowd. He told them how Caesar had left them, by his will, his gardens across the Tiber and a sum of money to every citizen. He showed them his blood-stained robe, still gashed by the daggers of the murderers. The body was burned on the spot, where a large mass of rubble still marks the site, and the heads of the conspiracy were driven from the city by public indignation. Antonius now carried a decision in the Senate by which all the acts of Caesar, as found in his testament and other papers, were confirmed. In a certain sense, he took Caesar's place for the moment, and, in order to form an army for his protection, he got himself invested by the popular vote with the proconsulship of Hither Gaul. This had already been assigned by a decree of the Senate to Decimus Brutus, who was not prepared to give it up, and, when Antony marched to take possession of it, shut himself up in the city of Mutina, now Modena, which Antony T f h M^t"na was om ig' e( l to besiege. The war of Mutina, as it is called, lasted for some little time. The Senate, excited by the so-called Philippic orations of Cicero, declared Antonius guilty of high treason, and sent an army against him under the command of the two consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, who defeated him at Mutina, and forced him to ad. 96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 211 take refuge in Gaul, where he was joined by Lepidus, who had been master of the horse under Caesar. But both consuls fell in the war, and the command was taken by the propraetor, the young Augustus, known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, one of the most remarkable men in the annals of the world. His well-known boyish bust stands as the model for the expression of statesman- like resolution and firmness and for engaging sweetness of dis- position. Its discovery in 1806 had much influence in forming the type of the portraits of Napoleon. He was now twenty years of age, the great-nephew and adopted son of Caesar. Aiming at once at avenging his uncle and advancing himself, he reversed the policy of the Senate, forcing it to allow his election as consul and pass a decree against Caesar's murderers. Brutus and Cassius were collecting an army in the East, but when Antonius marched to Italy, Octavian joined him, and they associated with themselves the far inferior Lepidus. The legions of Decimus Brutus mutinied against him, murdered him, and sent his head to Antonius, upon which t^ Second the three, Octavian, Antonius, and Lepidus, meet- Trium- ing on an island in the Reno, near Bologna, virate. formed a Triumvirate for the purpose of crushing Brutus and Cassius, and the Senate confirmed their arrangement for five years. In order to get money, they established a reign of terror, in which three hundred senators and two thousand equites lost their lives and property, among them the unfortunate Cicero, whose savage attacks Antonius could not forgive. Now began the war against Caesar's murderers, who repre- sented themselves as supporting republican principles. Octa- vianus was not able to drive Sextus Pompeius from Sicily, where he was intercepting the supply fteaewal of of corn to Rome, but he defeated the republican fleet at Brindisi, and opened a way for his colleagues to the East. Antonius, who possessed great qualities as a general, hastened to Macedonia ; and, in 42, entirely de- feated Brutus and Cassius in two engagements at pu-v • Philippi, where, after their defeat, they both killed themselves. Antonius went to Egypt, where he fell under the fascinations of Cleopatra, one of the most attractive of her sex, who knew how to use her charms and her wealth to ensnare political leaders like Caesar and Antonius, but, in this seeming dissoluteness, kept a cool head for the solid interests of her country. Octavianus returned to Italy, and 2i2 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to distributed the lands promised to them in Hither Gaul to 170,000 veterans. Fulvia, the ambitious wife of Antonius, jealous of the sudden rise of the young Octavian, and assisted by her brother-in-law, Lucius Antonius, joined the discon- tented inhabitants of Upper Italy, and made war against the upstart youth, the most notable feature of which was the siege Renewal of °f Perusia, which Lucius was at last compelled the Trium- to surrender. Marcus hastened with a fleet to virate. Brundisium, and here the Triumvirate was re- newed in the year 40, Octavianus receiving command of the West, Antonius of the East, and Lepidus of Africa. Concord was preserved among the Triumvirs by the efforts of Octavia, the worthy sister of Octavian, whom Antonius married after the death of Fulvia. As it was Defeat of S. impossible to conquer Sextus Pompeius or his Pompeius. « r , , i m • • i -j-l fleet, the Triumvirs made an arrangement with him at Misenum, by which he should retain for himself Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and Achaia. But there was some re- luctance to carry out these conditions, and the result was a maritime war between Pompeius and Octavian, which lasted from 38 to 36, and ended with the defeat of Pompeius at Mylae and Naulochus by a fleet which M. Vipsanius Agrippa had built. Pompeius, seeking assistance from Antonius, was treacherously murdered at Miletus in 35. Lepidus, who had assumed a position for which his talents and capacities in Lepidus n0 wa y fitted hi mj was forced to retire from the Triumvirate, and died many years afterwards at Circeii in honourable retreat. Octavian was now undisputed master of the West, and, living at Rome, won the favour of all by his strong and prudent Mark government. But Antonius, at Alexandria, allowed Antony in himself to become more and more the slave of the East. Cleopatra and to be corrupted by oriental ways. She robbed him of the provinces of Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, and parts of Judaea and Cilicia; she incited him to make war against the Parthians, which cost him the greatest part of his army, and to celebrate in her capital an unworthy triumph over Artavasdes, the king of Armenia, which was a disgrace to the Roman name ; and finally to declare war against Octavian, whose sister Octavia he latterly divorced. Octavian was roused to action, but, to avoid the appearance of another civil war, he declared war against Cleopatra. The two lovers, instead of proceeding to Italy, which was unpre- pared for resistance, spent the winter in silken dalliance at a.d. 96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 213 Ephesus, and then at Athens. In the following year, 31, Octavian had collected an army of 80,000 infantry, 12,000 cavalry, and a fleet of 250 ships. With this he fought the battle of Actium in the Ambracian Gulf. The victory fc was a strange one. Antonius had a superior army and twice the number of ships, but Cleopatra . a . . e ° cared less for Antonius than for her own safety, and determined to desert him at the first opportunity. With this view she insisted on a sea fight, leaving the army unused. Agrippa attacked the unwieldy galleons of Antonius with his light Liburnian vessels, and, when Cleopatra saw that the result of the conflict was doubtful, she sailed away with her fleet, and Antonius followed her. Agrippa thereupon pursued the ships of the enemy, and the land forces, when they were assured of the flight of their general, surrendered. Octavian thus became the undisputed master of the world, having arrived at this position by prudence and self-command, without one trace of treachery or deceit. It now remained to subdue Cleopatra. Strengthened by the legions of Antonius, Octavian went first to Greece, then to the Greek islands, and lastly to Egypt. Cleopatra Death of now tried her arts of fascination over him, who Antony and in his brilliant youth would have been a more Cleopatra. worthy conquest than either Caesar or Antonius, but he was proof against temptation. However, he used her devotion to him to get possession of her army and her fleet. When Antonius sought to upbraid her for her treachery, she shut herself up with the treasures she had amassed in the mausoleum which she had constructed. She let Antonius believe that she was dead, and he put an end to his life, dying eventually, it is said, in her arms. Once more she used her arts to obtain her liberty from Octavian, but, when he resisted, she took poison, that she might not suffer the disgrace of being exhibited in his triumph. The story goes that she was poisoned by an asp concealed in a basket of figs. Octavian gave her a splendid funeral, and buried her by the side of Antonius. The lovers now rest under a powder magazine in the harbour of Alexandria, opposite the world-renowned Pharos, and it is difficult to dis- cover why the present masters of Egypt do not disinter their remains. Egypt was made into a province, independent of the control of the Senate, and Octavian returned to Rome to celebrate his triple triumph, and to consolidate his imperial government in the manner which has been already related. It is impossible within the compass of this work to give 214 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to an adequate account of the Augustan Age, one of those rare periods of harmony in the history of the world when cir- cumstances united to produce peace, wealth, and culture. Augustus, Augustus aimed at establishing an empire in the Master of form of a republic. His domains included the World. almost the whole of the world as it was then known — in Europe, the peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Balkans, with Gaul as far as the Rhine ; in Asia, Asia Minor and Syria as far as the Euphrates ; in Africa, Egypt and Carthage. He was a lover of peace, and the wars which he undertook on the Rhine and the Danube, and in the Alps, were undertaken for the defence of the Roman frontiers. In order to secure the northern frontier of Italy, Drusus and Tiberius, the stepsons of Augustus, carried on, in the years 16 and 15 B.C., several successful campaigns against The German t] c lti ^ between the Alps and the Danube ; and made Raetia, Vandalusia, Noricum, and Pannonia into Roman provinces, defended by fortresses at Vienna, Regensburg, Salzburg, and Augsburg. Drusus also undertook, in the years 12 to 9 B.C., four campaigns in the interior of Germany as far as the Elbe, and fortified the frontier from Mainz to the north of the Rhine by forty fortresses, amongst which were Xanten, one of the most interesting of German towns, Cologne, Bonn, Coblenz, Mainz, Strasburg, and Basel. His brother Tiberius also brought under Roman sway, mainly by adroit diplomacy, the north-west of Germany from the Elbe to the Rhine. One of the Roman governors left in Arminius these provinces was Quintilius Varus, who offended defeats the Germans by the little regard which he paid Varus. to their laws and customs. They rose against him, led by their heroic chieftain Arminius, who belonged to the tribe of the Cherusci, and defeated him in 9 B.C. in the defiles of the Saltus Teutoburgensis, now known as the Teuto- burger Wald, in the neighbourhood of Detmold. This defeat produced a profound effect on the Romans, and was indeed never forgotten, and it is now celebrated as a glorious victory by the modern Germans. Thus the descendants of Julius Caesar tried in vain to establish that settlement of the frontier Augustus' OI the empire which he would have effected if he domestic had lived. Augustus was unfortunate in his Troubles. domestic arrangements and relations ; if he had been less so the empire would have suffered fewer shocks, and would have been more successful. Augustus married and r 3 5x -;.i ^tS a.d. 96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 215 divorced two wives in early youth : he married Scribonia in 38, but divorced her a year afterwards, when she had borne him a daughter, Julia, having been fascinated by the charms of Livia, the wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, who surrendered her to him. Livia's two sons, Tiberius, who was born in 42 B.C., and Drusus, who was born three months after her marriage to Augustus, were brought up in the house of her former husband, but after his death were transferred to the house of Augustus. The most promising member of the imperial household was Marcellus, the son of Ocbavia, sister of Augustus, who in early youth married Julia, the daughter of Augustus, to the disgust of Livia, who designed her for one of her own children. His principal rival was Agrippa, his brother-in-law, who was very jealous of Maecenas. Marcellus died in 23 B.C., the darling of the Roman people. Augustus now married Julia to Agrippa, who, for the purpose, divorced Marcella, the sister of Marcellus. In 17 Agrippa went with Julia to the East to arrange disputed successions and other matters, and founded Julia Felix on the site of the modern Beirut. After spending several years in the East, Agrippa returned to Rome, and died in March B.C. 12, being buried by Augustus with distinguished honour. His Pantheon at Rome, like his splendid baths, has been replaced by buildings of a considerably later period. Tiberius was now thirty years old. Livia divorced him from his wife, Vipsania Agrippina, whom he dearly loved, and made him marry Julia, who had already borne five children to Agrippa — three sons, Gains, Lucius, and Agrippa ; and two daughters, Julia and Agrippina. This brought him near the succession, but Augustus did not care, for him. The imperial circle was now sadly diminished in numbers. Agrippa, Octavia, Drusus, and Maecenas all died between the years 12 and 8 B.C. Augustus turned with affec- ip^g tion to his grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, the Imperial children of his daughter Julia and his friend Family. Agrippa, gave them the title of Caesar, and treated them as members of his family. They were regarded with jealousy by Livia ; and Tiberius, perhaps to escape the annoyance of family broils, obtained permission to go to the island of Rhodes, where he spent seven years in deep study. Suddenly Augustus took the surprising step of banishing his own daughter, the mother of his favourite grandsons, to the island of Pandataria, on the plea that her mode of life was a scandal to the imperial family. This is certainly correctly ascribed to the jealous intrigues of 216 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to Livia, but it is difficult to penetrate the intricacies of that corrupt age, in which ordinary men and women had to bear a burden of sovereignty too heavy for any human being to support. Deaths of Julia's son Gaius, now eighteen years of age, was Gaius and sent with proconsular authority to Asia, with the Lucius. object of subduing the Armenians, who had re- volted from Rome with the assistance of the Parthians, and of punishing certain Arabian tribes. Accompanied by Lollius as an adviser, he went by way of Samos to Egypt, visited Tiberius at Rhodes, and then proceeded to Palestine and Syria. He had an interview with the Parthian king, Phraates, on an island in the Euphrates, and persuaded him to evacuate Armenia. But, worn out by exertions and weakened by a wound, he died in Lycia on February 4, his younger brother Lucius having also succumbed to sickness eighteen months earlier at Marseilles. Their deaths are, of course, attributed to poison administered by Livia, but without the slightest evidence. At last, Augustus himself, now seventy-six years Augustus °^' c ^ ec * su d ( l en ly at Nola, in Campania. It is said that Livia, then an old woman of seventy, not only poisoned her husband, but concealed his death until Tiberius could be brought to Rome. These stories are to be regarded more as evidence of the degeneracy of the age than as serious history. Augustus was burned and buried in the Campus Martins, where the remains of his stately mausoleum still exist. The character of Augustus has always been a matter of great dispute, some regarding him as a mere actor, others as a far- Place of seeing statesman of the first rank. The wise Augustus in historian will probably concur with the latter History. judgment. Julius Caesar, greater than his suc- cessor, has undoubtedly the credit of having conceived the form which it was necessary for the new empire to take if it was to be successful and lasting. But he was only able to lay the founda- tions of it, and the raising of the imperial fabric was left to Augustus. He governed the empire with such wisdom and judgment and moderation that the Augustan Age has always been regarded as one of the few bright spots in the annals of mankind, an oasis of security in the desert of turmoil, in which it was both appropriate and fortunate that the The Birth • of Christ great Founder of our religion, Jesus Christ, should be born. The birth of Christ not only dignifies the reign of Augustus, but stamps its character. Only in a period of rest, in silence of arms, in a world-peace, could a.d. 96} THE ROMAN EMPIRE 217 Christianity have come into existence and found an appropriate nidus for its growth and dissemination. Undoubtedly the momentous hiatus between the years of before and after Christ was bridged over by the rule of one of the greatest of earthly sovereigns. As with Pericles, his sweet and noble countenance indicated the wisdom and moderation which characterised his rule. Whether he spoke or was silent, a cheerful restfulness played over his countenance, and his benevolence disarmed the violence of the assassin. He combined dignity and geniality ; his large clear eyes were the windows of a mind wide and penetrating in the outlook. If we regard Caesar as the most highly gifted of human beings, with capacities so far beyond our power to imitate them adequately, Augustus must remain for us the embodiment of dignity and wisdom, the oracle of the Roman empire, the builder who found Rome built of bricks and mortar and who left it of marble, the man of letters who surrounded himself with historians and poets who would rightly make his age an object of admiration and envy to posterity. Tiberius reigned for twenty-three years, from 14 to 37 a.d. The narrative of his reign has been so disturbed by calumny, and so smirched by revolting falsehoods, that it is difficult to describe it' accurately. The ^Serius probability is that he was really a great ruler, but, having passed a great portion of his time in solitude and study, he was less fitted for imperial representation than Caesar or Augustus, and his retirement to the island of Capri at the end of his life is a pendant to his seclusion at Rhodes in his middle age. No doubt, the great glories of his reign lay in the victories of Germanicus, his nephew and adopted Campaigns son, the child of his brother Drusus, who succeeded of Ger- him in the pacification of Germany, a country manicus. which was a constant thorn in the side of Rome, but which Julius Caesar would have reduced to order if he had lived. In 14 A.D., at the news of the death of Augustus, a mutiny broke out in the camp of Vetera on the Rhine, and Germanicus hastened from Gaul to suppress it, which he effected with some difficulty. He thought that the best remedy for disaffection would be active service, and he led his troops over the river. Here he conducted three campaigns with the same energy as his father Drusus. In the first, he devastated the territory of the Marsi, but was driven back by the union of the Bructeri and Usipetes. In the second he defeated the Chatti, broke into the lands of the Cherusci, and paid funeral honours to the 218 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to dead whose bones recorded the catastrophe of Varus, three years before. He was, however, repulsed by an attack of Arminius, and also lost his fleet by a storm. At the same time his lieutenant, Oaecina, suffered a severe defeat in Friesland. In the third campaign, he sailed with a fleet of a thousand ships into the Ems, and then marched to the Weser, where he gained a victory, but was obliged to retire before superior forces. Germanicus was preparing for a fourth campaign, when he was recalled, not necessarily from jealousy, but because Tiberius had conceived a different idea of frontier policy, and thought that the Germans had better be allowed to slaughter each other by mutual quarrels. After his departure, Arminius marched against Marbod, who had taken no part in the campaign against the Romans, and drove him back into Bohemia, where he was deposed by Catualda, a Gothic prince, and, surrendering himself to the Romans, was sent to Ravenna. In 21, Arminius, the great German patriot, fell by treachery. From this time the Romans contented themselves with a defensive policy on the Rhine and the Danube. From his brilliant but not very successful campaigns in Germany, Germanicus was sent to the East, where there was plenty to occupy his attention. He visited the i^th^East 5 P laces °f an cient fame — Athens, Byzantium, Ilion, and Colophon — and was able to alleviate misery which an earthquake had inflicted on Asia Minor. It is said that he was opposed in all his undertakings by Calpurnius Piso, the governor of Syria, and his wife Plancina. He brought order into the affairs of Armenia, Parthia, and Cappadocia. He then sailed up the Nile as far as the second cataract, and studied the history and monuments of that country, and relieved the conditions of the suffering people. Returning to Syria, he died at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, at the age of 34 — it was of course said by poison. His wife Agrippina brought back his ashes to Rome in a triumphal progress which has few parallels in history, and has been described to us by the brilliant but partial pen of Tacitus. Piso returned to Rome in 20, but was accused of murder before the Senate. Whatever may have been the truth, public opinion was strongly against him, and before judgment was pronounced he killed himself. His wife Plancina received a pardon, and his sons were allowed to inherit their father's property. Agrippina was left with three sons, Nero, Drusus, and Gaius. She entirely believed the charge against Piso and his wife, and was a.d. 9.6] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 219 very bitter at the way in which her husband had been treated. She was supposed to be urging her children to aim at the throne, and, by a decree of the Senate, was sent with her son Nero to an island, where they both perished by hunger. In the following year, her second son, Drusus, was declared an enemy of his country, imprisoned, and killed. It is generally related that the later years of Tiberius, when he assumed more power to himself and paid little attention to the Senate, were largely under the control of Sejanus, who was head of the Praetorian Guard. We must again receive the utterances of Tacitus and Juvenal with caution. He died at the age of seventy- eight at Misenum, and he was succeeded by Gaius, the third son of Germanicus, who had by some good fortune escaped the fate of his brothers. The twelve Caesars, who have always occupied so prominent a part in the history of the world, are made up of four sets of three. The first three of these, Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Tiberius, have already received Caesars attention. Then came Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, with whom the Julian- Claudian family, natural and adopted, came to an end. These were succeeded by the three military Emperors, Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and these again by the three emperors of the Flavian house, Vespasianus, Titus, and Domitian. It is difficult to write the history of any of these emperors with accuracy. They occupied a position in the world which has rarely been held by any human being — that of absolute control over a large portion of the globe, indeed the only portion of any importance; called to this position suddenly and by a kind" of accident, unprepared for it them- selves, without the apparatus and the instruments of govern- ment which were necessary for the successful fulfilment of their duties. This produced two results. First, it placed upon human beings, generally of ordinary capacity, a burden far too heavy for them to bear ; it made the mild capricious, in some cases nearly mad. Secondly, it made a judicial and temperate account of their reign almost impossible, because historians had not yet come to understand the conditions under which such extraordinary powers must necessarily be t n J r ,1 in , -1 •, The Roman exercised, and consequently could not describe uj s t ri ans them. We have to depend on two lines of narrative ; authors like Suetonius giving prominence to silly stories and to court gossip, which, even if true, would throw little light upon the facts about which we are most interested, 220 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to and others, politicians like Tacitus or satirists like Juvenal, powerful and impressive writers, who are so full of party jealousy, and so bitterly conscious of the evils of autocratic rule, that it is impossible to separate truth from falsehood. It is a safe rule, in considering the career of a very great man like Caesar or Napoleon, not to pay attention to his imputed faults until you have taken trouble to understand his merits, and the same is true of persons holding exceptional authority, which removes them from the society of the multitude, like the early emperors of Rome, and some similar rulers in modern times. We have tried in our own narrative to follow this rule, to disregard the stories with which many accounts of these sovereigns are filled, and to confine ourselves to those matters which are of permanent interest and the evidence of which is tolerably certain. Of the second group, Gaius, known as Caligula, the name of the military shoe which he wore as a child during the campaigns of his father, was the youngest son eigns o Q £ Q erm anicus, w h escaped the murder of his uncle and his two elder brothers. He reigned only five years, from 37 to 41 a.d. We are told that he was first received with joy and acclamation, but that, after a few months, he fell a victim to the madness of despotism, which led to acts of cruelty and extravagance, so that he was mur- dered by an officer of the Praetorian Guard. He was succeeded by his uncle, the younger brother of Germanicus, ^ ,. known as Claudius, who reigned from 41 to 54. We know that he was a scholar and a man of science. We are told that he was ridiculous in appearance and character, and that after his death he was changed, not into a god, but into a pumpkin. But that need not concern us : the solid facts of his reign are that he made the harbour of Ostia ; began to drain the Lake Fucinus, an enter- prise completed in our days ; invaded our country Britain, and took a personal part in the campaign ; made Mauretania, Lycia, and Thrace into Roman provinces ; and, after the death of Herod Agrippa, brought Judaea under the control of the Roman government. He had two wives, Messalina, and Agrippina, of whom we do not hear a good account. The name of the first has become proverbial for inordinate lust, and the second has been raised by the literary talents of Tacitus to an eminence in which we do not know whether to detect or pity her most. She had a son called Britannicus by A.i). 90] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 221 the Emperor Claudius, and another son, Nero, by her first husband, Domitius Ahenobarbus. Britannicus died as a boy, and when Claudius died, we are told by poison, Nero succeeded to the throne. He pro- duced a powerful effect on the Roman world, Reign and which will never be effaced, but there is the Character same difficulty in disentangling truth from false- °f Nero, hood in the annals of his life. He had been educated chiefly by the philosopher Seneca, one of the wisest and best men of the time, and was directed in state affairs by Burrus, the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, who was an excellent adviser. During the early part of his reign, which lasted for fourteen years, from 54 to 68, he gave good hopes, but afterwards the madness which accompanies unrestrained power in minds not able to bear it seems to have taken possession of him. We need not believe the worst stories told about him — that he murdered his brother, his mother, and his wife, or that he wilfully set Rome on fire. He certainly put to death both Jews and Christians, who were both unpopular, but there is no evidence that he instituted a systematic persecution of either one or the other. He took advantage of the burning of Rome to rebuild the city in a more magnificent and safer style, which it sadly wanted, and erected for himself a gorgeous palace called the Golden House, which he filled with the spoils of the temples of Asia and Greece. There can be little doubt that he possessed great artistic gifts, both in music and in acting, and that he loved to exhibit these accomplishments in an undignified manner, and showed himself in this way quite unworthy of his position. It was natural that the serious soldiers of his empire should rise against him with a view of putting a more worthy successor in his place. Julius Vindex, propraetor of Gaul, and Servius Sulpicius Galba, proconsul of Spain, formed a conspiracy against him, and Galba was elected emperor and marched upon Rome. Nero fled to a country house, where, at his own request, he was killed by a faithful servant. He did not die unlamented. His personality had made a deep impression upon the Roman world, so that there was a belief that he was not really dead, but would return some day from the far East, where he lay concealed. His bust in Rome was decorated every year with fresh flowers, false Neroes arose to represent him, and it is said that even Domitian trembled at his name. He was sincerely mourned by the Greeks, for whose art and literature he had a deep admiration, and 222 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c. to who could not forget that he had visited Athens to show his artistic accomplishments. On the other hand, the Christians regarded him as Antichrist. With him perished the imperial line which could boast its descent from Venus and Aeneas, and which, for two hundred years, had been so closely connected with the most important events in the history of the Roman world and people. The next triad of Caesars (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius) reigned only for a year and a half, from June 68 to December 69. Galba, a strict and penurious old man, seventy- Sp 1 ^ °» three years of age, whose virtues were not fitted to that self-indulgent age, was murdered by the Praetorians, after a reign of six months. Otho, viceroy of Lusi- tania, who had bought the crown, was defeated by his rival Vitellius, at Bedriacum, in Upper Italy, at the spot where the Chiese flows into the Oglio. Otho is represented as a luxurious fop, who never deserted his looking-glass, and Vitellius, as a very fat man with swollen cheeks, whose chief delight lay in the pleasures of the table. Happily they were succeeded by a more worthy ruler, T. Flavins Vespasianus, the first of the Flavian line, who, being then in the East, was summoned to the throne by the legions of Moesia, Pannonia, and Egypt. He did not establish his power without a conflict in Rome itself, in which the ancient Capitoline temple was destroyed by fire. The confusion and disorder of the capital produced its natural effect in the provinces. The Batavi, the warlike ancestors of the Dutch, with the warlike race of the Frisians, stirred up by their patriotic prophetess Velleda, rose in rebellion under Claudius Civilis, and were put down with difficulty ; and, at the same time, the Gauls, under Julius Sabinus, who was desirous to found a Gallic kingdom for himself, also rose to help their neighbours on the sea-coast. Not until the year 70 was peace restored. The turbulent Jews, who had driven out the vice- roy of Syria, Cestius Gallus, declared their independence, and in 67 Vespasian was sent to quell them. He was, however, recalled to the capital to be emperor, and left his son Titus in command. Titus besieged Jerusalem, captured it, and de- Destruction stroyed the holy temple by fire, a large number of Jeru- of Jews perishing in the flames. This destruction salem. f the Jewish temple by Titus in 70, although it may have seemed a slight matter to the Romans of that time, was really an event of great importance in the history of the world. It not only obliterated the most holy seat of worship a.d.96] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 223 in Syria, and left the people of that country without a shrine which might give expression to their religious aspirations, but had the effect of scattering the Jews through all the nations of the world, and also gave a great impulse to the dissemination of Christianity. In Vespasian, Rome had once more a worthy emperor, who brought back order and morality into the shattered polity. He reformed the Senate, gave it back its privileges, placed the finances on a sound footing, and set an ei S ns .° example of simplicity and moderation. He was a friend of science and education, established a system of paid professors, and enriched Rome by inimitable buildings, the Temple of Peace, and the Coliseum, which is now one of the wonders of the world, an amphitheatre to contain without diffi- culty 90,000 spectators. He attempted to subdue Britain, and sent to it the notable statesman Agricola, who, during the years 78 to 85, left there an example of wise and benevolent rule. His son Titus, who was associated with him in the government on his return from an 1 us ' Palestine, succeeded him in 79. He was less stern than his father, and left a memory more remarkable for kindness and benevolence. This was shown by his treatment of Rome, after it had been devastated by a three days' fire, and by the zeal he displayed in relieving Italy, when it suffered from famine, pestilence, and earthquake. He received the title of the " love and darling of the human race," and he was accustomed to say that he considered that day lost in which he had not performed a benevolent action. It was in his reign that Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae were -destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79. After a reign of ten years, in which he deeply impressed the imagination of mankind, Titus died at the early age of forty- one, and was succeeded by his brother Domitian, who reigned for fifteen years, from 81 to 96. A man of very different character, he, too, began well, but, like several of his predecessors, was not able to support the burden of irresponsible rule, and became a cruel and cowardly tyrant. He called himself not only Lord, but God, Divus as well as Dominus ; he robbed the rich to gratify his habits of extrava- gance, and delighted in murder. At last he was murdered by his wife. He was unfortunate in war. He celebrated a triumph over the Chabri, whom he had never conquered, and over the Dacians, the warlike inhabitants of Transylvania and 224 A GENERAL HISTORY [44 b.c.-a.d. 96 Roumania, who were reserved to fall before a more worthy antagonist. He completed the conquest of Britain, but killed Agricola through jealousy. He did a great deal for the advance- ment of the capital. He built the palace which to-day excites our wonder on the Palatine Hill, and the Temple of Vespasian, which is the most beautiful monument in the Forum. To him also is due the famous Arch of Titus, with which he celebrated his brother's victory over the Jews. The reigns of the three Flavian emperors, the last triad of the twelve Caesars, form a notable epoch in the history of the The Roman empire. Under them the frontiers of the Imperial empire were extended beyond the Rhine, and Frontiers. beyond the Danube. An enlightened frontier policy was introduced. New provinces were formed, and the great wall of defence, the " limes Romanus," extending from the Rhine to the Danube, was built to safeguard Roman territory against German incursions. Domitian's name has become notorious for his persecution of the Christians, but this has been probably exaggerated, and was caused by the oppres- sion of the Jews by heavy taxes, and by the little distinction that was drawn between Christians and Jews. The Flavian period was, on the whole, a worthy prelude to the great age of the Antonines, but, after all allowance has been made for calumnious exaggeration, the historian will find it difficult to place Domitian on a level with his brother and his father, although, undoubtedly, in his longer reign, he did more to carry out their designs. CHAPTER XIII. THE ROMAN EMPIRE, 96-337 A.D. The world has probably never seen a nobler series of sovereigns than those to whom its government was committed after the death of Domitian. Nerva only reigned a short time, and had little opportunity of showing what was in Antonines him, but Trajan remains the example of a strong and faultless ruler, and the reigns of his three successors, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius — the " age of the Antonines " — form, by the general consent of posterity, an oasis in the desert of human affairs. Marcus Cocceius Nerva, a senator advanced in years, who had probably taken part in the conspiracy against Domitian, was chosen by the Praetorian Guard to be his successor. He proceeded to reverse the policy of Domitian, and gave the chief power into the hands of the Senate. He opened the prison doors, he recalled exiles from banishment, he put an end to the curse of informers, he was an enemy of extravagance, he alleviated the burdens of the provinces. This policy, however, did not please the Praetorians, and they regretted that they had given their consent to Nerva's election. To remedy the defects of his own character, he summoned to the throne, as his col- league, Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, a capable and . respected general. He was by birth a Spaniard, ■" who had, first as consul and then as commander of the Rhine army, obtained a great reputation. He combined, as much as any emperor who had ever reigned over the empire, the two conflicting principles of imperium and libertas. Europe still exhibits many monuments of his reign. He completed the Appian Road through the Pontine marshes ; he created new harbours, and built roads and bridges, such as the bridge over the Rhine at Mainz. The roads he made along the Danube above Orsova, and the bridge which he built over that mighty river below the Iron Gate, still attract the interest of the traveller. He established a system of post-houses throughout the empire : 3-5 p 226 A GENERAL HISTORY La.d. 96 to he provided for the education of five thousand orphan children. The districts between the Rhine and the Danube generally known as the Agri Decumates he surrounded by a wall, so as to secure their being contained within the Roman empire. He defeated the Dacians in two campaigns, and the column of Trajan in the Forum, which he constructed at Rome, still remains as evidence of his conquests, covered with valuable re- presentations of the conflicts by which they were achieved. He made Dacia into a Roman province. He delivered Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria from the incursions of the Parthians, and entered the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon, as a conqueror. He marched through Arabia, and reached the Persian Gulf. He formed a province of Arabia, consisting of a portion of Syria from Damascus to the Red Sea. He made an expedition into Nubia, and extended its boundaries. His health suffered from the hardships borne in these torrid lands, and he pre- pared to obey the order of the Senate which recalled him to Italy, but he died on August 11, 117, at the age of 64, at Selinus in Cilicia, which afterwards bore the name of Trajano- polis. His ashes were brought to Rome in a golden urn, and buried at the foot of his column, which he had erected in his Forum. He received the title of " Optimus," and it was customary to greet future emperors on their accession with the words, " May you be more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan ! " He was succeeded by a worthy successor, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, who reigned twenty-one years, from 117 to 138. He was a relation of Trajan, and married his wife Hadrian. patina. He paid great attention to law, as Trajan had to education. He codified Praetorian Law, the Equity of the Romans ; invited distinguished lawj 7 ers to the capital ; and organised the administration of the empire in the three separated departments of palatine, public, and military, concerning respectively the empire, the state, and the army — a classification which endured to the latest times. The great feature of his reign lay in the imperial progresses, in which he visited every part of his dominions, very largely on foot, remedying abuses, and leaving monuments of his rule in magnificent buildings. In Rome, the Castle of Saint Angelo, first founded as his sumptuous burying place, recalls his memory to every traveller. The falls of Tivoli owe their origin to him, and his villa in that neighbourhood was full of buildings and works of art which recalled the memory of his travels. He ad. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 227 completed the dome of the Pantheon, which Agrippa had begun. He enriched Athens with a new quarter. His court was the house of learned men, and was illustrated by historians such as Arrian and Plutarch, philosophers such as Epictetus, rhetoricians such as Fronto and Herodes Atticus. He pursued a policy of peace, and surrendered the conquests which Trajan had made beyond the Euphrates. In Britain he built the great wall to keep out the invasions of the Picts, and in Germany he completed the limes which had been worked at by several of his predecessors. He had great trouble with the Jews. A new town had been built on the site of Jerusalem, destroyed by Titus, called Aelia Capitolina, and a temple of Jupiter was erected on Mount Moriah. This roused the Jews to an insurrection under Barchochebas, put down by Hadrian with the greatest energy, which resulted in the absolute -Dispersion destruction and disintegration of the Jewish nation. It is said that 580,000 Jews were killed in the war, and a thousand towns and villages destroyed. In the last years of Hadrian's life he adopted Aelius Verus, for whom, as for the beautiful Antinous, he had a passionate affection, but who died shortly afterwards. The emperor did not long survive him. He died at Baiae on July 10, 138, at the age of sixty-two, in great personal suffering, which led him to some acts of cruelty towards the close of his career. In all the activity of his public duties, his personal individuality asserted itself in strongly marked characteristics. He fascinates the historian, whether he cares much for government or for literature and art. Hadrian was succeeded by his adopted son, Antoninus Pius, probably the best emperor who ever ascended the throne of the Caesars. Unfortunately, very few records of his reign remain. His name Pius has been variously Antoninus interpreted, but his deeply religious character would justify its being regarded as a tribute to his piety. He reigned from 138 to 161, and it is said by Gibbon and other writers that he never left Italy during this time. But this is an error, as he spent a considerable time at Antioch, which he enriched with magnificent buildings. The chief characteristic of his reign was the attention which he paid to legislation and administration. He gave much power to the Senate, admitted the best and wisest of his subjects to free intercourse with him or with the officers of state, and took great pains in the appointment of provincial officials. Deeply religious, he 228 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. or, to devoted himself to recalling to life the more spiritual aspects of Roman worship. He restored the ritual of the Arval brothers, and erected the magnificent temples of Baalbec in Syria, in which he endeavoured to find a home for the spiritual aspira- tions of that country, which had suffered a severe blow in the destruction of Jerusalem. Like other excellent emperors, he distrusted Christianity, regarding it as a socially disintegrating and a politically subversive force ; but he sought to weaken its influence, not by persecution, but by establishing what he believed to be a purer and more wholesome religion in its place. After a reign of twenty-three years, he died at the age of seventy in his country villa at Lorium. Perhaps an historian will arise who will rescue his personality from the shadow which has been thrown upon it by the brilliancy of the emperors who came before and after him. He was succeeded by Marcus Aurelius, the celebrated philo- sopher, whose Meditations are amongst the best known religious books of the world. During the nineteen years Marcus of his reign, from 161 to 180, he followed in the footsteps of his predecessors. He imposed legis- lation, reduced expenditure, encouraged morality, and showed especial devotion in alleviating the effects of natural calamities, such as floods, earthquakes, famine, and pestilence. He is, however, reckoned as a persecutor of the Christians. He was unfortunate in the choice of an adopted brother, Lucius Yerus, who was chiefly employed in fighting against the Parthians. His reign was afflicted by the Marcomannic War, in which the tribes of the Danube, both Germans and Sarmatians, made a combined invasion into the Roman empire. Other German invaders also threatened the imperial frontiers, and Marcus Aurelius was compelled to cross the Alps three times to repel them. In the second of these campaigns he traversed the frozen Danube, and gained a victory over the Quadi with the help of the Legio Fulminatrix, the Thundering Legion. In the third campaign, he was preparing to restore the fortifications on the Danube begun by Hadrian, when he died at Vienna on March 17, 180, leaving the empire to his unworthy son Corn- modus. The column erected to commemorate his victories stands before the Italian Parliament House in Rome. Commodus knew no better way of delivering himself from the Germans than by proclaiming peace. With the death of Marcus Aurelius the series of great emperors comes to an end, until it is re- vived by Septimius Severus, Diocletian, and Constantine, a.d. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 229 Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius and Faustina, became emperor at the age of nineteen, and reigned for twelve years, from 181 to 192. After having established peace upon the Danube, he entered Rome amid the joyful shouts of the army and the people, a fine handsome man, the first emperor born in the purple. For the first three years of his reign his hands were unstained with blood, but he had really a weak and timid nature ; and as soon as he began to give way to sensual enjoyment, against which his father had expressly warned him, his character changed, and he became lustful and cruel. It is said that he was deeply affected by an attempt upon his life. Eventually he devoted himself entirely to the exercises of the circus, and it is said that he killed 735 animals with his own hand. This passionate de- votion to the practice of the athletics of those days did not prevent his shameful excesses from becoming gradually worse ; while he persecuted, and even put to death, those who attempted to restrain him, or whose lives were a reproach to his own. At last he perished, on New Year's morning, 193, the day on which he was to have entered upon his consulship in the dress of a gladiator. It is said that his mistress Marcia attempted to poison him, and that, when this failed, he was strangled by Narcissus. When he died he was considered to be the best archer and the handsomest man in Rome, and a doubter may ask how this physical excellence was compatible with the sexual excesses which were laid to his charge. On the same night, Pertinax was summoned to the throne. The son of a Ligurian wood merchant, he had raised himself to the highest position in the army and the „ ,. P6rtin3,x government. He was a senator full of virtues, public and private, and set himself to the reform of the state. But the Praetorians wanted no reform, and they attacked him in his palace and slew him. He died at the age of sixty- seven, having reigned eighty-seven days. The head of the murdered emperor was brought to the praefect of the city, Sulpicius, who was in the Praetorian camp. He immediately offered to buy the crown for 5000 drachmae, but Didius Julianus, a distinguished civil servant, outbid him with (3250 drachmae. Sulpicius was allowed to depart with his life. But the choice of the Praetorians was not accepted by the the vast palace on the Palatine, carefully shutting up all means of access between them. Caracalla, however, whose real name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, succeeded in murdering his brother just a year after his father's death, it is said in the apartments of his mother, Julia Domna, who had invited them there for the purpose of reconciliation. Caracalla was a cruel tyrant, as he looks in his portraits, many of which exist. He left Rome a year after his brother's death, never to return. His deeds of violence and lust are scarcely credible, but the account of his murdering the whole of the promising young men of Alexandria rests upon the authority of Herodian, who was a respectable historian. From Alexandria he went to Antioch and Mesopotamia, and won the title of Parthicus from his exploits against the Parthians, which were not very creditable to him. Under him, Abgarus, the last king of Edessa, was sent to Rome in chains ; his country became a Roman province, and his capital a colony. We must not forget that Caracalla' s a.d. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 231 reign was illustrated by the great jurists Papinian, Paulus, and Ulpian, and that he has the credit of having given the standing of Roman citizens to all the free in- Extension of habitants of the empire, which is the most notable Roman event of his reign. The Roman empire now Citizenship, became, for the first time, a consolidated government, and every position in it was open to the ambition of every free inhabitant. However, he met with the usual fate, and, on April 8, 217, was treacherously murdered by Martialis at the instance of his chief confidant, Macrinus. Three days later, Macrinus became emperor, and associated with him his son Diadumenianus, a handsome boy, as Caesar. The Roman world was now exposed to a curious destiny. Julia Domna, the mother of Caracalla, heard of her son's death in the camp of Antioch, and immediately put an end to her life. Her sister, Julia Maesa, had removed from Antioch to Emesa, a town in Syria, now known as Horns, not far from Baalbec, taking with her her two widowed daughters, Soaemis and Mamaea, and their sons. The son of the first of these, Bassianus, a handsome boy of low moral character, was made priest of the temple of the Sun, with the title of Elagabalus. Maesa, with little regard for the character of her daughter, gave the soldiers who were quartered in the neighbourhood to understand that Elagabalus was the natural son of Caracalla, and, on May 16, 218, he was saluted as emperor E^|eror" US with the title of Antoninus. Their choice was accepted by the whole of Syria, except by the Praetorians, who were faithful to Macrinus. A battle was fought in the neigh- bourhood of Antioch, where the Praetorians were defeated, apparently by the cowardly flight of Macrinus, and the position of Elagabalus was secured. The first act of the new emperor was to put Macrinus to death, together with his son, Diadu- menianus, who was ten years old. Elagabalus reigned for four years, and presents one of the most difficult problems in Roman history. It is said that he combined the effeminate vices of Syria with the cruelty and extravagance of a Roman, the passions of a voluptuary with a fanaticism of a priest. It is difficult to disentangle the truth and falsehood of his reign. The falsehood is not worth repeating, and the truth is impossible to discover. The affairs of the empire were administered by his mother, and it is said that she had a seat in the Senate. The cousin of Elagabalus, the son of Mamaea, had been carefully educated and was of excellent character. He was elevated to the rank 232 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 96 to of (Jaesar. Eventually, we know not exactly how, Elagabalus was killed, together with his mother, on March 10, 222, and Alexander, who bore the name, not altogether appropriate to his character, of Severus, was accepted as emperor by the Praetorians. It is said that during his reign the power rested chiefly in the hands of his mother, Mamaea, who, on the whole, governed well, but neither she nor her son were able to Severus* 61 " kee P tlie -P raetorian s in check. The most im- portant event was that in 226, Ardscher, a name corresponding to Artaxerxes, a man of obscure origin, rose against the Roman suzerainty, and founded the new Persian The New empire of the Sassanidae. Artaxerxes died in Persian 240, and was succeeded by his son, Sapor, who Empire. was a worthy successor. Severus, after fighting against the Persians in the East, undertook a campaign upon the Rhine, and was murdered, with his mother, at Mainz, on March 19, 235. He was succeeded by Maximin, a Thracian, and half a barbarian, a strong man with an iron will, admired by the soldiers, but without any education, and imner- Ty| o V1TT11T1 . fectly acquainted with the Latin tongue. With him began a new epoch in the history of Rome. The empire was governed by the army, who knew no fatherland but their camp, no laws but the orders of their general, no influence but fear. The soldiers were now masters of the world. Whatever may be the truth or falsehood about Maximin's career, there is no doubt that he was unfit to reign. He was killed during the siege of Aquileia, in 238, after a reign of three years, and was succeeded by Marcus Antonius Gordianus, a boy of fourteen, whose grandfather and uncle had conducted a rising against Maximin in Africa. He reigned for six years, and turned out better than might have been expected, chiefly by the influence of bis tutor, Timesitheus, whose daughter he married. After Timesitheus' death, Philip, an Arabian from Bostra, became commander of the Praetorians, and soon suc- ceeded in murdering Gordian, then nineteen years of age, on the banks of the Euphrates, where his tomb was long an object of admiration in the road between Circesium and Ctesiphon. About the five years' reign of Philip the Arabian (244-249), who succeeded Gordian, we have no knowledge whatever, except that in 248, after the return from the East, he celebrated the a.d. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 233 so-called Secular games which had been previously celebrated by Augustus. In the Museum of the Baths of Diocletian at Rome, a sculptured tablet is preserved, which was found in the Tiber, forming a sort of play bill or programme Arabian, of Augustus' games; it contains the amazing line, "Carmen composuit Quintus Horatius Flaccus" (a hymn was composed by Quintus Horatius Flaccus), a con- temporary reference to the well-known Carmen (j a !L e g CU ar Seculare, which school-boys had to learn by heart fifty years ago. On that occasion, mystic sacrifices were celebrated on the banks of the Tiber, and for three nights the Campus Martius, illuminated by lamps and torches, resounded with music and dancing. Similar scenes took place in the games as revived by Philip ; choruses of young men and maidens of the noblest families celebrated in solemn hymns the virtue, good fortune, and majesty of Rome, a sharp contrast with the horrors which we have been narrating. However, the fact that the records of Philip are so scanty shows that there was little scandal to relate about him. The reign of Decius, who succeeded him, and who occupied the throne for two years (249 to 251), was notable for a general rising of the Germans from the Danube and the Decius Rhine to the Alps and the Pyrenees, to which he and his himself fell a victim. We find among them the Successors. Allemanni, a composite but brave tribe, bearing the name of Allmen and giving the appellation by which their country and their own people are known in France at the present day. We find also the Franks, who gave their name to France, the Saxons, and the Goths. These invaders I jfi a a -o ia f' crossed the Roman wall, and penetrated beyond the Alps, laid waste Gaul and Spain, plundered Thrace, Mace- don, and Greece. The efforts to resist them, as well as the re- cently revived Persians, occupied the attention of the emperors who succeeded Decius — Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian, Gallienus, and Claudius II. — for the next nineteen years, 251 to 270, when we reach the reign of Aurelian, 270 to 275, who received the title of the Restorer of the empire. Aurelian, the son of a poor farmer, was born at Sirmium on the Save. He surrendered Dacia to the Goths, but succeeded in driving the Germans across the Rhine, and Aurelian compressed and kept within limits the new restores the Sassanian Persians. But his chief glory was in Empire. subduing Zenobia, the heroic queen who had founded a powerful 234 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 96 to empire at Palmyra in the desert. Her dominions included Syria, a large portion of Asia Minor, and part of Egypt ; and she was attempting new conquests when Aurelian t^v.- ° marched against her, defeated her at Antioch and Zenobia, _ & . > . . _ , JtLimesa, and besieged her m her capital, She tied, but was captured, and decorated a Roman triumph. Such a scene had rarely been witnessed, even in Rome. The procession was led by twenty elephants, by a string of panthers, lions, leopards, giraffes, and other strange animals ; then followed eight hun- dred pairs of gladiators destined for contests in the amphi- theatre ; prisoners from all nations in their national dress, their hands bound behind their backs, the women dressed as Amazons. Tables bearing their names and countries were carried before them. Last of all came Zenobia, the queen of the East, with fetters of gold on her hands and feet, her dress covered with such a weight of precious stones that she could scarcely support it, while a Persian slave led her by a golden chain. She walked proudly before Aurelian's chariot, which had belonged to the king of the Goths and was drawn by four stags. Aurelian introduced into Rome the worship of Baal, the sun-god, the great divinity of the East, whose priest Elagabalus had been at Emesa, and for whose worship Antoninus Pius had erected the wonderful temple at Baalbec, and it remained the religion of the imperial house till the reign of Constantine. Aurelian was succeeded by the excellent Probus (276 to 282), who restored the discipline of the army, defended the frontiers of the Danube and the Rhine against the incursions of the Germans, and brought order into the East by successful warfare, but after a beneficent reign of six years was murdered by his soldiers in Pannonia. He was succeeded by Cams, a man of sixty years old, who had risen against him, but who, with his two sons Carinus and Numerianus, soon suffered a similar fate. Now comes upon the scene the great Diocletian, who reigned from 284 to 305, and deserves an honourable place among the . restorers and the wielders of the Roman power. ioc e lan. jj g wag k orn a ^ Di oc i ea in Dalmatia, of humble origin, his mother being a slave; but when he achieved power he gave an entirely new character to the Roman polity. He did away with all republican forms and privileges in Italy, and made himself an autocratic ruler. He abolished the distinction between the fiscus and the aerarium, the two treasuries of the a.d. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 235 state and the emperor, so that all taxes were paid into the same fund. Besides organising finance, he reformed legal pro- cedure and favoured learning and science. He wielded autocratic authority with ability and power B gJ a uj!fL for more than twenty years, but he exaggerated the divine character of his position and gave his court an oriental character. His great work, however, was the organisation of the government of the empire on a new basis of administration, which, though necessary for the power, impaired the authority of Rome and paved the way for the transference of the capital to Constantinople. He first raised his friend Maximian to an equality with himself, committing t ^ V1 r; 10n > e to him the charge of the West, with Milan as his capital ; while he took charge of the East, fixing his capital at ISTicomedia. He then went further, and associated Constantius Chlorus with Maximian as ruler of the West with the title of Caesar, and took to himself Galerius in a similar position for the East. Galerius conquered the Persians, took five provinces away from them, and compelled them to surrender Mesopotamia. It was natural that a ruler of this arbitrary character should not be favourable to Christianity, and the name of Diocletian is associated with the last and most serious persecution of the Christian religion, which is, however, as much to be attributed to Galerius as to himself. Having exhibited to the world the splendour of a strong and wise ruler, and having erected the fabric of an efficiently organised government to control the known world, to the surprise of all men he abdicated his office and retired to Salona on the Dalmatian coast. There he lived in retirement for nine years, having built for himself a palace of such size and magnificence that it affords ample room for the modern town. His work, however, did not last, but was followed by a period of confusion, in which there were sometimes four and sometimes six emperors, and which could only be brought to an end by one prevailing over the others. After a*" u° the murder of Maximian and the death of Gale- rius, there were two emperors in the East and two in the West. Of the latter one was Maxentius, the son of Maximian, and the other Constantine the Great. Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, had been proclaimed by the soldiery at York on his father's death, and, like Constantius, he protected the Christians from persecution, though he supported the old worship from reasons of state. He speedily quarrelled with 236 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 96 to Maxentius, who claimed sole authority in the "West. Twice he defeated his rival, and then the decisive battle was fought, on Battle of October 28, 312, at Saxa Rubra, not far from the the Milvian Milvian Bridge, now the Ponte Milvio, a few miles Bridge. from Rome. Maxentius was completely defeated, and was drowned in the Tiber. Constantine's first use of his victory was to destroy the Praetorian camp, which had been the stronghold of Maxentius, and to issue an edict of toleration under which every one was permitted to follow any form of religion he pleased, thus relieving the Christians from any fear of further persecution. Oonstantine was now sole emperor of the West. Licinius, defeating his colleague Maximin, who attacked him while Constantine celebrating his marriage with Constantine's sister, Emperor of soon became sole emperor in the East. Then the West. Constantine and Licinius quarrelled, and Licinius was compelled to surrender his possessions in Em-ope with the exception of Thrace and Eastern Moesia. For some time Constantine endured a joint rule with his elderly but still vigorous brother-in-law ; but it was obvious that such an arrange- ment could not continue with a man of Constantine's temper, so that, after defeating him by land at Adrianople, by sea at Chalcedon, and finally at Nicomedia, he had him executed. So, in 325, Constantine became master of the whole Roman empire, and in the same year issued an edict in Emneror which he declared Christianity to be the only true religion, but at the same time tolerated paganism. The masterful and even despotic nature of Con- stantine led him to consider himself the founder of a new era, and he could best give effect to this by establishing a new capital. Rome had ceased to be the residence of the emperors ; Diocletian had neglected it, and even raised Milan to be a rival to it, and Constantine seldom occupied the great palace on the Capitol. With great insight he chose a spot perhaps too well adapted by nature to be the capital of an empire, where Byzantium, united with and yet divided from the Mediterranean by the Bosphorus and with the Black Sea by the Propontis, possesses an unrivalled harbour in the Golden Horn, and secures for itself at the same time an impregnable f eW «l d™ 6 position and a staple for the exchange of mer- chandise of West and East. The first stone of the New Rome was laid on November 4, 326, and it was conse- crated as the capital on May 11, 330. It is not necessary to ad. 3371 THE ROMAN EMPIRE 237 describe its magnificent buildings, most of which have been destroyed, but it is desirable to give some account of the new organisation of the government which led to what is known as the Byzantine empire, and lasted for more than a thousand years. The emperor became invested with absolute power without any limits. His person was clothed with a sacred and divine majesty, the external signs of which were the purple robe introduced by Diocletian, the diadem tine Empire and nimbus adopted by Constantine, and the ceremony of adoration. The emperor was superior to all laws, or rather he was the law incarnate. His official title was Dominus, and all the inhabitants of the empire were his subjects and his slaves. The system invented by Diocletian (284 to 305) implied the simultaneous reign of two Augusti and two Caesars. The two Augusti were equal, and laws were made in the name of both. The empire was divided in order to facilitate the administration of that enormous mass — Rome and Constantinople, as the New Rome was henceforth called, being the two capitals of the West and the East. This arrangement was finally consolidated by the Emperor Theodosius in 395, but, till the destruction of the Western empire in 476, the two empires were considered to be parts of a single whole, and the two emperors were colleagues. Although the Caesar generally succeeded the Augustus to whom he was attached, the empire was not hereditary in state law. The Caesar could not succeed to the throne without the recognition of the army and the decree of the Senate. The institution of the emperor was accompanied by great solemnities. The new sovereign was raised upon a shield, after the German fashion, and, in the Eastern division, after the Emperor Leo I. (457), he was crowned by the patriarch. Immediately after his installation, he addressed a manifesto to the capital, in which he promised a just and beneficent reign. The power and importance of the emperor were extended to his family. The oath of fidelity was taken not only to the emperor but to the empress, and all the members of the imperial family received the title of Most Noble. The emperor was the source of legislation and judicial power ; he had sovereign authority over the civil, military, and financial administration of his dominions. The emperor was assisted in the duties of government by a council of state called a consistory and by the quaestor of the sacred palace. The staff of the palace was under the control 238 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 96 to of the master of the offices, while the personal service of the emperor was under the orders of the provost of the The New sacred bedchamber. The civil administration Bureau- of the empire was committed to six high func- cracy. tionaries, the prefect of the city for the two capitals, and four praetorian prefects for the four great divisions of the empire. Finance was committed to two officers, the count of the sacred largesses, who had control of the public treasury, and the count of private affairs, who kept the emperor's purse. Civil servants, whose numbers were enor- mous, were nominated by the Emperor on the recommendation of a member of the Senate, and were appointed for one year only, but their tenure might be prolonged. The etiquette to be observed by the officials between themselves and towards the emperor was regulated with the utmost minuteness. All these officials received carefully distinguished titles of honour. First came the patricius, after Constantine a dignity personal and for life. He held the first place after the acting consuls, and before the praetorian prefects. Then came the order of counts, or comites, which was organised in definite ranks and was not uncommon. Officials of senatorial rank were called clarissimi, a title which still survives in the title of Serene Highness. The equites were at first called perfectissimi or egregii, but the title of egregius disappeared and perfectissimus was restricted, and all received the appellation of clarissimi. Soon, however, there grew up three ranks among the claris- simi — one clarissimus et illustris, another clarissimus et spectabilis, and a third clarissimus alone. To the first class belonged the praetorian prefects, the prefect of the city, the quaestor of the sacred palace, the master of the offices, the provost of the sacred bedchamber, the count of the sacred largesses, the count of private affairs, the master of the soldiers, and the counts of the bodyguards. It is not necessary to enumerate the divisions of the other classes. We will now turn to the methods of legislation. All imperial laws and constitutions were prepared by the quaestor of the sacred palace in concert with the other proceres T ". ? f.° or nobles, and, after 446, submitted to the con- Legislation. ' ' ' sideration ot the Senate or the capital. They were then discussed in the imperial consistory, and finally draughted in the imperial scrinia or offices. They were then signed with purple ink with the emperor's divine hand, and countersigned by the quaestor of the sacred palace, The laws a.d. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 239 were recited in the Senate and published in the whole of the empire. Besides the laws and constitutions there were imperial rescripts, which were sent in answer to the questions of officials or private persons, drawn up by the quaestor of the sacred palace, and signed by the emperor with purple ink. When they were addressed to corporations, communes, or provinces, or when they concerned public affairs, they were called pragmatic sanctions, a term which meets us occasionally in the history of the German empire. It was evident that these laws should receive codification, and so, in the year 429, Theo- dosius II. appointed a commission of nine members to collect all the constitutions published since Constantine, and to arrange them according to their contents, chronological order being ob- served. In 436 the same duty was entrusted to a new com- mission of sixteen members, and in 438 the collection was published in the official code of the East, the same collection being also sanctioned and published by Valentinian III. in the West. The imperial consistory was the council of state which assisted the emperor in the general administration of the government. Its duties were very various. In The the presence of the consistory the emperor gave Imperial solemn audiences and promulgated laws : it assisted Consistory, the emperor to administer justice and deliberated before him on important matters of general administration. The minutes of the proceedings of this consistory were carefully kept. During the audience the police of the palace was kept by thirty officers called silentiaries, a title which occurs not in- frequently in Byzantine history. The civil and The military household of the emperor was elabor- Emperor's ately organised under the orders of the master Household, of the offices. There were, besides the general attendants of a court, the couriers, who executed the commissions of the emperor in the provinces ; mensores, who prepared a camp for the emperor during his progresses ; the comes stabuli, the count of the stable, the origin of the modern constable, whose duty it was to examine and approve the horses which were bound to be furnished for the emperor's journeys ; the link bearers ; the decani or deans, who commandeered property for the emperor's use; the cancellarii or chancellors, who assisted at the judicial sittings with their numerous clerks. The master of the offices was expected to maintain discipline in the palace, and had civil and criminal jurisdiction over his subordinates. 240 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. or to As time went on, the power of the master of the offices became more important, and paved the way for the mayor of the palace in later times. The private service of the emperor was made the work of the provost of the sacred bedchamber, or grand chamberlain. The Praetorian Guard, whose numbers had been reduced by Diocletian, was entirely suppressed by Constantine, and its place was taken by a mounted and unmounted body- guard called domestici or protectores. They were highly paid, and had numerous privileges, and were recruited from the centurions and young men of senatorial rank. They were less numerous than the body of men called scolares, but were superior in rank. Constantine instituted a complete separation between the civil and military functions of the government, giving the civil Government administration to the praetorian prefect and the of Constan- charge of the army to the master of the soldiers. tinople. He raised Constantinople to the rank of the capital of the East, divided it into fourteen regions, and gave it a similar government to that of Rome. Like Rome, it was governed by a prefect of the city, who immediately represented the emperor, being nominated by him from men of senatorial and consular rank. In the Senate, he gave his opinion before the consulares, and after the time of Justinian presided over it. He gave a report about the deliberations of the Senate every month to the emperor, and transmitted to him the wishes of the Senate and the people. All the administrative officials of the emperor were subject to him — he was the culmen urbanum, the summit of the city. The principal officers under the prefect of the city were the prefect of the market, who was charged with the provisioning of the city — Rome's principal supplies of corn coming from Carthage, Constantinople, and Alexandria — and the praefectus vigilum, who was head of the police. There was also at Rome and at Constantinople a public system of higher education. Professors were nominated by the Senate, who fixed their salaries, and after twenty years' service accorded them the rank of comes. By the side of this municipal administration, Rome remained the seat of the ancient Senate, the Consulate, the Praetorship and the Quaestorship, institutions which had Republic ** survived the fall of the republic, and, when Byzantium was raised to the rank of the second capital, it received a Senate after the model of Rome, as well as Quaestors and Praetors, while the Consulate was divided ad. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 241 between the two capitals. But these offices had become mere honorary distinctions without real power, and the Senate had fallen to the rank of a quasi-municipal institution, without authority over the rest of the empire. The only duties left to the members of this famous body were the care of games and matters concerning their own order, although the emperor some- times consulted them about the crime of high treason and other judicial matters, and sometimes brought new laws before their notice. At the same time the Senate occupied a high place in the empire, and formed its nobility. The distinction of mem- bership was acquired either by inheritance or by favour, and carried with it the title of clarissinms. It involved subjection to certain charges, but also the enjoyment of certain privileges. The consuls were still considered the highest officers of the state, but their duties were confined to presiding over the Senate. They were nominated by the emperor, and their names were published all over the empire so as to serve for the designation of the year. There were sometimes one consul in each capital, and sometimes two consuls in either. The praetors and quaestors were expected to exhibit games at their own expense, so that the tenure of the office was a con- siderable charge. The empire was now divided into four great praefectures, each governed by a praetorian praefect. The two praefectures of the Eastern Empire were called Oriens and Adminis- Illyria, those of the West, Italy and The Gauls, trative Each praefecture contained a certain number Divisions, of dioceses, and each diocese was divided by Diocletian into a certain number of provinces of small extent, the diocese of Italy containing seventeen provinces. At the head of each diocese was a governor generally called vicarius, at the head of each province a rector. Each province had also a capital called urbs, or metropolis, which was the residence of the governor and the seat of the administration. The rectors made frequent tours through their provinces. They also were compelled to remain in them fifty clays after the expiration of their office, in order to be able to answer any complaints which might be brought against them. The emperor also received direct information about the state of the provinces, by means of a secret police called curiosi. The provincial assemblies which previously existed were not abolished under the monarchy. The provinces were further divided into communes, their territory being composed of pagi and vici,pagus representing a tract of country Q 242 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 96 to and incus a village. The Italian name for a country village, paese, is derived from par/us, as is also the term pagan. The communal nobles were called decemvirs, and the dignity was hereditary. To be a decemvir was a heavy charge, and persons did their utmost to be relieved from it. We see that the Roman government, as existing under the monarchy, was a highly centralised organisation, governed by a bureaucracy with the emperor at its head. It was, on the whole, efficient and just, and it is a mistake to suppose that the new races when they came in substituted a vigorous rule for an effete system. On the contrary, they could not have founded a government at all if they had not borrowed their institutions from Rome. An interesting institution found in Italy and _ _ , . elsewhere is that of the coloniate, consisting of The Coloni. £ , , e , • x> -J.- tree men capable ot becoming Koman citizens, but bound indissolubly to the soil, and passing with the sale of the soil to a new proprietor. They held their land at a fixed rent, paid either in money or in kind according to the custom of the property. Their rent could not be raised by the proprietor, nor could he sell his land without them. They were subject to a poll tax, which was collected by the proprietor and trans- mitted by him to the governor, and they supplied most of the recruits which their proprietors were bound to furnish. The colonies exist, almost unchanged, in many parts of Italy at the present day. Under the new regime the condition of the slaves was much improved, and Constantine deprived their masters of the power of life and death. Indeed Christianity was a most powerful influence in first alleviating the lot of the slaves and then abolishing slavery altogether. During this time there was a constant influx of barbarians into the empire, but we hear little about their legal condition, except that they were not allowed to intermarry with citizens. In the Easter week of 337, Constantine fell ill. When he found that remedies did not avail him, he became a catechumen and on his death-bed received the sacrament of Cc> a ta°f ne baptism from the hands of Eusebius, who was an Arian. His character has been so differently depicted by Christians and pagans that it is difficult to estimate it correctly. There can be no doubt that he behaved with extreme cruelty to his excellent son Crispus, and that he delayed the determination to declare himself a Christian as long as he could, because he wished to derive all possible advantages from the antagonism of the two religions. We ad. 337] THE ROMAN EMPIRE 243 may also conclude that his public recognition of Christianity was rather a political than a religious measure. It was better to bring so powerful an organisation under the control of the state than to leave it as an independent force. He died at the age of sixty-five, having been emperor for thirty years of his memorable life. CHAPTER XIV. HISTORY OF EUROPE, 337-5G5 A.D. Constantine left behind him three sons, Constantinns II., who died in 340 — Constans, who died in 350 — Constantins, who died in rp h a f 361, and two daughters, Constantia, who married Constantine Hannibalianns, and Helena, who married Julian. — Partition He divided the empire between them, setting an of the example of partition which was afterwards abun- Empire. clantly followed, giving Constantius the East with Thrace, Constantinus the West, and Constans Africa, Italy, and Western lllyria. They rapidly became furious enemies of each other, which resulted in the death of two of them, and in 353 Constantius united the whole empire under his sceptre. He found, however, that the task of repelling enemies both on the east and on the west was too much for him, so, while he fought against the Persians without success, Julian, his cousin and brother-in-law, whom he had made Caesar, saved Gaul, by Julian's defeating the Allemanni and the Franks at Victory at Strasburg in 357. He drove the invaders across Strasburg. the Rhine, but allowed the Salian Franks to settle in Belgium. Constantius, jealous of Julian's success, ordered nine of his legions to join him in the East to repel the Persians, but they refused, and saluted Julian as emperor. Constantius set out on the march against him, but died on the journey at Tarsus in Cilicia. It was not unnatural that Julian, with such examples before him, should conceive a hatred of Christianity, and prefer the Reign of philosophy of Neoplatonism, and indeed, during Julian "the his short reign, which only lasted two years, from Apostate." 361 to 363, he did all that he could to destroy Christianity as an established religion and to substitute for it the more spiritual aspects of paganism. He is therefore known as the Apostate. His first act on arriving at Constantinople as emperor was to open the temples and restore the altars, to pro- claim toleration for all religions, to recall the Jews to Jerusalem, 244 a.d. 337-5615] HISTORY OF EUROPE 245 and to rebuild their temple. He did not, however, persecute the Christians, as some of his predecessors had done. He assumed the office of pontifex maxim us as head of the pagan religion. Every day, with his own hands, he offered a sacrifice both to the rising and to the setting sun — indeed, the sun Baal, the visible source of all light, life, and energy, had always been the rival of the unseen God who created it. He attempted to reform the priesthood, and to remove from paganism the charge of sensu- ality. In all these measures, the philosopher Libanius was his adviser, friend, and assistant. He naturally threw scorn on the Galilean and his fishermen apostles, and he could not restore the temples and bring back the priests without injuring the churches and those who served in them. But, on the whole, he left the Christian sects to their dissensions, and their disciples to their poverty. He met with some opposition in Antioch, where he brought back the worship of Apollo to the laurel grove of Daphne, and turned out the bones of Christian martyrs. It became, however, necessary that he should defend the frontiers of the empire, and that he should treat the Persians as he had already treated the Allemanni and the Persian Franks. He therefore set out from Antioch for Campaign, this purpose in the spring of 363. He advanced and Death, beyond the Tigris, and reached the neighbourhood of Ctesiphon ; but from this place he was obliged to retreat, followed by a swarm of mounted enemies from whom it was difficult to escape. He exhibited the greatest bravery and energy, but, as in the heat of the clay he had laid aside his breastplate, a spear pierced him and he died. According to the famous story he grasped a handful of blood from his wound, and throwing it up to heaven, cried, " Thou has conquered, Galilean ! " Julian was succeeded by Jovian, who made peace with the Persians, restored to them nearly the whole of Mesopotamia, and replaced the Christian religion in its former . place. He, however, died in 364, after less than a year's reign. For ten clays after Jovian's death, the empire remained without a head, Sallustius having refused the perilous position, until unanimity was secured in the election of Valentinian. He was the son of a Pannonian soldier, and had himself been brought up entirely in the camp. He was of majestic stature, and possessed the virtues of andValens 1 courage, experience in war, purity of morals, simplicity of life, and sound practical wisdom. At the same time, his intellectual education was defective, and he was 246 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 337 to ignorant of Greek. He was elected in Nicsea, and, choosing his younger brother Yalens to share the throne with him, gave him the care of the East, while he fixed his own capital at Milan. Valens was a Christian, but was devoted to the teaching of Alius, which did not admit that Jesus Christ was precisely on an equality with Gocl, and he persecuted the orthodox Athanasius with as much zeal as he persecuted the Arians. This caused the rising of Procopius, a relation of Julian, who committed the fatal error of calling in the Goths to assist him. The Goths, the ancestors of the modern Germans, who, settled on the northern frontier of the empire, had long served to protect it against the inroads of the wild Sarmatians, were divided into two great sections, the East Goths and the West Goths, generally known as the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. At this time they were both under the control of a single monarch, called Amanrich or Hermanrich, whose authority extended from the Black Sea to the Baltic. They were Christians, but Arians, and they owed their conversion largely to Ulfilas, who had made a Gothic translation of the Gospels, the manuscript of which is still preserved at Upsala in Sweden. The two brothers knew no other way of preserving their authority or of defending the empire than that of severity and cruelty. It is said that Valentinian kept two bears in a den behind his bedroom, and that a criminal as soon as he was con- demned was immediately delivered to these creatures. Their reign, however, was illustrated by the historian Eutropius and the poet Ausonius, and Atheiis still remained a centre of eloquence and philosophy. Valentinian reigned over the "Western empire with success for nearly twelve years, and guarded Frontier ^ ie f ron ^ier of Rome on the Rhine, in Britain, and in Africa, while his brother Valens followed his example in the East. At this time the Bishop of Rome or Pope was Damasus, who was a great and magnificent ruler over the church and the city, and whose memory is still pre- served by the extreme beauty of those inscriptions of his which have survived. In this reign war was waged against the Allemanni, who were defeated in 366 at Chalons on the Marne. Valentinian was accompanied in the campaign against them by his son Gratian, whom he associated with him in the government. They also had to contend against two other German tribes, the Burgundians and the Saxons. While Valentinian was occupied on the Rhine, Britain was defended by Theodosius, the ablest man in that country since Agricola, a.d. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 247 who also rescued Africa from rebellion and invasion. He was, however, beheaded at Carthage on the charge of high treason. Valentinian had also to contend against the Quadi and the Sarmatians, and in 375 was wintering in Pressbnrg with a view to recommencing the campaign in the spring ; but, on November 17, he died suddenly from a stroke of apoplexy. He was succeeded by his son Gratian, w T ho was seven- Accession of teen years of age ; but at the same time, Valen- Gratian and tinian II., a child of four years of age, the son Valentinian of the late emperor's second wife, Justina, was **• also made emperor, and Gratian was obliged to accept the decision. Justina went to live at Milan and Gratian at Trier. The year of his accession, 375, is marked as a great epoch in the history of the world by the crossing of the Volga by the Huns. It has been already said that the more The Huns remote parts of central Asia were at this time cross the the seat of a human volcano, whose eruptions Volga. might at any time upset the equilibrium of Europe and cause convulsions, the effect of which it was impossible to foretell. To these causes are clue the sudden invasions and devastating inroads which meet us in history and which seem so mysterious and uncontrollable. Of the Huns we do not receive a very attractive account. Their appearance was hideous. The habit of cutting their faces when young prevented the growth of hair and made them horrible. Strong in body, they had heads like animals. They possessed great powers of endurance : they fed on vegetables and half-raw flesh, made eatable by being placed under the saddles of their horses. They never entered a house. They were dressed in linen and in shoes which they wore until they dropped to pieces from old age. They never fought on foot, but rode on horses as ugly as themselves. They never left their horses night or day, but trafficked and bartered, ate and drank, slept and dreamed, on their backs. They even held their assemblies and chose their leaders on horseback. They fought at a distance with spears and arrows, and at close combat with the sword. They knew no culture of the land, no home or hearth, no law nor government ; their wives and children dwelt in waggons. They seemed to follow the impulse of the moment. They lived like wild animals, thinking nothing of vice or virtue, faith or religion. At the same time they were very fond of money. These untameable people, having first crossed the Volga and subdued the Alani, who dwelt between the Volga and the Don, 248 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 337 to Attacked the Eastern Goths with their help, and caused the death of Amanrich, who was 110 years old. The consequence was Invasion that the East Goths were driven against the West of the Goths ) some of whom took refuge in the Carpa- Visigoths. thians, whilst others under Fridigern crossed the Danube into Thrace, and were allowed to settle there by Valens under condition that they embraced the Arian faith. But, infuriated by an attempt to kill their leaders by an act of treachery, they broke, reinforced by new swarms of Goths, over the passes of the Balkans, and defeated the a e o Emperor Yalens, who marched from the East to oppose them, in a decisive battle at Adrianople, which cost him his life. The Visigoths now swarmed over the whole country as far as the Julian Alps. When Gratian heard of this disastrous defeat and of his uncle's death, he hastened to Sirmium, and appointed Theo- Theodosius dosius, whose father's death we have before nar- pacifies the rated, first as commander-in-chief and then as Goths. Augustus. So long as Fridigern lived, Theodosius could effect little, but after his death he was able to set the two divisions of the Goths against each other. Athanaric succeeded in reuniting them for a short time, but after his death Theodosius contrived to induce the Visigoths and part of the Ostrogoths to become allies by treaty of the Roman people, and to accept land in Dacia, Moesia, and Thrace, as well as in Phrygia and Lydia, where they might remain at peace. With the help of his new allies, Theodosius was able to put down two usurpers — Maximus, who had been saluted as emperor by the legions in Britain, and who, by invading Gaul, caused the Deaths of death of Gratian on August 25, 383, and the Gratian and Frank Arbogast, who caused the death of Valentinian. Valentinian II., on May 15, 392. Valentinian, after the death of his mother, Justina, came under the influ- ence of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who gave him an excellent education, so that he acquired the reputation of being one of the best of the Roman emperors. Theodosius now united the whole of the empire under his single rule, and governed it in such a way that he deserves the Theodosius title of the " Great," which posterity accorded to sole him. Saint Ambrose had so much authority that Emperor. when Theodosius had stained his hands with the murder of 7000 citizens in the circus of Thessalonica, he refused him admission to the church until he had done a.d. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 249 penance and received absolution. In 381, Theodosius had commanded a second oecumenical council at Constantinople at which the teaching of Arius was finally condemned, and the Athanasian Creed was declared binding on the churches of both East and West. Still the Goths, Yandals, Burgundians, and Lombards continued to profess the Arian faith. In 392, Theodosius forbade all kinds of heathen worship, and heathen- dom fell into disrepute. Heathen temples were closed even in Rome, where heathen practices had remained more ob- stinately than elsewhere. Theodosius enjoyed the undisputed rule of the united empire for only four months. In January 395 he died at Milan, deeply mourned by Ambrose, who delivered over him a brilliant oration, but two years later followed his master to the grave. Before his Final Divi- death, Theodosius had again divided the empire sionofthe into the two sections of East and West, entrust- Empire, ing the East to Arcadius, who was eighteen, and the West to Honorius, who was eleven years of age. From this time the two parts of the empire followed independent destinies. Arcadius established his capital in Constantinople, and had as his chancellor first Rufinus and then Eutropius, while Honorius took up his abode in Ravenna, a city Arcadius easily defended from attack, and took as his chief and adviser the able Vandal Stilicho. The court of Honorius. Constantinople was contemptible in itself, and was rendered worse by the character of the consul Eutropius. It was not, therefore, surprising that Alaric, a man of heroic temper, should be raised by the Visigoths to the Career of position of a sovereign, should attack and lay waste central Greece and the Peloponnesus, and should, at last, in 397, be made the governor of Illyria by the court at Constantinople. As soon as Alaric felt himself secure in his new position, he determined to attack Northern Italy, and, in 402, conquered Istria and Venetia, besieged Aquileia, and laid waste the rich province of Verona with fire and sword. Alaric had determined to find in Italy either a kingdom or a grave, and, while Stilicho collected troops from the Rhine and from the British wall, and crossed Jjjg^ over the Alps to rescue his master's dominions, Alaric attacked Milan, where he found Honorius, who at- tempted to escape to Gaul, but was intercepted and besieged at Asti on the Tanaro. But Stilicho came to the rescue, and on Easter Day, 403, a great battle was fought at Pollentia, not 250 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 337 to of a very decisive character. Alaric was able to cross the Apennines to Etruria, and to approach the walls of Rome, but, on Stilicho's occupying Venice, he was compelled to return, and, after a battle fought in the autumn of 403, retired to Illyria. A triumph was celebrated in Rome, with games in the Coliseum, for the last time. It is said that on this occasion a monk jumped into the amphitheatre to separate the com- batants, but was stoned by the people, upon which Honorius stopped the games, and they were never resumed. After Alaric's invasion, Honorius fixed his court, for safety, in Ravenna. But, in 405, a number of German tribes, still impelled by the Huns, crossed the Alps and broke into Italy. They consisted of Vandals, Burgundians, and Sueves, supported by the Alani cavalry and by Goths, Rhadagais, an Ostrogoth, being their leader. They marched as far as Florence, which they attacked from the height of Fiesole ; but in 406 Rhadagais was defeated by Stilicho and taken prisoner, and 12,000 of his followers were received into the service of Rome. The defeated Germans were driven back into Germany, where they came into conflict with the Franks and Allemanni, Movements anc ^ finally overran Gaul, which they laid waste of the Ger- with deeds of horrible cruelty and destruction. man Tribes. The Allemanni now established themselves in Alsace, and the Burgundians founded a kingdom on the Rhine, which in the second half of the fifth century was extended to the Mediterranean on the south, and to the Cevennes and the Vosges on the west. Britain being left undefended by Roman troops, a certain Oonstantinus took the opportunity of raising the standard of revolt, and, getting assistance from Gaul and Spain, attempted to make himself master of Italy. g .„. , ° Stilicho turned for assistance to Alaric, and suc- ceeded in securing his services ; but just at this time himself fell a victim to court intrigues, and, on August 23, 408, was dragged from a church where he had taken sanctuary, and slain by order of Honorius, his friends perishing with him. The arrangement made between Stilicho and Alaric was now repudiated, so that Alaric, starting from Noricum in 408, marched upon Rome, to which he laid siege. lege o jj e wag koug]^ £f by the sacrifice of masses of gold and silver, and costly furniture, and by the surrender of all the German slaves in Roman service. " What have you left us?" said the Romans. "Your lives," replied the haughty Visigoth. Alaric received 5000 pounds of gold, 30,000 a.d. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 251 of silver, besides silk, cloth, and pepper. However, in the following year, reinforced by 40,000 slaves of German origin, and swarms of Goths and Huns, led from the Danube by his brother-in-law Ataulf, Alaric attempted to reduce the court of Ravenna to submission, and, when Honorius refused to accept his terms, he created a new emperor in the person of Attalus. He returned to Rome in August 410, conquered g ac k Q ^ and plundered it, full as it was of every kind of Rome — wealth. After a six days' orgy, Alaric marched Death of into Campania, and, reaching the southern point Alaric of Italy, made preparations for passing into Sicily ; but he died at the age of thirty-four at Cosenza, whose walls are washed by the river Busento. It is said that the course of the river was changed, and Alaric, with his arms and treasures, deposited in its bed, and, when the river was brought back again into its former course, all the workmen were killed, in order that no one might know the place of his interment. He was succeeded by Ataulf, who at once left Italy, and in 414 married Placidia, the sister of Honorius. The same year, having overthrown in Gaul the usurper who rejected Honorius' authority, Ataulf crossed the Pyrenees, and conquered the north of Spain, placing his capital at Barcelona. Here, however, he was murdered by a servant of the Gothic chief, Sarus, whom he had defeated and executed some years before. Ataulf was succeeded by Wallia, who detested the Romans as much as his predecessor was well disposed towards them. Yet he made a treaty with Honorius, in accordance with which Placidia was sent back to Italy, and the Goths entered the Roman service. Placidia married Constantius, the minister of Honorius, to whom she bore two children, Honorius and Valentinian. Wallia now fought in Spain against the German settlers there, as the lieutenant of Rome. He defeated the Vandals and the Alani, and also the Goths who were settled in Gallicia. After three years had been spent in these wars, Honorius ceded to the Goths the province of Aquitaine between the Garonne and the Loire, with Tolosa as its capital, where the successor of Wallia, Theodoric, fixed his abode — a rich and prosperous country. Here the Goths were established for nearly a century in peaceful agricultural occupations. At the same time, the Burgundians were settled in the fertile fields on the Rhone, the Jura, and the upper Rhine. They became Christians at an early period. The Franks dwelt in the north of Gaul, and extended their domains from the Maas and the 252 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 337 to Scheldt southwards to the Somme, and eastward to Trier on the Moselle, while the banks of the Rhine from Coblenz to the Vosges were occupied by the Allemanni, who already held the Black Forest and part of the Alps. The remains of their capital, Vindonissa, are still to be seen on the banks of the Aar. Armenia and Britain were left to defend themselves, and the absence of the Roman legions gave predominance to the clergy, who were obliged to take the place of the defenders of their country against barbarian incursions. In Ravenna, Constantius, the husband of Placidia, received the title of Augustus, but died seven months later in 421. His widow and her two children retired to Constanti- Honorius nople ; but on August 2, 421, Honorius also died, from dropsy. Valentinian III., a child of six years old, was then acknowledged by the Eastern court as emperor of the West, and was married to Eudoxia, the daughter of Theodosius II., who had succeeded his father Arcadius. During his long minority, Placidia acted as regent, but she was not equal to the task. At this time Rome possessed two remarkable men, Aetius and Boniface, who, if they could have clung together, would have saved the empire. Unfor- tunately, their relations were spoilt by jealousy. Boniface had been entrusted by Placidia with the government of Africa, but Aetius demanded his recall, and he raised the standard of rebellion, so that Aetius henceforth enjoyed the entire confidence of his mistress. Boniface, to defend himself, called in the aid of the Vandal king, Gaiseric, who crossed over into " Af ^ Africa in 429, and rapidly became master of the country. That rich province, once the granary of Italy, distinguished in commerce, industry, and learning, became a desert. Towns were destroyed, palaces plundered, churches robbed, priests murdered. In the midst of these horrors died St. Augustine, the famous Bishop of Hippo, a city which Boniface, repenting too late, did his best to defend for fourteen months. At last in 432, with the remains of the Roman population, he went to Ravenna, and threw him- self on the mercy of Placidia, who forgave him. Aetius, dis- gusted, marched against his rival with an army of barbarians, and Boniface was killed. Aetius fled to his friend Rugilas, king of the Huns. While the Vandal empire was firmly established . in Africa, Britain was left to defend itself against the incursions of the Picts and the Scots ; for this purpose, Vortigern, who ruled in south-eastern Britain, in a.d. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 253 449, invited the aid of some Jutes, who, 1600 in number, crossed over to our island in three long ships, under the command of Hengist and Horsa, names which have been thought to be legendary, because they bear the meaning of horse and mare. After executing their instructions, they refused to depart. Other bands of adventurers, Angles and Saxons, followed them, and, after 120 years of hard fighting, had conquered about one half of Britain. The Britons withdrew into the mountains of the west, while part of them emigrated to the north of France, or, as Bretons, settled in Armorica, the Brittany of to-day. In the meantime, the condition of the Eastern empire had been no better than that of the West. Arcadius, after a reign of thirty years, occupied by palace quarrels, The Eastern oppressive government, rebellion within and Empire — invasions of barbarians from without, died at Theodosius Constantinople on May 1,408, leaving the empire n * to his son, Theodosius II., who was only seven years old. The Praefect Anthemius, a strong and competent man, held the reins of government for six years. Under him, Uldin, king of the Huns, was compelled to retire from Thrace, and the Scirians, a wild race, were entirely subdued. The capital was protected by a wall, and the Illyrian towns were secured against attack. The weakness of the empire was assisted by the talents of the emperor's sister, Pulcheria, one . of the few worthy descendants of Theodosius. u c eria " Educated in a convent to lead a pure and blameless life, she received the title of Augusta in 414, and not only directed the affairs of state, but educated her brother to fulfil his duties, so far as he was competent to do so. At the age of twenty, the emperor married Athenais, daughter of the Athenian philosopher Leontius, who took the name of Eudoxia. She had great literary gifts and led an exemplary life, but she did not agree with Pulcheria, and was at last compelled to retire to Palestine, where she died in the year 460 at the age of sixty-seven. Her weak and foolish husband, curiously enough, lives in history as the author of the Theodosian Code, published in 438, which was a worthy predecessor to the immortal work of Justinian. Half a century had now passed since the Eastern world was terrified by the incursion of the Huns, and they had spread from the Volga to the Danube. We have heard that King Rugilas, a friend of Aetius, had been settled in Pannonia, and had formed connections with the courts 254 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 337 to both of Constantinople and of Ravenna. Theodosius II. gave the king of the Huns who were settled on the Theiss and the Danube the title of Roman general, and paid him a yearly tribute of 350 pounds of gold. The nephews of Rugilas, Attila and Bleda, who, after their uncle's death in 423, succeeded to his throne, demanded an increased tribute, and the surrender of the Hunnish emigrants who had taken refuge in Constanti- nople. On being surrendered, the most dangerous of them were crucified. Attila, who is known in German legend by the name of Etzel, murdered his brother Bleda, and in 444 founded the great kingdom of the Huns between the Danube and the Yolga. He first attacked the Eastern empire, laid its northern provinces waste, defeated the armies of Theodosius several times, and threatened Constantinople itself. Then, instigated by Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, who wished to create a diversion against a threatened attack of the Romans, he assumed the title of Godegisel, the Scourge of God, and marched upon Western Europe with an army of half a million warriors. In 450, he set out from his wooden palace in Pannonia, passed through Austria, Bavaria, and Switzerland to the Rhine, crossed the river at its junction with the JSTeckar, and defeated the Burgundian king, Gundikar (Gunther), at Worms. Wherever the hoofs of Attila's horse trod, the grass grew no more. The Roman towns were destroyed, and their fields laid waste, to the banks of the Loire. The dwellers in the fields fled, some into the towns, others into the mountains ; the forests were full of fugitives, who fought for their lives with wild beasts. The Huns now crossed the Yonne at Auxerre, and attacked Orleans, where they were met by Aetius and the Visi- goths under the aged Theodoric. Attila now retreated over the Seine and the Marne, followed by the united Goths and Romans, reinforced by the Burgundians, the Franks under Meroveus (Merwig), and other German tribes. The great conflict took place in the Catalaunian plain, which now gives its name to Chalons on the Marne, in the year 451, and Attila, Chalons ai ^er showing prodigies of valour, was defeated, and was only saved from destruction by the death of Theodoric, which distracted the Visigoths from the struggle. Yet he soon recovered from this disaster, and in 452 crossed the Julian Alps to Aquileia, the mistress of the Adriatic. He destroyed it so completely that a hundred years after- wards not a trace of it remained, while the inhabitants founded another home, a new water-city in the lagoons, which after- ad. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 255 wards gave birth to Venice. Padua suffered the same fate ; Faenza, Verona, and Bergamo also fell victims ; while Milan and Parma bought off the destroyer. Aetius defended him- self as well as he could with small resources, and Valentinian took refuge in Rome. In 453, Attila was preparing to destroy the Eternal City, when he was diverted by the entreaties of Pope Leo the Great, and consented to make a treaty with Valentinian and to return to Pannonia. Here he shortly afterwards died, and the Hunnish army was broken up. The empire of the West did not long survive these events. Valentinian, in 454, the year after Attila's death, fell under the influence of the eunuch Heraclius, and killed Aetius with his own hand. In the following H e ? .? . year, he seduced the wife of the rich and worthy senator, Petronius Maximus, who caused him to be murdered on March 15, 455, as he was witnessing a review in the Campus Martius. After the death of the unworthy sovereign, Petronius was unanimously summoned to the vacant throne, but his reign was one of misery. Having lost his wife by the misconduct of Valentinian, he wished to strengthen his position by marrying Eurloxia ; but she was indignant at the suggestion, and summoned Gaiseric and his Vandals to avenge her murdered husband. They entered Rome on June 12, 455. Pope Leo again gack f used his intercession, and Gaiseric promised to Rome by- spare the churches, the private dwellings, and Gaiseric. the unfortunate inhabitants, but he allowed his troops liberty of destruction for a fortnight. It is difficult to exaggerate the havoc wrought during these last fourteen days of June, 455. Temples and statues fell in indiscriminate destruction, and then the Vandal fleet, laden with treasure, and carrying with it the Empress Eudoxia and her two daughters, sailed to Africa. The throne now fell to the Arvernian Avitus, equally dis- tinguished for learning and courage, the father-in-law of the poet Sidonius Apollinaris, who has left us a panegyric of him. Avitus was dethroned by the Suevian, Ricimer, who commanded a large army of Germans. Rome was helpless, and the Visi- gothic kingdom, under Theodoric II. and his successor Euric, was extended from the Loire to the Mediterranean, from the Rhine to the Pyrenees. Ricimer died in 472, after several emperors had occupied the throne, the best of whom was Majorian, and the last Julius Nepos. In 475 Orestes, the new barbarian " Patrician " in Italy, placed his own son Momylus, a boy of fifteen, on the throne, changing his name to Romulus. And 256 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 337 to Romulus, whose title Avas significantly corrupted into Augustulus, was the last emperor of the West. In 476, Ottokar, better known as Ocloacer, a German and an Arian, with an army of Herulians, Rugians, and other German mercenaries, conquered and killed Orestes, drove Romulus from End of the the throne, and settled him in a country house Western in Campania. He then undertook the govern- Empire. ment of Italy in the name of the Emperor Zeno, requesting from him recognition as Patrician. Zeno urged the rights of Julius Nepos, who lived at Salona in Dalmatia till his death in 480, but Odoacer remained the only real ruler of Odoacer Italy. He did not interfere with Roman laws or Lord of institutions. He fixed his court at Ravenna, Italy. and, though himself an Arian, showed favour to orthodox Christians. He arranged by skilful diplomacy to avert the invasions of Visigoths and the Vandals, by surrender- ing Narbonensian Gaul to the former and Sicily to the latter. He rewarded the German troops by giving them a third of the Italian soil. When the Rugians attempted an invasion, they were defeated and destroyed, and those who remained of them became his subjects. He reigned well and wisely over Italy for twelve years, when the Ostrogoths, who had settled in Moesia and Western Pannonia after the dissolution of the Hunnish kingdom, attacked him at the instigation of the Emperor Zeno, who told their king, Theodoric, that he would recognise his rule in Italy if he would turn out Odoacer. In consequence of this, Theodoric, with the whole of his Goths, left his settlements in 487, conquered the Gepidae on . the Danube and the Rugians on the Julian Alps, defeated Odoacer, first at Aquileia and then in the famous battle of Verona, which lives in legendary history, and shut him up in Ravenna, where he had taken refuge. He then spent three years in the reduction first of Milan and Pavia, and then of the rest of Italy. Odoacer remained in Ravenna, vainly expecting help from the Burgundians, but ■ji he the city was at last taken in 493, and the Ostrogothic kingdom of the Ostrogoths founded in Italy. Kingdom of Odoacer was granted his life, but was shortly Italy. afterwards slain. Theodoric held the throne for thirty-three years, and well deserves the position which he holds both in history and legend. He was fortunate in having as his prime minister Cassioclorus, a well-educated man of letters, whose records of his reign are extremely in- a.d. 5651 HISTORY OF EUROPE 257 teresting, if occasionally too diffuse. He lives in German legend as Dietrich of Bern, Bern being the Teutonic form of Verona. His purpose was to establish a great kingdom secured from attack, and he succeeded in including in his dominions, be- sides Italy and Sicily, Noricum, Istria, Pannonia, and Dalmatia. He also desired to rule the Goths and the Romans with equal firmness, and to put them both in the same position with regard to himself. At the same time, being an Arian, he was always ill-regarded by the orthodox court of Constantinople. He had a large army of 100,000 men, formed entirely of Goths, and a fleet of 1000 ships, which protected his coast from the in- cursions of the Vandals and the Byzantines. Using his own people for war, he gave up commerce and industry to his Roman subjects, whom he also employed in the business of administra- tion. He is represented to have said, " Let other kings gain booty and half-ruined towns by war and slaughter ; my object is, by God's help, to conquer in such a way that my subjects may regret that they did not come under my rule before." In the year 500, he issued an edict declaring the principles on which he intended to govern. It was founded on Roman legislation, and had for its object the gradual education of the Goths in Roman ways and the union of the two peoples. He established a number of grafen, or counts, whose business it was to exercise equal justice between the two races. In his youth, Theodoric had been a hostage at Constantinople, and had there learnt to admire art and literature. He there- fore favoured these, and did his best to preserve the remains of Roman magnificence. All his contemporaries regarded him with admiration and reverence, but his reign was naturally not without its difficulties, which began with matters of re- ligion. The emperor of Constantinople, Justin I., stimulated by his nephew Justinian, began to persecute the Arians, upon which, in 526, Theodoric sent an embassy to the Byzantine emperor, with Pope John at its head, to protest against this action. The request was refused, and Theodoric found that some of his best and most trusted advisers were ill-disposed to the Arian faith. In consequence of this, Boethius, one of the glories of the empire, and Symmachus, a senator of high rank and influence, were put to death. The work of Boethius, " The Consolations of Philosophy," written during his im- prisonment, remains a masterpiece to the present day. Theo- doric died at Ravenna on August 26, 528. Soon after his death, the ashes of " the accursed heretic," which his daughter R 258 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 337 to Amalasunta bad hidden under a mass of granite, were torn out of their resting-place and scattered to the winds, and the magnificent tomb which he had erected for him- self remains empty, as a testimony to posterity of the greatness of its builder, and a memorial of the mutability of fortune. Theodoric had intended that the succession should pass to Eutharic, his daughter's husband, but Eutharic was dead, and Theodoric committed the care of the kingdom to Amala- sunta, because her son, Athalaric, was too young to assume the government, and, after the death of her child, she reigned for some time alone. The Goths, however, did not like her encouragement of Roman customs and culture, and her open- ing the harbour of Sicily to the Greeks. To defend herself, she married a scion of the royal house, called Theodohat, and shared the government with him. But the arrangement did not last, and she was murdered in the year 535. After the disappearance of the family of Theodosius, the court of Constantinople gradually fell into a condition of corruption and confusion, occupied partly by the rni. a To a f Dr v, ■*■ ' j. x t/ t/ E re quarrels of the Circus and partly by disputes about religion. The weakness of the emperors gave power to the church, and ecclesiastical affairs assumed an unhealthy prominence. After the death of Zeno the Isaurian, in 491, and Anastasius, during whose reign the empire had been afflicted by numerous incursions of the Bulgarians and other barbaric tribes, who had to be bought off either by the payment of money or by the concession of land, Justin I. succeeded in 518, an uneducated, . . but wise and vigorous sovereign, who restored Tustin I . some appearance of order to the afflicted empire. But the old prosperity was not restored till the reign of his nephew and successor, Justinian, one of the most illustrious . sovereigns of history, who reigned from 527 to 565. His chief legacy to posterity was the Corpus Juris, in compiling which he was assisted by the jurist Tribonianus. It comprises, first, the Institutions, an intro- ductory book for learners ; secondly, the Pandects, a digest of authoritative juristic writings ; next, the Codex Justinianus, a codification of imperial enactments ; and lastly, the Novels, or laws recently issued. It has exercised less influence in England than elsewhere, but in several parts of the world, e.g. in Germany and in South Africa, it remains the corner- stone of jurisprudence. In 529, Justinian put an end to a.d. 565] HISTORY OF EUROPE 259 the philosophical schools which still existed in Athens, and thus rooted out the last remains of heathenism, and he built the great cathedral of Santa Sophia, which still exists at Constantinople as one of the most worthy examples of Roman architecture. At home, he crushed the dissensions of the Circus by the slaughter of 30,000 of the Greek faction. Abroad, he both secured and extended the frontiers of the Roman empire. In the North, by the erection of eighty fortresses, he put a stop to the invasions of the Bulgarians, Avars, and other Danubian tribes ; and in the East, he checked the incursions of the famous new Persian king, Chosroes, or Nushirvan, partly by arms and partly by the payment of money ; in the West, he formed the plan of conquering Italy and establishing the Roman empire on its former basis. Geiseric, the Yandal, who died in 477, was succeeded by his son Hunneric, and in 523 the gentle Hilderic came to the throne. As he was unwilling to follow the examples of his predecessors by persecuting the orthodox Christians, he was deposed by his cousin Gelimer and thrown into prison. Justinian seized the opportunity of aveng- ing him, and of thus arriving at the execution of his designs. The great general Belisarius, who had fought Belisarius with distinction against the Persians, was now reconquers sent to Africa to attack Gelimer. In a campaign Africa, of six months, he captured Carthage, and put an end to the Vandal kingdom, which had lasted for ninety-five years and was now made into a Greek exarchy. On his return to the capital, Belisarius was saluted as the third conqueror of Carthage, and was allowed to celebrate a triumph, in which Gelimer was led as a captive. At this time, as we have already related, Amalasunta was murdered by Theodohat, and Justinian sent Belisarius to avenge her in 535, the year after the destruction of the Vandal empire in Africa. Belisarius captured Sicily, stormed Naples, and would have entered Rome had not Justinian, jjj s Q 0n _ it is said from jealousy, given a command to quests in Narses, which prevented unity of action. The Italy, consequence of this was that Milan, which had been already conquered, fell back again into the hands of the Goths, assisted by the Burgundians. Vitiges, who had succeeded the deposed Theodohat as king of the Goths, now stirred up the Persians to attack the empire, in order that Belisarius might be recalled from Italy. But before his departure he got possession of Ravenna, took Vitiges prisoner, and carried him off to Constantinople. The Goths 260 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. 337-565 chose as successor to Vitiges, Totila, who, in a short time,fdrove out the Greek exarch, and recovered almost the whole of Italy for the Goths. Belisarius was sent to Italy again, and succeeded in conquering Rome ; but, being left by the emperor without sufficient reinforcements, asked that he might be recalled, whereupon Totila again became master of Rome. Narses came in the place of Belisarius, with a large army of mercenaries, chiefly of German nationality, and defeated the Goths Narses a ^ Tagina, at the foot of the Apennines, in July 552, destroys the a battle in which Totila was wounded and slain. Ostrogoths. Narses then occupied Rome, and marched to the south to encounter Tejas, who had succeeded Totila as king of the Goths. The decisive battle was fought at Nocera in the neighbourhood of Vesuvius, and Tejas, who fought like a hero, fell. After a few more ineffectual struggles, the Ostrogothic kingdom came to an end in 555. Narses celebrated his triumph in Rome, exhibiting as trophies in the city the arms and treasures of the Goths, Franks, and Allemanni, while the soldiers, with garlands on their heads, sang hymns in honour of the Italy re- conqueror. Italy became a province of the stored to Byzantine empire, but its splendour and pros- the Empire, perity had entirely disappeared. With the death of Justinian in 565, ancient history may be said to have come to an end. The new nations, who were to change the face of Europe, had begun to assert themselves. The story which we have told ends with an undoubted hero, whose character has been much maligned. We have not sufficient evidence to enable us to distinguish between truth and falsehood, but we shall not go far wrong if we give him credit for the great actions of his reign, and recognise that they could only have been accomplished by a union of exalted ambition and of great capacity, which is not likely to have been stained with the meanness and vices which some historians of the Byzantine court have delighted to attribute to him. BOOK II. CHAPTER I. THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 486-768— RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM, 570-802. Ten years after the first appearance of Odoacer in Italy, the last possession of the Romans in the West was also lost, falling into the hands of the Salian or Merovingian Franks, who founded the Frankish empire under Ohlodwig p £ allan or Clovis. The Franks, who had been previously settled by the Yssel and the sea, and were, therefore, called Salians or Meerings, as they lived in the Saalgau or the Meergau, came into Belgium under Chlodio, who was son of Faramund, and then, led by Chlodio's son Merwig, and with the help of his own son Childeric, spread over South Brabant and Liege along the Maas and the Sambre to the Somme. The Salians, being of a free and independent nature and discontented with the arbitrary government of Childeric, called to their assistance Aegidius, who was the Roman viceroy who ruled over a small district round Paris and Soissons. However, the rule of Aegidius suited them no better, and they recalled Childeric, who had taken refuge with Basinus, king of the Thuringians. While there, he gained the affections of Basina, the wife of Basinus, who bore him a son, Chlodwig or Clovis, and with them he returned and resumed his reign. When Childeric died, Clovis, now fifteen years old, succeeded him and took Tournay for his capital, other Frankish tribes, governed by princes of the house of Faramund, beinsr also settled in Belgium. Clovis allied him- Conquests ip • i pi- it • i °f Clovis. self with some or these princes, and also with another body of Franks called Ripuarians, and with their help defeated Syagrius, the son of Aegidius, in the battle of Soissons in {186, and thus founded the Frankish empire, which extended as far as the central and lower Loire. Armorica, the modern 261 262 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 486 to Brittany, remained independent, but the rest of northern Gaul easily submitted to him, because a number of Frankish immi- grants had previously filtered into it. Clovis, who was of an enterprising and aspiring character, was not content with what he had done, but proceeded to defeat the Burgundians, at Dijon, in 501 — the Allemanni, probably at Tolbiacum or Ziilpich, near Cologne, in 506 — and finally the Visigoths, at Vouille, in 507. The Allemanni were at this time settled on the Main, occupying the lands on the middle Rhine which had been deserted by the Burgundians. The Burgundians, ° at the beginning of the fifth century, had removed to the south of Gaul, and had founded a Burgundian kingdom on the Rhone and in Switzerland and Savoy. They were, however, distracted by civil dissensions. In 470, their country was divided amongst four brothers — Hilperic, reigning in Geneva, Gundebald in Lyons, Godegisel in Besancon, and Godemar in Vienna. Gundebald slew Godemar and Hilperic in war, and carried off to Lyons Hilperic's treasures and his daughter Chlotilde. Clovis then married Chlotilcle. The Franks were heathens and the Burgundians Christians, but, in the battle of Ziilpich, as it is called, which we have already mentioned, Clovis took an oath that if he won he would become baotized a Christian. He was baptized, with 3000 of his nobles, by Remigius, the bishop of Rheims. As Clovis was orthodox, and all the other German princes Arians, he found supporters among the orthodox subjects of all neigh- bour kings. Chlotilde, it is said, stirred up Clovis to attack Gundebald for having slain her father, Hilperic, but his life was spared, and by killing his remaining brother Godegisel he became king of all Burgundy, governed it well, and gave it a code of laws. After this, Clovis proceeded, on the plea of religion, to attack the Arian Visigoths, adding to his dominions most of the country between the Loire and the Pyrenees. He was stopped from further advance by Theodoric the Great, whose grandson was now king of the Visigoths. Clovis received the title of Patricius from the emperor of the East. Being greatly assisted by his orthodoxy, he succeeded, by either force or fraud, in gradually getting the greater part of Gaul under his sway, and when he died, in 511, left it to be divided between his four sons — a disastrous practice, which caused civil war and prevented unity. All this happened before the reign of Justinian, of which we a.d.768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 263 have already given an account. Justinian was succeeded by his nephew Justin II., whose weakness and incompetence lost the possession of Italy, which his nncle had won. In 568, Alboin, king of the Lombards, who were settled in Pannonia, having destroyed the Gepidae, with the help of the Avars, gave up his country to them as a reward for their assistance, and, reinforced by some bodies of Slavs or Saxons, marched with his whole nation to Italy, which he overran as far as the Tiber, with the exception of the sea-coast of Venetia and Liguria. After the battle of Pavia in 569, he founded the Lombard The kingdom in Italy. He had married Rosamunda, the Lombard daughter of Kunimund, king of the Gepidae, whom Kingdom, he had killed in single combat. However, when in a drunken fit he compelled her to drink wine out of her father's skull, which he used as a goblet, she murdered him in his sleep, with the help of her paramour, Helmichis. Having failed to obtain the throne which she had coveted, she fled with her treasures and her lover to Ravenna, where they killed each other by poison. The Lombards first chose Kleph to be their king, and then murdered him, so that for ten years they remained without a king. But, finding that this arrangement led to civil war and weakness against their enemies, in 584, thev chose Autharis, who, to resist the Franks, • Aut h fl,n ^ made an alliance with the Bavarians — Bajuarii — whose domains extended from the Danube to the Alps. The Bavarians were a German nation, composed of Marcomannic and Gothic elements. They formerly occupied the country between the Lech and the Ems, reaching beyond the Danube in the north, and as far as Trent in the south. Autharis, following the usual custom, married Theodelinde, the daughter of the Bavarian king whom he had conquered, who bore the name of Garibald, but he died in the following year, 590. The Lombards then invited his beautiful and pious widow to be their queen, and to marry any one of them whom she might choose. She selected Duke Agilulf of Turin, and made him king. He was baptized into the Catholic faith, upon which many of the Lombards deserted Arianism. After her second marriage, Theodelinde built the cathedral of Monza, in which is still preserved the iron crown with which the kings of Lombardy have always been crowned, said to have been formed out of a nail which was used in the crucifixion of Christ. To return to the Franks. After the death of Clovis in 511, his kingdom was divided amongst his four sons. Theodoric, the 264 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 486 to eldest, received the eastern portion, known as Austrasia, chiefly German, which he enlarged by the conquest of most Austrasia °f Thuringia. He placed his capital in Metz. and Ohlodomer was settled in Orleans, Childebert in Neustria. Paris, and Chlothar (Lothair) in Soissons. These three provinces were known as Neustria, or the country of the West Franks, the prevailing language being French. The West Franks conquered Burgundy. Chlothar I. was fortunate enough to outlive his brothers, and, in 558, became king of the whole of the Frankish domains from the Atlantic to the Unstrut, and nearly to the Adriatic, but, dying in 561, again divided his domains between his four sons. This led to terrible family feuds, which were accentuated by the Fredegunde bitter hatred between Fredegunde of Neustria and and Brunhilde of Austrasia. which made the Brunhilde. Merovingian house notorious for domestic quarrels. Brunhilde was the wife of Sigebert, who died at Metz in 575, leaving one son, Childebert II., who died in 596, his line coming to an end in 613. Fredegunde was the wife of Chilperic I., and their son, Chlothar II., succeeded eventually to the whole Frankish kingdom, dying in 628. His son, Dagobert I., who died in 638, became king of the whole Frankish empire, and has left a reputation scarcely inferior to that of Clovis. After his death came the "Rois Faineants," the do-nothing kings, who ■r, . e , 01 ^ lived in retreat, wore Ions; fair hair, the sign of Faineants. . . ' ° ' & their sovereignty, but only showed themselves occasionally, driving in w T aggons to public assemblies, the real power being exercised by the major domus, the mayor of the palace, from whom sprang the mighty Charlemagne, Charles the Great, the one sovereign in history whose title has become part of his name. Before we leave the Merovingians, we must give an account of the constitution of their government and show that it was The Mero- borrowed from the Roman polity, which they vingianCon- found existing in the countries which they con- stitution, querecl. There can be no doubt that the Mero- vingian constitution followed in all important respects the pattern of the Roman empire, and there is no evidence of its having been affected by German individualism. There is no trace of the monarchy having been elective; the succession of the throne passed like a private estate, and could be left by will. Every prince reigned by virtue of the natural order of succes- a.d. 768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 265 sion, two things being necessary, the act of installation, and the taking of the oath of fidelity of the whole people. There was a meeting of the people in arms, held in spring, called the Champ de Mars, or the Champ de Mai, but it was only a military in- spection, and it had no deliberative character and no influence over the government. Neither Clovis nor his successors ever held an assembly of the Frankish people. There was a Frankish nobility, but it was not hereditary, and was conferred by the king. We find five terms used to designate The nobles amongst the Franks : Leudes, Antrustions, Frankish Optimates, Proceres, and Nobiles. Leude, which Nobility, is a form of the German Leute or people, is a correlative term. A leude was always a leude of some one. Antrustion is a person in the trust of the king — that is, owing allegiance, or as the prayer-book says, " affiance and trust in him." A man was made an antrustion by the king, and he was of higher rank than a leude. Optimates and proceres signified a nobility of service which was not hereditary, and nobiles was a general term for persons of rank. The king never performed royal acts of government alone. He was always surrounded by a small group of persons, who deliberated and discussed with him, and who position offered them advice on all subjects, but he was and Powers not bound to consult them by law, but by a con- of tne King, vention of the constitution. This court was composed of bishops, dukes, and counts. But no one attended this council as a matter of right. Sometimes the whole of the bishops and grandees were summoned, sometimes only a part of them. They were summoned one day, and not the next. The Roman emperors also consulted their consistory ; they did not think it necessary to say that they had done so, but it became the custom of the Merovingian chancery to declare that the royal act had been done in council, and that it had the approval of the grandees. There is no sign of the intervention of the people in legislation, or of a popular assembly. The king was called dominus, and disobedience to a simple letter of the king was punished by a fine equal to that of murder. At the same time, he could not pro- mulgate a law or lex. This word seems to have been reserved partly for the old Roman laws which were always venerated, and partly for national customs which bore the sanction of antiquity. At the same time, the royal edicts had all the force of laws. Under the Merovingians there was no national assembly 266 A GENERAL HISTORY [a. d. 486 to possessing political rights, no aristocratic body with traditions of independence, no people electing their kings, no people making laws. There was neither by the side of the king nor in front of him any institution which limited his power. The Gauls under the dominion of the Romans had been used to a highly organised form of government, and they obeyed the Frankish king as they had previously obeyed the praetorian praefect. The Merovingians considered the kingship and the kingdom as their property. Not only were all the public affairs of the kingdom in the hands of the king, not only was he the master of peace and war, of taxes, laws and justice, but he could intervene in private affairs with arbitrary power. A new name for the wish of the king was bannus or ban. Every one was bound to obey the king's ban. The Frankish kings soon adopted the Roman ensigns of royalty. They wore the purple tunic like the Roman consuls ; they had the sceptre, the throne, and the crown of gold ; their letters were called oracles, and their residence was called the sacred palace. The old law of laesa majestas (lese majeste), or high treason, was applied by them with great severity. Under the Roman empire, the Palatium was, at once, the court of the emperor and the seat of government, and we find the same among the Franks. The name of Palace e mg s wag gj ven D y them to the king's house and also to the persons comprising the king's court, who followed him about wherever he went. It was also called aula, aula palatina, or domus regis. The members of the royal court were called aulici or palatini : to live in the king's court was a privilege highly envied. The members of the court were also called nutriti, or persons fed by the king, convivae regis, or persons entitled to eat at the king's table, where matters of state were frequently discussed. ISTo one was admitted to the palace except by wish of the king ; no birth, however noble, gave a person a right to it. The king could exclude any one he pleased — indeed, to be driven from it was the punishment for certain offences ; no one, once admitted to it, could leave it without the permission of the king. Many persons passed the whole of their lives in the palace. They entered young, and grew old in it, passing through the various degrees of the palatial hierarchy, beginning as aulicus, then becoming comes, then domesticus, then conviva regis, then procer or optimas. Children were sent to the palace very young, and a school was held there, attended by both Franks and Romans. The ad. 768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 267 men employed in the personal service of the king held a very high rank. First came the pincerna, or butler, who had charge of the king's wine ; then the cubicularii, or chamberlains, who had charge of the king's bedchamber ; then the senescalcus, seneschal or steward, who had charge over the servants ; then the marescalcus or marshal, who had charge of the king's horses, and under him was the comes stabuli, the count of the stable or constable, a name given to various ranks, ranging from the village policeman to the constable of France, second only to the king himself. Also the king's chapel was of great importance, and especially the relics it contained. No act of justice or pro- cedure could take place without the relics of some saint ; even the oath of fidelity to the king had to be taken in this way. The chapel, like the palace, always followed the king. Even down to the end of the French monarchy in 1870, the place where the sovereign slept, even though it were a hovel, was always called the palace. Such was the domestic part of the palace, but it was also the centre of government, and the administration of the kingdom was carried on there. There were the ministers , and their offices, called Scrinia. From the palace Ministers 8 came royal wills, precepts, authorities, decrees, edicts, capitula, and charters, which were written by notaries or amanuenses or scriptores, names all borrowed from the Roman empire. There were also chancellors or referendaries, the duty of these last being to present documents for signature, and to sign them themselves. The treasury also held an important position in the palace. It was at once a depository of money, a storehouse for precious objects, and a depot for archives. The palace also contained a class of persons called domestici, who must not be confounded with antrustiones or convivae. Some of them were directors of domains, while others looked after the household. They were officers of very high rank. At the head of them was the comes palatii, the count of the palace, whose functions eventually obscured those of the king himself. His most important duties were judicial ; he had charge of the palace court. The Frankish kings had no capital properly so called. Paris, Metz, and Orleans were their principal towns, but the kings did not live in them, and the government did not sojourn in them. The palace followed the king about from villa to villa, and never left him. It was a moving capital, an ambula- tory government. It was the supreme tribunal of the kingdom, and the supreme council of the state. Indeed, the palace was 268 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 486 to the most important institution of the Merovingian period. Per- haps what most nearly resembles it is the court of an Indian prince at the present day. This being the position of the palace, we cannot be surprised that the mayor of the palace came to have such great import- The Mayor ance in the kingdom. The major domus was, of the at first, a term used only in private families, and Palace. wa s given to one who had charge both of the do- mains and of the servants. It was known to Roman society in the fifth century, but was not found in the imperial palace. It is, however, found amongst the Vandals, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Burgundians. Among them we find strong expressions used about the power of the mayors of the palace. We are told that he governs the palace, he governs the court of the king, he is raised above the royal house. All the services of the palace are directed by him ; he is like a prince of the palace ; he governs the body of the palatini, who govern the kingdom. There is no doubt that as head of the palace he had the right of justice and coercion over all the persons who composed the palace — that is, over the grandees of the kingdom. It was naturally not intended to create an officer with such extended powers, but as the palace gradually concentrated into itself all the powers of the kingdom, so the authority of the mayor of the palace grew. He became the first judge, the first treasurer, the first administrator ; he took the royal place in the absence of the king ; he directed the finances and imposed the taxes ; he was guardian of the royal domains. His powers were indefinite and unrestricted. He was sometimes a judge, sometimes a general, more often an administrator than a soldier ; he had charge of all kinds of things, and he was responsible for every- thing ; every one consulted him. Much depended on his personal character, his goodness, his pride, or his cupidity, for he could enrich himself when he pleased, and he alone pro- nounced restoration or confiscation of lands. Thus, his duties, without being defined, extended to everything. The Mero- vingian king had no master of the offices, no count of the sacred largesses, no master of the soldiers. Their places were taken in great measure by the mayor of the palace, who was the first minister — indeed, the only minister — of this absolute monarchy. At first the mayor was appointed by the king, but eventually the palace elected both its mayor and its king. We shall see presently that the mayor became eventually entirely independent, and ended by securing the throne, but during two- ad. 768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 269 thirds of the Merovingian period the palace was only a collec- tion of the king's court, and the mayor of the palace was the servant whom the king appointed to govern the others in his name. The relations between the Frankish monarchy and the church are very important. The Franks did not introduce their pagan religion into France, as they were converted at T ne church the moment of invasion. But the church of the in the Fifth fifth century was not the primitive church ; its Century, dogma was fixed, and it was arranged in hierarchies. Origin- ally Christianity bore a very democratic character ; the church formed a community which was called the ecclesia or the assembly ; its chiefs were called elders, presbyters, or priests ; its head was an episcopos or overlooker, eventually changed to bishop ; its servants were deacons. It presented itself to the eyes of the outer world as a close body, a clems, whereas the rest of the world was called the crowd, laos, so that the community was divided into clergy and laity. But this demo- cratic character was lost as soon as the church began to take to itself the character of the Roman empire. The church, like the empire, was divided into provinces and civitates ; the city became a parish ; the province was ruled over by a metro- politan. The bishop of Rome did not at first possess any great authority. Milan and Ravenna were the two seats of government in Italy. Below the bishop was often, at this time, his assistant the chorepiscopus. There were also archpriests and archdeacons, the last named having authority over the re- ligious services, the discipline of the clergy, the revenues, and the salaries. An archdeacon must be a man of ability. It thus happened that the Frankish kings when they arrived in Gaul found a strong episcopate, having great power over souls, strongly attached to the constitution of the rp^e church state, more venerated and more influential than and the the municipal magistrates, independent of the Frankish imperial power, which rarely interfered with it, Kings. but subordinate to the people, who sometimes claimed to elect the new bishop and sometimes to depose him. The new nations of the country had no feelings of hostility against the episcopate. Clovis treated with the bishops before he became king, and, after he was baptized affected to consult them. He enriched them with the lands which he had conquered. But the monarchy gradually got the election of bishops into its hands, and either dominated the episcopate, or appeared to dominate 270 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. 486 to it. It is not, however, till 549 that we find the will of the king specified as a feature in the appointment of bishops. The king at first exercised only a veto, later the actual right of nomination. The Frankish kings were so intent upon establishing a right to nominate the bishops that they did not care about limit- ing their power. That power grew by the th^ETh belief which all Christians had of a future state of reward and punishment. The first interest of every one in this world was to procure for himself a place in the next. The church disposed of every one's destiny. The punishment of excommunication was very severe, but, if the church had punishments, it had also rewards — all festivals were church festivals, the body of a saint was a most precious possession. In a powerful church, the bishop was the most powerhu person ; he seemed to hold the place of Christ himself, as the visible head of the community. He was the mediator between God and man, a sacred being, and the common people regarded him as a saint, which he often was, — the power of the episcopate being indeed greatly due to the high charac- ters of the men who held the office. He was supposed to cure diseases by making the sign of the cross, by alloAving people to touch his garment, by giving them water to drink. If he did not do miracles during his lifetime, it was certain that he would do them after his death. The church became immensely rich : lands and money were given to it in profusion. Attached to the soil were a number of serfs, all devoted to the church. It also possessed in every city a number of men who had received some kind of orders and were called clerici, though they might marry and have families, and sometimes kept shops. Large numbers of the poor were also maintained by the church, and these swelled the adherents of the bishops. Many of the bishops had proceeded from the palace ; they had passed part of their lives as referendaries or counts, and had acquired a knowledge of affairs, and naturally kept up close relations with the palace from which they had come. All these things helped to strengthen the power of the bishops ; they acted almost as temporal sovereigns, and tended to reduce to im- potence the old municipal magistrates. The bishops gradually made for themselves a place by the side of the counts, and shared public authority with the functionaries of the king. The church in Germany owes its strength and, indeed, its existence largely to missionaries, who were sent at the end ad. 768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 271 of the sixth century from Ireland and England to preach the gospel in the interior of that country, which, in the seventh century, had a powerful effect upon the church in France. The conquest of Britain by the j^J^^y Anglo-Saxons, who were heathens, led to the destruction of Christianity, which had been introduced by the Romans. It was founded again by Pope Gregory the Great, who sent forty missionaries to England, led by Augus- tine. They found there King Aethelbert of Kent ^nd Ireland and his queen, Bertha, who was the daughter of a Frankish prince, and a Christian. She converted her husband, and they and their family did much to spread Christianity throughout the island, and founded bishoprics, the chief of which was established at Canterbury in Kent, of which Augustine became archbishop. Ireland had already been con- verted to Christianity by St. Patrick in the fifth f^g j rish century, and first from Ireland, and then from and English England, proceeded missionaries who brought the Missionaries, gospel to Scotland and then to those parts of Germany which were either as yet unconverted or had fallen back into heathen- dom. Amongst these may be mentioned the Irishman St. Columba, who, between 590 and 615, accompanied by twelve missionaries, went to the Allemanni, and worked in the Vosges mountains, at Zurich, and at Bregenz on the lake of Constance. His companion, Gallus, who worked between 590 and 640, founded the monastery of St. Gallen, which gave its name to a canton in Switzerland, and was a seat of education and enlightenment to that portion of Europe, extending to the whole of southern Germany. Kilian, bishop of Wurzburg, preached among the Franks, and Emmeram, bishop of Poitou, in Bavaria. The Anglo-Saxon Willibrord came to Germany at the close of the seventh century with eleven missionaries, and, with the help of Pepin, converted the Frisians. Meanwhile Gregory the Great (540-604) did much to estab- lish the position of the bishop of Rome and to strengthen the unity of the church ; and Benedict of Nursia, who died in 543, had set on foot a reform of the monasteries. His chief founda- tion was the monastery of Monte Cassino, in the centre of Italy, and from this proceeded a number of smaller monasteries, which devoted themselves to manual labour, to agriculture, to study, and to the education of youth. Indeed, it is impos- sible to exaggerate the services which the Benedictine Order has rendered to the cause of learning in the world. 272 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 486 to Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy all possessed mayors of the palace, the growth and extent of whose powers have just been described, and it was natural that they H^^tal should quarrel with each other. At last, in 687, Pepin, of Heristal, now a subxirb of Liege, who was grandson of Pepin of Landen, becoming mayor of the palace in Austrasia, defeated his Neustrian and Burgundian rivals in the battle of Testri, on the Somme, and became mayor of the palace for all the kingdom. He was in fact, though not in name, the king of the Franks, and, under the weak govern- ment of the "do nothing" kings, was able to consolidate his power and to pass it on to his descendants. The son of Pepin of Heristal was Charles, called Martel, or the Hammer (714-741), who united the whole of the Frankish empire under his rule. Under him, ar es Christianity was threatened by the advance of Islam or Mohammedanism, of which we shall speak in the latter part of this chapter. The Arabs and the Moors of Spain crossed the Pyrenees into France, with the object of converting the whole of that country to their own faith. The very existence of Christianity seemed to be at stake, when, in 732, Charles defeated the invaders in a battle which was fought between Tours and Poitiers, and lasted several days. Even then, for some time, Mohammedans were able to maintain themselves in Septimania in the south of Gaul. After the death of Charles Martel, his two sons by his first marriage divided the kingdom, Karlmann, the eldest, taking Austrasia, and Pepm, the younger, Neustria and Burgundy. Karlmann went into a monastery, and Pepin, called " le Bref 11 6 ^ re ^ " or ^ ne Short, undertook the government of the kingdom. His rule was so efficient that, in 752, at a diet held at Soissons, the Frankish nobles, with the concurrence of Pope Zacharias, deposed Childeric III., last of the Merovingians, and made Pepin king of the Franks. This had a great influence over the fate of the church, be- cause, in the meantime, Winfrid, an Englishman, better known . as Boniface, had begun the labours which insured Germany m him the title of the A P ostl e ° f Germany. He not only preached in Germany, but by his zeal and devotion effected the conversion of the Frisians, Hessians, and Thuringians. Bavaria, which had been previously converted by Severinus and Emmeram, was also stimulated by him, and the episcopal sees in Germany which were either founded or a.d. 768] THE FRANKISH EMPIRE 273 reformed by him were brought into closer connection with the see of Rome. Winfrid, who was born at Kyrton in Wessex in 680 or 683, had first worked amongst the Frisians under Willi- brord, and had then received the eastern part of the land of the Franks as his missionary field from Pope Gregory II. Pope Gregory III. made him archbishop of Germany, without any special see, in 742. He was supported strongly by Karlmann and Pepin, who made him archbishop of Mainz, by which he became primate of Germany. He founded the bishopric of Buraburg in Hesse, now represented by Fritzlar, the monastery of Fulda, the bishoprics of Wiirzburg and Eichstadt in Thur- ingia, the bishoprics of Regensburg, Freising, Passau, and Salz- burg in Bavaria. At the close of his life, he committed the care of his archbishopric to his pupil Lullus, and devoted himself to the conversion of the Frisians, amongst whom, at the age of seventy, he suffered a martyr's death at Dokkum in 754. The heathens whom he was attempting to convert, seeing the Bible and the church vessels which he bixmght with him, thought they were of value, and fell upon him and killed him, with fifty- two of his companions. Pepin saw that the security of his government depended greatly upon the support of the Roman church, and the bishop of Rome was desirous of obtaining the support of the Franks for himself, as he was K® pi p and threatened both by the Lombards and by the exarch of Ravenna. 80 Pepin received the consecration of the pope, which was afterward given to his successors. He also assisted Pope Stephen in his struggle against the Lombard king, Aistulf, defeated him in two campaigns, and took away from him the exarchate of Ravenna, which he gave to the pope. This was known as the " Donation of Pepin." It did not include the city of Rome, but it was the foundation of the temporal power of the pope, which lasted for eleven hundred years, and did not come to an end till September 20, 1870. In 756, Pepin made the Saxons of Westphalia tributary to him, and destroyed the domination of the Mcors in Septimania. After establishing the duchy of Aquitaine as a state tributary to the Franks, he died in 768. He left his kingdom to his two sons, Charles and Carloman, but, in order to avoid the dissensions which arose from the division into East and West — that is, into France and Germany — he attempted to unite the two nationalities by a division into North-East and South -West, of which, s 274 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 570 to Charles received Austrasia, with Thuringia and Bavaria, but also much of Neustria and the land between the Loire and the Garonne : Carloman, ruling the rest of ISTeustria, had also Burgundy, Provence, Alsace, Allemannia and part of Aquitaine. In the Byzantine empire, Justin II., the nephew of Justinian, was succeeded by Tiberius IT., and both of them were much Troubles of troubled by the attacks of Nushirvan, the shah the Eastern of Persia. Maurice, who succeeded, was simi- Empire. larly oppressed by the Avars and Scythians ; and Phocas, who reigned from 602 to 610, and who is chiefly known by the tall column which bears his name in the Forum at Rome, established a reign of terror which made matters worse. The Persians had robbed the Eastern empire of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, and were encamped opposite Constantinople, so that the Emperor Heraclius (610-641) gave up everything as lost, and deter- mined to take refuge in Carthage. His courage was, how- ever, revived by the energy of the patriarch ; he defeated the Persians in three campaigns, and at last obtained a brilliant victory over Chosroes II. at Nineveh in 627. But he did not succeed in reviving the strength of the empire, which suffered under a despotic government, and was torn asunder by ecclesiastical disputes. The weakness of the Eastern empire and of the religion which it professed gave an opportunity for the advance of Islam, which took its rise in Arabia. The Arabians were a Semitic race, consisting partly of a settled people established in towns, and partly of wandering nomads, the ancestors of the modern Bedouins. They had originally, like the Hebrews, worshipped one God, but they gradually fell into polytheism, and, in the south, into the worship of stars. One of their principal objects of worship was the Kaaba, a meteoric stone, for which a temple had been built in Mecca. The care of the stone had been committed to the Bedouins, who thus became lords of Mecca ; but disturbances arose, and in the middle of the fifth century the Kaaba came into the possession of a Bedouin race called the Koreits. Abdul Kasem Mohammed, son of Abdallah, was born at Mecca in 570, of the Koreit family of the Hashem. He had great gifts both of mind and of body, and was certainly one of the most remarkable men who ever came into the world. He a.d. S02] RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 275 lost his parents at an early age, and was brought up by his uncle, Abu-Taleb. He travelled with trading caravans in southern Arabia and Syria, and, at last, managed the business of a rich widow, called Kadija, whom Shammed he married. Devoted to religious reflection, he withdrew from the world, and spent the whole of his time during the sacred month Ramadan in a cave. Mohammed had met both in Mecca and on his travels with Jews and Christians, and by their teaching, as well as by his own reflection, he became convinced of the superiority of the worship of a single God to the polytheism which sur- rounded him. He had also learnt that both Jews and Christians looked for the coming of a teacher — Jews of a Messiah, Christians of a Paraclete, the promised Holy Spirit. Thus he gradually became persuaded that his own people required a purer religion, and an inspired prophet. Now, at the age of forty, he began to feel the birth of new ideas. The Angel Gabriel appealed to him in his cave, and bade him reveal his message to the world. Kadija believed in him and en- couraged him, and the angel appeared to him a second time. At last, in 610 or 612, came the night of the secret resolution, the "Leila al Kuds." He determined to proclaim himself the messenger and ambassador of Allah the one „ __ God, the lord of heaven and earth. His first c i a ims him- disciples were his wife, Kadija, his daughter, self the his cousin Ali, then ten years old, his friend Prophet of Abu Bekr, an upright merchant, and his emanci- pated slave, Zeid. He attempted to conciliate the new faith with the old, suppressing the worship of Kaaba and the pilgrim- ages undertaken to it. In the first three years, his disciples did not exceed forty. In the fourth, he addressed his tribe the Koreits, and threatened them with the fires of hell if they did not give up their polytheism, but he encountered contempt and ridicule. A number of his followers, among whom were Rukeija and her husband Othman, took refuge in Abyssinia, where they were protected by the king, who was a Nestorian Christian. Persecution had the effect of increasing the number of his disciples in Mecca, the chief of whom were his uncle, Hamza, called the " Lion of God," and Omar, the son of his principal antagonist, Abu Djal. Omar was then twenty- six years old, a man of gigantic stature, of marvellous strength, and of great courage. With his wild look and his heavy staff, he was able to make people afraid 276 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 570 to of him. But Mohammed was finally exiled, and had to take refuge for three years in a fortress in the wilderness, and did not return to Mecca until 620. Soon after this, Kadija died, an irreparable loss, but Mohammed consoled himself by marrying Sanda and by being betrothed to Ayesha, the daughter of Abu Bekr, who was seven years old. Mohammed was now fortified by new visions, and believed himself to be carried by a winged horse to the presence of God, in the seventh heaven. If the people of Mecca would not listen to him, he began to find adherents in Medina, especially in the tribe of the Chazradjites. At last, seventy- three believers from Medina came to him, and begged him to leave Mecca and go to them. He at first declined, and remained for three months in Mecca, but, when he heard that the Kureish had determined to murder him, he fled with Abu Bekr and Ali by night to Medina. This was the . Hegira, the beginning of the Moslem calendar, g ' July 16, 622. He entered the city in triumph, and was supported by Ali, Omar, and Othman. He first approached the Jews, reverenced the Sabbath, and declared Jerusalem to be the Kibla, the place towards which every true Mohammedan turns when he prays. But the Jews rejected him for their Messiah, as they had previously rejected Jesus, so he turned to the Arabians, and made Mecca the Kibla and Friday his Sabbath. In Medina, the teaching of the prophet began to take a new development. His conversations with the Angel Gabriel became more frequent : his utterances were collected and formed the sacred book, the Koran. A mosque was built, called Mesdjid, a common house of prayer, out of palm trees. From its roof, Bilal called the faithful four times a day. Mohammed now began to draw the sword. He defeated the Koreits at Beda in 624, and again at Ohod in 625. He Moham- attacked the Jews, who besieged him in Medina. med's Con- In 629, he undertook a pilgrimage to Mecca, and quests, eventually brought it under his power in 630. He returned to Medina as a victorious king, sought on all sides by ambassadors of friendly powers and by new adherents, while he sent his own embassy to the south and to the sea- coast to procure new believers in Islam. In 632 he made another pilgrimage to Mecca, when he walked round the Kaaba seven times Avith fervent prayers. Shortly after his return from Medina, he fell ill in the house of his wife Ayesha, and a.d. 802] RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 277 died in her arms on June 8, 632. His last words were " Ever- lasting life in Paradise ! " He died in the eleventh year of the Hegira, and the sixty-third year of his age, the prophet, poet, priest, and king of Arabia. He was buried in the place where he died, and his house was turned into a mosque, and became a place of pilgrimage like the Kaaba at Mecca. The corner stone of the belief of Islam is the Koran, a collection of the revelations made by the Angel Gabriel to Mohammed, ordered and arranged by Abu Bekr two years after the prophet's death. Islam attempts to revive the old religion of Abraham, while recognising both Judaism and Christianity ; Moses and Jesus are regarded as the ambassadors of God, but Mohammed as his last and chief messenger. The fundamental belief of Islam is contained in the words, " There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet." The Moslems also believe in angels, prophets, in the resurrection, last judgment, everlasting life, and pre- destination. If Islam is a decline from Christianity, it is a great advance on the former religion of the Arabs and on the teaching of the Parsees. After the death of Mohammed, a contest arose about the succession, some following Ali, husband of the prophet's daugh- ter, Fatima, and one of the purest and brightest conauests spirits in the whole of the Moslem hierarchy, and f Abu others the powerful Abu Bekr, who became the Bekr and first khalif, that is, representative of the prophet. Omar. Abu Bekr took energetic steps to spread his religion, and, with the help of Kalid, conquered the Persian princes of Irak and Hira on the Euphrates, and wrested a large part of Syria from the Eastern empire. He died in 634, and was succeeded by Omar (634-644), a rough warrior, who took the title of Emir al Mumenin, commander of the faithful, and established a council of state called the divan. He conquered the Emperor Heraclius at the battle of Tiberias, and took from him, by 639, Damascus, together with Syria, Palestine, and Phoenicia. In 641, Amru, with 1 ° f the assistance of the Coptic Christians, who were opposed by the Byzantines, conquered Egypt and destroyed many thousand Christian churches. There is also little doubt that Omar caused the destruction of the world- famous library of Alexandria, an irreparable loss an Fersia - to literature. Also, in 642, he overthrew the powerful Persian empire, defended by the last Sassanid, Jezdegerd III., and 278 A GENERAL HISTORY [a. d . 570 to his brave general Rustum. This made Islam the predominant religion of the East. Bagdad on the Tigris soon became the principal seat for the Mohammedan world, of commerce, art, and science, and farther toward the East arose the princes of Bokhara, Balkh, and Samarcand. Soon after the conquest of Persia, Omar was murdered in Medina by a Persian slave. Omar had, before his death, commanded the six oldest followers of the prophet to choose a new khalif from amongst them. They met in the house of Ayesha, and discussed for a time the conflicting claims of Ali and Othman, and the choice fell on Othman. He held the khalifate for twelve years, but without much reputation or success. Real power came into the hands of his cousin Moawija, of the tribe of the Ommaijacls, who were spoken of in the Koran as the enemies of Islam, and internal disorder increased. At Tlie last, in 656, Othman was attacked and murdered. Struggle Ali was chosen as his successor, but he hesitated for the for some time to receive the position from blood- Khalifate. .stained hands. He was bitterly opposed by Ayesha, Mohammed's widow, who disliked Fatima, the wife of Ali. Ayesha and her followers took refuge in Bozra, and Ali pro- ceeded to attack them. The decisive battle was fought under the walls of Bozra in December 656, and was called the battle of the camels, because Ayesha directed it from the back of a camel, which the followers of Ali struggled in vain to capture. At last the animal was hamstrung, and Ayesha was captured. Ali entered Bozra as a conqueror, but he had new difficulties before him. Moawija had raised the standard of revolt in Damascus to avenge the death of his relation Othman, and had roused the Syrian Moslems against Ali. He was supported by Amru, the conqueror of Egypt, and Ali had to attack 'them. It is said that ninety battles were fought in one hundred and ten days, Ali losing 25,000 of his men, Moawija 45,000. At last, three Mussulmans swore that they would kill all three combatants, in order to put an end to the civil strife. Amru was slain by a poisoned dagger, Moawija was severely wounded, but not killed, and Ali, stabbed on entering a mosque, died two days afterwards. He left a son, Hussain, ttd^hlftes w ^° con ti nuec l the succession of his family in Mecca. By this time, Mohammedans were divided into the two sects of Sunnites and Shiites, which often fought furiously when they met. The Persians were mainly ad. 802] RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 279 Shiites, and regarded Ali as the rightful immediate successor of Mohammed. The khalifate of the Ommaijads begins with Moawija. He moved his capital from Medina to Damascus, and attacked the Byzantines so vigorously, between the years 668 The and 675, that they were only saved by the use of Ommaijad Greek fire. Between 692 and 705, Abdul Malek Khalifate. conquered Armenia, while his general, Musa, destroyed Carthage in 698, and completed the conquest of North Africa, the Berbers being compelled to become Mohammedans. Abdel Malek's successor, Walid (705-714), was the mightiest of the Ommaijads. He conquered the territory of the Oxus and Jaxartes in the East, and, in the West, crossed from Africa into Spain, and in 711 destroyed the kingdom of the Visigoths, and established a Moslem empire on its ruins. The cause of this lay in internal dissensions. The kingdom of the Visigoths, founded by Euric (466-484), was diminished by the conquests of Clovis in the north, and of the Byzantines in the south. In 687, King Leovigild restored its power by defeating the Suevi in Gallicia, while his successor, Beccared, drove out the Byzantines from the peninsula and even crossed into Africa. Civil dissensions, however, arose, and King Vitiza, who attempted reforms, was deposed by the clergy and the nobles in 710, and Boderic put in his place. The sons of Vitiza then called the Arabs to their assistance to avenge their father. The Moslem garrison of Ceuta sent an expedition into the peninsula, consisting of a force of 400 Africans and 100 Arabians. They landed to the south of Moslem Algeciras, at a place now called Tarifa from the Invasion name of their leader Tarif, and returned in a of Spain, few days laden with booty and giving such an attractive account of the wealth and charms of the country that Musa, Emir of Africa, determined to attempt the conquest of it. The leave of the khalif of Damascus having been obtained, an army of 12,000 men was sent under the command of Tarik. It first attacked the famous rock which, like a couching lion, watches, as the outpost of England, over the straits, and which has ever since borne the name of its conqueror, Gibraltar, Gibal al Tarik, the mountain of Tarik. Having mastered this stronghold, Tarik met in conflict the governor of Andalusia, Boderic. The battle of Xeres de la Frontera lasted a whole week, beginning anew every morning. On the third day the fortunes of the Mussulmans were on the wane, when Tarik, 280 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 570 to rising in his stirrups, cried, "Conquerors of Africa, whither will you flee? Behind you is the sea, before you is the foe. Follow your leader ; I am resolved either to die or to place my foot on the neck of the fallen enemy." At last the battle was won. Roderic escaped to find an inglorious death in an obscure river. The date of this great battle, which gave the mastery of Spain to the Moors, was July 19-26, 711. The victory of Tarik attracted crowds of invaders across the straits. Malaga fell, and then Granada. Cordova offered some Conquests resistance, but, after three months, was compelled and Fate of to open its gates. Toledo, the capital of the Tarik. Visigothic kingdom, was besieged by Tarik himself, and surrendered on honourable terms. The success of his lieutenant roused the jealousy of Musa, who, having tried in vain to recall him, made an expedition of his own. More cities fell before the onslaught of Tarik, but, when he heard of Musa's arrival, he hastened to his chief and laid the spoils of the Visigoths at his feet. His only reward was to be deprived of his rank and offices and to be cast into prison, from which he was with difficulty delivered. But in two years almost the whole of Spain was conquered, and the peninsula, from Gibraltar to the Pyrenees, obeyed the rule of the khalif of Damascus. Musa, like Tarik, the victim of jealousy, was recalled, and reluctantly obeyed the command. He set out in triumph from Ceuta to Damascus ; thirty waggons and countless f ^j. a e camels bore the riches of Africa and Spain, while four hundred Gothic nobles swelled his train ; his journey lasted for more than a year. When he reached Damascus, he found the khalif in the throes of death and Soliman ascended the throne. Musa was accused of embezzlement, found guilty, deprived of his property, and condemned to pay an enormous fine. At the age of seventy-eight, he was thrown into prison, scourged, and exposed on a pillory to the burning sun. His children were put to death, that they might not avenge the fate of their father, who died of a broken heart, while travelling as a beggar pilgrim on the road to Mecca. The despotic rule, the cruelty, avarice, and sensuality of the Ommaijads roused the opposition of righteous Moslems. Civil dissensions ensued, and there came to be three parties in the khalifate, — the Ommaijads, who reigned in Syria and Spain, the Fatimites in Arabia, and the Abbasids (descended from Abbas, the uncle of the prophet), in the Eastern provinces of Asia. At last, the Abbasids rose in rebellion, overthrew the Ommai- a.d. 802] RISE OF MOHAMMEDANISM 281 jads, and founded the Abbasid khalifate, which reigned first in Damascus and afterwards in Bagdad. In order to secure their power, the Abbasids determined to exterminate y^ the whole race of the Ommaijads. Abdallah, Abbasid the uncle of the first Abbasid khalif, invited the Khalifate. leader of the Ommaijads to a feast at Damascus, under the pretence of making peace with them, and ninety of them made their appearance. At a given sign, they were all murdered, a large cloth was spread over their bodies, and the feast continued while some of them were still in the agonies of death. Only one, the famous Abderahman, escaped with great difficulty, took refuge in Spain, and founded there the emirate of Cordova, in 756. In the meantime, the empire of the East was beset by troubles. After the dynasty of Heraclius came to an end, it was succeeded by Leo III., the Isaurian, who reigned from 717 to 741, and fought bravely against the Bulgarians T^aurian and the Arabs. He made a vigorous campaign against the use of pictures in the churches, which had come into a condition of great abuse. Wonder-working pictures and statues had become common, and were the cause of grievous superstition, which aroused the contempt and -p^e i cono . abhorrence of the Mussulmans to such an extent clastic that the representation of the human, or indeed Struggle, any animal, form was entirely forbidden by them. After Leo III. had borne these excesses with patience for nine years, he issued an edict, in 726, with the consent of his senators and bishops, that all pictures should be removed from the altars, and placed in a position where they could not be touched or worshipped. When this half measure only produced worse effects, he ordered, in 728, that all pictures of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, or of the saints and martyrs, should be removed from the churches and holy places, and broken to pieces. The bitter strife between the Iconodules and the Iconoclasts lasted for more than a hundred years, and threatened the throne and the empire with destruction. Leo was succeeded by Constantine V., who bore the insulting name of Copronymus, given him by the Iconodules, and then by Leo IV. (775-780). As Leo was in weak health, he was persuaded to associate with himself his f~" son Constantine, then four years old, in order to secure the succession. On his death, the Empress Irene, who was fond of pictures and kept them secretly in her bedroom, 282 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 570-802 became guardian of her son, and succeeded, with some difficulty, in establishing peace between the two parties. A synod, held at Nicaea in the autumn of 787, established, with the consent of the Eastern patriarch and of Pope Hadrian, that pictures might be reverenced by bending the knee, but not made objects of worship. When Constantine came to manhood, a quarrel arose between him and his mother, who wished to retain her power. She had to yield for a time, and Constantine VI., called Porphyrogenitus — that is, born in the purple chamber — reigned from 792 to 797. Irene, however, thirsted for revenge, and succeeded in casting her son into prison and blinding him, after which she reigned alone till 802. After her overthrow, the throne was occupied by a number of worthless emperors, raised to eminence by the army, and quickly deposed. Islam had Losses of deprived the Byzantine empire of many of its best the Eastern possessions in Asia and Africa, and had destroyed Empire. a ll traces of literature and learning in Alexandria, in Antioch, and in the other cities which the Moslems had conquered. But the Byzantine empire and the Eastern church continued to be a bulwark of good government and of religious life against the destruction which threatened both, and their history, entirely neglected, is a worthy object of study. CHAPTER II. CHARLEMAGNE AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 768-928. Charles the Great may be regarded as the Moses or Lycurgus of his age. He was, above everything else, the great lawgiver. The German and French legends do not take the same view of him, the first looking upon him as £; nar J es the administrator, judge, and legislator, the other as the type of the churchman, emperor, and crusader. The difference is characteristic of the two nations, as German development required above everything a peaceful administrator, and the French some one to represent in heroic guise their national culture and ambitions. Pepin during his reign had to deal with two great political factors, which the Carolingian age had inherited from the Merovingian, the church and the aristocracy, t^ Church At his accession, the first of these had been and the overpowered by the second, but he took unwearied Nobles, pains to raise the church to its former position, to give new order to the finances, to unite the bishops by the creation of synods, and to increase their administrative power. He, how- ever, neglected Boniface, whom he had made archbishop of Mainz, but whom he had not endowed with that primacy over the Frankish church which he earnestly desired. Boniface, in his disappointment, sought and found a martyr's death in Friesland. At the synod of Verneuil (755), the clergy were organised to deal vigorously with the lay aristocracy, whose leading family, the house of Arnulf, had reversed traditional policy by uniting with the church and the papacy. The pope compelled the lay nobility to recognise the new monarchy, but they were not altogether contented with their position. We have already seen that the division of the empire made by Pepin provided that each of his sons should have an inherit- ance composed of both Koman and German territories. But the two brothers were of different characters and pursued different policies. Carloman allied with the Lombard court; Bertha, 283 284 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 768 to the widow of Pepin, went herself to Italy and negotiated a marriage between Charles and the daughter of Desiderius. the Lombard king. But Charles was of a different Carioman" 1 milld ' and SGnt hiS Wife back t0 Pavia - When Carloman died in 771, his widow and his sons took refuge at the court of Desiderius, who put pressure on the pope to anoint the children of the elder brother and to oppose Charles. Upon this, Charles determined to have nothing to do with Italy for the present, but to devote his attention to Germany. At the age of twenty-six, he placed a great national task in the forefront of his policy, and took a line which was certain to be popular with his warlike aristocracy. There was no well defined frontier between the territories of the Franks and the Saxons, except forests and mountains, and there had been constant warfare between them. So Charles set ~, , out from Worms in the year 772, after holding a Charles J „ . . & embarks on Champ de Mai. I he war was a war 01 religion, the Con- and the battle-fields of the Saxons are to be found quest of ni close proximity to their sanctuaries. Charles, the Saxons. cross i ng t h e Rhine, passed into Westphalia, captured the Eresburg, their fortress, destroyed the Irminsul, a sacred pillar or tree, and returned when the Saxons had agreed, upon the banks of the Weser, to deliver up to him twelve hostages. In the Champ de Mai of the year 773, at Geneva, it was resolved, at the pope's request, to attack Lombard ° f Desiderius - Charles avoided the nearest Alpine passes, which had been entrenched, crossed the Mont Cenis, sending another detachment over the great St. Bernard, and besieged the Lombards in Pavia and Verona. In the spring of 774, both surrendered ; Desiderius was taken prisoner, and compelled to enter a Frankish monastery. Charles became king of Lombardy in his place, but, for the present, made no alteration in the constitution of his new kingdom. During the absence of Charles, the Saxons invaded and plundered the frontier of Hesse. Charles invoked the aid of the church against his pagan enemies, and, holding a Mayfield at Diiren in 775, invaded Saxony anew. The Eastphalians submitted to him, and at last the Westphalians gave up their Settlement opposition to him. Charles then marched straight of Lorn- from his Saxon battle-fields into Italy, in order to bardy. put down a rebellion of the Duke of Friuli. He placed Frankish counts in the revolted towns, and transplanted Frankish institutions to Lombard soil. When the Saxons arose a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 285 anew, he was able to exhibit such an overwhelming force that they submitted without a battle. These colossal successes could not have been brought about unless the Frankish empire had been consolidated on a firm basis by Pepin and Charles, the national army had been made efficient, and the lay and eccle- siastical elements had been so reconciled as to favour the growth of freedom. Charles was now able to hold the May- field of 777 at Paderborn. The Saxon king, Widikind, fled to Denmark. Huge numbers of Saxons came to be baptized, and received an amnesty from Charles on the condition that if they rose again they should lose their freedom and their property. In 778, Charles, now regarded as a great Christian monarch, re- ceived an invitation from Soliman, viceroy of Saragossa, to attack the Moors in Spain. He stormed Pampeluna and Saragossa, subdued the country as far as the Ebro, and added it to his kingdom under the name of the g a r es m Spanish March. On his return over the Pyrenees, he suffered his first defeat, his rearguard, under Roland, being attacked by the Basques in the pass of Roncesvalles, and nearly all slaughtered, including their officers. During this campaign, the Frankish settlement of Saxony had been entirely destroyed by a new uprising, which may have been stirred up by the return of Widikind from Denmark, but took the form of a great renew™* 1 ™ national revolt. The Saxons laid waste the right bank of the Rhine from Deutz to Ehrenbreitstein with ruthless barbarity, which, considering the manner in which they had been treated, is not surprising. Charles, through his lieutenants, Geilo and Adalgis, succeeded in putting down this movement, and in restoring his organisation. The Saxons were unable to withstand the attack of the Frankish infantry. In 779, they were driven out of their entrenchments at Bocholt, and, in 780, the Franks penetrated to the north of Magdeburg, which made a great impression on the enemy. Many Saxons came into the Frankish camp to be baptized, and Charles had leisure to undertake the reduction of the Slavonic tribes to the east of the Elbe. It is not exactly known what means were taken by Charles to establish his authority in Saxony on a secure basis, but it is supposed that he deprived the Saxons of the allodial possession of land, making them ? saxonv feudatory to himself, and that he destroyed their guilds, which he knew to be the centres of disaffection. At 286 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 768 to the end of 780, Charles went to Italy, where, at Easter 781, Pepin and Louis, his younger sons, were anointed by the pope as kings of Lombardy and Aquitaine, for Charles thought that, as he now held a firm central position between the Loire, the Alps, and the Saxon frontier, he might, without danger, allow a certain independence to Lombardy and Aqui- taine. Charles recognised that the church was the corner stone of his dominions ; he therefore entered into close connection with the pope, and made efforts to improve the S^ChuiS? intellectual condition of his clergy. In Italy, in 781, he met at Pavia the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar, Alcuin, and invited him to his court, and he attached to his service the Lombard Paulus Diaconus, as well as some learned Goths and Bavarians. He emancipated the clergy from the gloom of the cloister schools, and brought them into the cheerful atmosphere of his own court. In 782, Charles, lulled by a false security, met an attack of the Swabians on the left bank of the Saale with an army Further chosen from eastern Franconia, and even em- Revolts of ployed Saxons to assist him against the enemy, the Saxons. But, at this very time, Widikind came back ngain from Denmark, and organised a new revolt. Theodoric, a count of the lower Rhine, hastened to the Weser, and found the Frankish army in great danger. The commanders of the army, Geilo and Adalgis, parted from Theodoric, and made a separate attack on the main body of the Saxons, which led to their army being destroyed almost to a man. Charles hastened to the scene of danger with a new army, and held the Saxon nobles responsible for the disaster. They laid the blame on Widikind, who again fled to Denmark. They delivered up to Charles 4500 of Wiclikind's adherents, and it is said that he put them to death in a single day at Yerden on the Aller. However, in the following winter, the insurrection spread over the whole country, and Widikind again returned to find himself the chosen leader of the people. In 783, Charles summoned his army to meet at Paderborn. When he heard that the Saxons had concentrated themselves on the other side of the mountains at Detmold, he attacked and routed them, and returned to his former position. He now began the complete devastation of the country, and was so entirely occupied by the Saxon war that he spent the whole winter in the Eresburg. In 785, he passed on to ad. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 287 the basin of the lower Elbe, a country into which no foreign army had penetrated since the days of Tiberius. The Saxons were now reduced to order, but eight years later, in 793, they rose again. Charles adopted a statesmanlike policy towards them, treating them with kindness, and, at the same time, transplanting some of them into Franconia. Widikind and Abbio, another leader of the rebellious Saxons, were baptized at Attigny on the Aisne, Charles himself acting as godfather. Many thousands of the Saxon nohles and common people also became Christians and orderly subjects of the empire. While the efforts of Charles were concentrated upon the reduction of the Saxons, other discontented interests took the opportunity of asserting themselves. Hartrad of T rou bi es in Thuringia rebelled in 785 ; the inhabitants of Brittany, Brittany refused tribute in 786 ; and, in the same Italy, and year, the Lombard duke, Arichis of Benevento, Bavaria, who had attempted to establish an independent kingdom in southern Italy, was compelled to make his submission to Charles in Campania. In the following year the conduct of Duke Tassilo of Bavaria became so suspicious that Charles was obliged to suppress him, and attacked his dominions from three sides. Tassilo gave way without a contest, and in the following year, being deserted by his own nobles, he was shut up with his son in a monastery. After this, Charles took possession of Bavaria and administered it on the Frankish system. In 789, he crossed the Elbe and subdued the Wilzen and the Serbs, both Slavonic races. The historians tell us that the king undertook no campaign in 790, the first year of the reign in which there had been no war. > Charles the Great is the most illustrious of the family of Arnulf . The whole political work of his predecessors culminated in him. The talents of his family for civil and Adminis- military rule reached in him an elevation which tration of they had never before attained. Yet there was the Empire. nothing weak or luxurious in his nature, and he was able to move in complete security in a region where his predecessors, with enormous labour, had created order out of chaos. Charles Martel and Pepin had lived, so to speak, from hand to mouth, but Charles the Great conceived and called into being a well- ordered administration, which, out of raw materials, was welded into a living and effective whole. He accomplished this task by his personality alone. It is true that his inherited political capacity and his own statesmanlike understanding far surpassed 288 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 768 to the ordinary level of his time, but he knew how to put a proper man in the proper place and to inspire the different sections of his people with enthusiasm for the carrying out of his ideas. He made his court the centre of the civil and ecclesiastical aristocracy, the place where all important negotiations were undertaken and all serious decisions were made. In the Mero- vingian time the palace was already the centre of govern- ment, as we have already said, but there had been many changes in the interval. The mayor of the palace had now disappeared ; the chamberlains, who were previously under his orders, had become officials of the royal treasury. The seneschal and the butler still held their offices, and the marshal looked after the royal stables. Under these officers there was a whole army of public servants, divided into their proper sections. The sons of the Frankish nobles were willing to perform the services and to familiarise themselves with the views of the court. There were also a door-keeper, Ostiarius, and a quarter-master, Mansion- arms. The business of the kingdom was separated into two great sections. The civil business passed through the hands of the count of the palace, the comes palatimis, called in German the Pfalzgraf, or count palatine ; the ecclesiastical business through the hand of the chaplain. He had charge of the capella of the imperial bedchamber, in which the cappa or mantle of Saint Martin, which he divided with the beggar, was preserved, and this was the origin of the name. This complicated court had no fixed residence, but wandered with the king from palace to palace. The Merovingian domain between the Moselle, the Rhine, and the Scheldt e oya j m j j^^ ac | c i ec | to the possessions of the house of Pepin. Among new acquisitions were the crown lands of Lombardy, considerable possessions in Saxon)', the property which had belonged to the dukes of Bavaria and Allemannia, and many districts on the frontier. There is no doubt that Charles was the largest landed proprietor of his empire, and on that depended the magnificence of his court and his predominance in his diets. He paid the greatest attention to the management of his property, and his domestic economy was a model for the whole kingdom, especially for the church. His chief palaces were Compiegne and Kiersy on the Oise, Attigny on the Aisne, Heristal on the Meuse, Duren on the Roer ; Aachen, Metz, Thionville, and Trier on the Moselle ; Nijmegen, Ingelheim, Worms, and Spires on the Rhine. Charles also built a palace at Frankfort on the Main, and he a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 289 had many hunting lodges in different forests. All these palaces were centres from which revenue might be derived. After he had subdued the Bavarians, Charles attempted to secure peace in the south-east of his dominions, and began to attack the Avars. When the Lombards had re- Charles moved from Pannonia into Italy, the plundering attacks the Avars, a race closely related to the Huns, had Avars, settled in what is now Hungary, where they formed a barrier to relations between the East and the West. Charles waged against them a war of extermination for eight years, from 791 to 798. In the first campaign he drove them back beyond what was called the Wiener Wald, the wooded country which sur- rounded Vienna. His son Pepin captured their capital and treasure, conquered their lands between the Danube and the Theiss, even as far as the Raab, and added them to the Frankish empire under the name of the Ostmark, or Eastern March, the future Austria. Whilst he was thus engaged, a new Saxon revolt broke out in 793, which lasted, with some interruptions, till 797, and had to be broken by systematic devastation of the country. In that year, Charles summoned a portion of the Saxon nobles to Aachen, and made with them a new capitulation. The empire of Charlemagne now extended from the Eider, the frontier river of Denmark, to the Ofanto, the ancient Aufidus of Italy ; and the whole world admired the marvellous ability with which he ordered t ifeErnr?ire his mighty kingdom and swayed the conflicting interests of so many different peoples. He endeavoured to meet the new problems to which the extent of his empire gave rise by new institutions, one of which had its origin in Mero- vingian times, while the other was due to himself. The missi dominici, who were generally counts or bishops, had the duty of travelling about certain districts, in which they could hold courts, receive complaints against the counts, publish the edicts of the diets, examine the condition of the domains, and exercise general control over civil and ecclesiastical matters. The other institution was the creation of Markgrafen, margraves, in Latin marchiones et praefedi Mareraves limitum, whose duty it was to preserve the peace of Germany by an active and well regulated defence of the frontiers. The office of the margrave was to prevent sudden inroads of frontier enemies, to command the forces of the neighbouring districts, and summon the population of the march to war. The margrave also had the privilege of reporting T 2Q0 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 768 to directly to the diet, instead of to the king, which gave him a certain independence. After the conquest of the Avars, Charles founded an Avarian March, in the south-east, which bordered on the Friulian March to the south of the Alps. He created a Spanish March south of the Pyrenees, and established a similar institution on the frontiers of Brittany and in the Slavonic districts of Saxony. It is scarcely to be wondered at that Charles should have conceived the idea of re-establishing the Roman empire. He Education was unceasingly occupied in bringing about a and union between the civil and ecclesiastical culture Literature, of his time ; in order to raise his people to a higher standard of education, be revived the palace school and the bishops' schools. He attempted to inspire the higher society with a knowledge of Roman culture, and to give them literary education. The first great history of the empire dates from 788. In 796, Alcuin was made abbot of the monastery of Saint Martin at Tours, and undertook the management of the schools in that place. The degradation of the Latin language was gradually stopped. We find in the literary monuments of the time — the writings of Eginhard, of Peter of Pisa, of Paulus Diaconus — a purer Latinity than before. After long neglect, the old literature came to life again in the circles of the Carolingian court and the Carolingian church. From the year 797, there was no male representative of the empire at Byzantium. The patriarch of Jerusalem sent the Coronation keys of the Holy Sepulchre to Charles as the of Charles representative of Christianity. In 799, Pope at Rome. Leo III., driven out from his bishopric, applied for assistance to Charles at Paderborn, and Charles soon re- established his authority at Rome. In the following year, he travelled to Italy, and on Christmas Day, 800, a memorable date in the history of the world, was crowned emperor by Leo III. in the church of Saint Peter's. Eginhard tells us that the act of crowning came upon Charles as a surprise. It has been suggested, on various grounds, that several of the king's councillors had conceived the idea of reviving the Western empire, but it is probable that Charles would not have deter- mined upon this step unless he had first come to an arrange- ment with Byzantium. Negotiations may have begun, but the pope made the coronation an accomplished fact. In the last years of his life, Charles did his" best to perform his religious duties with the greatest zeal. He felt that he a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 291 was truly the head not only of his kingdom but also of the Christian church. At the same time, he strove to make the acts of his administration acceptable to his people, p ij cy f and he never aimed at an absolute monarchy. The Charles — ■ edicts which he published with regard to criminal The Feudal and civil law were not only drawn up in accord- System, ance with popular rights, but laid before the "hundreds" by the king's messengers, and discussed by them before they were finally adopted. It was natural that a government founded on these lines should develop into a feudal empire, and we find the essential principle of feudalism — that is, the performance of public duties, depending upon and conditioned by the holding of public land — developed in the reign of Charles himself. In the closing years of his reign, Charles withdrew more and more into Aachen, and his palace in that city naturally became more and more the centre of his government. Eginhard represents him here as in the midst . a F es a of social and political circles, which he impresses with the stamp of his genius. It is a stimulating spectacle to see how this really good and really great man endeavoured to give his government the security and the permanence and the strength which might be able to inspire his rough and half heathen subjects with new ideas of culture. A popular king of the old German type, ordering the administration of his posses- sions with the carefulness of a wealthy peasant, on the principles of a simple and natural economy, yet at the same time clothed with the dignity of a Christian monarch, he was the last and best result of a cultivation which was now tending to disappear. In his court, the chiefs of the different tribes which composed his empire found the social life, the natural splendour, and the new-born art of their own civilisation, and the clergy of his wide dominions recognised in the emperor the head of their united church. The union of conflicting tendencies in the focus of a well organised imperial palace, and in a richly endowed per- sonality, produced that brilliant society which, for nearly half a century, held the whole of the civil and ecclesiastical community breathless, and claimed the admiration of the civilised world. It is strange that Charles, with his inexhaustible political activity, had not too clear a conception of the unity of his empire to arrange for the partition of it after his death, -j^e Suc . But he may have been led to this decision partly cession to by the custom of the Franks, partly by the feeling the Empire, that the empire was too large for the strength of a single man. 292 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 768 to The death of his two sons, Charles and Pepin, made the partition impossible to carry out, and Louis of Aquitaine remained the only heir. The death of these princes was a piece of good fortune for the church. Since the Benedictine rule had been introduced into the monasteries, the quarrels in the church, arising from the differences between the secular and the regular clergy, had begun to disappear. The church had become a powerful uniform organisation. Similarly, the unity of the Frankish empire, and its government by one man, had become an article of faith. When it became certain that Louis would inherit the whole of the empire, Charles saw clearly that a well organised church would be the best support of the inheritance which he placed in the hands of his son. In the year 812, he had the whole of the church property in his empire appraised and valued, and, in the following year, Louis r f a . ° was recognised as his successor, and crowned by Charles himself at Aachen. On January 28, 814, Charles died in that imperial city, where the marble throne upon which his corpse rested may still be seen. Charles was no great winner of battles like Theodoric. He only fought in two open fields, at Detmold and on the Haase. But he was the greatest mayor of the palace of the house of Pepin. He was one of those natures who, like Napoleon, take a delight in administi'ation, who derive a moral satisfaction from the order, security, and permanence of their economical manage- ment. The great difference between him and Theodoric was that the position of the German tribes had entirely altered. Theodoric had regarded his Goths as soldiers, his Romans as workers. But the Goths themselves had now become workers. Military movements stood still, and Charles found himself at the head of a people which was mainly devoted to agriculture. The greatness of Charles is to be found not so much in the complete organisation of his administration as in the fact that he produced so many new ideas. He leaves the impression of a man who had entirely devoted himself to great duties, and was ever seeking to accomplish new tasks. Even if the immediate results of his government may be regarded as small, he had an enormous moral effect ; and the greatest result of all is that he recovered for the German races a fixed form in their articulation, and that he exhibits to the world the ideal of a great statesman. He had reigned for forty-seven years. His embalmed body was buried at Aachen, seated on a marble chair, dressed in the full paraphernalia of an emperor, a ad. 028] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 293 golden book of the Gospels on his knees, and a golden pilgrim's wallet at his side. The tomb was filled with precious spices, and then walled up and sealed. Just after the defeat of Roncesvalles, Charles the Great heard that his wife Hildegarde had borne him twins. One of them died in his second year : the other, Louis, was destined from his cradle to be king. At the p ious age of three, he was anointed and crowned by Pope Hadrian, in Rome, as king of Aquitaine, and he appeared, four years later, in his father's camp at Paderborn, in Basque dress, surrounded by a train of followers. He was carefully brought up, and promised to be a worthy successor ; but he showed, as he grew up, that he was too much given to attend to the advice of others, that he was too strictly devoted to the affairs of religion, and that he wanted the decision and the strength of character to make him a great king. He was absolutely free from vice, but he was deficient in the great virtues. He was called a Bible-reader and a Psalm-singer, and his nephew Bernhard was thought to be better suited for the throne. Pope Leo III. died in June 816, and was succeeded by Stephen IV., whose first act was to pay Louis a visit in France. In October 816, he crowned the king and queen in the cathedral at Reims with crowns which he had brought from Rome. Stephen died soon after his return, and was succeeded, on February 28, 817, by Paschal I., pious, peace- ful, prudent, and determined. Louis now decided to divide the kingdom, which he did not feel strong enough to govern for himself, amongst his three sons. He associated his eldest son, Lothar, in the government with himself, confirmed Pepin, t^E^iTe the second son, in the government of Aquitaine, and gave Louis, the youngest, the kingdom of Bavaria. The unity of the empire and of the church was to be maintained. His nephew Bernhard, the son of his brother Pepin, to whom Charles had committed the government of Italy, was not pleased with these arrangements, upon which Louis had him condemned to death. He reprieved him, but cast him into prison, and blinded him, so that he died a few days afterwards. Shortly after this, Louis' wife died, and his sorrow for this loss, and remorse for his treatment of Bernhard, made him wish to abdicate and retire into a monastery. But his coun- cillors persuaded him to marry again, and he took for his second consort Judith, or Jutta, the daughter of Count Welf 294 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 768 to of Bavaria, a beautiful but ambitious woman. She bore him a son, known afterwards as Charles the Bald. This made a new division of the empire necessary, and Charles, when six years old, was made duke of Allemannia. Also by the influence of Judith, Bernhard of Barcelona was raised to a higher position in the court. The result of this was that, in the year 830, the sons of Louis rose against their father, compelled him to get rid of Judith and Bernhard, and, after the treacherous negotiations which gave its name to the Liigenfeld, in the neighbourhood of Colmar, imprisoned him in 833. Lothar locked his father up in a prison at Soissons, and compelled him to do penance and even to abdicate the throne ; but the younger Louis disapproved of Lothar's conduct, set the emperor free, and placed him once more upon the throne. Pepin died in 838, and a new partition became necessary, and this so diminished the share of Louis that he took up arms to defend his rights. When a battle was imminent, however, he hesitated to attack his father, and retired to Bavaria, but Death of Louis the Pious, worn out with domestic troubles, Louis the retired to an island on the Rhine near Ingelheim, Pious. where he died on June 20, 840, aged sixty-two. He deserves the title of Pious which has always been given to him, but he exhibits all the qualities, and underwent all the miseries, of an incompetent ruler. Lothar naturally regarded himself as the successor to the imperial power, but this was disputed by his brothers, and Louis the German, as he is called, and Charles of Ver^fun^ ^ ie Bald defeated him in 841 — at Fontenay, in the neighbourhood of Auxerre. The result of this was the treaty of Verdun, in 843, in which a final partition of the empire was made. Lothar took the title of emperor, with Italy, Provence, Burgundy, Trier, and the Ripuarian country as far as the sea, together with Friesland. This gave him a central position, but a kingdom without cohesion, com- posed of conflicting elements, which has been a bone of con- tention and a cause of war in Europe ever since. Louis obtained for his share almost the whole of what is now known as Germany ; Charles, what is now known as France, together with the Spanish March. Thus were created France and Germany, to contend against each other as enemies, and a middle kingdom which should be coveted by and alternately belong to both. If Louis the Pious had left two sons in- a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 295 stead of three, the destiny of the world might have been different. With Louis the German, the ablest and most capable of the sons of Louis the Pious, began the line of Carolingian kings of Germany, which lasted till 911. It was their task to protect their possessions against three g 0mS e powerful enemies — the Norman Vikings, who, sailing from harbours round the Scandinavian coasts, attacked the shores of France and Germany, and burned many towns, such as Pairs, Orleans, Toulouse, Cologne, Bern, and even Ham- burg ; the Slavs, who made continual incursions from the frontier of the Elbe ; and the Magyars, the inhabitants of Hungary, who caused a great deal of trouble. Louis, who resided in Regens- burg, had also much difficulty with his own sons, Karlmann, Louis, and Charles. In 855, the Emperor Lothar laid down his crown, and retired to the monastery of Priim, having divided his empire between his three sons, Louis II., Lothar, and Charles. Charles died in 863, and Lothar without issue in f fL r ^ a y 869, upon which an arrangement was made at Mersen, not far from Maastricht, in 870, between Louis the German and Charles the Bald, by which the German portion of Lothar's dominions went to Germany, and was strengthened by the addition of Trier, Cologne, Aachen, Utrecht, Metz, and Strasburg. By this, the Rhine became a German river. The Emperor Louis II. died in 875, the last of Lothar's male descendants. Louis the German ought properly to have suc- ceeded to the empire with Italy, but Charles the Bald contrived to outwit him, and, with the assistance of Pope John VIII., got these dominions for himself, and was crowned king of Italy. As Louis was preparing to defend his rights, he died at Frank- fort, on August 28, 876, being more than seventy years of age. Louis the German's three sons, Kallmann, Louis, and Charles known as the Fat, effected a partition among themselves, by which Karlmann received Bavaria, Carinthia, The Later Bohemia, and Moravia ; Louis Franconia, Saxony, Carolin- and Thuringia ; Charles Allemannia and Rhaetia. gians. But a succession of unexpected deaths spoilt all these plans. After a famous assembly at Kiersy, Charles the Bald, and his wife Richildis, went with an army over the Alps, carrying with them many treasures. Pope John VIII. hastened from Ravenna to Pavia, where, in August 877, resolutions were passed against the alienation of church property and against 296 A GENERAL HISTORY (a.d. 768 to placing it under the feudal system. But, when he heard that Kallmann, the son and heir of Louis the German, had invaded Lombardy with a large army, Charles hastened to Tortona, where Richildis was crowned empress by the pope, after which she returned over the Alps with the treasure. Charles remained behind with the pope, hoping for the arrival of the Frankish nobles whom he had summoned to his assistance, but when they did not appear, fearing what Karlmann might do, he set out to join his wife, while Pope John retired to Eome. Death of There he heard that Charles had died on October Charles the 13, in a poor peasant's hut, after he had received Bald. a powder from a Jewish doctor. He had wished to be buried at Saint Denis, but the escort could not support the smell of his body, and he was hastily put into the earth at a monastery near Lyons. Karlmann now came into northern Italy. He assumed the crown of Lombardy, and wished to be crowned emperor by the The Pope pope in Eome, but the pontiff contrived to keep and the him at a distance. John, not feeling himself safe Crown. in his capital from the attacks of the Saracens, desired to proceed to France and to continue his negotiations with Karlmann in that country. But Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, now advanced against Karlmann, who, being attacked by an infectious illness, retired to Germany. John's rebellious vassals had shut the pope up in the Leonine ftity, and endeavoured to compel him to crown Karlmann. He, however, escaped, and went to France, and, accompanied by Boso, the brother of the Empress Richildis, came to Compiegne, where, assisted by Hincmar of Reims, he crowned the stammer- ing Louis as king of the French. John remained in France for a year, attempting to find a sovereign who had sufficient capacity and devotion to the Holy See to deliver the pope from the attacks of the Saracens and the insults of his smaller vassals. He was strongly tempted to crown Boso king of Italy. Boso was nothing loth ; indeed, he poisoned his first wife in order to marry Engelberga, the only daughter of Louis the German. But the princes of northern Italy were not prepared to receive an adventurer in the place of Karlmann. Karlmann himself, on his return to Germany, lost his speech, and was incapable of further action — dying in 880. His brother Louis the Young took his place, and Louis the Stammerer died suddenly at Compiegne on April 10, 879, leaving behind him two sons by his first wife, Ansgard, Louis a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 297 III. and Kallmann, while a posthumous child was born to him by his second wife, Adelheid, who was afterwards known as Charles the Simple, and lived till 928. Louis the Young, second son of Louis the German, now claimed the West Frankish throne, but was finally worsted by Louis III., son of Louis the Stammerer, and died early in 882. His youngest brother, Charles the Fat, was crowned king of Italy in 879. Meanwhile Boso made himself king of lower Burgundy. Hugo, bastard son of Lothar II. and Waldrada, seized Lorraine ; and the Normans threatened both the Loire and the North Sea coast. Hence in 880, at Gondreville, Charles the Fat met the envoys of Louis the Young and the West Frankish king, and concerted the overthrow of Hugo, which was achieved, and of Boso, which was prevented by the departure of Charles, in the moment of victory, to be crowned emperor by John VIII. at Rome, in 881. Karlmann, Charles' eldest brother, dying the year before, had left a famous bastard son, Arnulf of Carinthia. In 882 — the year of Louis the Young's death — Louis III. died also, suddenly, in consequence of a fall from his horse, and his younger brother, Karlmann, was summoned to succeed him. But death was busy to interrupt the plans of men. Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, who had been driven from his cathedral, and had to take refuge from the Normans in Epernay, died in December 882, followed by public mourning. Pope John VIII. was murdered in the same month by con- spirators who found poison too slow to effect their object. He was succeeded first by Marinus, and then by Hadrian III. Then Karlmann perished, from a wound received in a boar hunt, on December 12, 884, at the age of eighteen, and Charles the Fat became king of all the Franks, east Charles the aud west. Charles the Simple, a child of four Fat, King of years old, although he was the rightful king the whole of the West Franks, was thought too young to Empire, hold the sceptre of the tottering kingdom. Charles the Fat was now at the height of his ambition, and he did his best, by craft and diplomacy, to effect what he hail not the strength or the determination to do otherwise. He murdered the Viking Gottfried, blinded his rival Hugo, defeated the Normans, to whom he had refused the tribute which they had received from Karlmann, and attempted to secure the succession for his natural son, Bernhard. He was supported in this by Pope Hadrian, but the pontiff died suddenly in June 885, 298 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 768 to and was siicceeded by Stephen V., who was elected without asking the consent of Charles. And as Charles became more weak and impotent, and the whole land was full of trouble, and a strong emperor was eminently necessary, in 888 he was at last deposed, and Arnulf, son of Karlmann, was King lfmadG elected kin g of the Germans, and reigned till 899. Charles died shortly afterwards, and was buried on the island of Reichenau, in the lake of Constance. Men felt that the rapid succession of these deaths was a sign of divine intervention in human affairs, and those who attended Charles saw the heavens open as he died, and believed that it was meant to show that he passed to a heaven of which he was worthy, from an earth which brought him nothing but trouble and disappointment. Arnulf did not succeed to the German crown without difficulty, because his illegitimate birth stood in his way. He spent the first months of his reign — ■ indeed the greater part of his time — in Regensburg, which was at that time the chief city of Bavaria. He secured the ad- herence of Henry Welf, belonging to the most distinguished race of southern Germany, to the disappointment of his father Edico II., who had his castles on the Boden See. In the west, the kingdom of the Carlings began to break up and several princes asserted their independence. The most Anarchy in prominent of these was Odo of Paris, who, in the Western reward for his exploits against the Normans, had Kingdom. become count of Paris, abbot of Tours, and count of Anjou, and had been crowned king at Compiegne by the archbishop of Sens. Fulco, archbishop of Reims, who was the rival of his brother of Sens, preferred the claims of Guido of Spoleto, and Guido hastened across the Alps to secure the prize, but had to retire to Italy, where he attempted to wrest the iron crown from Berengar of Friuli. Meanwhile, virtual independence was secured by Alan of Brittany, by Ranulf in Aquitaine, by Boso's son Louis in the kingdom of Aries, and by Rudolf I. in Upper Burgundy. In Italy, Guido of Spoleto succeeded in being crowned emperor by Pope Stephen V. in St. Peter's Church at Rome on February 21, 891, taking the title of Augustus. But he had neither power nor prestige. Benevento, in central Italy, set itself up as an independent duchy, reckoning itself as a part of the Lombard kingdom. Meanwhile, Arnulf's determination to make his bastard son Zwentibald king of Lorraine led him to intervene in the civil war in France, where first Charles the Simple, son of Louis a.d. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 299 the Stammerer (who was crowned on January 28, 893), and then his rival, Odo, acknowledged himself a vassal of the German king, in order to secure his assistance. Zwentibald obtained Lorraine as an independent kingdom, but his violence and misrule assured his ultimate downfall : otherwise the new realm might have seriously weakened the German monarchy. In France, meanwhile, on January 1, 898, Odo died, and his supporters then transferred their allegiance to Charles the Simple. Rudolf of Upper Burgundy, however, and Berengar of Friuli still remained undisturbed, and Arnulf was attacked by Svatopluk the Slav, by the Normans in the Netherlands, and by Bernhard, the natural son of Charles the Fat, in Allemannia. Arnulf, however, showed himself a worthy sue- Arnulf cessor of Louis the German, and in the battle maintains of the Dyle, fought on November 1, 891, defeated himself in the Normans and returned triumphant to Ulm. Germany. Four very distinguished men received ecclesiastical preferment at his hands, Hatto of Mainz, Saloman of Constance, Adalbero of Augsbui-g, and Hermann of Cologne. Also the house of the Conradins, descended from Alpais, daughter of Louis the Pious, and their rivals, the Babenbergers, began to make their appear- ance. Arnulf now turned his arms against Svatopluk, with the aid of the Hungarians or Magyars. These newly arrived warriors, armed with bows and arrows, like the ancient Arnulf's Parthians, were the best fighters of their time. Wars They were also assisted by the Chazars, a mixed with the race, comprising Christians, heathens, and Moham- Slavs, medans, but formidable in war. Their capital was Itil, at the mouth of the Volga. In 892, Arnulf crossed the Moravian border, and attacked Svatopluk, but without success, but Svatopluk died in 894, and his kingdom fell to pieces. The Magyars, attacked by the Petschengs, who established them- selves between the Danube and the Don, now invaded Moravia and Pannonia, and, mastering the country between the Danube and the Theiss, became a menace to Arnulf himself. The Avars and the Slavic nations whom they expelled went into Italy, defeated Bishop Liutbold at Vercelli, and assailed Venice, but were driven back from the Rialto by the Doge Peter. Attacked by Berengar on their retreat, they fought a battle against the Lombards on the Brenta, and devastated their country. They continued their plundering in Germany, and were at last 3oo A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 768 to brought to order by Arpad, who is regarded as the first king of Hungary. In 895, Arnulf went to Rome and was crowned emperor by the pope, Formosus, in April 896, but fell ill and had to hasten back. Formosus died immediately afterwards. His successor, Boniface VI., only held the tiara for a fortnight, and Stephen VI. had the body of Formosus dug up, formally tried, and condemned to death, upon which it was dragged along the streets and thrown into the Tiber. His remains were afterwards recovered, and buried in St. Peter's. Five popes succeeded each other in two years. At last Ar ulf Arnulf died in 899 — it was said, of course, by poison — and was followed by his son, Louis the Child, who was only seven years old, and whose chief supporter was Hatto of Mainz. The weak hands of this boy could not keep the empire to- gether, and dukes, who were almost independent, began to End of the make their appearance. Zwentibald in Lorraine Line of was attacked by Gebhard, and slain at the battle Louis the of the Meuse in 900, upon which the conqueror German. married his widow, Ota, and claimed his inherit- ance. Gebhard was attacked by the Conradins, and this brought their enemies, the Babenbergers, the descendants of Count Poppo of Thuringia, to Gebhard's aid. But the Babenbergers were defeated, and Gebhard was killed by the Hungarians. Louis the Child was strengthened by his death, but he died himself on August 20, 911, without distinction or reputation, and with him the line of Charles the Great passed away from the soil of Germany like a mountain mist, and we enter into a new period by the election of Conrad the Frank as German king in 911. The names given to the later Calling kings, the Bald, the Fat, the Stammerer, the Simple, are indications of the slight Decay of respect in which they were held, and both their the Royal qualities and their power corresponded to their Power. nicknames. After Charles the Bald, the royal power depended upon the joint support of the nobles, the clergy, and the people ; the property of the crown had been long in the hands of the great vassals, and feudal investiture had become nothing more than a form. The power of the Callings fell like that of the Merwings, except that, in one case, it passed to an individual, in another to a number of successors. In the dukedoms, margravates, and counties into which their terri- tories were divided, royal authority was merely a shadow. They ad. 928] CHARLEMAGNE AND SUCCESSORS 301 filled up the whole of the Frankish empire, except Burgundy, which had become a kingdom, and the western coast, where the ISormans had established themselves, and each lord had his own vassal under him. In these circumstances, Charles the Simple, who reigned from 893 to 929, was not able to perform his duties with vigour or success. At this time, the leader of the Nor- mans was Duke Rollo or Roll, a man of noble Th e family from More in Norway, who, after a wild Duchy of life as a Viking, established himself in Rouen. Normandy. Charles determined to make peace with the powerful invader. Accompanied by Robert, Odo's successor in the duchy of Francia, and the bishop of Rouen, he met Rollo at Saint Clair on the Epte, and offered him the country between the Epte and the coast as an hereditary duchy, with suzerainty over Brittany, on the condition that he should acknowledge the king as his lord and assist in protecting the realm. Rollo agreed, took the oath of allegiance, and married the daughter of Charles, Gisela. The people of Brittany, however, resisted this arrange- ment for thirty years. The settlement with the Normans removed one danger, but in 923 Robert, duke of Francia, repudiated Charles and declared himself king. This was more than even Charles £ n(i of the could put up with, and, in June 923, he defeated Line of and killed Robert in the battle of Soissons, which Charles the would have been a complete victory had not Bald. Hugo, the son of Robert, escaped with a number of followers, and, burning for revenge, which he was not able to execute himself, made his brother-in-law Rudolf of Burgundy king. Rudolf got possession of Charles and imprisoned him in Chateau Thierry, while his son Louis and his wife Edgiva found a refuge in England with his brother-in-law, King Aethelstan. In 928, Charles was allowed to escape, but was recaptured and died in 929. There remained his son Louis, known as d'Outremer, from his residence across the seas, and in 936 he was recognised as king by Hugo, who had succeeded his father Robert as duke of Francia, Louis being then sixteen years of age. But Hugo, now called the Great, was really king of France ; the nobles rose against Louis, and, after a number of struggles which our limits will not allow us to narrate, he was killed in 954 by a fall from his horse, in the thirty-third year of his age. Just before his death he saw Laon, Chalons, and Reims plundered by the Hungarians. He was not an unworthy scion of the race of 302 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 768-928 Charles the Great, but circumstances were far too powerful for him to control. The disappearance of the Carlings had a disastrous effect upon Italy. The papacy fell into the power of the robber Degrada- knights of the Campagna, who called themselves tion of the consuls or senators. At the beginning of the Papacy. tenth century, eight popes were set up and deposed within eight years, until Sergius III. was able to retain the tiara for ten years, from 904 to 914. The lowest depth of the papacy was reached under John X. (914 to 928), who came under the influence of two women of bad character, Theodora and her daughter Marozia, who distributed the honours and wealth of the papacy as they pleased between their favourite sons and grandsons. John himself was not without merit. He obtained the assistance of Alberic, a knight-errant of Lombard race, who married Marozia, and, on June 14, 916, defeated the Moors on the Garigliano and put an end to their incursions into France. However, Marozia, who, after Alberic's death had married Guido of Tuscany, threw John X. into prison and murdered him. She then became mistress of Rome, took the title of Patricia, made her own son Pope, under the title of John XL, and tyrannised over church and state. After Guido's death, she married King Hugo of Italy, who expected to be crowned emperor by his stepson, John XL, but this was prevented by the rise of another stepson, Alberic II., who drove Hugo away and became master of Rome, which he ruled for twenty years — a period of the lowest moral degradation. CHAPTER III. 1. THE NORSEMEN— THE DANES IN ENGLAND, 835-1042. We have often had occasion to mention the Normans, and must now give some account of the country from which they came. We will begin with the year 600, about i^g Scandi- which time the Ingling Ingjald Ildrada attempted navian to establish himself as overlord of Sweden, but Kingdoms, failed, and fell, with all his race. Ivan the Wild was then elected king, and was succeeded by Harold Hildetand, who reigned over Iceland, Schonen, and Gothland, and was the mightiest king in the North. Old and blind, he was defeated in the battle of Bravalla by his nephew Sigurd Ring, to whom he had already surrendered Sweden. Sigurd Ring became king of Sweden and Denmark, followed by Ragnar Lodbrok, whose sons, Bjorn Ironside and Sigurd Snake-Eye, succeeded to Sweden and Denmark respectively. The race of the Ingling had, in the meantime, established an independent kingdom in Norway. They had their palace in Skiringsa, and thence extended their power over Jutland and Sleswig. We must pass over many years, until we come to Harold Harfagar (861-930), son of Halfdan the Black, who was a powerful king in Norway. Gorm the Old, who died a heathen, extended the kingdom of Denmark, died in 936, and was succeeded by Harold Bluetooth. In Sweden we have Eric, who made Curland, Esthonia, and Finland tributary, and died in 885, and was succeeded by Bjorn, who lived till 935, and was followed by his son, Eric the Victorious, the contemporary of Harold Bluetooth in Norway and Sven Foikbeard in Den- mark. The foundation of the three independent kingdoms of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark marks the passage of Scandinavia from heathendom to Christianity and the beginning, for it, of the Middle Ages. As the Germans wandered by land, so the Scandinavians sought new homes by sea, and this was the origin of the Vikings, or Wicking, as they are better called. This sea 3°3 304 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 835 to wandering was essentially an occupation of younger sons, an attempt to find territory by those who had inherited none. _. _... . The age of the Wickings, so called — it is said — from their habit of attacking small Burgs or Wicks, began with the ninth century and falls into two periods, the first when they returned to their own country for the winter after their expeditions, and the second when they effected permanent settlements. This happened in 835 in Ireland and on the Loire, in 853 in England and on the Seine, but earlier in Friesland. The expeditions of the Wicking extended to the British Isles, the coast of France, thefrRaids Spain, the Mediterranean, and the coasts of Italy, Africa, and Greece. They were known as Danes in England, Easterlings in Ireland, and Normans in France. Their ships were very small, and three or four hundred were required for an expedition. They had a preference for the mouths of rivers, such as the Scheldt, the Loire, and the Thames, where they could barter with the inhabitants. If they met with a merchant ship, they offered the sailors the alternative of leaving the ship in their hands, or being killed. The most famous of the Wicking was Ragnar Lodbrok, the son of King Sigurd Ring, who conquered at Bravalla. He was tall and beautiful, and there are many legends about him and his son Siward. The Normans attacked France in the time of Charles the Great, but their first serious assault was in the reign of his successor and lasted for thirty years, and, at last, they settled permanently in the country and founded the duchy of Nor- mandy. In 841, Wicking ships sailed up the Seine and the Loire, destroyed Rouen and Amboise and beleaguered Tours. Some ten years later, a more serious attack was made by Bjorn Ironside, son of Ragnar Lodbrok, assisted by his foster father, the terrible Hasting. They conquered Nantes, slew the bishop, plundered Bordeaux, and threatened Toulouse. In the following decade their ravages became more severe, and they had to be bought off. In the Iberian peninsula, they invaded Catalonia, plundered Lisbon, and appeared on the coast of Andalusia. In 844, Bjorn Ironside and Hasting sailed up the Guadalquivir to Seville, and defeated Abderahman in a three days' battle. The rovers pushed on to Africa and the Balearic Islands, and in 859 entered the Gulf of Spezzia and destroyed Luna, doing the same for Pisa and other Italian towns, and sailing as far as Greece. In 873, the Wicking began another attack on France, and a.d. 1042] NORSEMEN 6- DANES IN ENGLAND 305 were with difficulty repelled by Charles the Bald, the Danish King Harold being their chief leader. In the time of Charles the Fat and Arnulf, they took possession of Friesland and plundered the district of the Rhine. They were also attracted to Constantinople, which they called Micklegard, and under the name of Varangians formed a body-guard for the Byzantine emperors, although they could not altogether restrain their hereditary instincts. The Byzantine historians call them " Axe- bearing barbarians from Thule." They also went into Russia. The Varangians had a high reputation for bravery and fidelity. About the same time, in the reign of Egbert (802-839), the Norman pirates began to lay waste the south coast of England. The chronicles of the time tell us that Almighty God sent out swarms of cruel heathen people in En ~ la af S — Danes, Norwegians, Goths, Swedes, Vandals, Frisians — who for more than two hundred years laid waste guilty England from one coast to the other, killed men and cattle, and did not spare women and children. But this devastation was not continuous, and Egbert was able to establish his authority over the country. England began to consolidate herself just as France began to break up. Egbert Egbert repulsed the Normans, and enjoyed a short period King of all of peace before his death in 839, during which he England. was able to summon an assembly in London, to discuss the best means for defending the country and also for subduing Wales. The reign of Egbert's son and successor, Aethel- wulf, which lasted twenty-two years, from 839 to 858, was mainly occupied by fighting against the Danes and the Normans, who succeeded in establishing permanent settle- ments along the coast, chiefly in islands such as Sheppey, Thanet, and Portland. Aethelwulf was a lover of peace and piety, but, with the help of his son, Aethelstan, who was king of Kent, he gained a victory over the Normans at Ockley in Surrey in 851, when they had landed with three hundred and fifty ships at the mouth of the Thames, and conquered London and Canterbury. But the success was only temporary. Roric, from Friesland, crossed the Channel, and established winter quarters in Sheppey. Aethelwulf had been first intended by his father for a priest, and was a firm supporter of the clergy. He sent his youngest son Aelfred to Rome, where he was crowned and anointed by Pope Leo IV. in 853, and, two years later, undertook himself a pilgrimage to the holy city, where he gave costly presents to the church of St. Peter, of gold, precious stones, and splendid u 306 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 835 to robes, and made himself very popular. He also founded in Rome a Saxon college, and made arrangements by which Eng- land should contribute a yearly sum to the Holy See, which was the origin of the payment of " Peter's Pence." Aethelwulf stayed a year in Rome with his son Aelfred, and, on his return, paid a lengthy visit to Charles the Bald, whose daughter, Judith, he married. After the death of his eldest son Aethelstan, Aethelwulf divided the kingdom with two others, Aethelbald and Aethelbert, who both succeeded him. Aethelwulf himself died in 858 ; Aethelbald, in the flower of his youth, in 860, when We viand, with a crowd of Danes from the I va 'o mS Seine, landed at Southampton, and, marching to Winchester, plundered that town and the church, and murdered the monks. Aethelbert lived till 866, when the fourth brother, Aethehed, succeeded to the throne of Wessex, and reigned till 871. Eight kings and more than twenty earls, among them the two sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, now effected a landing on the coast of East Anglia. They established a fortified camp, ac- quired a number of horses, conquered York, and became rulers of the country. In 868, they went to Mercia, made themselves masters of Nottingham, and forced the English to make peace. After this they destroyed the rich abbey of Croyland, but the abbot, Theodore, hid his treasures in a well, upon which they slew him at the high altar, and burned the monastery. Peter- borough and Ely suffered the same fate. In the winter of 870, Ingvar, son of Ragnar Lodbrok, got possession of Edmund, king of East Anglia, and, when he refused to abjure the Christian faith, tied him to a tree, and exposed him to a lingering death. Edmund the Martyr, ever since reverenced as a saint in England, died on November 20, 870. A Danish prince, Guthrum, succeeded to his throne. In the spring of the following year, new swarms of Danes arrived, under two kings and four earls. Aethelred and his brother Aelfred met them at Reading. By the Reading- bravery of Aelfred, they were defeated, and one king and five earls were killed, but their repulse was only temporary, and on May 23, 871, Aethelred died of his Aelfred, wounds. Aelfred, the youngest son of Aethelwulf, King of now ascended the throne of Wessex, having been Wessex. kept back by his brother, although he had been anointed at Rome eighteen years before. He is one of the greatest kings that England ever possessed, and still commands the devotion of his countrymen, who call him the Great. He ad. 1042] NORSEMEN 6- DANES IN ENGLAND 307 was chiefly brought up by his mother, Osburga, and was now twenty-two years of age. He had great doubts of his com- petence to perform the duty imposed upon him, and began by buying off the Danes, that he might devote his attention to organising a defence. A respite of four years was secured, while the rest of England was ravaged. Then Wessex was attacked again. In 876, after a hard struggle, the Danes were partly forced, partly bribed, to withdraw. But in 878 came the famous winter invasion which drove the West Saxon king to Athelney. Danish annals tell how, in a battle fought in Devonshire, Ubba, the brother of Ingvar, and a thousand of his followers were slain, and the sacred banner was captured on which the three daughters of Ragnar Lodbrok had em- broidered the Raven, the bird of Odin, which flapped its wings in victory, but drooped them in defeat. But Aelfred could do nothing against overwhelming numbers ; the spirit of his countrymen was broken, and if he had then lost heart or an enemy's spear had slain him, English royalty would have perished from the earth and our island would have become the haunt of sea robbers. Aelfred, however, remained steadfast, and it is to this period that the stories about him which occup} 7 so large a space in English histories belong. Aelfred And at last, in 880, he gained a great victory over makes the Danes at Eddington : they asked for peace, Peace with and their king, Guthrum, was baptized, and took Guthrum. the name of Aethelstan, receiving from Aelfred East Anglia as a fief, after which a more peaceful time ensued. Arrangements were made by which the eastern part of England was committed to the Danes, and a frontier established between them and the English. Ten quiet years followed, and were occupied by Aelfred's wise government of his country, but though they left a permanent effect and an undying memory, belong to the history of England more than a general history of the world • but in the beginning of the nineties, when the victories of Arnulf in the Netherlands and the efforts of the Western Franks had checked the inroads of the Normans on the continent, new invasions took place in our island. The new comers brought their wives and children with them, as if they intended a permanent settlement, and matters were made worse by the death of the Danish prince Aethelstan, whose successor broke the peace with Aelfred. But Aelfred had so organised and established the strength of his country that for three years, with the help of his son Edward, 308 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. 835 to he was able to withstand their attacks, and matters were im- proved by the treaties which he had made with some of the Welsh princes, who acknowledged him as their sovereign. So Aelfred spent the remaining years of his life in comparative peace. At last, after a reign of thirty years, at the age of fifty- three, he died, on October 28, 901 — one of the best and wisest kings who ever sat npon a throne. Edward, Aelfred's eldest son, had, as crown prince, defeated the army of the Dane Haeston at Farnham, so that the great council of the Witenagemot had no hesitation in making him king of the West Saxons ; but Aethelwold, Aelfred's nephew, thought that he had a stronger claim. He refused his allegiance to Edward, and established himself in Badbury, and was prepared to risk his life on the issue. When Edward attacked him, he took refuge with the Danes, and a civil war broke out. But in 909 the Danes were defeated, and the old alliance was renewed. Edward was a worthy son of his father ; he extended his kingdom, strengthened it by the creation of towns and fortresses, and, having rivalled the glories of Egbert and Aelfred, died in 924, after a reign of twenty- four years. His daughter, Edgiva, married Charles the Simple, and, fearing for her safety, fled to England with her son, then three years old, who was afterwards known as Louis " from- beyond-the-Sea." A third heroic king, Aethelstan, ascended the throne of England in 924, and reigned till 941. It is said that he was the son of a beautiful peasant girl, whom his father found in a solitary hut during the chase and made his queen. We possess more legends with regard to his reign than trustworthy history. He held a high place among the sovereigns of Europe. The Emperor Otto I. married his daughter Edith, and a prince of Aquitaine, his sister. By his influence, Louis d'Outremer became king of the Franks, and in European difficulties recourse was had to his arbitration Battle of an d advice. But the great event of his reign was Brunan- the battle of Brunanburgh in Northumberland, in burgh. which the discipline and valour of the Saxons showed their superiority over the wild tribes of the North. The battle lasted a whole day, and was the last decisive victory of Germans over Celts, for in Aethelstan's army fought Normans, Wicking, and the Scandinavian brothers Thoralf and Eigil. Five Celtic kings and seven earls were killed, and the battle is celebrated in the poetry of both Saxons and Scandinavians, a.d. 1042] NORSEMEN &> DANES IN ENGLAND 309 Aethelstan died three years after the battle of Brunanburgh, on October 27, 940, loved and mourned by people and clergy for his generosity, his chivalry, his justice, and his Ki Edmund- good government. As he had no children, he was succeeded by his brother Edmund (941-946). The Danes and the Scotch took advantage of the change to renew then- attacks, and Anlaf was summoned from Ireland and recognised as Lord of Northumberland. The Normans living in Mercia and East Anglia joined him, and Archbishop Wulfstan of York supported him. For three years England was desolated by wars which continued till Edmund got possession of the five towns of Derby, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Leicester, Peace was made by the mediation of the archbishop of Canter- bury, and Anlaf was recognised as king of York on doing homage to Edmund and being baptized, but rebelled within a year and was slain. Edmund himself was killed at a royal feast on May 26, 946, and, as his sons were too young to succeed, the crown was given to his brother Edred, who reigned for nine years (946-955), occupied mainly with wars against Eric, the son of Harold Bluetooth, king of the Danes. At Edred last Eric was killed by treachery, with his two sons, but a large number of Danes settled in England, which has left their stamp on the country till the present day. Arch- bishop Wulfstan, who had assisted Eric, was moved from York to the see of Rochester in the south, and Edred was able to restore the monastery of Croyland. When he died without heirs, on November 26, 955, Edwy, the elder son of Edmund, a young man of remarkable beauty, was chosen king, and reigned from 955 to 959. Unfortunately, he was both weak and immoral. The reign of Edwy was distinguished by the life of Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, belonging to the Benedictine Order, which had shortly before been reformed by the influence of the abbey of Cluny. Dunstan and Odo, arch- f Dunstan. bishop of Canterbury, set themselves against the king, in consequence of which Dunstan was exiled and fled to Flanders. But Edwy fared no better ; a large portion of England soon revolted, and summoned his brother Edgar to the throne. In 957, Dunstan was recalled, made bishop of Worcester and London, and taken by Edgar as his chief adviser. Edwy had to separate from his wife, Aethelgiva, on the ground of consanguinity, but died himself on October 1, 959, after a short and miserable reign. 3io A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 835 to Edgar was now recognised as king in the south, and governed the kingdom, under the influence of Dunstan. He reigned happily for seventeen years, from 959 to 975, a period always celebrated as an age of gold. On the death of Odo, Dunstan became archbishop of Canterbury, and set himself to reform the church of which he was the head. Edgar was of small stature, but true and courageous. He repressed insubordination in Cumber- land and Wales. It is said that eight vassal kings rowed his barge on the Dee, himself seated at the rudder. At the age of thirty he was solemnly crowned by Dunstan at Bath, establishing a close union between church and state. After his death, his son Edward, a boy of thirteen, was raised to the Martvr ^ & throne by the influence of Dunstan, but he reigned only a short time. On March 18, 978, as he was riding in the chase, he stopped before the palace of his step- mother, Aelfrida, to receive a drink which was offered him, was stabbed treacherously in the back, and was dignified, without much reason, with the name of Martyr. Aelfrida was able to raise her young son Aethelred to the throne, which he held till 1016, but his nickname, the Aethelred " Unready," which shows his weakness in council, "theUn- shows also that he was not worthy of much ready." honour. For the first ten years he had the assistance of Dunstan, and it was not until the Archbishop's death, in 988, that misfortunes burst over the kingdom. The Wicking renewed their attacks. The most dreaded enemies of the English were Sven Forkbeard and Olaf Tryggveson. In 992 Aethelred attempted to purchase peace by the payment of a tribute of <£ 10,000, which was known as the Danegelt, and lasted, as a heavy tax upon the people, for Daneselt many years, ceasing finally only under Henry II. In the year 999, Aethelred was obliged to purchase peace from the Danes at the price of £24,000, and shortly afterwards married Emma, the daughter of llichard, duke of Normandy, who had been a strong sup- porter of the Cluniac reform. Emma, who was called the jewel and flower of Normandy, took the Saxon name of Aelgiva, and much was expected from the assistance of her brave and prudent brother, llichard II. But , h as ^ cr ® ° Aethelred, reduced to despair, allowed himself to be guilty of a terrible crime. On November 13, 1002, the night of Saint Brice, an attempt was made to murder the whole of the Danes in England, with their children and a.d. 1042] NORSEMEN 6- DANES IN ENGLAND 311 their English wives, so that Saint Brice stands in English history as a pendant to the horrors of St. Bartholomew in the history of France. Vengeance was not long in coming. Among the victims had been Gunhild, the wife of Jarl Pallig and the sister of Sven Forkbeard, who, being now king of Norway, determined to avenge his sister's death. In 1003, he landed in Devonshire, took possession of Exeter, and laid waste Wiltshire and Hampshire. The Danegeld rose to £48,000 ; the whole country, from Kent to Northumberland, was a scene of murder and violence. A new tax was levied under the name of ship-money, to build a fleet for the protection of the coast. The archbishop of Canterbury was carried off on a Danish ship, and, when he refused to pay the ransom demanded, was foully murdered. In 1013, Sven Forkbeard, now an old man, having committed the government of Denmark to his son Harold, sailed again to England, accompanied by his son Cnut, determined to destroy the Saxon kingdom for ever. He established his camp at Gainsborough. After many bloody fights, in which he earned the name of " England's Devil," he entered London, and Aethelred, having collected his treasure in Winchester, fled with his wife and children to the court of his brother-in-law, Richard, in Normandy. But, hearing that Sven had died on February 2, 1014, he returned, at the request of nobles, clergy, and people. Aethelred's triumph was of short duration. In 1015, Cnut (generally known as Canute) appeared with a fleet of Wicking ships on the coast of England, to take possession Canute and of his father's kingdom. Aethelred hid himself Edmund in London, and when he died in the following Ironside, year the greater part of England fell into Canute's hands. But he left behind him a chivalrous son, Edmund, who, for his bravery, received the name of Ironside. The Danes found it impossible to capture London, and Edmund would have saved England, as Aelfred had saved her before, had he not been overthrown by treachery. The decisive battle was fought at Assandun (Ashdown) in 1016, and Edmund would have won had not the ealderman Edric fled with his men from the field and given the battle to the Danes. The two leaders met, and determined to divide the country between them, Canute taking the north and Edmund the south, but, on November 30, 1016, Edmund was treacherously slain, probably by the machinations of Edric, and Canute was recognised as king by the Witenagemot and the people. 3r2 A GENERAL HISTORY t835-lo42 Edmund's brothers and sons were excluded from the suc- cession, and the best of them, Edwy, was put to death. Two of them found a refuge with St. Stephen, king of Hungary. Edmund's brother-in-law, Uhtred of Northumbrian was slain, and his earldom was given to the Northman Eric. The traitor Edric was soon executed, and East Anglia was given to Thurkil. Canute began his reign well, and endeavoured to establish his throne on a secure basis. He married Emma, Aethelred's widow, exiled the irreconcilables, and made peace Ca^e with the rest. He punished London by exacting a fine of =£10,500, besides an enormous Dane- geld. His objects were to establish a united government in England, and to convert Denmark and Norway to Chris- tianity. He traversed England from end to end, and during his seventeen years of reign sent out from his capital, Winchester, laws which are a model of wisdom and justice. He protected himself with a body-guard of house carles. He supported the church, and paid special honours to Dunstan and Edmund, now raised to the rank of saints. In 1026, he made a pilgrimage to Rome. An evidence of the position which he held in Europe was the marriage of his daughter Gunhilde to the son and heir of the Emperor Conrad. She died early, "like a morning-star fading away in the dawn." Canute's government of England was admirable. He cultivated the wasted fields ; he built castles and bridges, and made roads ; he erected churches and chapels. Some of the Danes were discontented at the favour shown to the English, but he put them down with a strong hand, forced his old friend Thurkil to leave the country, and deposed Eric from the earldom of Northumbria. The manner in which, in 1028, he obtained the crown of Norway by the overthrow of the wise and pious King Olaf is not much to his credit. He died on November 11, 1035, and was buried at Winchester. He was a mighty ruler, but was not free from unregulated ambition and bursts of unrestrained passion. Well-known stories about him tell of his sitting on the sea-shore and bidding the waves not to approach, and rebuking his courtiers for their flattery when the sea came up and wetted his feet ; and of his rowing on the flooded fens by Ely, and asking in elegant and humorous verse that he might draw near and hear the hymns in the cathedral. After the death of Canute, there were three claimants for the 1043-1087] THE NORMAN CONQUEST 313 English throne — Harold, his eldest son; Hardicanute, his son by Emma, who was not yet of age; and Edward, the son of Emma and Aethelred. The legitimacy of Harold and Harold was doubtful ; Hardicanute was in Den- Hardi- mark, weak in health and a hard drinker ; and canute. Edward, who was staying in Rouen, was foiled in his attempt to land at Southampton with a band of Normans, while his brother Aelfred was seized by Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and blinded. The result was that Harold was elected, and Emma had to take refuge at Bruges. Harold, however, died on March 17, 1040, and Hardicanute was elected king. But he died suddenly at a marriage feast on June 8, 1042, and the ground was left open for Aethelred's son, Edward, known as the Confessor, who reigned from 1042 to 1066. Edward was a pious and peace-loving monarch, who had been rendered unfit to reign in these stormy times by his monastic training and his retiring character, so that he fell into the hands of Godwin, the father of numerous confessor 6 sons, whom he placed in positions of authority and command. Edward married the gifted, charming, and virtuous daughter of Godwin ; but the strictness of his religious observ- ances unfitted him for the pleasures of family life. Denmark and Norway were lost, the one falling to Sven Estrithson, a nephew of Canute, the other to a descendant of St. Olaf. Edward was crowned at the cathedral of Winchester at Easter, 1043. His mother Emma was compelled to surrender the royal treasures which she had appropriated, and to return to Bruges. 2. THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND, A.D. 1043-1087. The people of England greeted Edward with enthusiasm, expecting to find in him a thoroughly English king, but they were disappointed. Long residence in Normandy had convinced him of the superiority of French J^ 1S an culture, and indisposed him to submit to the boorishness of the Saxons. He favoured Normans in every way, submitted himself to the see of Rome, for which the Saxons had no great respect, forced Godwin to leave the king- dom, and shut up his wife Edgitha in a convent. Godwin could not put up with this treatment. He took refuge in Flanders, while his son Harold went to Ireland and joined Griffith, king of North Wales, in harrying the west of England. 314 A GENERAL HISTORY [1043-1087 The general feeling of the English was in favour of Harold and against the intruding Normans • Godwin sailed up the Exile and Thames ; Robert of Jumieges, the Norman arch- Return of bishop of Canterbury, was obliged to flee to Godwin. Normandy. Godwin was supported by the Witena- gemot, and returned to his possessions. When the Normans were got rid of, the Saxons looked forward to the enjoyment of a national reign, but Archbishop Robert stirred up Duke William of Normandy, the illegitimate son of Robert the Devil, to aim at succeeding the childless Edward. Godwin died in 1053; Harold succeeded him in Wessex ; Tostig, his brother, became earl of Northumberland in succession to Siward, who had conquered Macbeth, the murderer of King Duncan, and is famous for meeting death in full armour, with his battle axe in his hand. Edward survived Godwin twelve years, a just, pious and righteous king, whose peaceful virtues were unfitted to obtain success in those times of troubled war. Harold, on the other hand, possessed all the active virtues in the fullest measure, and had won a reputation by his fighting in Wales. The last act of Edward was the completion and dedication of Westminster Abbey at Christmas, 1065. He died on January 5, 1066, and was buried in his own cathedral. Harold 11 ° Edgar Aetheling, the grandson of Edmund Iron- side, and the only surviving male member of the royal house, was a mere boy, and Harold was immediately chosen king. Within a few months the new ruler was obliged to turn his arms against his brother Tostig, who had been driven out of Battle of Northumberland by the exasperation of the nobles Stamford at his evil government, but had recovered his Bridge. earldom, by the help of the count of Flanders and of Harold Hardrada, king of Norway. It was necessary for Harold to put him down, and this was done at the battle of Stamford Bridge, where the struggle continued for a whole day, and did not come to an end until the king of Norway had been slain by an arrow and Tostig had received his death-blow. No sooner had Harold gained this victory than he hastened to meet more serious danger. William of Normandy, born in 1027, was full of the spirit of a Wicking. His father, Robert the Devil, who was charged with having killed his brother, Richard III., died on July 23, 1035, at Nicaea, in Bithyuia, on his way to Jerusalem, William being only eight years of age. He secured his position 1016-1187] THE NORMANS IN ITALY 315 by marrying Matilda, daughter of Count Baldwin of Flanders, and, on the death of Edward, determined to obtain the throne of England, to which he had no manner of claim whatever. The battle of Hastings was fought on |astin°s October 29, 1066, perhaps the most notable date in English history. Harold fell, pierced by an arrow in the eye, and the Saxons were defeated. During his reign, which lasted till September 1087, "William entirely transformed England, but the events of it are so fully related in histories of England that it is not necessary to recount them here. We must turn to the exploits of the Normans in southern Italy and Sicily. 3. THE NORMANS IN ITALY, A.D. 1016-1187. Southern Italy, a scene of party strife, embittered by treachery, murder, and crime of every kind, was disputed be- tween Lombards, Greeks, and Arabs, and offered state of a promising field for any adventurer who could Southern stop the ravages of pirates and establish some Italy, form of good government. In 1011, two Apulian nobles of Lombard origin, called Melus and Dattus, after an unsuccessful attempt to rescue Bari from the Greeks, took refuge with the duke of Capua. Pope Benedict VIII., who wished to put an end to the Greek rule in Italy, gave Dattus a strong fortress on the Garigliano, while Melus sought the assistance of the Normans. In 1016, forty Norman knights, on landing at Salerno on their return from Jerusalem, found f^e the city beleaguered by the Saracens, in conse- Normans quence of the refusal of their customary tribute. at Salerno. Borrowing arms and horses from the prince of Salerno, they soon put the unbelievers to flight, and, when they returned to their country, they received an embassy from Salerno, asking them to undertake a campaign against the Moslems in southern Italy. The ambassadors brought with them almonds, oranges, sugared walnuts, silken robes, arms and trappings covered with gold — evidences of the richness of the country — and the invitation was accepted. Two hundred and fifty Norman knights crossed the Alps, and met with a warm welcome. They came to Rome, and the pope, seeing their size and prowess, determined to employ them against the Byzantine Greeks, and introduced them to Melus, who was established in Capua. In May 1017, they defeated the Greeks at Fortore and 3i6 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.i>. loie to acquired all the country as far as Trani. Afterwards they suffered reverses, being defeated by the Greeks at Cannae in a e a 1019 ; but in 1027, one of their leaders, Ranulf, founded was awe t° establish an independent power in The Family Aversa. New swarms of Normans came in, con- of Haute- spicuous among them being the ten valiant sons of Tancred of Hauteville, who — leaving two brothers to look after their aged father and continue the family in France — joined one after another in the Italian enterprise. William "the Iron Arm," Drogo, Humfrey, Roger, a hand- some man of mighty stature, and Robert Guiscard a clever intriguer, were the most famous, and the Greeks determined to make use of them for driving the Saracens out of Sicily. In 1038, accordingly, they went there in the service of the Catapan. The Saracens, led by eunuchs, were defeated ; Messina was taken ; the emir of Syracuse fell under the lance of Iron Arm ; and, in a short time, the whole of the island acknowledged the rule of the Byzantine emperor. But, dis- gusted by the scurvy treatment which they received from their employers, the Normans returned to Aversa, determined to repay themselves by new conquests. The Catapan, who now opposed them, was defeated at the well-known Cannae, and the Normans gained possession of Melfi, which became a point of departure for future enterprises. Between 1040 and 1043, they made themselves masters of Taranto, Otranto, Brindisi, and Bari ; and William, the Iron Arm, took the title of Count of Apulia. Three years later he died, and was succeeded by his brother Drogo. However, Pope Leo IX. set himself against them, and Argyros, the son of Melus, had Drogo murdered in a church. His place was taken by his brother Humphrey. The Emperor Henry III. crossed the Alps with a small army, and the Normans offered to become vassals of the pope, but Leo insisted on their leaving Italy. They would rather die at the hands of the enemy than return to Normandy disgraced. They succeeded in winning the battle of Civitella in 1053, in which the pope was taken prisoner. Then Leo determined to invest them with the feudal possession of all the lands which they had wrested from the Greeks and Saracens, and — having thus made them his vassals — he returned to Monte Casino, where he died in the following year. In 1056 Humphrey died, and, as the sons whom he left behind him were of tender age, Robert Guiscard, their uncle, was made count of Apulia. He possessed in the fullest a.d. 1187] THE NORMANS IN ITALY 317 measure the qualities, both good and bad, which had raised the Normans to power in Italy. He made friends with the church, and showed such respect to Pope Nicholas II., in the synod of Melfi, that he persuaded §°J^. d him to withdraw the ban which had been laid upon him, to renew the feudal possession of his lands, and to make him duke instead of count of Apulia. The Normans did him homage as " Robert, duke by the grace of God and St. Peter." Well did he deserve the name of Robert Wiseacre. He spent four years in conquering his dukedom, in reducing the Lombard princes, in driving the Greeks out of Apulia and Calabria, in getting possession of Taranto, Otranto, Troja, and other places, and he was not master of Bari, the last Byzantine possession, till 1071. In the meantime his brother Roger, the young and beautiful, had been conquering Sicily for himself from the Arabs, the pope assisting him with the present s f c ^ Ues ° of a consecrated banner. The enterprise, which began in 1062, achieved its first great success two years later in the conquest of Palermo ; but Syracuse did not fall till 1085, Girgenti till 1087, or Enna, in the interior of the island, till 1090. Not content with his conquests in Italy, Robert Wiseacre determined to cross the Ionian Sea and to attack the Byzantine emperor in his own country. Alexius Comnenus, with his Norman Varangians, was defeated in the battle of Durazzo in June 1081, and the city of Durazzo was captured, after which Robert ^ attle ot penetrated into the heart of Epirus and Thessaly, approached Salonica, and made the emperor tremble in Con- stantinople. He was, however, recalled by Pope Gregory VII., leaving his son Boemund to continue his work in Thessaly. After many more adventures and exploits, which cannot be recounted here, he died in the island of Kephallenia in July 1085, at the age of seventy, and is buried at Venusia, the birth- place of the poet Horace. The sons of Robert, Boemund and Roger, after some disputes, divided their father's dominions between them, Roger taking Apulia and the title of duke, Boemund Taranto with a portion of Calabria. Boemund took part 5 . of t j ie in the first crusade, became prince of Antioch, but died at Taranto in 1111. The family of Guiscard came to an end with William, son of Roger, but in the island Roger II., son of Guiscard's brother Roger, became king of 318 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. loie-iis? Sicily and Apulia in 1127, and, on Christmas Day, 1130, the anti-pope, Anacletus II., allowed him to be crowned in Palermo as king of Naples and Sicily, on the of°licilv inS condition that he became a vassal of the Holy See, and recognised the right of the pontiff to Benevento. On the other hand, Pope Innocent II. placed the Normans under the ban of the church, and called the German Emperor Lothar into the field against them, but in 1139 Innocent changed his mind and recognised Roger as king of Sicily and duke of Apulia. Not satisfied with this, Robert occupied Malta, acquired Tunis and Tripoli, besieged Corfu, robbed Athens, Thebes, and Corinth of their costly treasures, and even attacked the imperial palace at Constantinople, until he was driven back by the fleet of the Emperor Manuel, who sent his admiral, Palaeologus, to recover southern Italy for his crown, an enterprise which signally failed. When Roger died in 1154, he left the kingdom of the Two Sicilies in a position of prosperity, founded on a peaceful, just, and orderly government which was not equalled by any other state in Italy. Palermo and Amalfi vied with Venice and Pisa in commercial prosperity. Medicine and science were studied at Palermo, and law at Amalfi and Naples, with a success which is not forgotten in our own day. William, the son and successor of Roger II., spent the eleven years of his reign in the idle sensuality of an Eastern sultan, End of the which earned him the name of the " Wicked," Norman while George Majo, son of a merchant of Bari, Line in acted as his grand vizier. His court became Sicily. orientalised, with its harem and its eunuchs. His son, William II., who reigned from 1166 to 1189, revived the power of the crown by his youth, beauty, and innocence. Party strife was suppressed, unjust laws were repealed, and Sicily enjoyed with him a short period of peace and prosperity. The people of Sicily and Apulia long regarded the reign of William III. as a golden age. He left no children, and his dominions passed to the German family of the Hohenstauffens, for, in 1186, Constance, daughter of Roger II., heiress of the Norman possessions in Italy, married in Milan, with great festivities, the son of Frederick Barbarossa, afterwards Henry VI., who was then twenty-one years old, ten years younger than his bride, CHAPTER IV. THE EMPIRE RESTORED— HENRY THE FOWLER, A.D, 919-93G: OTTO I., A.D. 936-973. The Emperor Conrad I. (911-918) was a prince with all the knightly virtues, dignified and magnificent, generous, affectionate, and of cheerful manner, but the task which was set before him was more than he could accomplish : p 0nr f; " ie indeed, his domains did not afford a sufficiently large foundation on which to rest the royal authority. Even Henry of Saxony, the son of the Otto who retired in his favour, would not acknowledge his authority, and resolved to resist him by force. The Danes, Slavs, and Magyars made in- cursions into his realm from different sides, the worst of all being the Magyars, who penetrated as far as the Saale and the Weser. Conrad died on December 27, 918, and, when he saw his end approaching, he persuaded his brother Eberhard to renounce the succession and to submit to Henry of Saxony, the head of the rival house. He said to his brother : " We have many who are true to us. and a great people who follow us into war : we have castles and arms ; in our hands are crowns and sceptres. But we have not the faculty of governing, and we have no luck. Luck and the power of governing belong to Henry : the future of the empire is with the Saxons. Take, then, the royal emblems, with the king's mantle, the sword, and the crown of our ancient monarchs ; go to Henry, and make thy peace with him as a friend." Eberhard did as he was advised, and the spot is still shown in Quedlinburg where the momentous interview took place. The kings and emperors of the Saxon house, also known as the Liudolfings, from Liudolf their founder, reigned in Ger- many for just on a hundred years, from 919 to Th g axon 1024. They included two Henrys and three Ottos. Emperors — Henry I., called the Fowler, because he was fond Henry the of going after birds, was acknowledged as king by Fowler, the magnates of the empire at Fritzlar in Hesse in 919. He 319 320 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 9] 9 to was at first received only by the Saxons and the Franks, but in the following year he was recognised by the dukes of Bavaria and Swabia as their feudal superior. He refused to be crowned, and called himself " King by the Grace of God." Lorraine was at first left to Charles the Simple, but in 925 Henry got possession of it, first defeating and capturing its duke, Giselbert, and then making him his son-in-law and friend. Henry used his royal power with great wisdom and moderation. His desire was to be rather the head of a confederation than the despotic ruler of a motley empire. He said : " As the circle of the crown unites in itself the bright jewels, and is thus the most magnifi- cent emblem of earthly power, so the royal authority should include in itself all German lands without destroying their individual life. Let each part preserve its own tradition, and order itself after its own laws and customs. Let a duke guide and lead in war, a duke whom counts and nobles are bound to follow in war and obey ; let him hold parliaments to appease strife and quarrels in the country ; let the poor and the oppressed find defence and support with him ; let him protect the churches, uphold the land's peace, and defend the frontier against the invading foe ; as the dukes stand over the several races in the empire, so let the king stand high over all people and all lands of the empire, the supreme judge and general of the whole people, the last resource of the afflicted and the oppressed, the final protector of the church." In the year 924, when Henry had been five yea,rs on the throne, the Hungarians made an invasion, which extended as ■phg far as Saxony. Wherever they came the country Hungarian was laid waste ; the monasteries and the churches, Invasions. the dwellings of the poor peasants, were destroyed by fire— old and young, men and women, were slaughtered. The march of the enemy could be traced by the fire and smoke which accompanied it; men hid themselves in the depths of the woods and in the tops of mountains and in the rocks. Henry, unable to make head against them with his scanty cavalry, took refuge in his castle of Goslar and entered into negotiations with them. On the payment of a yearly tribute, they agreed to leave the country, and for nine years Henry had leisure to strengthen his defences. In those days, the Saxons lived either in large farms or in open villages, according to the custom of their fore- fathers ; the only towns were those the Romans had built on the Rhine and the Danube, and these were mostly in ruins. The centres of population in Saxony were the palaces of the a.d. 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 321 king, the castles of the nobles, and the " liberties " attached to the dwellings of bishops, priests, and monks. Henry did his best to create towns round all possible centres, and to build fortresses on the frontiers. Quedlinburg, enrys Goslar, and Mersebnrg owe their origin to his wisdom, the last being a barrier against the Slavs. He ordered that every ninth man should move from the country into the towns ; that the third part of all produce should be taken there ; and that all trials, assemblies of the people, and commercial transactions should go on inside the walls. Meissen on the Elbe was fortified to spread German culture among the Slavic Serbs in the Lausitz, so that Henry well deserved the name of the town- builder. He also taught the Saxons to fight more on horseback. In 928, when four years had been spent in these reforms, he subdued the Havellers, a Slavonic race on the Havel and the Spree, and made their capital Lebus and their whole land tributary. With the help of the ^Wend* Bavarians, he subjected the Bohemians to his authority. It is said that in the battle of Lenzen on the Elbe, fought in 929, he killed 20,000 Wends, and for ever broke their power, which certainly seems an exaggeration. It. should be mentioned that Wend is not the appellation of a nation or of a race, but is a name given by Teutons to Slavs, wherever they come into contact, just as Welsh is a name given by Teutons to Kelts. These Wends were generally inoffensive, hard-working people, who had the misfortune to be heathens, and it is distressing to read how they were treated by German conquerors like Charles the Great and Henry. The ill-feeling- generated in those days by these cruelties has never died out, and explains the antagonism between the Slavs and the Teutons at the present time. The time had now come for taking vengeance on the Hungarians ; the tribute was refused, and when they attempted to enforce it by arms they were entirely defeated Defeat of on March 15, 934, at Riade, in the Golden Meadow, the Hun- now represented by Merseburg. Henry also de- garians. feated Gorm, king of Denmark, and re-established the mark of Schleswig, which had first been formed by Charles the Great. He was, indeed, the great creator of marks or frontier districts — the Altmai-k or the Nordmark, the mark of Meissen, and between the two the Ostmark, afterwards known as the Lausitz, which we have already mentioned. Having accomplished all these labours before he was sixty years old, he was struck by X 322 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 919 to paralysis while he was hunting at Botfeld in the Harz, and never thoroughly recovered. He summoned the grandees of the kingdom to Erfurt in 936, and there presented to them his son Otto as his heir. He then returned to Memleben on the Unstrut, in the Golden Meadow, where he had another stroke. He knew that his end was near, and said to his wife : " My dear faithful wife, I thank God that I am dying before you. You have often softened my wrath, given me good advice, and induced me to pardon offenders. I thank you, and commend you and our children to Almighty God." She went into the church to pray, and while she was on her knees heard a cry, which told her that the king was dead. Thus, on July 2, 936, passed away the greatest ruler of his time, inferior to none in body or mind, But he left behind him a son greater even than himself. He was buried in the abbey church of Quedlin- burg, which he had founded. Henry left three sons besides Otto — Thankmar, son of Hathe- burg, Henry, later duke of Bavaria, and Bruno, later arch- Coronation bishop of Cologne. But Otto seemed the most of Otto the promising, and his mother, Mathilde, worked for Great. him, so that, when he was recommended by his father for the throne, the Franks and Saxons had no doubt about choosing him, which was done in a very formal manner. He was crowned in the cathedral of Aachen by the archbishop of Mainz, the metropolitan, assisted by the archbishops of Trier and Cologne, these three becoming eventually the three eccle- siastical electors of the emperor. We find also the lay electors performing for the first time their special functions at the cere- mony. Duke Giselbert of Lorraine, in whose domain Aachen was situated, acted as chamberlain, and had the general direction of the festival ; Eberhard, duke of Franconia, as seneschal, arranged the table ; Hermann, duke of Swabia, performed the office of butler ; and Arnulf, duke of Bavaria, as marshal, looked after the carriages and superintended the arrangements of the stables. The coronation took place on August 8, 938. Otto was a worthy successor to his father, in whose footsteps he trod. He reduced the proud nobles to obedience, and established the unity of the empire. He conquered his enemies to the east and the north, and preached Christianity to them. He subdued the Hungarians, and brought their invasions to an end. He restored the splendour and prestige of the Holy Roman Empire, and deserved the name which English writers have generally accorded to him of Otto the Great. ad. 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 323 At the same time, his elevation to the imperial throne at the age of twenty-one did not pass without jealousy and opposition. Eberhard, the duke of the Franks, raised the standard of revolt, assisted by Thankmar, and civil Qu e ii e H° nS war broke out in Hesse and Westphalia. But the Eresburg was stormed, and Thankmar was slain at the foot of the altar, where he had taken refuge. Eberhard was punished by a short banishment. In the year before this (937), huge hordes of Hungarians had invaded Saxony by way of Franconia. They were beaten back by Otto, and when he followed them they retreated towards the west and laid waste the northern half of France as far as the Loire. Otto's brother Henry now rose in arms against him, and received large support. He allied himself with the ungrateful Eberhard, who was still thirsting for revenge, and with the ambitious Giselbert of Lorraine, Otto's own brother-in-law, who was anxious to turn his duchy into an independent kingdom. Louis IV., king of France, called also Louis-from-beyond-the-Sea, or Louis d'Outremer, from having been educated in England, also took part in the enterprise. Twice did Henry bring his brother into great straits, but we are told by Nithard, his historian, that the pious emperor took refuge in prayer, and sought assistance from One by whom it was not refused. At the battle of Biethen on the Rhine, not far from Xanten, Otto gained a victory over his opponents ; Eberhard and Giselbert fled, and were surprised by Count Uclo and Count Conrad Shortpole, after they had been again defeated in the neighbourhood of Andernach. Eberhard died of his wounds, and Giselbert was drowned in an attempt to swim across the Rhine, and his body was never recovered. Henry was now compelled to submit to his victorious brother, who magnanimously pardoned him. But soon afterwards, with great ingratitude, he entered into a conspiracy with Frederick, archbishop of Mainz, and some other discontented nobles. They formed a plot for murdering Otto during the Easter festival at Quedlinburg. The conspiracy was discovered in 941, and the ringleaders were put to death. The archbishop was imprisoned at Fulda, while Henry fled, and disappeared for a time from the sight of men. In this seclusion he seems to have realised his wickedness, and sought pardon of his brother, who promised to do him no injury. He was first brought to Otto's palace at Ingelheim, and placed under arrest. Escaping from this con- finement, he went to the cathedral at Frankfort, where Otto was keeping his Christmas festival, and, clad in a hair-cloth 324 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 919 to dress, with his feet bare, threw himself at his brother's knees and embraced him. From this time forth, the concord of the brothers was never again disturbed. But Otto was convinced that it was necessary to concentrate and strengthen the royal power more than his father had done. He therefore visited the different parts of his Otto's Gov- master over the dukes. He established an order of dominions, with a view to showing that he was counts palatine to keep the dukes and grafen in check. He also took care to commit the duchies to persons whom he could trust. He invested Count Conrad the Red with the duchy of Lon-aine and gave him his daughter Liutgard to wife. At the same time, he did not hesitate to commit the important duchy of Bavaria to his brother Henry, who had behaved so badly to him. The duchy of Swabia was given to his darling son, Liudolf, who married the daughter of the last duke, while Hermann the Billing, who had fought by Otto's side in his battle against the Slavs, was created duke of Saxony. We are also told that when he iuvested anyone with a duchy or with a county, or with a bishopric or imperial abbey, Otto gave the first a lance with a banner attached to it, and the second a ring and a staff. He then made them place their hands in his, and take an oath of homage, binding themselves to be true and faithful to him for all time, to follow him whenever he called them, and never to leave him in time of need. Otto was a born ruler, and inspired respect by his majestic appearance and commanding look. He carried out the principle of being magnanimous to the weak and pitiless to the strong. In order to be better able to keep his nobles in obedience, he made a close alliance with the church, bestowing bishoprics and abbeys on relations, so as to keep the empire together. He also reformed the system of imperial finance, not establishing a uniform tax, but taking care that the " Ehrengeschenk," or Gift of Heaven, which had been contributed according to ancient custom, by both ecclesiastical and lay nobles, should receive a more formal and obligatory character. The taxes paid for the expenses of the court, the burdens of purveyance, the duty of arming and maintaining the army, often became a very heavy burden. Otto was a great legislator. He treated with respect the capitularies of the Carlings, but gave consideration to the altered circumstances of his time. While his position as king w T as founded on Carolingian law, he punished treason and the breach of the royal peace according to Frankish law, At the a.d. 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 325 same time, he paid great attention to unwritten custom, which, in a kingdom composed of such motley elements, was a matter of much importance. He established a system of arbitration and favoured trial by combat. The proceedings in all courts were open ; the dukes presided over those in their provinces, the r/rafen, as their deputies, in the Gauen or hundreds. The judges were everywhere assisted by assessors or Schojfen, who formed a kind of jury. Under Otto the law never became foreign or artificial, but was always popular and easily under- stood. It was said of him that his laws were not written on parchment but inscribed on men's hearts. The king's law, the people's law, the feudal law, and the law of service, developed themselves, according to the law of custom, in great variety. As among the Merwings and the Carlings, the king was the centre of the empire : wherever he happened to lodge was his govern- ment and his court. He decided on public affairs with the help of his counts and bishops, whom he chose to invite as he re- moved from one palace (called in Germany Pfalz) to another. It was said of him, " His house is in all places in the German territory, and he will see everywhere and determine for himself what goes on in his country." He did not stay long in any one place, but his favourite resting places were his castles in the Harz, Goslar, Quedlinburg, as well as Kyffhauser in the Goldene Aue (the Golden Meadow). His restless life contributed to the unity of his kingdom. His court exhibited especial splendour on great church festivals, when he received the visits of the spiritual and lay dignitaries, the duty of his vassals, the tribute and the presents of his people. In the court of the sovereign there was a cheerful and motley life wherever he stayed. Feast succeeded feast with little cessation, but there was business as well as pleasure, the most important matters being determined on often, according to ancient custom, during the banquet itself. Now were settled questions of war or peace ; treaties were made or denounced with foreign kings or peoples ; bishops and counts were appointed, and new fiefs and privileges given. The travelling camp of the sovereign took the place of the more formal diet of the Carlings. The times of assembly often coincided with the great church festivals, especially Christmas, Easter, and "Whitsuntide, when, according to the old English expression, the king " wore his crown." Otto gave the Lusatian Mark to Gero, a Saxon, of no dis- tinguished birth, but of great daring and cunning. He fought against the Luitizen and other Wendish peoples, who lived 326 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 919 to between the Saale and the middle Elbe to the Oder. He once invited thirty of their chiefs to a banquet, and, when they were all well drunken, killed them ; and at last R;* ™?'". he reduced all the Wendish tribes as far as the the wends. ^ , t t t Oder, and made them tributary, so that even the duke of Poland recognised his suzerainty. Hermann, the Billing, treated in the same way the Wends living between the mouths of the Eider and the Haff. For the conversion of the heathen Otto founded the archbishopric of Magdeburg and the subordinate bishoprics of Merseburg, Zeitz, Meissen, Branden- burg, and Havelberg. But the Slavs detested Christianity, and also the Germans who had brought it to them, and tried to force it upon them with such cruel atrocities. Harold Bluetooth had driven the Saxons out of the mark of Schleswig, and subdued all the country between the Eider and the Dannewerk. In 947, Otto invaded Denmark and recovered Schleswig for the empire. He pressed on as far as the north of Jutland, and fixed his spear in the waves to mark the limits of his dominions, and the place was called Ottensund. He founded the bishoprics of Schleswig, Ripen, and Aarhus, and placed them under the direction first of Hamburg, and then of Bremen. The con- version of the Baltic Wends to Christianity proceeded from the bishopric of Oldenburg, which was afterwards removed to Lubeck. Towns sprang up on the Elbe, the Oder, and the Danube. The Bohemians, who had joined Boleslav, the murderer of his brother Wenzel, in throwing off the German supremacy, were again brought into subjection. In 950, Otto made war against Boleslav and compelled him to submit. His pious son, Boleslav II., not only became a vassal of the Germans, but accepted Christianity as the religion of his kingdom, and established a bishop's see in Prag. By this and similar actions Otto attained such eminence that the ambassadors of France, Italy, and Burgundy met in his camp with the chiefs of the Wends, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Danes, and he exchanged presents with the emperor of Constantinople and the khalif of Cordova. We must now consider Otto's activity in Italy, a country which had been given up to confusion, lawlessness, and cor- ruption of morals since the extinction of the Italy 111 power of the Carlings. Many Italian nobles had tried to attain the position of king, but none founded a lasting dominion. The longest to reign was Hugo of Lower Burgundy, who made himself detested by his severity, and was the husband of Marozia, whom we have a.d. 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 327 already mentioned. He was driven out of his position, first by Alberic II. and then by Berengar, marquis of Ivrea, who obtained the sovereignty, but shared it with Hugo's son, Lothar. At first Berengar ruled with mildness, and won the affection of all ; but, after Hugo had died in Burgundy in 947, and Lothar at Turin in 950, he became cruel and tyrannical. The interference of Otto in Italy is due to a romantic incident. When Berengar heard of Lothar's untimely death, he sum- moned the grandees of Italy to a meeting at Pavia, and persuaded them to choose himself and his son Adalbert as kings, and they both received the crown of Lombardy in December 15, 950. After this, Berengar grew yet harsher, and became unpopular, so that a report arose that Lothar had died of poison. Lothar had left behind him a widow, Adelheid, daughter of Rudolf II. of Burgundy, who laid claim to the throne of Italy. She was beautiful and of high character, and in every way suited to be a ruler. Berengar and his wife Villa conceived a deadly hatred for Adelheid ; they persecuted her, deprived her of her jewels, and threw her into prison at Garcia, where she remained four months. Adelheid contrived to escape in a wonderful manner with the assistance of a priest, and, passing over the mountains, reached first Camerina, where she found protection, and then Reggio. The ill-treatment of Adelheid came to the ears of her brother, Conrad of Burgundy, who was protected by Otto, and her mother Bertha. Adelheid had always dis- tinguished herself by the kindness which she had shown to pilgrims who were travelling to Rome, and it is said that even Gero had been her guest. The grandees of the kingdom gave their consent, but Liudolf, duke of Swabia, Otto's son, whose wife Ida was the half-sister of Adelheid's mother, impatiently anticipated his father and invaded Italy first. He had hoped that Italy would rise in his favour, and that he would meet his father crowned with laurels, but, instead of this, he suffered from hunger and sickness, and had to return with shame and to meet his father with his wasted host, as he approached the Brenner, and entered into the valley of the Adige, in September 951. Otto reached Pavia on September 23, and sent his brother Henry of Bavaria to bring Adelheid into the camp. He then married her with great pomp, and invested her with large possessions, so that she became one of the richest women in the world. This marriage gave Otto a claim to the Oarling succession of Italy, 328 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 919 to and the Burgundians joined him. He reduced the whole country without opposition from Berengar, called himself " King of the Franks and Lombards and King of Italy," and invested his followers with fiefs. Bishop Manasseh, who opened to him the gates of Verona, was made archbishop of Milan. In the beginning of the following year he was recalled to Germany, leaving his son-in-law Conrad as his representative. Conrad, however, gave Italy back to Berengar, on the condition that he should submit to Otto and recognise him as his over- lord. Berengar went to Magdeburg, accompanied by Conrad, and was afterwards, at the diet of Augsburg in 952, invested by Otto with the fief of Italy. But the mark of Friuli and the territory of Verona were given to Henry of Bavaria — an act of evil omen for Italian unity in the future. Liudolf of Swabia and Conrad of Lorraine were very angry at the favoiir thus shown to Henry, and they divided the royal house against itself. They soon had other sup- R 1 1^ P 01 ^ - ; Lorraine, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria wavered in their allegiance. Frederick, arch- bishop of Mainz, joined them, and they had adherents even in Saxony. They took possession of Mainz and Regensburg, and Otto besieged them in vain. Civil war raged on the Meuse, the Rhine, and the Danube, and the rebel sons even entered into relations with Hungary. But Otto pursued a steadfast and successful policy. Lorraine returned to its allegiance, chiefly by the help of his brother Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and the archbishop of Mainz surrendered before his death. Conrad and Liudolf begged for pardon. Their castles and their property were restored to them, but their dukedoms were taken away. Swabia was given to the aged Burchard, who had married the youthful daughter of Henry. The archbishopric of Mainz was conferred on Otto's natural son, William. Bruno, who had been entrusted with the government of Lorraine, divided it into two parts, each of which was placed under a duke. The Hungarians had long recovered from the defeats which they had suffered in the reign of King Henry, ami had re- Renewed sumed their raids into the south of Germany. Hungarian The disturbances of that country in the civil Invasions. W ar, an j the condition of Italy, where there was no emperor to control its government, invited them to new enterprises. They extended their forays as far as the Adriatic and the Po in the south, and as far as the Danube in the west. A hundred thousand strong, they invaded Bavaria, passed into a. d . 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 329 Swabia, and encamped in the plain of the Lech, while some of them pushed on to the Black Forest. They were met by Bishop TJlrich of Augsburg, who did his best to defend his town. Otto now attacked them at the head of a larger army than their own. He was joined by the Bavarians and the Franks, Swabians, and Bohemians, and the population of the Rhine. On August 10, 955, the day of St. Lechfeld Lawrence, the royal army advanced against the enemy in eight divisions, the king in their midst. Before him was borne the lance of the Archangel Michael, and when that appeared victory never failed. The leader of the first division was Conrad, ex-duke of Lorraine, the hero of the day. The battle of the Lechfeld, as it was called, was, at first, unfavourable to the Christians, as they were attacked in the rear, but Conrad charged the enemy with his Franks and drove them to flight. The king followed, and in a short time the Hungarians were routed, but, in the midst of the battle, Conrad the Red, as he was called, the husband of Liutgard, the daughter of Otto, was killed by an arrow in the throat. Otto pursued the routed army to Regensburg, but the time was yet to come when the wild Hungarians were converted to Christianity by their sainted king, Stephen I., who civilised them, so that they gave up their nomad life and settled in the plains of the Danube, The last important act of Otto's life was to revive the " Holy Roman Empire" of Charles the Great. In 961, he held a diet at Worms, where his son Otto, born of Adelheid, Revival of now seven years old, was chosen as his successor Charle- and crowned at Aachen. He then prepared to magne's cross the Alps a second time. Berengar had not Empire, fulfilled his duties as vassal, and after the death of Liudolf, September 9, 957, recovered virtual independence. Pope John XII. asked Otto to restore peace in Italy, and offered him the imperial crown. In the autumn of 961, accompanied by Adelheid, he descended into the valley of the Adige. All the towns opened their gates to him, and he kept his Christmas in Pavia. In February of the following year, he otto advanced to Rome, and in the church of St. crowned Peter received the imperial crown and the sword at Rome, from the pope's hand. Adelheid was also anointed and crowned as partner in the empire. Thus, on February 2, 963, was founded the " Heiliges Romische Reich der Deutscher Nation." Thus began the connection between Italy and Germany, which 330 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 919 to was of great advantage to Germany, but also the cause of great trouble. Otto confirmed John XII. in the possession of Rome, but claimed the right of a feudal superior over the whole of Italy. On February 19, he issued an edict by which he gave to John everything which the papacy had gained since the donation of Pepin — Rome with its duchy, the exarchate of Ravenna,^"and the Pentapolis, the Sabina, some towns in Tuscany and Campania, and property in Benevento, Naples, Calabria, and Sicily, whenever he should conquer them, as well as Gaeta and Fondi. But all these possessions were conferred with the reservation of the imperial rights, as they had been laid clown in 854 in the constitutions of Lothar. Otto also retained a suzerainty over the civil government of the pope, especially in questions of law. The state of things was re- stored which had existed in Carling times. Before Otto left Rome on February 14, the Romans took the oath of fidelity to him, and the pope swore upon the grave of St. Peter that he would never take the side of his enemies. Scarcely had Otto left the " Eternal City " when the pope re- gretted what he had done. He joined Berengar, and attempted Pope t° rouse the Hungarians and Turks against the John XII. emperor. Otto returned to Rome, and deposed deposed. Pope John. This pope was Octavius, the son of Alberic and Marozia, who ascended the papal throne at the age of sixteen, and spent a cheerful life in the Lateran, with his young friends, playing, making love, and drinking. He was now solemnly dethroned on December 4, and on the follow- ing clay, contrary to all law and custom, Leo, a respected papal official, was elected to his place, taking the name of Leo VIII. Otto took hostages from the Romans, and made them swear that they would never in future choose or consecrate a pope without the formal consent and confirmation of the emperor. Berengar was banished to Bamberg. On Otto's departure, John, who had taken refuge in the mountains, returned again. He drove Leo out of the city, but died of a stroke of apoplexy. The Romans, to show their independence, elected a pope of their own, who assumed the title of Benedict V. Otto, how- ever, succeeded in restoring Leo, while the anti-pope, Benedict, died in Capua. Otto made a third expedition to Rome in 966, when, Leo being dead, he caused John XIII. of Capua to be elected pope. Otto was now at the height of his power. As regent of the holy church and head of the European state system, he a.b. 973] THE EMPIRE RESTORED 33* ordered everything, civil and ecclesiastical, internal and ex- ternal. He endeavoured to unite the Christian powers in a common struggle against Islam and heathendom, and to prepare his son to continue the work by having him crowned in Rome and marrying him to Theophano, daughter of the Byzantine emperor, so as to effect a union between East and West. In 967, the young Otto crossed the Alps, and was crowned in the cathedral of St. Peter's, but the marriage with Theophano was not carried out for some time. He did not reach Italy again till 972, when he was crowned with great pomp on April 14. Otto died on May 7, 973, in the castle of Memleben, where his father had died before him. He was buried in the church of St. Maurice at Magdeburg, by the side of his wife Edith. Otto presents the aspect of a born ruler, to whom age gave fresh dignity and majesty. His form was strong and vigorous, and he had great charm of manner. Even in his later years he was a vigorous hunter and an excellent rider, and in his bronzed face shone clear and sparkling eyes. His head was covered with sparse grey hair, and his beard hung long and thick down his breast. He wore the national German dress with no foreign ornaments, and only spoke the Saxon dialect, although he understood the Romance and Slavonic tongues. He divided his day between work and prayer, business and church services. He took but little sleep. Generous, merciful, and affable, he drew the hearts of all to himself, but he was more feared than loved. His wrath was hard to bear, and even the young emperor trembled before the growl of the lion, as he called his father. He exhibited an iron will from youth to age, and was full of energy even to the close of his life. He was always true to his friends, and magnanimous to his enemies, and, when he had once forgiven, he forgave for ever. No emperor had ever a higher standard, both of his kingly and of his imperial duties. He considered that he held his crown from God alone, and that anyone who offended his majesty was an offender against the commands of heaven. CHAPTER V. THE EMPIRE. A.D. 973-1106— THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1096 AND 1146. Otto II., who reigned for ten years, from 973 to 983, had fine qualities, a good education, and a chivalrous temper, but he had not the wisdom or the capacity for ruling pos- ' sessed by his father and grandfather. At first his mother, Adelheid, possessed great influence over the young emperor, but this was afterwards transferred to his Greek wife, Tb.eopb.ano, the daughter of the Byzantine emperor, Romanus II., and his Spartan consort. She brought into the Saxon court new magnificence and unwonted luxury, and was more admired than beloved. In the early years of his reign, Otto kept the example of his great father before his eyes, and, like him, had to crush rebellion on the part of his own kinsmen. The reign- ing duke of Bavaria was Henry the Quarrelsome, son of the Henrv who had been such a faithless brother to Otto I. Henry's sister, Hedwig, had married Burchard of Swabia, and on her husband's death it was supposed that she could con- tinue to rule his duchy, but Otto took it away from her and gave it to his nephew Otto, the son of Liudolf, whom he loved clearly. This deeply offended his cousin Henry, who had a strong dislike to Liudolf and his house. Otto also made the eastern part of Bavaria into an independent mar- graviate, under the name of the Ostmark, afterwards Austria, and gave it as a fief to the Frankish family of Babenberg. Henry, aggrieved by these proceedings, took part in a con- spiracy to drive his cousin from the throne, and was confined in the castle of Ingelheim. Soon after this, the Danes and Norwegians made an incursion into Germany, but Otto drove them back and gained possession of the Dannewerk, which had been originally built by the Saxons. In the meantime, Henry had escaped from prison and raised the standard of re- bellion in Bavaria. The lands on the upper Danube and the Isar were wasted by civil war, but Otto was victorious. Henry took refuge in Bohemia, and twenty -eight of his adherents were 332 a.d. 973-1106] THE EMPIRE 333 placed under the ban of the empire. The territory of Bavaria was again diminished by making Carinthia and Verona into a single mark, and by extending the dominions of the Baben- bergers and of the bishoprics of Salzburg and Passau. Finally, Bavaria, thus diminished, was united to Swabia. These measures did not please Adelheid, so she left the court and retired to Burgundy. The property taken away from the rebels was given mainly to the church. These disturbances gave an opportunity to Lothar of France, the last Oarling but one, son of Louis d'Outremer, to take possession of Lorraine. He advanced even to the -^ ar imperial city of Aachen, and, finding the eagle at between the summit of the palace looking towards the France and east, turned it towards the west, as a sign that Germany, the city belonged henceforth not to Austrasia, but to Neustria. In revenge, Otto invaded France, crossed the Seine, and reached the heights of Montmartre, but was not able to conquer Paris. Otto suffered some losses on his retreat, and, at a meeting held at Chiers, peace was made, and Lothar renounced his conquest. Otto also imposed his authority on Poland and Bohemia, and did his best to Christianise these eastern lands. He now followed his father's example, by making an expedition to Italy, his design being to unite the countries on both sides of the Alps into one kingdom. He was accompanied by his wife, Theo- phano, his little son, and a crowd of young knights, eager for illustrious deeds. Before his departure, he became reconciled with his mother Adelheid, and he reached Rome by way of Ravenna. In Rome matters were in a terrible condition. Boniface VI., the successor of John XIII. , had been driven from his throne by the popular party and strangled in the castle of St. Angelo. He was succeeded by Boniface VII., ^j s at who ran off to Constantinople laden with papal property. Benedict VII., bishop of Sutri, was elected in his place, a good man who endeavoured to do his best. The Sara- cens were infesting southern Italy under Abulkasem, but were kept in check by Pandolfo, the Ironhead, whom Otto I. had made prince of Capua and Beneventum, and duke of Spoleto and Camerino and Salerno. The throne of Byzantium was held by weak emperors, who were ill-disposed to Otto, and, to make matters worse, Pandolfo died just before his arrival, leaving his power in weak hands. Rome was really governed by Crescen- tius, a rich Sabine nobleman, son of Theodora, who, as duke, 334 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 973 to ruled pope and people with an iron hand. Otto restored the power of the pope, and Crescentius retired to the convent of St. Boniface on the Aventine, where he spent the rest of his life in attempting to make amends for his evil deeds. Otto pitched his camp in the Leonine City, not far from St. Peter's, and soon found that it was necessary to it i° m expel the Saracens from southern Italy and the Byzantines from Apulia and Calabria. He entered the territory of Amalfi, and spent his Christmas at Salerno. He also got possession of Bari and Taranto. But he suffered a serious defeat at the hands of the Saracens on July 13, 982. The Saracens were concealed in the heights of Squillace, south of Cotrona, where the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas nearly meet. As Otto was attacking a division of the enemy on the sea-shore, he was surprised and surrounded by a force lying in ambush on the hills. All resistance was in vain. Otto's army was en- tirely defeated, many of his knights, both German and Italian, were slain. Otto sprang into the sea and swam to a ship, which took him to Theophano at Rossano ; when in sight of the town, he sprang again into the water and reached the friendly shores. Thence he retired first to Salerno and Capua, and then to Rome. Apulia and Calabria were again overrun, and the dis- order extended even to the north of Italy. In 983, Otto held a diet at Verona, attended by German and Italian nobles, where he made another attempt to unite Germany and Italy into a single kingdom. His Diet at gon otto, then four years old, was chosen, with- out opposition, as his successor. His mother, Adelheid, was made regent of Italy, and the duchies of Swabia and Bavaria were placed in trustworthy hands. He now planned a new expedition to southern Italy to avenge the defeat of Squillace, and, in October 983, hastened to Rome, where Pope Benedict VII. lay dying. He established as his successor John XIV., bishop of Pavia and arch-chancellor of the empire, who was known to be friendly to the empire. But bad news came from Germany. The Danes had again stormed the Dannewerk and gained possession of the Eider ; the Wends in Brandenburg had resumed their heathen rites ; and the Obo tribes from Mecklenburg had plundered Hamburg. Sorrow at these misfortunes produced a violent fever, so that Otto II. died on December 7, 983, at the age of twenty-eight. The princes of the empire were employed in crowning Otto, a child of four years old, in the cathedral of Aachen a.d. 1106] THE EMPIRE 335 when the news of his father's death arrived and aroused them to the importance of providing for the fateful future. Henry the Quarrelsome, of Bavaria, released from prison, • • Otto III made a claim to the regency during Otto's minority, taking no account of Theophano. He obtained possession of the young king's person, was recognised by some of the most important men in the kingdom, and made schemes for assuming the crown. The Carling Lothar of France joined him on the promise of the cession of Lorraine, and the duke of Bohemia was attracted by the promise of Meissen. But the young Otto found a mighty protector in Willigis, a man of humble birth, who had been made archbishop of Mainz. He summoned both Adelheid and Theophano from Italy, brought the Frankish and Swabian dukes over to his side, secured the powerful aid of Adalbero, archbishop of Reims, and the learned Gerbert, who, having been made by Otto II. count-abbot of Bobbio, had come to visit his friend Adalbero in France. Gerbert was one of the most remarkable men of the age, equally at home in philosophical speculation and in affairs of state. Henry was obliged to surrender his charge, to renounce the royal title, and to release from their oaths all the vassals who had sworn allegiance to him. Theophano was recognised as guardian and regent, and went with Adelheid and the young king to Saxony. In the following year, 985, Henry made ample submission, and received back his duchy of Bavaria. Theophano proved to be a good ruler, and it is interesting to note that her brother was at the same time seated on the throne of Constantinople, so that the two empires of West and East were governed by 5k Sen £ y ° f members of the same family. Meissen was now recovered from the Slavs by the Markgraf Eckhard of Thiiringen, who carried the war into Wendish territory, and took measures for the permanent defence of the Teutonic frontier. In Scandi- navia, German authority suffered a reverse when Harold Bluetooth was murdered in 985 by his son, Sven Forkbeard. The bishoprics founded by Otto I. were destroyed, and the heathen religion again raised its head. But a few years afterwards Sven himself was again converted to Christianity. In the midst of these troubles, Theophano died. Eagerly anxious to uphold the honour and unity of the empire, she celebrated the Easter festival of 991 with great splendour at Quedlinburg with her son, but died suddenly at Nijmegen, 336 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 973 to 011 the lower Rhine, on June 15. A tender plant, with re- fined education and great beauty, she was transplanted among the rough and simple Saxons, but bore herself with dignity and distinction. She died at the age of thirty, when her son Otto was eleven. The regency was now assumed by Adelheid, who was assisted by a council of civil and ecclesiastical notables, amongst Early whom Willigis of Mainz, as imperial chancellor, Training took the principal place. Every precaution was of Otto. taken in the education of the youthful sovereign for his important duties. His physical training was under- taken by Count Hoiko of Saxony. John of Calabria, a learned man, whom Theophano had made bishop of Vicenza, taught him Greek. Bernward, later bishop of Hildesheim, known as a man of letters and an artist, directed his general education, which Avas carried further by the mighty Gerbert, the marvel of the age, who afterwards became Pope Silvester II. No one could ever boast of more distinguished tutors. The con- sequence was that Otto III., like Edward VI., was full of precocious learning, and anticipated the Emperor Frederick II. in receiving the title of the "Wonder of the "World." Indeed, his brain and character were hardly strong enough to bear this forcing. He became conceited, and was especially puffed up by uniting in his person the blood of the Eastern and Western empires. He was the prey of flatterers, and was too often led away by passing fancies. At the age of fifteen he took the reins of government into his own hands, Adelheid retiring to Alsace, where she founded the nunnery of Selz. Otto now undertook an expedition into Italy, where matters were no better than before. Rome was governed by the younger Crescentius, named John, and Capua It ,° m was in a state of disorder. Otto, the first down appearing on his cheeks, collected his followers at Regensburg and crossed the Brenner, the Holy Lance carried before him, his retinue singing hymns. Alter a short stay at Verona, where he settled a dispute between the Doge of Venice and the bishop of Belluno, he kept his Easter at Pavia. Here he received news of the death of Pope John XV., and, being asked to nominate his successor, chose his own kinsman Bruno, son of Otto of Carinthia, a young ecclesiastic of excellent qualities, but stern and some- what pessimistic. Bruno went to Rome accompanied by a.d. 1106] THE EMPIRE 337 Willigis and Hildebald, bishop of Worms, and, on May 3, 996, he was elected pope with the title of Gregory V., the first German occupant of the Holy See. It is said that his election marks the liberation of the papacy from the narrow limits of the town and aristocracy of Rome, and brings it into connection with the whole world. Otto reached Rome soon afterwards, and, on May 20, was crowned otto emperor in St. Peter's. It must have been crowned strange to witness these two youths in the great a * Rome. basilica, one twenty-three, the other fifteen years of age, one the grandson, the other a great-grandson, of Otto the Great, respectively at the heads of the ecclesiastical and civil worlds. Crescentius could not stand against then united power ; liberated from banishment, he tendered his submission. But no sooner had Otto left Rome than Crescentius violated his oath of allegiance, deposed Gregory V., who had made many enemies by his reforming severity, and raised John of Calabria, Otto's former tutor, to the rjreeetiu papacy, under the title of John XVI. Cres- centius assumed the titles of Patricius and Count, and entered into relations with the court of Constantinople. Otto, who was engaged in a war with the Wends, and in learned disputations at Magdeburg, again crossed the Alps, accompanied by Otto of Carinthia, the pope's father. He went by way of Ravenna, and kept his Christmas of 997 at Pavia. Crescentius shut him- self up in the castle of St. Angelo, and Pope John fled into the Campagna and took refuge in a tower, but, on the arrival of the emperor, he was torn from his hiding-place, his eyes were burnt out, his tongue, nose, and ears were cut off, and, in this guise, he was set upon a donkey and led through the streets of Rome. He was then publicly stripped of his bishop's robes and thrown into prison, where it is supposed that he died. The castle of St. Angelo was stormed by Eckhard of Meissen on April 26 ; Crescentius was beheaded on the summit of the edifice, and his body was exposed on the gallows on the heights of Monte Mario. He was, at length, buried in the church of San Pancrazio in the Trastevere, on which the inscription com- memorating him long remained. The nobles who had joined his party also perished. In the following year, February 18, 999, Pope Gregory V. died suddenly, in the flower of his age, as many thought, by poison. Otto now raised his friend Gerbert to the Holy See, having first made him archbishop of Ravenna. He took the title Y 338 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 973 to of Silvester II. Otto's dream was to restore the ancient glories of Rome, to make it the capital of the empire, and to surround Gerbert ^ with the pomp of Byzantium. He went far Pope — beyond the ideas of Charles the Great. The Imperial fancies in which he lived were as vague and Dreams of shadowy as they were magnificent. The Senate of ancient Rome, with its wisdom and govern- ment, the conquests and triumphs of a Trajan, the spiritual elevation of a Marcus Aurelius, the court of Constantinople with its united splendour of West and East, formed the magic circle in which his imagination moved, and he prepared him- self for his mighty task by strict penances and many pil- grimages. He united in his character many inconsistencies — the glory and the renunciation of the world, princely pride, and the self-abasement of an anchorite. He assumed at the same time the titles of Ttalicus, Saxonicus, and Romanus to mark his triumphs, and of the " Slave of Jesus Christ and His Apostles " to denote his spiritual victories. He lived for a fortnight in the vaults of San Clemente, fasting and praying, visited the graves of the martyrs, and dwelt in the cave of St. Benedict at Subiaco. He is said to have expected that the end of the world would come in 1000 a.d. Un- fortunately Gerbert favoured the eccentricities of the young- emperor, although he was a worldly man himself. It is to be feared that he played the part of a flatterer. He wrote to him that it was by divine providence that he was by birth a Greek, by dominion a Roman, and that he had inherited the treasures of Greek and Roman wisdom. He reminded him that as a monarch he was obeyed by Germany, France, Italy, and the Slavs, and that he wore the greatest crown in the world. Otto despised his native Saxony, and looked longingly to the East. He and Gerbert contemplated the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. He also, like his grandfather, desired the welding of Germany and Italy into one dominion. He even appointed an admiral for the Roman fleet, and revived the dignity of Patricius and Praefectus Urbi. He also tried to re-establish the privileges of Roman citizenship. He was recalled to Germany by his own failing health, undermined by his religious excesses, and by the death of his aunt Matilda in Quedlinburg and his grandmother in Selz. During his stay he paid solemn visits to the graves of two men whom he held in special honour as types of religious spirituality and imperial greatness — Saint Adalbert of Prague and Charles the Great. Adalbert was a a.d. 1106] THE EMPIRE 339 Bohemian nobleman who had exchanged the bishopric of Prague for a monkish cell on the Aventine. In 991, he had gone to the Baltic to convert the heathen Prussians, and he had been killed on the Amber Coast, where a cross still marks the spot of his martyrdom. The Polish duke Boleslav embalmed the body, and buried it in Gnesen in Poland in the year 1000. Otto, accompanied by the duke, made a pilgrimage to the grave of the martyr, and founded there the first archbishopric and mother church of Poland. He then went to Aachen, and founded a second church of St. Adalbert. With his first sword- bearer, Count Otto of Lomello, he visited the grave of the Great Charles. Otto tells us that the emperor's body was not laid in a grave, but sat upright upon a throne like a man alive. The hands were dressed in gloves, through which the nails had grown : the grave was covered with marble slabs and chalk. The two visitors threw themselves on their knees before the emperor, and prayed. Otto carefully observed the body, placed new white robes upon it, had the nails cut, and supplied deficiencies. The features were all perfect except the tip of the nose, which Otto restored with gold. He took a tooth of the emperor with him, and had the grave walled up again. Soon after this, Otto heard that Capua had revolted and had recalled her Lombard masters ; that Salerno, Naples, and Gaeta had thrown off the imperial yoke. Leaving otto's Last Aachen at the Whitsuntide of 1000, he crossed Visit to the Alps from Chur, and spent some time in Italy. Lombardy to recover his health. He reached Rome in October. He was, however, compelled to leave by the rising of the citizens, and retired to Ravenna. He soon returned with a large force, and fixed his summer camp at Paterno, at the foot of Soracte. From this place he directed his expedition, sometimes appear- ing before the walls of Rome, sometimes laying waste the Campagna with fire and sword, and sometimes reaching even to Beneventum and Salerno. The winter he passed at Ravenna with the hermit Romuald. He was further embittered by the quarrel about the precedence between his two friends Willigis of Mainz and Bernward of Hildesheim, which he did his best to settle by a general council held at Todi on December 27, 1001. Then he returned to his camp at Paterno, where he slowly wasted away from fever. On January 23, 1002, he received the holy elements for the last time from the hands of Pope Silvester, and died with his eyes fixed on 340 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 973 to the walls of the Holy City which he was not permitted to enter. Gerbert followed him to the grave on May 12, 1003. Thus perished the last of the Ottos, for Otto III. was never married. His body, carried hastily over the Alps, was buried Decay of * n tne ca thedral of Aachen. His life was a Royal failure, with shattered hopes and unfulfilled de- Power in signs. Whilst he was pursuing the ideal of the Germany. Roman commonwealth, making pilgrimages to dead men's graves, or engaging in subtle disputations at Magde- burg or Rome, the country between the Havel and the Elbe remained in the hands of the heathen, the bishoprics founded amongst the Wends fell into abeyance, the empire was diminished in the north and east, and independent kingdoms, founded on a national basis, arose in Poland and Hungary. The land princes of Germany asserted their pretensions, and the imperial feudatories attained more and more an hereditary character. If Charles the Great could have awakened from his death slumber, he would have rated his successor soundly for neglect- ing his duties. Otto was pursued by the hopeless passion for the possession of Italy, which so often proved the bane of Germany. He remains the Phaethon of German history, who perished on the banks of the Tiber because he could not guide the sun. His memory is kept green rather by poetry and legend than by the surer verdict of history. On the death of Otto III. the German throne was disputed by three claimants— Henry of Bavaria, son of Henry the Quarrelsome; Eckhard, margrave of Meissen; and Henry . o Hermann, duke of Swabia. Henry was recognised as king by the nobles of Franconia, Bavaria, and Upper Lorraine : he was crowned by Willigis at Mainz, and ac- knoAvledged as supreme ruler by the magnates at Merseburg, so that before the end of the year his position was undisputed. He had to defend his crown by constant wars against Germans, Italians, and Slavs. He first subdued the Lombards, then the Bohemians, and then the Poles, under their duke, Boleslav. He joined the king of France and the duke of Normandy in an expedition against Baldwin of Flanders, who had taken Valenciennes ; and he received a promise from Rudolph III. of Burgundy that, after his death, his kingdom should be added to the empire ; so that he not only preserved but expanded the dominions to which he had succeeded. Perhaps his most conspicuous work was building the cathedral of Bamberg, which was dedicated on May 6, 1012. In the following year a.d. 1106] THE EMPIRE 341 he marched a second time into Italy, and was crowned in Rome with his queen, Cunigunda, on February 14, 1014, when he persuaded Pope Benedict VIII. to cross the Alps and bless his darling Dome at Bamberg. A third expedition to Italy was undertaken in 1023, directed against the Greeks of the south, and was carried out with the help of the Normans, who, as we have seen, had established themselves in those parts. Shortly after his return he died, on July 13, 1024, in his castle at Grone, near Gottingen. Henry II. was the last of the Saxon emperors, and the crown passed to the Franks in the person of Conrad II., gene- rally known as the Salian. He was crowned king of Germany by Archbishop Aribo at Mainz, receiving the insignia from Cunigunda, the widow of Henry. Conrad reigned from 1024 to 1039. In 1026, he went into Italy, received the iron crown in Milan and the imperial crown in Rome, in the presence of Canute, king of England and Denmark, and of Rudolph of Burgundy. Rudolph died in 1032, and eventually the Romance and the Carinthian por- tions of Burgundy were separated, the lands of the Rhone Saone, Isere, and the Durance going to France, while Franche Comte and Switzerland fell to Germany. Conrad died at Utrecht on his return from his second visit to Italy in 1039, and was buried in the cathedral of Spires, which he had founded. He was succeeded by his son Henry TTptiw TT ; i III., who increased the power of the empire * by depriving the duchies of their hereditary character. He made two expeditions into Italy, and married Agnes of Poitou, heiress of Aquitaine, in 1045. On his death in 1056, the crown passed to his son Henry IV., a child of six years old. At the age of twelve he held festival enry with his mother, who was acting as regent, at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine, and invited Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, to pay him a visit. The boy was induced to examine the arch- bishop's galley, when, at a signal, the rowers bent to their oars, and the young king was carried off to Cologne. In order to escape, he jumped into the stream, and was saved from drowning by Eckhard, who was in the conspiracy. Thus Hanno became guardian to the king, instead of Agnes. Three years later, at the age of fifteen, he was girded with the sword at Worms, and took the government into his own hands. He was a victim of the contest, between ecclesiastical and civil powers, which reached its greatest intensity at this time. In the 342 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 9731106 following year, 1066, the year of the Norman invasion of Eng- land, Henry married Beatrice of Turin, whom he gradually learned to love, and who made him a good wife. The most important episode of Henry's career was his struggle with Hildebrand, who, as Gregory VII., held the Henry's papacy from 1073 to 1085. On January 1, 1076, Quarrel Henry, in his palace of Goslar, received a message with from the pope bidding him give up his life of Gregory VII. s { n ^ an( j a tone for his offences by public penance. A diet, held at Worms on January 24, replied that the pope must leave the chair of Peter, which he had acquired by unjust means, and be no longer recognised as head of the church. Henry directed this missive in the following terms : " Henry, not by favour, but by God's holy appointment, king, to Hilde- brand, not the pope, but a false monk." This message was carried to Rome by two German and Italian bishops, who, when they delivered it, cried out before the cardinals and bishops present : " The king and our bishops order you to come down from the chair of Saint Peter, which you have obtained not by right, but by robbery." Gregory, not less proud and stubborn, deprived all the German bishops who had signed the letter of their sees, laid his ban on Henry, deposed him from his office, and absolved all his subjects from their oath of allegiance. Unfortunately, Henry was not sup- ported by his nobles. They met at Tribur on October 16, and declared that they would no longer recognise Henry as their lord and king, if he did not reconcile himself with the pope. The result was that Henry had to do penance before Hilde- Henry at brand in the castle of Canossa, situated on a Canossa. peak of the Apennines, in the neighbourhood of Modena. For three days he stood before the castle gate in the shirt of penitence, though it was the middle of winter, before the stubborn pontiff would admit him to his presence. Having promised with an oath to forgive his rebellious nobles, he fell at the pope's feet in a flood of tears, and received the papal blessing. Mass was celebrated in the castle church, and the ban was re- moved. Henry received his imperial crown again, but its glory had passed away to the pontifical tiara. The struggle as to " in- vestitures," in which the church and the crown counter-claimed the right of investing prelates with the insignia of office, was ended by the Concordat of Worms in 1122 — a compromise in favour of the pope — under Henry's son, Henry V. Henry died at Liege in August 1106, and was buried in the cathedral of Spires. A.n. 1096-1146] THE CRUSADES 343 THE CRUSADES, A.D. 1096 AND 1146. If we study the map of Europe as it was in the beginning of the twelfth century, we shall find its appearance very dif- ferent from what it was at the fall of the Roman Europe in empire. It is beginning to show something of the Twelfth the main features which distinguish it in our Century, own day. Passing from west to east, we find Spain mainly in the hands of the Moors. A very large France is bounded by the Rhone, the Meuse, and the Scheldt, and this includes not only France but Belgium. Between France and Germany lie the two duchies of Upper and Lower Lorraine, of large extent, Alsace being a small strip to the east of the upper duchy. Modern Holland is represented by Friesland. To the south of Lorraine lies the kingdom of Burgundy, or of Aries, as it is sometimes called, shortly to be divided between France and Germany. Germany is occupied by the three great duchies of Swabia, Frankland, and Saxony. Swabia contains Wiirtemberg and Switzerland — Frankland, the upper Rhine provinces, and what is now called Franconia — Saxony lying to the west of the modern country of that name, bounded on the east by the Elbe and watered by the Weser — Germany extending northwards over Holstein to where the Schlei separates it from Denmark. To the south of Swabia is the kingdom of Italy, to the east of which lie the marquisate of Verona and the duchy of Oarinthia. North of this we find the great duchy of Bavaria, including the whole of what is now called Austria, but then the East March or Ostmark. We next come to the Slavic countries to the east of the Teutons, Bohemia and Moravia, watered by the upper Elbe and the Moldau, the march of Meissen, the march of the Lausitz, and another eastern march or Ostmark (not to be confounded with that of Bavaria), the North March, and Berlin, the kernel of modern but not of medieval Prussia, which lies far away to the north-east. North again of this, in the countries of Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, is seated the powerful race of the Billing, who gave their name to Billings- gate. A further eastern strip is formed by Pomerania and Hungary. These divisions have only been given roughly ; to state them more accurately would occupy too much space, while the boundaries and designations of the countries are subject to perpetual change. 344 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. ioog to It was from a Europe constituted something in this manner that the Crusades were undertaken. The states of modern Europe had begun to make their appearance, and the stirring Causes °^ the national spirit had begun to be felt. of the Europe was ready for a collective enterprise. Crusades. There was none that was so likely to appeal to the imagination or the reason of her rulers as the attempt to recover from the hands of the infidel the holy places where the Founder of our religion had lived and suffered. The church Was now a predominant factor in civilised Europe. Progress and enlightenment owed more to the bishop than it did to the prince. The state would not be likely to undertake any enterprise in which the church did not feel an absorbing interest. The Crusades may therefore be regarded as a great international effort made by the United States of Europe, which had just begun to realise their solidarity and power, at the bidding of a church which had too much authority to be lightly disobeyed. As early as the fourth century after Christ, it had become the custom to undertake pilgrimages to Palestine for the health of the soul, or to do penance for the sins of a guilty to Palestine ^ e ' an '* to l 3ra ^ at tne se P lu "chre or Christ, the holiest place in the world for Christians, which the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena had covered with a stately dome and consecrated as a church. The idea that ascetic self-denial in this world was one of the surest methods of securing happiness beyond the grave gave prominence to the merits of a long and perilous journey to the East ; the inclina- tion to make such a pilgrimage would naturally acquire a greater strength when the belief began to spread that the world would come to an end soon, perhaps in the year 1000 ; and the impulse thus given did not sensibly slacken throughout the eleventh century. The safety of the pilgrims began to be a matter of national concern. In the year 1064, a large company of 7000 persons of all nations, laymen and clerics, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Syria, with Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, at their head, of whom only about two thousand returned, the rest finding a grave either in Palestine itself or on the journey. So long as the holy places were under the domination of the Arabs, safety might be purchased by the payment of a ransom, but when Palestine was conquered by the Seljukian Turks, Christians, whether pilgrims or residents, were treated with great severity. The great pontiff Hildebrand, the mighty Pope a.d. 1146] THE CRUSADES 345 Gregory VII., was not likely to turn a deaf ear to their com- plaints, yet his quarrel with the Emperor Henry made action difficult. But Urban II., in answer to appeals from the emperor at Constantinople, took advantage of a lull in the strife to stir up western Europe to wage the First Crusade. The famous pilgrim Peter the Herrnit aided the Pope, travel- ling far and wide to preach the crusade and wLffj* rouse the pity of western Christendom for the sufferings of pilgrims and the desecration of the holy places. Clad in a simple robe, girt with a cord, his face worn by ascetic self-denial, he told his piteous tale, and his success was marvellous. Meanwhile Urban, in the year 1095, summoned a meeting at Clermont in France, which was attended by bishops, nobles, and a countless host of common people. The Pope himself closed an eloquent speech by an appeal that every one should deny himself and take up his cross that he might win Christ. A great shout arose : " God wills it ! " and thousands knelt down and devoted themselves to the service ; and the name of Crusader, the wearer of the cross, which marked those who bore it as members of a sacred army marching for the recovery of the sepulchre of their Lord and God, came for the first time into existence. It had been arranged at Clermont that the expedition should start on August 15. 1096, in order to give those that took part in it time for preparation, but the delay was too tedious for the excited crowd. In the spring of crusade that year motley and undisciplined throngs, led by Peter and by a French knight called Walter the Penniless, marched through Germany and Hungary to Constantinople. They stormed Semlin and threatened the walls of Belgrade, and many thousands were slain. A remnant reached Constantinople, and were sent across the straits into Asia Minor, where they perished at the hands of the Turks. Walter fell, after a short resistance, surrounded by his brothers and his bravest com- panions. A hundred thousand men had perished in this manner, when Godfrey de Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, with his brothers Eustace and Baldwin, and a host of knights and nobles from the lower Rhine, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Scheldt, began the march through Hungary towards Constantinople. At the same time other bodies of crusaders started from northern and southern France and from southern Italy — some by land, through Lombardy and Dalmatia, others by sea, from south Italian ports — led by Robert of Normandy, son of 346 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. 1096 to William the Conqueror, — by Stephen of Blois, who was said to have as many towns in his possession as there are clays in the year, — by the rich and powerful Count Raymond of St. Giles and Toulouse, who is reported to have had under him a hundred thousand men, and with whom marched Adhemar de Puy, the papal legate, and many bishops, — and by Boemund of Taranto and his nephew Tancred, sung by poets as the flower of knightly virtue, who brought the Normans of Sicily and Naples. Arriving at Constantinople, they found Alexius Comnenus on the throne. He was much frightened at their approach, but Successes of ne compelled their leaders, as they successively Godfrey de arrived, to promise that any conquests they might Bouillon. make should be held as fiefs of the Byzantine empire. They then crossed to Asia Minor and held a review in the plain of Nicaea, in which, we are told, were mustered 100,000 heavy-armed knights, 300,000 armed footmen, besides women and children, monks, priests, and camp-followers. Nicaea surrendered after a siege, but to Alexius. In July 1097, the battle of Dorylaeum was won by the bravery and skill of Godfrey of Bouillon, and in the following year his brother Baldwin became prince of Edessa. The important city of Antioch, on the Orontes, was captured on June 3, 1098, and was saved from recapture by the discovery, real or supposed, of the Holy Lance by which the side of Christ was pierced at the crucifixion. In Whitsuntide of the following year the crusaders obtained their first sight of Jerusalem. They fell upon their knees in prayer, and tears flowed from their eyes. Taken ^ ^ ie ^ e S e was conducted with great difficulty, but in July 1099, the Holy City was conquered. It was determined to form the new conquest into a kingdom, and the crown was offered to Godfrey, but he refused it, saying that it would be sacrilege to wear an earthly crown where his Master had worn a crown of thorns. Godfrey contented himself with the title of " Protector of the Holy Sepulchre," and justified this appellation by the victory The °f Ascalon, on August 12, over the Egyptian host, Kingdom of which gave the crusaders much booty and Jerusalem. .secured the existence of the new kingdom. This pure and noble character died from the effect of the exertion and the climate on July 18, 1100. His sword and sword-belt are still preserved in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, bearing the arms of Jerusalem, four cross crosslets or on a field argent, the only arms in which metal is borne on metal, representing a.d. 1146] THE CRUSADES 347 the dove with silver wings and her feathers of gold. Baldwin, prince of Edessa, had not the scruples of his brother, but hastened to Jerusalem and assumed the title of king, which, alter following various fortunes till the end of the thirteenth century, was finally claimed and probably is still borne by the houses of Savoy, Anjou, Lorraine, and Austria. Baldwin held the crown of Jerusalem from 1100 to 1118, constantly engaged in wars, not without success. The Norman Boemund died in 1111, and Tancred secured for himself the principality of Antioch, which long remained in his family. The first crusade was followed by the rise of the great Orders ^he Orders of Christian chivalry, the Knights of St. John of Knight- and the Knights Templar, the first of which are hood. better known as the Knights of Malta and still exist under their old name, while the fate of the second forms one of the saddest and most discreditable pages of medieval history. In 1144 Edessa, the bulwark of the Christian empire of the East, fell into the power of the Saracens, and the vain hope of recovering it was the leading motive of the Second Crusade. But, with the exception of Ascalon, no important addition was ever made to the kingdom of Jerusalem as it stood at the death of its third ruler, Baldwin II., in 1130. Between the first crusade and the second, which was first preached in 1146, great vicissitudes had befallen the empire. Lothar of Saxony, who succeeded Henry V., had L tfiar and as son in-law Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, Henry the of the family of Guelph, Welf, or Wolf. Lothar Proud. invested him also with the duchy of Saxony, so that he united in his possession two great German duchies, enclosing Swabia and Frankenland between them and threatening them with ex- tinction. When Lothar died on December 3, 1137, he gave his insignia of the empire to Henry, but the German nobles would not acknowledge a prince of such overwhelming power and of such imperious disposition. So, with the archbishop of Trier at their head, they met at Coblentz, and on March 7, Conrad of 1138, chose as emperor Conrad, brother of the Hohen- duke of Swabia, of the house of Hohenstauffen. stauffen. Conrad took a strong line. He deprived Henry of his duchies, placing him under the ban of the empire, and giving one to Albert the Bear, the founder of the Ascanian house, and the other to his own half brother, Leopold of Austria. The Hohenstauffen came originally from the castle of Waibling in the Remsthal, in what is now the kingdom of Wiirtemberg, and they were 348 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. io96-H46 called by that name. And when the double election produced a serious feud between the two houses of Welf and Waibling, it spread to Italy and raged there for three hun- Ghibenfnes dred years under the name of Guelf and Ghibel- lines. In Italy the Ghibellines were generally the supporters of the emperor and the Guelf s of the pope, but in many Italian cities the titles had lost all significance, and meant little else but a feud between two rival families. When Henry the Proud died in 1139, Conrad restored the duchy of Saxony to his son, Henry the Lion, giving Albert the Bear the mark of Brandenburg, in exchange, as an independent principality. Further, after Conrad's death Bavaria was given back again to the Welf family, and in compensation the Baben- berg margraves of Austria were made into independent dukes, who fixed their capital at Vienna. Thus the quarrel between Welf and Waibling was the indirect cause of the rise of the two powers, Aiistria and Prussia, whose rivalry fills the whole of modern European history, and is hardly yet finally concluded. The empire, however, did not gain in strength by this dispute ; the Slavs, the Burgundians, and the Italians began to assert their independence, while Pope Innocent II. acknowledged Roger, duke of the Normans, as king of the Sicilies, which he took as a fief from the pope himself. The capture of Edessa in 1144, and the consolidation of the Moslem power in northern Syria, gave occasion for a new crusade, which was preached by St. Bernard, C C de° n abbot of Clairvaux in Burgundy. Conrad III. of Germany and Louis VII. of France assumed the cross. Conrad marched through Hungary to Constantinople, and reached the coast of Asia Minor ; but on the way to Iconium he was misled by false guides, and the whole of his magnificent army gradually wasted away. Warned by this, Louis chose the route along the sea-coast, by Smyrna and Ephesus, but met with nearly the same fate. The two monarchs came together at Jerusalem, and foolishly attacked Damascus, whose emir had been an ally of the fourth ruler of Jerusalem, King Fulk. But the enterprise ended in nothing, and the monarchs returned home. Conrad died on February 15, 1152, a man of talent and virtue, but with wasted gifts. He left the empire in need of a strong head, and such a one was found in Frederick Barbarossa, one of the greatest of German emperors. CHAPTER VI. FREDERICK BARBAROSSA, A.D 1152-1190— THE THIRD CRUSADE. After the death of Conrad III. on February 15, 1152, the princes of the empire, passing over Conrad's son, a child of seven years, chose, on March 4, his nephew, Frederick of Frederick of Hohenstauffen and of Waibling, in Hohen- Frankfort as German king, and five days after- stauffen. wards he was consecrated and crowned in the church of St. Mary at Aachen, by Arnold, archbishop of Cologne. Many circumstances contributed to bring about this quick decision. Not only did his personal qualities justify the warmest hopes, but, by his connection with the rival house of Welf, he seemed to be the true corner-stone by which the contentions between the houses might be ended. By his mother, Judith, the sister of Henry the Proud, Frederick was a cousin of Henry the Lion, and the nephew of Welf VI., for whom he had already performed many services. Besides this, the German nation was anxious to preserve the same princely family, and to put a limit to freedom of choice, without expressly recognising the right of inheritance, and also to give some weight to the wishes of the departed king. A happier choice could not have been made. Frederick was now thirty-one years old, of middle size and well grown : his light hair and reddish beard, which he had in common with many of his family, won for him the name of Barbarossa from the darker Italians. His courteous manners, his blue sparkling eyes, and his cheerful countenance attracted everybody ; and through these external advantages he was a prominent personality amongst all the princes of the time. He was inferior to none in knightly exercises, in hunting, or in any form of bodily exertion. His contemporaries said that he was master of his passions, a friend of justice, bold and undismayed, full of warlike courage, generous but not extravagant ; that he had a penetrating intellect, and a gift of deliberative wisdom. His memory was never at fault ; he was very eloquent in his own language ; Latin he 349 350 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to understood better than he could speak it ; he was full of kindness for his friends, but terrible against his enemies ; he had sympathies with science and art ; he was a deep student of history, and spent much of his time in antiquarian studies. The first occupation of his reign was to bring about peace in Germany ; but, before he had accomplished this, he determined to undertake a journey to Italy, in order to Frederick obtain the imperial crown, and to make the empire more respected in that country. In the first days of October 1154, a large army was collected in the Lechfeld, close by Augsburg, to accompany Frederick in his first journey to Italy by way of Brixen and Trent. The march was conducted with great order and discipline. After a rest on the lake of Garda, the army encamped on the Roncalian Plain, in the neighbourhood of Piacenza, where from time immemorial the German kings had been accustomed to hold their reviews and courts of justice. The shield of the emperor was exhibited on a staff, which was a sign to the vassals that they should come to him in arms, and that they should perform the honourable duty of guarding his tent. All that did not obey his summons, especially the ecclesiastical princes of Bremen and Halberstadt, were deprived of the fiefs which they held of the emperor. Many were the signs of the disturbed condition of Italy. The marquis of Mont- ferrat, almost the only noble of upper Italy who had not bent before the power of the communes, complained of the increasing pride of the towns, especially of Chieri and Asti. Como and Lodi, supported by Pavia and Cremona, renewed the complaints which they had already made at Constance against Milan. In vain did the Milanese send two eloquent men into the camp, and offer the king 4000 marks to con- firm their lordship over the two towns. Frederick refused to hear them, saying that he would make an inquiry on their own territory, and discover what was right. The army now marched forward. It was the duty of the Milanese to supply its material wants, but they led the way through those districts which had been entirely laid waste in the war between Milan and Pavia. Want of food, heavy rain, and snow-storms caused discouragement and disgust, and at last the king lost his temper. He rased the town of Rosate, and also Chieri and Asti. The citizens took refuge in the mountains. Whilst the king was encamped before Asti, ambassadors arrived from Pavia, and complained that their a.d. 11901 FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 35* fields had been -wasted by the inhabitants of Tortona, which was in league with Milan. Frederick took their side and marched against the town, which was built on a high rock. It stood a long siege, but was at last taken. The town was given up to plunder, and the citadel destroyed. Frederick was determined to break the republican pride of the Lombards, which threatened to destroy his rights in Italy, and to restore the legal position of his authority. But, for the moment, he contented himself with being crowned at Pa via, on the 15th of April 1155. After three days' sojourn, he proceeded to Rome. The pope at this time was Hadrian IV. He went as far as Viterbo to meet the emperor, and sent an embassy to welcome him to that place. Hadrian was an Englishman Hadrian IV named Breakspear. He had been driven from the monastery of St. Alban's as a boy, — had wandered along the roads as a beggar, — at last, by hunger, shame, and a desire for knowledge, had been led to France, — and after many adventures had been received in a monastery near Avignon, where after a time he was chosen prior. Sent to Rome to conduct the business of his monastery, he attracted the attention of the Pope, Eugenius III., by his education, eloquence, and striking appear- ance. He was made cardinal-bishop of Albano, and was sent on a mission to Denmark and Norway, where he organised the church with equal wisdom and power. After his return, Nicholas Breakspear was chosen unanimously to be head of the church. Times were stormy ; he said himself that the apostolic chair was covered with thorns, The p pe and the papal mantle was pierced by swords, and Arnold He would not recognise the Senate, and was of Brescia. therefore forbidden to enter the city, and had to take up his residence behind the church of St. Peter, which was intrenched. He determined to upset the republican constitution which existed at that time, and to demand the surrender of Arnold of Brescia, who was at the head of it. The Senate was reluctant to banish that influential preacher, who was reverenced by the people as a divinely-inspired prophet. A disturbance arose, in which it happened that a cardinal, while on his way to visit the pope in the Leonine city, was mortally wounded. The pope avenged himself by pronouncing an interdict against the city, the effect of which was to stop all divine service ; no bell was rung, no mass was said, no sacrament was consecrated, and baptism and extreme unction were performed with rites of 352 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to terror. The dead were not buried in consecrated earth, and marriages were celebrated in the churchyards. The Romans endured the punishment from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thurs- day, but as the festival of Easter approached their spirits were disturbed by sorrow and unrest. It seemed as if Christ would not rise for the Romans, as He was wont. Then the people bestirred themselves, and the senators threw themselves before the knees of the pope, praying for his pardon. Hadrian demanded the banishment of the reformers, and would not take his curse from the town until this condition had been fulfilled. He had conquered in the strife. Arnold, betrayed and deserted, wandered from fortress to fortress under the ban of the church. The Holy Father, surrounded by bishops and cardinals, proceeded, amid the acclamations of the people, from St. Peter's to the Lateran. It was just at this time that he heard that Frederick was on his way to Rome. Frederick secured the goodwill of Hadrian by delivering up the person of Arnold, but their harmony was nearly broken by Frederick the refusal of the emperor to hold the stirrup of and the the pope as he descended from his horse. This, Pope. however, was got over by the persuasion of his nobles. Frederick held the stirrup of the vagabond beggar boy, and as a reward received the kiss of peace, which had at first been refused. When he approached Rome, Frederick encamped with his army at Monte Mario, and in the dawn of the following day he accompanied the pope to the Leonine city, which r t, was garrisoned with a thousand armed men, and received in the church of St. Peter the sword, sceptre, and crown of the empire from the hands of the pope. This took place on June 18, 1155. The Romans in the capital heard with horror that a foreign king had received the imperial crown from a foreign pope without the consent of the Roman people, and without swearing to obey the laws of the city. In a hot summer noon a crowd of men passed over the bridge of St. Angelo towards St. Peter's. The Germans hastened to repulse them ; a terrible fight took place ; at least a thousand citizens were killed by German swords or drowned in the waters of the Tiber ; the rest, attacked by Henry the Lion in the rear, ran away, and fled either to the castle of St. Angelo or to the town. Two hundred were taken prisoners, and many were wounded. Arnold of Brescia had not long to wait for the fulfilment of his fate; he was given up to the praefect of the ad. 1190] FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 353 city, a nobleman from the neighbourhood of Viterbo who had long been at variance with the Roman republic. Arnold saAV the preparations for his execution, and when the halter was just being laid around his neck, he was executed asked whether he would renounce his errors and confess his sins. He answered, undismayed and full of con- fidence, that he considered his teaching wholesome, and would not be afraid to die for what he had taught. He then knelt, lifted his eyes and hands to heaven, and sighed, and com- mitted his soul to God without a word. Then he gave his body to the executioners, who performed their duty not without tears. When he had been strangled, his corpse was thrown into the fire and his ashes scattered over the Tiber, because it was feared that even his ashes might become an object of reverence. Frederick's second expedition to Italy took place in the Whitsuntide of the year 1158. A large army collected in the neighbourhood of Augsburg, drawn from g , more than twelve German nations. The bishops visit to and vassals of the empire hastened to show Italy — The their devotion to the imperial cause. The Greek Lombards ambassadors, who had tried to bring the towns of su ° dued - the coast under the dominion of Byzantium, were sent away with threatening words, and their Italian partisans were com- pelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the emperor. The army descended into the plains of Italy in five divisions. Some crossed the eastern passes of Friuli, some the western passage of the Splugen to Chiavenna and Como. The emperor himself, with the most important princes and bishops, passed through the Tyrol to the lake of Garda, followed by Henry the Lion with his Saxon warriors. The Italian vassals met them at Brescia, and the forces of the towns favourable to the empire — such as Pavia, Parma, and Cremona — joined the army, which now numbered 100,000 infantry and 15,000 cavalry. The first object of the emperor was the punishment of Milan, and siege was laid to the capital of Lombardy at the beginning of August. The blockade continued for several weeks, with much brave fighting on either side, until peace was made by the intervention of Count Guido of Bianclrate, who was loved and honoured by the people, yet was the head of the German party in Milan. The Milanese made a treaty by which they bound themselves to recognise the independence of Lodi and Como, to give up all imperial property and all Z 354 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to rights of supremacy, to take the oath of allegiance to the German sovereign, to pay a fine of 9000 marks in silver, to give up 300 citizens as hostages, and to build a fortress. Upon this the emperor withdrew his ban, and promised to lead his army away, and to abstain from any further punishment. It was arranged that the city should be governed by consuls, chosen by itself, but that their appointment should be con- firmed by the emperor. The submission of the town was consummated on September 8. The whole body of the citizens came out of the gates, in humble clothing with bare feet — first the clergy, with crosses in their hands ; then, the consuls and the knights, each carrying a bare sword on his back, and last of all, the citizens, with halters around their necks. When they reached the camp, passing through the line of German warriors, they threw themselves down before Frederick, who was seated upon his throne, acknowledged their fault, and prayed for pardon. Frederick answered them with courteous words, advised them to be obedient for the future, and then set all the prisoners free. Even the Germans wept when they saw the meeting between the prisoners and their friends. Frederick then went to Monza, where he wore the iron crown of Italy, and was able to send a large part of the army home, including the Bohemians and Hungarians. The imperial banner now waved on the highest towers of Milan, and Lombardy seemed to be at peace. After this, in November 1158, a diet was held on the Iloncalian Plain, to settle once for all the rights of the emperor and the different classes of the empire Rtmcaelia * n -^aly. For this purpose, two deputies were sent from fourteen Lombard towns, who were to discuss these questions with four of the most famous jurists of the university of Bologna. It was useless, however, to argue with the master of so many legions, or to recall the fact that many of the powers previously held by the Lombards, Caro- lingians, and Germans who had borne rule in Italy had passed into other hands — into those of bishops or of communes. The Italians had no alternative but to acknowledge that those rights now belonged to the emperor. In the most solemn manner, all the clerical and civil princes who were present, as well as the consuls of the towns, gave back their rights to the emperor. There is no doubt that this created a different state of things from what had actually existed up to this time, and reduced Italy to the state of a vassal kingdom. Since the a.d. 1190] FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 355 time of Otto the Great, no ruler had appeared in Italy with such power as Frederick possessed, after the diet of Roncaglia. Yet it was clear that, although an outward peace had been secured, passions still glowed under the ashes. Frederick had not realised the strength of the new form of public life which had grown up out of the ruins of the past, setting up popular officers in rivalry to those deputed by the emperor. But the spiritual power of the church, and the love of freedom in the towns, were antagonists which, though for the moment bent, could not be entirely subdued. He found evidence of this in the resistance of Genoa, which he only punished by the imposition of a fine. He found it also in the policy of Pope Hadrian IV., who refused to submit himself, and claimed as his own independent dominion not only the country sur- rounding Rome, but some districts in the north, as k well as the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. The strongest resistance, however, came from Milan itself. When, in the spring of 1159, the commissioners came to Milan to nominate consuls on the basis of the deci- sions of Roncaglia, and a podesta to represent the Resistance emperor, the citizens objected that they had the right of choosing their own masters. The dispute grew warm, and a popular rising was the result ; stones were thrown at the palace where the imperial commissioners were lodged, and they had some difficulty in saving themselves. They went to Frederick's camp, which was in the neighbourhood of Turin, and represented matters in their worst light. The result was that Milan was again placed under the imperial ban ; the property of the citizens might be plundered with impunity, their persons enslaved, and their town destroyed. Milan was so little affected by these threats that on the same day it undertook an expedition against the castle of Trezzo, which still stands, surrounded by the rushing Adda, and compelled the imperial garrison to submit. But the vengeance of the emperor was not long delayed. First turning his arms against the little city of Crema, which had risen in revolt, and rasing it to the ground, he marched on Milan, which was the centre of the opposition. The struggle lasted for two years, but the city yielded at last in March 1162. The whole of that month was spent in inflicting indignities upon the conquered rebels. On March 1, the great waggon called the Caroccio, with its white banner, was given up. The flags were laid at the emperor's feet, and the keys of the town 356 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to given to him. On March 6 appeared the citizens themselves, high and low, with cords around their necks and ashes on their heads. They fell on their knees and cried D * tr ed l°ud for pardon , holding crosses in their out- stretched hands. Frederick chose from the consuls, the knights, and the most important citizens 400 hostages, and compelled the whole people to take the oath of unconditional ohedience. On March 26, orders were issued that all the in- habitants should leave the town with their property, and should betake themselves to four open fields ten miles distant from each other. We may imagine the misery and despair of the wretched people, as they left their beloved town, the scene of their happi- ness, their freedom, their prosperity, and their memories, to seek a refuge at a distance. But the worst was yet to come. Milan, which was the centre of all the disturbance, the seat of republican freedom, which had espoused the side of the banished Pope Alexander, was to drink the cup of degrada- tion to the dregs. Orders were given to Pavia, Oomo, Lodi, Cremona, and Novara to sweep all traces of Milan from the surface of the earth. The haughty town, the flower of Italy, was to fall in dust and ashes. A legend says that the emperor himself drove a plough over the place where Milan had stood, and sowed salt in the furrows, that it might be desolate for ever. The emigrants saw the pillars of smoke and fire, which marked the ruin of their houses and public buildings. The churches and the palaces of the nobles alone resisted the power of the flames ; the wall and towers, and everything which could assist the strength of the town, were torn down, and the ditches were filled up. In this way did the Lombard cities who favoured the emperor fulfil their vengeance and their hatred. The traveller on the railway between Milan and Lecco sees on the left-hand side a slender bell tower which marks the ■Phe monastery of Pontida. Here, five years later, Lombard in 1167, the representatives of several Lombard League. towns, some already belonging to the league of Verona, promised by oaths and other symbols to remain faithful to each other, and to drive out injustice and violence. This was the beginning of the Lombard League. They had no desire to break their allegiance to the emperor, but merely to set limits to his power. One of their chief objects was the restoration of Milan, and the calling back into their ancient home its inhabitants, who were still living in the open fields. Among the most important members of the league were — a.d. 1190] FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 357 Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, Treviso, Brescia, Ber- gamo, Piacenza, and Mantua. Above all, Cremona, hitherto most faithful to the emperor, led the movement. Lodi re- sisted until it was compelled to join by force. Frederick appeared again in Pavia to put down the cities, but his army was decimated by a terrible plague, and he was compelled to retire in the next year. The Lombard League took advan- tage of this to organise and strengthen itself, and it was joined by the towns of Parma, Modena, and Bologna, which lay in the Aemilian Plain. The league was further strengthened by an alliance with the pope, and the town of Alessandria, in the neighbourhood of the battle-field of Marengo, remains at the present day a memorial of this alliance, bearing the name of its founder, Pope Alexander III. It was built where the Bormida flows into the Tanaro, close to the frontiers of Pavia and Montferrat. Its position was very strong, and it was pro- tected by earthworks. It formed a bulwark of liberty, and a protection against the Germans. Migration to it became so popular that only a year after its foundation it could send 15,000 armed citizens into the field. In this way almost all the cities in Lombardy and Venetia, and some in the Romagna, became members of the league, either freely or by compulsion, and some of the feudal nobility were forced to join it. All the members bound themselves to be true to each other, and never to make a separate peace with the Hohenstauffens or their allies. Milan, which had been again surrounded with walls and gates, and had received new vigour from its misfortunes, stood at the head of the patriotic movement. Frederick bided his time, and in the autumn of 1174 he crossed the Alps for the fifth time, passing into Lombardy by the way of Susa and Turin. He had hoped to R e t urn of surprise his adversaries ; but the bad weather and Frederick — difficulties about food, and the bravery of the Battle of enemy, caused much delay. The imperial army Legnano. lay before Alessandria for four winter months. Floods had turned the country into a broad marsh, and the Germans were on the point of retiring without having effected their object, when reinforcements arrived from Germany. Philip of Cologne, the count of Flanders, and the archbishop of Magdeburg came to Frederick's assistance ; but all was in vain, and the mighty emperor had to retire towards Como. The great battle of Legnano took place on May 29, 1176. At first the Germans were victorious ; the emperor, dressed in shining armour, was 358 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to visible to all, with his banner-bearer by his side ; he broke through one of the enemy's wings, and compelled it to yield, but the centre was composed of Milanese, who, under the name of "The Company of Death,'' had sworn to conquer or to die. They resisted in a solid square, and with the " Sacred Company," who protected the Caroccio, stood firm as a wall, immovable, not to be pierced. For some time the brave citizens withstood the shock of the armour-plated knights ; then they took the offensive, and pressed with such violence upon the foe that they broke through the ranks of the imperial army, supported by an attack of the Brescians upon the flank. Frederick's banner- bearer fell, pierced by an arrow, and in the tumult of the battle Frederick himself fell from his horse and disappeared from view. A cry was raised, " The emperor has fallen ! " and terror broke the resistance of the Germans. Soon the flight was general, and the defeat complete. The allies who had come to help Frederick from Como were killed, almost to a man ; a rich booty fell into the hands of the conquerors, including the shield and lance of the emperor. But in vain did they seek the corpse of their enemy among the fallen ; they learned, to their great disappointment, that he had escaped by cross-roads to Pavia. After the battle of Legnano, peace was made between the emperor and the pope at Venice, where a congress sat from May to August 1177. But the final peace Constance between the Lombard cities and the emperor was only concluded on June 29, 1183, in the diet of Constance. It resulted in a complete victory for the towns. The emperor renounced all the " Regalien " or regal privileges which he had hitherto claimed ; he acknowledged the right of the confederated cities to levy armies, to fortify themselves, and to exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction. The consuls were to be chosen by the citizens, and were then to be invested with the privileges of imperial vicars, which were to be re- newed every five years. The confederacy was allowed to extend itself for the purpose of maintaining these rights. On the other hand, the cities agreed to take the oath of allegiance to the emperor, to recognise his suzerainty, and to pay him the sum of 15,000 imperial ducats which he demanded as due to him. Whilst Fredeiick was occupied with the affairs of Italy, Henry the Lion, the great Guelph, the rival of the Hohen- stauffens, was extending his dominions in Germany, by the addition to them of Pomerania and Mecklenburg and other Slavic territories, so that his power extended from the Baltic ad. 1190] FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 359 to the Alps, from the lower Rhine to the Oder. He treated the princes and bishops who were his neighbours in a manner which necessitated the interference of the Emperor Frederick Frederick. This produced a bad feeling between and Henry them, which was intensified by the refusal of the Lion, the duke to assent to the election of Frederick's son Henry, then five years old, as German king. Another cause of difference came between them. The head of the Guelph family (Welf VI.) was very extravagant, and offered to sell his hereditary possessions to Henry for a considerable sum of money. The duke, however, refused, expecting that these lands would eventually come to him by inheritance. Welf then offered them to the emperor, who, to the great disgust of Henry, purchased them. The consequence of this was that Henry did not give the emperor efficient assistance in the campaign of Legnano. When Frederick returned to Germany after his defeat, his first occupation was to settle matters with Henry the Lion, whose overbearing conduct had raised many enemies against him. He summoned him four times to appear before the diet to give an account of his proceedings, and four times he refused to come. The imperial ban was therefore issued against him, and his possessions were divided amongst other princes. Part of Saxony was given to Bernhard of Anhalt, son of Albert the Bear, but Westphalia was divided from it, and added as a dukedom to the archbishopric of Cologne. Styria and the Tyrol were separated from Bavaria, and the remaining provinces were given to Otto of Wittelsbach, so that the house of Wittelsbach now reigns in Bavaria. Otto had materially assisted Frederick in his Italian campaigns. In the first he had rescued him from serious danger in the pass of Rivoli, when the Veronese endeavoured to intercept him on his return, and in the second he contributed largely to the conquest of Crema. The sturdy old Lion had eventually to submit to the superior power of the emperor ; the ban was removed at Erfurt in 1181, and Henry was left in possession of Brunswick and Liineburg, but he was ordered to absent himself from Germany for three years. He spent these at the court of his father-in-law, Henry II. of England. In this country a third son, William, was born to him, who became the progenitor of the Guelphic house of Hanover and Brunswick, from which the royal house of England is descended. After the conclusion of the treaty of Constance, Frederick made in 1183 a sixth expedition into Italy, and received a brilliant 360 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1152 to reception from the Milanese, whom he had treated so badly. In 1186 his son Henry was married to Constance, the daughter of Roger II., and heir to her nephew, William the Good, king of Naples and Sicily. Having arranged his family affairs, and reduced his empire to a condition of comparative peace, he was able, at the age of sixty-seven, to take part in the third crusade, which was now beginning. In 1183 the famous Saladin, having suppressed the khali- fate of Cairo, had become the sole Moslem ruler in Egypt and Syria alike. The crusading kingdom, itself torn Palestine ^y faction, and now threatened for the first time by a united and aggressive foe, was saved for a moment by the victory of Ramleh in 1184. But its power was finally broken at Hittin, on Lake Gennesareth, on July 5, 1187, and Jerusalem fell into Moslem hands. The crosses were pulled down, but the population was kindly treated by the magnanimous Saladin. The news of the ap ure o capture of Jerusalem was received by Western Europe with a thrill of horror. Crowds of warriors streamed towards the Holy Land, from the fiords of Scandinavia to the Gulf of Naples. In England and France, those who stayed at home had to pay a tax known as the Saladin tithe. Frederick Barbarossa, who had taken part as a young man in the second crusade, now determined to gild the declining years of his illustrious life by a great act of duty and self-sacrifice. The crusaders reached Constantinople in good order and discipline, and cowed into submission the weak Byzantine The Third emperor, Isaac Angelus. They then defeated Crusade, the sultan of Iconium, and punished him for his 119 °- treachery. But at this point the great emperor died, being drowned in the mountain torrent Selef, the ancient Calycadnus, either when crossing it on horseback or when Death of bathing in it, as accounts differ. His second Frederick son, Frederick of Swabia, succeeded to the com- Barbarossa. mand of the German troops, and led them by the way of Antioch to meet Guy of Lusignan, who was at this time king of Jerusalem. Frederick died at the siege of Acre in 1191, just after he had founded the Order of Teutonic Knights. The German army was wasting away when the kings of England and France, Richard Cceur-de-Lion and Philip Augustus, came to Syria by sea, and captured Acre on July 12, 1191. Richard performed prodigies of valour, and a.d. lieu] FREDERICK BARBAROSSA 361 showed himself a worthy antagonist to Saladin, but Jerusalem was not recovered. Eventually a treaty was made with Saladin, by which the sea-coast between Joppa and Tyre was made accessible to Christians, and they were allowed to visit the holy sepulchre. On his way to Palestine, Richard had conquered the island of Cyprus from the Byzantine emperor. He now gave it to Guy of Lusignan as a compensation for the loss of Jerusalem, and it remained in his family for three centuries. Saladin himself died on March 3, 1193, leaving an immortal name in history. CHAPTER VII. THE EMPIRE, A. D. 1190-1250— THE FOURTH CRUSADE, A.D. 1204. Frederick was succeeded as emperor by his son Henry VI., who reigned for seven years, and had many difficulties with Henry the Lion. He made two expeditions into y ' Italy, in the first of which he was crowned by Pope Celestine at Rome, while in the second he set his wife Constance free from imprisonment at Salerno — where, after being deprived of her duchy, she had been locked up by the Norman Tancred, an illegitimate scion of the royal line — and established his own power as king in Naples and Sicily. He treated Tancred's family with such cruelty that he incurred the censure of the pope. On his return to Germany he indulged in far- reaching but impracticable plans for extending the empire and making it hereditary in his family. He desired to include in it Apulia and Sicily, which his wife had brought him as a dowry, and to unite the two empires of West and East ; for which purpose he prepared to undertake a crusade, but died suddenly at Messina on September 28, 1197, at the age of thirty-two. As he left a son too young to be chosen emperor, the Ghibel- lines elected Philip of Swabia, the third son of Barbarossa, while the Guelfs put forward Otto IV., the second son of Henry the Lion, as king, which led to a ten years' civil war (1198-1208). In the meantime, the fourth crusade, which was preached by Fulk of Neuilly, was undertaken at the instigation of the great pope, Innocent III., in 1204 — the principal leaders i e rourui De j n g Baldwin of Flanders and the marquis of Montferrat. The event, however, turned out quite differently from what was expected. The French crusaders found themselves unable to pay Venice the amount promised for the transport of their forces, so the doge, Dandolo, deter- mined to commute the balance for assistance in the conquest of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, which had been wrested from Venice by the king of Hungary. This achieved, the crusaders were next urged to undertake an expedition against Constanti- nople, where a palace revolution was in progress. The Emperor Isaac Angelus had been dethroned and blinded by his brother 362 a.d. 1190-1250] THE EMPIRE 363 Alexius III., and the victim had sent his son Alexius to ask help of the Venetians, with tempting offers of assistance in the crusade in return. Accordingly, in spite of papal interdict and excommunication, Constantinople was besieged, and the blind Isaac replaced on his throne. But the people detested the foreign intruders, and rose under Alexius Ducas, so that Isaac died of terror and his son was strangled. Thereupon the crusaders resolved to conquer Constantinople for ^ & Latin themselves, which they accomplished, storming Conquest of the city and destroying many buildings and Constanti- precious manuscripts. Alexius Ducas was killed, n °Pl e - and Baldwin became the first Latin emperor of the East ; but his direct authority was limited to the capital (outside the Venetian quarter), Adrianople, most of Thrace, and islands in the eastern Aegean. The marquis of Montferrat — as king of Thessalonica — ruled Macedonia and part of Thessaly. Princi- palities, duchies, marquisates, counties, and lordships were allotted to other crusaders. Above all, Venice secured full sovereignty over many islands and coast settlements of great commercial value, the Doge thus becoming " lord of a quarter and half a quarter of the empire." Innocent III., though condemning the sack, sanctioned the secular arrangements, and himself appointed a Latin patriarch, in the vain hope that the schism of East and West would now be healed. We left Germany disturbed by civil war between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, Otto IV. representing the one and Philip of Swabia the other. Otto was at first successful, otto IV. and but the party of Philip was gradually strengthened Philip of by the adhesion of Otto's elder brother, the Pals- Swabia. grave Henry, the archbishop of Cologne, and the king of Bohemia, so that he was himself elected a second time, and was crowned by the archbishop in his cathedral. There was a prospect of peace being restored because Innocent III. was prepared to recognise him, but in 1208 he was murdered in Bamberg for reasons of private vengeance. Otto did his best to arrange the quarrel by betrothing himself to Beatrice, the daughter of Philip, who was only ten years old, and marrying her four years after. Innocent III. was perhaps the greatest of the medieval popes ; certainly the commanding position that the papacy obtained at that time was due to his energy and ability, and to that of his predecessor Hildebrand. He strove to place the spiritual power of the tiara before all earthly crowns, to make himself master over all kings and princes, and he succeeded 364 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. noo to in making the kingdoms of England and Aragon tributary to the Holy See. He now ordered Otto to submit himself to a new election, and acknowledged him as king of Lombardy and emperor. But a new force was arising in Europe in the person of the Hohenstauffen Frederick IT., the gifted son of Henry VI., to whose career we must now devote our attention. Just at the time when the power of Henry VI. was at its height, having been strengthened by the destruction of his Norman enemies at Salerno, he heard that his p ir , . . ,, wife Constance, after eight years of childless union, had borne him a son at Jesi, in the mark of Ancona, on St. Stephen's Day, 1194, an event that seemed to promise him the peaceful possession of Apulia and Sicily. It had been intended at first to call him Oonstantine, but the name was afterwards changed to Frederick. The child was elected king of Germany in 1196, and he was to be crowned shortly afterwards ; but on September 28 in the following year, Henry died in Sicily and was buried in Palermo, at the age of thirty- two, leaving behind him the child of three. Philip, of whom we have already spoken — a noble character, well worthy of his father — became guardian of his nephew, but could not refuse the crown himself, as it would be unsafe to leave Germany in the hands of an infant. In May 1198, Constance brought her son from Foligno to Palermo, and had him crowned king of Sicily. The same year Pope Celestine died, aged ninety, and on the day of his funeral the cardinal-deacon Lothar, of the wealthy house of Conti, was unanimously elected pope, Innocent III. and tQok tbe ^^ q£ Innocent jj L We have already mentioned him ; he had been carefully educated, had studied theology and philosophy in the schools of Rome, Paris, and Bologna, and had been created cardinal at the age of twenty-nine by Pope Clement III., but was kept in the background by Celes- tine III., perhaps to his great advantage, because he was able to mature his mind and character in solitude and reflection. Thus, at the age of thirty-seven, he assumed the tiara, — a man of pure morals, of simple life, of strict piety, — a powerful preacher, a learned lawyer, a statesman, and a born ruler, — to govern a world that was in dire need of a strong hand to control it. His objects were to free the papacy from imperial control, and Italy from foreigners and feudal dissension, to base the power of the papacy on a territorial foundation, to form a great confederacy of the Christian world with the pope at its head, and thus to follow the example of Gregory VII. in a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 365 making the papacy at once the national champion of Italy and the greatest power in the world. On January 22, after being crowned in St. Peter's, he made his solemn progress to the Lateran, and on the following day received an oath of allegiance from the praefect of the city, who had been before regarded as a vassal of the empire. He also put an end to the power of the republican commune which sat in the Capitol, by taking into his own hands the nomination of the senators, while he made all the princes of the sea-coast and the Sabine mountains acknowledge him as their master. Further, he confirmed his authority over the heritage of Countess Matilda of Tuscany, over the march of Ancona, the Romagna, and the duchy of Ravenna. He stretched out his hand to seize all the attributes of sovereignty, both ecclesiastical or lay, which the weakness of pope or emperor had left in the dust. He did more than Alexander III. had done ; he placed himself at the head of a Tuscan League, more powerful than the league of Lombard}', to which he also extended his protection, and received the homage of Perugia, Spoleto, Assisi, Foligno, and other towns, Pisa alone remaining devoted to the emperor. The child Frederick also received Sicily and innocent southern Italy from his hands, having to pay and Frede- a tribute of a thousand pieces of gold. Constance r i ck H. died on November 27, 1198, leaving her infant son to the guardianship of the pope, the archbishop of Palermo, and the ambitious chancellor, Walter of Troja, an arrangement which was deeply resented by the Normans of Sicily and Apulia. The pope first intended to marry the child Frederick to the daughter of the king of Aragon, but the scheme was delayed. He provided his ward with a broad and generous education, and did his best to give effect to his remarkable natural gifts. In August 1209, Frederick, who was now fourteen, was declared of age, and was married to the sister of Peter of Aragon, not to the younger sister, Sanchia, who Frederick had at first been intended for him, but the elder, elected Constance, the widowed queen of Hungary, who Emperor. was ten years older than her husband. When Frederick began to reign in his own name few cities obeyed him, his barons retained their independence, and swarms of Saracens infested the mountains. But the boy was equal to the occasion. He now heard that he had been elected king in Germany, and determined to accept the offer. He sailed from Messina in March 1212, leaving his wife as regent for his little child 366 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1190 to Henry, who had been crowned king of Sicily. Reaching Rome, he sailed from Ostia to Genoa, and, passing by Verona and Trent, crossed the Alps to Chnr, and reached Constance, the gates of which were opened him by the bishop. Every one was charmed by the refined and handsome youth of seventeen summers, by his generosity and the splendid memories of his race. He was solemnly elected German king at Frankfort, on December 9, and was crowned two years afterwards in the cathedral of Mainz, where his uncle Philip had been married fifteen years before. The struggle between Otto IV. and Frederick, the Guelf and the Ghibelline, was one of European importance. Otto had Struggle increased his power by marrying the daughter between °f the duke of Brabant, and he now showed that Frederick his courage and energy were unbroken. He an( * seized and imprisoned the archbishop of Masrde- rvii- TT7" - 1 - J. O burg, and laid waste the land of Thuringia, Saxony, and the Netherlands. An apparently small event brought about a European war. The duke of Brabant had attacked the bishop of Liege, who belonged to the Hohenstauffen party, and the altar of St. Lambert had been stained with blood. The bishop laid his ban upon the duke, and summoned counts and other feudal lords to his assistance. The kings of France and England took part in the conflict, and Frederick naturally helped his French ally. Otto commanded an army of 100,000 men, mainly English and Netherlander, and burned to avenge himself on the French king, Philip Augustus, the rival of his uncles Richard and John of England. The struggle was decided on July 27, 1214, at the bridge of Bouvines, Eouvines situated between Tournay and Lille, by one of the decisive battles of the world, in which the French chivalry and the banner of the oriflamme gained a signal victory. The counts of Flanders and Boulogne and the earl of Salisbury were taken prisoners. Otto fled to Cologne, where he was sup- ported by the alms of England, his power being henceforth restricted to his paternal inheritance of Brunswick. Frederick extended his conquests over the lower Rhine and the Nether- lands, and even as far as Denmark, and on July 24, 1215, just a year after the battle, was crowned at Aachen by the archbishop of Mainz, acting as legate to the pope. Otto passed the remain- ing three years of his life at Brunswick, dying on May 10, 1218, and a year later his brother, the count palatine, purchased security for his own possessions by surrendering the insignia a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 367 of the empire to Frederick, so that the Hohenstauffen was now without a rival. In 1216, Pope Innocent III. died, and was succeeded by Honorius III., of the house of Savelli. Before his death he re- cognised the mendicant orders of the Franciscans L as t Years and Dominicans, which were further established of Innocent by his successor, and to which were afterwards HI. added the Carmelites and the Augustinians. Innocent con- tinued in his passionate zeal for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre to the end of his life, and he persuaded not only the youthful Frederick but the kings of Hungary and England to take the cross. Nor was he deterred by the terrible example of the Children's Crusade, which discredited the enterprise by a catastrophe of indescribable horror. About the year 1212, thousands of children, boys and girls, young men and young women, left France and Germany for the Holy Land, led by a few priests and monks. They took ship in the south of France, but came to a terrible end, — some dying of starvation and ex- haustion, many more being taken prisoners by sea or land and sold as slaves, very few surviving to reach their home. What is known as the fifth crusade took place in 1217, but produced no result. It was led by King Andrew II. of Hungary and Leopold VII. of Austria, and other German princes. John of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, and the legate Pelagius stormed Damietta, at the mouth of the Nile, in 1219, but soon had to surrender it. The coronation of Frederick in St. Peter's took place in November 23, 1220, amidst a large crowd of princes from both Germany and Italy. He received the cross from Frederick the bishop of Asti, as a sign that he was still crowned true to the vow of crusade which he had taken at a * Rome. Aachen. The catastrophe of Damietta followed next year. The news produced a feeling of dismay in Europe, such lofty hopes being followed by such a terrible disaster. Honorius was more anxious than ever for a crusade, and in March 1223 a congress was held at Florentino. Frederick solemnly promised in the presence of the pope, the king and patriarch of Jerusalem, and the Masters of the three great military orders, to sail for Syria on or before St. John's Day, 1225. He had lost his wife, Constance, in 1222, and it was now arranged that he should marry Iolanthe, the eldest daughter of John of Brienne, who had married Iolanthe of Montferrat, the heiress of Jerusalem. Frederick spent these two years in ordering the affairs of Apulia 36$ A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1190 to and Sicily. He got rid of various nobles, exiling and confis- cating the property of the counts of Aqnila, Caserta, and San Severino. He pursued a similar policy in Sicily, making war against the Saracens in the mountains, hanging Ibn Abed and his sons, and transplanting his prisoners to Lucera in Apulia, where lie founded a military colony, which became in time devoted to his interests, and furnished for him a bodyguard of 20,000 warriors, who remained faithful to the house of Hohen- stauffen until its extinction. But the pope did not approve of the Moslem cry of prayer being proclaimed in the mosques of Lucera or of the Koran being read in them. Meanwhile the preparations for the crusade went on. John of Brienne travelled through France and England, but could Prepara- nnc l no su PP or t : Philip Augustus and his suc- tions for cessor, Louis VIII., were occupied with the sup- a new pression of the Albigenses, and Henry III. was Crusade. a m i n0 r. Nor was he more successful in Castile. Frederick himself was full of zeal, but asked leave to defer the expedition, promising at San Germano that he would go to the Holy Land in August 1227, and remain there for two years, subject to a fine for failure of contract. If he did not fulfil these conditions he was to be excommunicated. He was now married to Iolanthe in Brindisi. He assumed the title of king of Jerusalem, which Iolanthe's father did not approve of, and bad feeling arose between the two families. Frederick spent the interval in confirming his authority in Sicily, assisted by his faithful adviser, Pietro delle Vigne, whose political success did not save him from being put into hell by Dante. But the increase of the emperor's power and authority, and his excellent government, only stimulated the jealousy of the pope. The Lombard League began to raise its head, and favoured the power of John of Brienne in Italy at the expense of Frederick. The virtuous Honorius III. died in March 1227, and was succeeded by Cardinal Ugolino Conti, of the family of Innocent III., who took the title of Gregory IX. He had Gregory IX been a staunch supporter of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and, notwithstanding his advanced years, promised a vigorous reign. His first care was to exact from Frederick the fulfilment of the bond given at San Ger- mano to prepare for the crusade, which was to set out from Brindisi in August. A large number of crusaders were collected there, and Frederick exhibited great energy. But a terrible fever broke out in the heat of a Calabrian autumn. The sons a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 369 of the north melted like snow under the rays of the southern sun. Frederick did indeed despatch 40,000 pilgrims by sea, and followed himself on September 8, accompanied T ne by the landgrave of Thuringia, the husband of Crusade the sainted Elizabeth ; but an attack of fever com- abandoned, pelled them both to return, and three days after his landing the landgrave was a corpse. The doctor insisted upon Frederick's renouncing the expedition, and going to be cured in the baths of Pozzuoli. This broke up the expedition. The fleet returned, and the crusaders dispersed. The pope was beside himself with wrath. Without waiting for explanations, he pronounced at Anagni a decree of ex- communication against the emperor. This was Frederick the beginning of a new policy for the papacy, excom- which set itself to uproot the authority of the municated. Hohenstauffens. Gregory issued a circular to the bishops defend- ing his action. Frederick's explanations were not listened to, although he promised to sail for the Holy Land in May. The ban was renewed on November 17, and it was declared that the landgrave had died of poison. Frederick replied to the attack with characteristic nobility. In a manifesto to the king of England, he described the dangers to be appre- hended from the increasing power of the hierarchy and the restless policy of the pope. He cited the examples of the count of Toiilouse and of King John of England, drawing a moving picture of the demoralisation of the church, and contrasting it with the purity and simplicity of the early Christians. Gregory put all the places in which Frederick might reside under an interdict, so that divine service could not be performed in them, and few of the clergy dared to disobey. But Frederick had supporters in Rome, of whom the Frangipani were the leaders, and the Ghibellines were in fact so strong that, when Gregory renewed the ban on Maundy Thursday, the citizens rose against him and compelled him to withdraw to Viterbo. Frederick continued his preparations for the crusade with- out troubling himself about the action of the pope, who could hardly prevent an enterprise which the papacy Frederick had always declared to be of the greatest import- starts for ance to Christianity. While keeping his Easter Palestine. at Barletta, he heard of the death of Almuazzam of Damascus, who had been the bitterest enemy of the Christians. A postponement was caused by the death of the Empress Iolanthe 2 A 370 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1190 to in giving birth to her son Conrad, but Frederick started on June 28, under the ban of the Holy Father, so that a Mohammedan said that he sailed for Jerusalem not as a crusader but as a pirate. After a visit to Cyprus, he reached Ascalon on September 7, and was well received by the Knights Tem- plars and the Knights of Saint John. But they refused to give him the kiss of peace or to dine with him, because he was excommunicated ; indeed, the action of the pope soon began to produce its effect. The clergy denounced him, the military orders refused their obedience. The Venetians wavered, and the sultan of Egypt hesitated to confirm the treaty for the surrender of the holy places, which he had already agreed to. Frederick was preparing to march to Joppa when two Franciscan friars came to Ptolemais, telling the patriarch and the heads of the religious orders that they were Frederick in to • e p rec l er i c k n0 assistance. Frederick had, Palestine. ^ • • i 4.1 ±i. *. on his arrival, sent a message to the pope that he would not return until he had won Jerusalem back for Christianity, but the pope was more anxious for the destruction of the Hohenstauffen than he was for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The consequence was that the patriarch and the heads of the orders refused to assist him unless he left his own name out of the expedition, to which he mag- nanimously assented. Sultan Al Kamil, who was in camp a day's journey from Joppa, had conceived a great admiration for Frederick's splendid qualities and a corre- ?h e ^, ty 1 ^ ritl1 sponding contempt for those who were endeavouring to destroy him. Therefore in February 18, 1221, he made an agreement with him by which the mosque of Omar should remain in the possession of the Moslems, while the rest of Jerusalem, with Bethlehem and Nazareth Jand the coast from Joppa to Sidon, should be surrendered to the Christians. The patriarch bitterly opposed this statesman- like arrangement, which had been made, he said, without his knowledge. He wrote to the pope that Frederick was at heart a heathen and a Mohammedan, that he led an un- christian life with singing and dancing women, whom he had received from the unbelievers, and that his bodyguard was formed of Saracens. Frederick paid no attention to this ; he entered Jerusalem with the acclamation of the Christian popula- tion, visited the Holy Sepulchre as catholic emperor on March 18, 1229, dressed in the imperial robes, and, taking the crown a.d. 12501 THE EMPIRE 371 of Jerusalem from the altar, placed it on his head. The patriarch answered this by laying Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre under an interdict, so that no religious service could be held there so long as Frederick remained ; therefore, after two clays, he left the Holy City and withdrew to Joppa and Acre. The quarrel now assumed the character of a civil war. The pope wished to obtain the consent of the king of France to raise an army for recovering the Holy Land, which would have broken the treaty between Frederick. Frederick and Al Kamil. Frederick ordered the crusaders to leave the Holy Land, as the object of the expedi- tion was now fully accomplished, and on Palm Sunday went so far as to pull down some of the friars from the pulpit and flog them through the streets. On May 1, 1229, after entrusting the kingdom to the care of the bailiff of Sidon, he went quietly on board ship, and sailed for Italy by way of Cyprus. He found that, in his absence, Gregory had released his Apulian subjects from their allegiance, and had excommuni- cated his friends. He had also used the money collected for the recovery of Jerusalem to conduct a crusade against Frederick, and had enlisted crusaders for this purpose. He had stirred up Frederick's enemies, th^Kevs Thomas of Celano, Roger of Aquila, John of Brienne, Cardinal Colonna, and the papal chaplain, Pandulf of Anagni, to attack Rainald of Spoleto, whom the emperor had left behind as viceroy. The villages of the plain were devastated by civil war, and Benevento was conquered. The " Army of the Keys," as it was called, marched into the Romagna, and stirred up strife between the Guelfs and Ghibel- lines in northern Italy. Florence, Ravenna, and Imola fought against Modena, Parma, and Cremona. The Milanese attacked the count of Savoy ; Rainald with difficulty protected Sulmona ; John of Brienne blockaded the coast, hoping to destroy Frederick and to recover the crown of Jerusalem for himself. It was reported that Frederick was a prisoner or dead when suddenly, to the consternation of his enemies, he arrived at Brindisi. The pope soon found that his army melted away from him, but he would hear nothing of peace, and met Frederick's offers by a fresh ban. Frederick, however, was too strong for him, and advanced from victory to victory. Louis IX. of France remained neutral, and by the autumn he had recovered all his possessions with the exception of Gaeta, and the way to 372 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. lino to Homo lay open to him. On July 23, 1230, a peace be- tween the emperor and the pope was concluded at San Treaty Germano, by which the pope should keep his of San temporal possessions and Frederick should be Germano. released from the ban. The two enemies signed the treaty at Anagni, and Gregory called the emperor his beloved son. After the treaty of San Germano, Frederick set to work to organise his kingdom. In Sicily, he changed the feudal Frederick's state into a centralised bureaucratic government. Imperial In Germany, he exalted the royal power over Policy. the freedom of the towns, but left much authority in the hands of the nobles. In northern Italy, he pursued a similar policy, and increased everywhere the power of the local laws over the democratic government of the cities. The emperor was the head over everything. But the church was opposed to him, and became, from this time, the assertor of freedom. The connection of Frederick with Germany was fatal to his plans. If he could have been king of Italy without being king of Germany, the unity of the peninsula might have been consummated six hundred years before it was eventually brought about. The treaty of San Germano was followed by five years of peaceful government, and was a great benefit for Christianity. Adminis- Gregory ratified the treaty which Frederick had tration of made with Al Kamil, and the kingdom of J erusalem Sicily and was left in peace, Christians having free access to Italy. the holy places. With the help of Pietro delle Vigne, Frederick elaborated a fresh constitution for Sicily, and gave it the character of a modern state. He committed justice to four great judges, with a Grand Justiciar at their head. He did away with ordeal and judicial combat, and brought order into harmony with ideas of progress. For administration he created an enlightened bureaucracy. He favoured the development of agriculture, of commerce, and of the army and fleet. He applied the soundest principles to the collection of taxes, although the circumstances of the times did not favour the introduction of free trade or the prohibition of monopolies. The huge revenue which he derived from Germany and Italy enabled him to maintain a brilliant court which would vie witli any contemporary court in splendour. His palaces were full of beautiful women, and he gave much attention to poetry, encouraging troubadours and minnesingers. The universities a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 373 which he established in Naples and Palermo vied in reputa- tion with the schools of Paris and Bologna, Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo. No emperor had had such large . possessions in gold and silver since the days of Charles the Great. But in his later years he became ex- travagant, and his government became oppressive to the people. Revolts arose and were sternly suppressed, not without shedding of blood. But long after Frederick's death Pope Clement IV. held up the government of the great Hohenstauffen as a model to Charles of Anjou. The country over which he ruled is still full of his works — his cathedrals, his castles, and his palaces, original in style, unrivalled in f-rcnitec- beauty, deserving far greater study and attention than they have received. They raise Italian Gothic to a worthy rivalry with her northern sister. Nothing can be more beautiful than the churches of Aquila and Tagliacozzo, with their twisted columns inlaid with mosaics and their blight and cheery interior. The castle of Alba is a masterpiece of strength and majesty; his palaces both in Italy and Sicily join to the exuberance of Eastern decoration the refinement of Italian taste. Even if Frederick had desired to separate Germany and Italy, he could not have clone so, and he kept before his eyes the ideal of an empire extending from the Baltic to the sea Tk e of Sicily, to hold the world in peace and obedience. Lombard He cultivated good relations with the Curia, and League. tried with its help to destroy the rebellious Lombards, who had not only renewed their league but had extended it by the addition of Mantua, Brescia, Ferrara, Vicenza, Padua, and Verona. In March 1232, he met his son Henry (VII.) at Aquila, and did his best to establish an enduring system of peace with his dominions on either side of the Alps. Henry was not an obedient son, and bore with impatience the subjection which his father naturally laid upon Frederick him. With the help of his brother-in-law, Duke Frederick of Austria, he endeavoured to strengthen his power by violent means, threatened Otto the Illustrious of Bavaria with war, and took his son Louis, a child of five years, as hostage. He destroyed the castles of recalcitrant vassals, who complained to the emperor, and attacked the margrave of Baden, whom he suspected of being too much devoted to his father. When Frederick heard of this, he was very wroth, and insisted on the hostages being restored. Henry was forced to submit, because 374 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1190 to Frederick was at this time on better terms than ever with the pope. In this manner Frederick secured the adhesion of the German princes to help him against the towns, and, pursuing a similar policy, he made an alliance with Ezzelino da Romano, a blood- thirsty and cruel tyrant, who might help him against the Lombard League. In 1224, a popular outbreak took place in Rome which compelled the pope and the cardinals to take refuge in Rieti, from which Gregory fulminated his ecclesiastical curses. The Romans plundered the palaces of the fugitives, and under their municipal banner attacked Velletri and Viterbo and threatened the patrimony of Saint Peter. There seemed a danger lest the work of Innocent III. should be undone. But the emperor assisted the pope in his time of need, and in May 1235 compelled the rebels to make peace. The unfilial conduct of Henry (VII.) led his father to consider the advisability of recognising his son Conrad as heir to the German crown, and Henry in his turn determined to revolt. It cannot be denied that Frederick paid less attention to Germany than to Italy, and there was much to be said for the separation of the two countries, as we have before remarked ; but it was not in Frederick's nature to consent to this partition, and Henry, with his Aveak and sensual character, was not the man to bring it about. Henry found himself deserted by those that he ex- pected to assist him, and in 1235 Frederick made an expedition into Germany, accompanied by his son Conrad, who bore the title of King of Jerusalem, and by his faithful councillor Hermann of Salza. Henry saw the uselessness of resistance, and submitted to his father. A diet was held at Worms on July 4, and Henry hoped that he might be forgiven, but when he knew that his father was determined to put his half-brother in his place he took refuge in his castle of Trifels, where he had possession of the royal insignia, and claimed the assistance of his friends in Germany and of the Lombard League. His plot was discovered, and he was arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Worms, which bore the picturesque name of Luginsland, from which he was removed to Heidelberg and placed in the custody of his bitter enemy, Otto of Bavaria. As he refused to submit, and his presence in Germany was thought dangerous, he was carried in the following year across the Alps. Frederick of Austria and the Lombards attempted to set him free, but without success. He was brought first to Aquila, and then to different fortresses in southern Italy, where he was kept in strict con- finement, and, after seven years of captivity, died without sub- a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 375 mission and without repentance. Frederick heard of his death with great sorrow. His wife Margaret returned to Germany, and went into a nunnery at Wiirzburg, dying in 1267. The fate of his two sons need not detain us. In the same year 1235 Frederick was married to his third wife, Isabella, a sister of Henry III. of England. The negotiations for the marriage were conducted by Pietro delle Frederick's Vigne, and the archbishop of Cologne and the duke third of Brabant conducted the bride from England. She Marriage, made her last prayer in her own country at the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury. She was received at Cologne with great splendour, and stayed there six weeks, until the emperor was ready to receive her. At the marriage, which was celebrated at Worms, there were present four kings, eleven dukes, thirty counts and marquises, and the ceremony was continued for four days. The bride and bridegroom then went to Mainz to attend the diet that was held there on August 15, to provide for the permanent settlement of the empire. Peace was made between the houses of Waibling and Guelf, Otto of Liineburg being made duke of Brunswick. Those that had supported Henry in his rebellion were forgiven, and the Diet of Mainz was perhaps the culminating point of Frederick's career. It was, however, necessary to settle matters with the Lombards, and, before he began this work, Frederick took care to have his son Conrad chosen king of Germany and crowned. On November 27, 1237, with the assistance of Ezzelino, he defeated the Battle of Lombards at Cortenuova, winning a complete Corte- victory, and capturing the sacred Caroccio. The nuova. dead and the prisoners amounted to 10,000, and among the last was Vieri Tiepolo, podesta of Milan, son of the doge of Venice. He decorated the triumph of the emperor, being tied to the mast of the Caroccio, which was drawn by a white elephant. Even the pope sent his congratulations to the emperor. On Epiphany Day of 1238, Frederick entered the imperial city of Pavia in triumph, having the young counts Albert and Rudolf of Hapsburg in his train, and a few Renewed weeks later the Empress Isabella bore him a son. Disputes But the Lombards were not yet subdued. The with the siege of Brescia lasted from August to October 1 238, P°P e - and failed — a prelude to further misfortunes. The ancient sympathy of the pope for the Lombards began to revive. Indeed, he became jealous of Frederick's success, and feared lest he should lose his authority over central Italy and Sicily. 376 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.». 1190 to The quarrel came to a head about Sardinia, the suzerainty of which the pope claimed for himself. After the death of Ubaldo Visconti, the lordship of the Sardinian districts of Torre and Galium came to his widow, who chose for her second husband Enzio, the handsome son of Frederick, now eighteen years of age, his father's living image, and dearer to him than his legitimate children. The pope strongly opposed this marriage, but the emperor insisted upon it, and invested his son, in feudal fashion, as vassal king of Sardinia under the imperial suzerainty. Gregory, therefore, encouraged by Frederick's failure at Brescia, made an alliance with Genoa and Venice to assist the Milanese in their struggle, and if possible to rouse the whole of Italy against the dreaded emperor. On Palm Sunday, 1239, the aged pope pronounced for a second time his ban against Frederick, " giving his body to Satan that Frederick n * s sou ^ m i8^ ^ e saved." His sons were released again from their allegiance, and any place where he Excom- might reside was held accursed. On the very day municated. on w hi c h this curse was pronounced, his faithful companion and friend, Hermann of Salza, who had spent his life in efforts to maintain peace between the pope and the emperor, died. He sought the aid of the doctors of Salerno in vain — they were unable to save him. The cause of the quarrel with the pope was not religious, but political. The pope was possessed by the principles of papal government which had first been set forth by Hildebrand and afterwards extended and developed by Innocent III. The papacy was to possess spiritual authority over the whole Christian world and temporal authority over Italy. Of this hegemony the temporal possessions of the church were to form the solid basis : southern Italy and Sicily were to recognise the pope as their suzerain, Umbria and Tuscany were to acknowledge his supremacy, and the republican communes of the north were to be united with him by ties of friendship, so that Italy was to become a federated nation under the head- ship of the pope. The principles held by Frederick, and the action that he took in consequence of them, were entirely opposed to these ideas. He had founded an independent kingdom of Sicily ; he was in constant intercourse with the Ghibellines of Rome ; he Avas opposed to the independence of Lombardy ; and he was endeavouring to extend his influence over Tuscany and Umbria, so that even the inheritance of Countess Matilda did not seem to be safe. These differences were brought into strong light by the creation of the kingdom of Sardinia. ad. 1250] THE EMPIRE 377 The action of the pope led to a bitter civil war. The excom- munication did not at first have any effect in Germany, but means were soon found to rouse feelings against Frederick. Frederick of Austria seized the ^Twar opportunity of making himself independent ; Otto the Illustrious, duke of Bavaria, and the Count Palatine, hitherto a firm supporter of the Hohenstauffens, were won over to the side of the pope. King Wenzel of Bohemia took the same line, but his people remained faithful to the emperor, and for the moment Germany stood firm in her national feeling against Italy. Matters went differently in Italy. In the north, Azzo of Este was the first to renounce his allegiance, but he was followed by many others. A bitter party war raged from the outskirts of Messina, carried on not only by the sword but by speech and writing. Yet the pope did not succeed in raising a rival to Frederick, nor was Frederick capable of making an antipope. On the Guelf side were the important cities of Milan and Bologna, supported by Venice and Genoa, by Azzo of Este, by Alberic of Romano, who had quarrelled with his brother Ezzelino, and by most of the Umbrian and Tuscan towns. On the side of the Ghibellines were Mantua, Parma, Modena, Cremona, and Reggio, with Ezzelino of Romano, Salinguerra of Ferrara, the marquis of Montferrat, and above all the bastard Enzio, who was made viceroy of Italy. Sicily was retained in her allegiance by the force of an iron hand. In the autumn Frederick invaded the Milanese with a motley force of Italians and Saracens, but could not do much, and had to retire to Cremona. At the end of the year Frederick he crossed the Apennines, kept his Christmas in threatens the friendly Pisa, and marched into the states Rome. of the church ; the Frangipani, the leaders of the Ghibellines, cried : " The emperor has come to take possession of his capital ! " The pope replied to this by organising a large procession which passed from the Lateran to St. Peter's, bearing the holy relics of the Passion and the heads of the two apostles ; he placed the relics on the high altar of the basilica, and, taking the tiara from his head, crowned them with it with the words, " May the saints protect the city which the Romans are willing to destroy ! " The populace was seized with enthusiasm, and assumed the cross, as crusaders against the enemies of the church. The emperor was prevented from attacking Rome by want of money, and after spending some time at Viterbo he went to Foggia, where he hoped to obtain supplies from his 378 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1190 to parliament. In the .summer of 1240 he occupied the march of Ancona, but left the Campagna alone. He now heard of the defection of Ferrara, where Salinguerra, Ezzelino's brother-in- law, who had been favourable to him, was attacked by Azzo of Este and carried off to Venice. The brutal Ezzelino exacted terrible vengeance from the Guelfs. In August, Frederick attacked Faenza, which fell in April 1241. Gregory had summoned a general council to Rome to decide the emperor's fate, and in April a large number of prelates from France, Spain, England, and northern Italy met in Genoa, with the intention of sailing to Astura. Twenty-seven galleys full Meloria °^ ecc h?siastics set sail on April 25, but they were intercepted by the imperial fleet, led by King Enzio, which, on May 11, fought the battle of Meloria, and entirely destroyed the Genoese fleet. All but four of the galleys were either sunk or captured ; two thousand men were drowned, amongst whom was the archbishop of Besancon ; and over a hundred prelates, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, abbots, three papal legates, the representatives of the Lombard League, and 4000 citizens of Genoa were taken first to Pisa, and then by a three weeks' voyage to Naples and Melfi, suffer- ing meanwhile from heat, hunger, and thirst, and the insults of the sailors. A rich booty fell into the hands of the conquerors. Thus the projected council came to an end, but the spirit of Gregory was not broken. Frederick was determined to march upon Rome, where Cardinal John Colonna was head of the Ghibelline party, and reached Spoleto in June. Here he received bad offersPeaee. news from German y> Ki »8" ^ela of Hungary begging for his assistance against the invading Tartars. Frederick endeavoured to make peace with the pope, and sent his brother-in-law, Richard of Cornwall, to Rome for that purpose. But Gregory would be content with nothing short of unconditional surrender. Frederick hesitated no longer : he marched by way of Terni and Narni to Tivoli, and in August 1241 encamped at Grotta Ferrata in sight of Rome. He stormed the monastery of Farfa, and laid waste the country with fire and sword. In Rome a civil war was raging between the Orsini, who favoured the pope, Death of an( j y^ Colonna, who supported the emperor, regory . , Q ar( jj na j j h n Colonna having joined Frederick's army. Just at this time, on August 21, 1241, Gregory IX. died in the Lateran, nearly a- hundred years old, but full of vigour. a.d. 1250] THE EMPIRE 379 The cardinals met to choose a new pope in the Septizonium, two of Frederick's prisoners being allowed to come to Rome for the conclave, and after a long discussion they chose as pontiff the Milanese Godfrey, bishop of Sabina, a man of learning and character, who took the name of Celestine IV., but died before he could be consecrated. The civil war in Rome between the Orsini and Colonna now raged more violently than ever. Frederick wandered about the country to the south of Rome, wasting the lands of his enemies with his Saracen troops. He had both private and public anxieties. His beautiful wife Isabella died on December 1, 1241, and on February 2, 1242, his son Henry (VII.), whom he had always loved, also met his end, and he mourned for him as David mourned for Absalom. The emperor did his best to hasten the election, but a new pope was not chosen till June 24, 1243 — Sinibaldi Fieschi, a Genoese, who took the title of Innocent IV., an ominous name. Frederick said when he heard of the election that he was afraid that he had lost an old friend as cardinal and acquired a new enemy as pope, for no pope could love a Ghibelline. The emperor suffered a heavy blow by the loss of Viterbo, which went over to the side of the Guelfs, and this calamity was followed by others. Vercelli shut her gates to King Enzio ; Alessandra, Novara, Montferrat, and j Vq^I * t V Malaspina passed to the side of the pope. The Romans supported him, and attacked the Ghibelline castles in the states of the church ; but at the same time negotiations went on because Innocent was anxious to throw the blame of the rup- ture on Frederick. Preliminaries of peace were signed on March 31, 1244, containing hard conditions to which the pope expected that Frederick would object. But the emperor accepted them, and Innocent was forced to adopt some other pretext for the continuation of the war. At last, in order to secure complete freedom of action, he fled to his relations in Genoa. The world now considered him as a persecuted martyr, and the emperor as an overbearing tyrant. The pope summoned a council at Lyons, and on April 13, 1245, issued a new bull Third Bull of excommunication against the emperor and King of Excom- Enzio. The patriarch of Antioch offered his munication. mediation, which was neither refused nor accepted, and negotia- tions went on. Frederick, accompanied by his son Conrad and a few south German bishops and princes, went to Turin to be near the scene of action. Innocent saw that no time was to be lost, and, without waiting for the emperor's ambassadors, in the 380 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. H90to third meeting of the council, on July 17, issued a decree accusing the emperor of perjury, of heresy, and of intercourse with Moham- medans, depriving him of his crown and kingdom, releasing all his subjects from their allegiance, taking Sicily to himself, and calling upon the German princes to elect a new emperor. Thaddeus of Suessa, the emperor's representative, when he heard the decree, cried, " This is the day of wrath, of mourning and desolation, over which the enemies of Christ will rejoice." The pope replied, " I have done what I was obliged to do : may God complete it according to His will ! " The prelates then solemnly extinguished their burning torches. In this manner, an Italian pope, with 150 French and German prelates, had deprived of his crown and empire the most power- ful sovereign of the West, an action that filled all Christendom with astonishment and dismay. When Frederick heard of it, he said : " Has the pope robbed me of my crown ? Bring me my crown that I may see if it is really lost ! " He then placed it on his head and cried, "Now I have my crown, and no pope or council shall rob me of it without a struggle ! " A bitter contest took place between Guelfs and Ghibellines. A conspiracy was formed against Frederick's life, which he put down, exacting vengeance with great cruelty. In Germany, in accordance with Election the order of the pope, on May 22, 1246, Henry of Rival Raspe, landgrave of Thuringia, was elected German Emperors. king, and a battle took place between him and Conrad, in which the Hohenstauffen was defeated by treachery ; but Raspe died on February 27, 1247, and the male line of his race became extinct. William of Holland, a chivalrous young man of twenty, was elected in his place, Pope Innocent assist- ing him with money and support. In Italy the important city of Parma joined the pope's side, on which Frederick built, close by, a city of wooden houses with streets, market-place and gates, mills and places of worship, where his troops might winter until the rebellious city was captured. Sure of success, he named the new city Vittoria, and coined in it money called Vittorini. But on February 18, 1248, while the emperor was out hunting, the people of Parma attacked it, tore down the palisades, burned the wooden houses, and killed Thaddeus of Suessa. Fifteen hundred men were killed, and three thousand were taken prisoners. The emperor, on his return from the chase, found the city of Vittoria destroyed, his army routed, his seal of state, his jewelled crown, and the imperial treasure carried off, and the whole of his court captured, including his harem. A.n. 1250] THE EMPIRE 381 He himself mounted his fleetest horse called the Dragon, and so escaped. After this catastrophe disaster followed upon disaster. His prime minister, Pietro delle Vigne, being accused of treachery and conspiracy against the emperor's life, was blinded and exiled. Shortly after this his darling EJSyKm son Enzio was taken prisoner in a skirmish at Fossato, near Modena, by the Milanese, who obstinately refused to set him at liberty. After this, fortune seemed to be more favourable to him, and in the last month of 1250 he made prepara- tions for attacking the states of the church with his accustomed energy ; but death seized him suddenly at Fiorentino, close by Lucera. Clad in the robe of a Cistercian monk, and absolved by the archbishop of Palermo, he died in the arms of his son Manfred, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the thirty-fifth of his reign. He was so great in life that no one would believe that he had really gone for ever. CHAPTER VIII. THE FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN, A.D. 1250-1 2G8— NAPLES AND SICILY, A.D. 1268-1301— END OF THE CRUSADES. The news of Frederick's death was received with great joy by the papal court. Innocent IV. expressed his delight in no ~ ,. . measured language, and looked forward to the Continued .. , & ° ' p ., p TT1 ~. War entire destruction of the race or Hohenstauffen. between The enemies of the imperial house were urged on Guelphsand by the mendicant orders. In Germany, Conrad Ghibellines. wag denounced as a son of Herod ; in Italy, the Frangipani now put themselves at the head of the papal party ; quarrels between Guelphs and Ghibellines were rife in every city. Civil war raged from the Rhine and the Danube to the southernmost promontory of Sicily. After acknowledging William of Holland as king of Germany, and giving him hopes of the imperial crown, Innocent left Germany a prey to destruc- tion, and returned to Rome in a triumphal procession. But it was easy to see from the strength of the opposition that it was hopeless for him to attempt to revive the authority of Innocent III. He hoped to recover his power over the kingdom of the two Sicilies, but here he was met by Manfred, a natural son of Frederick, who was acting as the viceroy of his half-brother, Conrad IV. Manfred, now eighteen years old, and one of the most picturesque figures in history, immortalised by Dante, beautiful, brave, and chivalrous, clever, cultivated, and generous, drew the hearts of all to his allegiance. The pope reached Rome by way of Bologna, where Enzio was imprisoned, and ordered Manfred to surrender all the castles in his possession, offering him Taranto as a papal M a n nfred and fief " Manfred refused, and called Conrad to his counsels. Conrad crossed the Alps and reached Verona, where he met the faithful ally of the empire, Ezzelino da Romano, a monster of cruelty, whose excesses offended even the seared consciences of that blood-stained age. Conrad, sailing from Pola, landed at Siponto, afterwards called Manfredonia, A.P. 12S0-12A8] FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN 383 where he was met by Manfred, whom he treated with great honour. But, under the influence of Pietro Buffo, a minister of humble birth, the emperor of twenty-four gradually became jealous of the viceroy of eighteen, who surpassed him in brilliancy and popularity. Yet the generous and open-hearted Manfred assisted him in all his enterprises, reduced the towns of Apulia, and helped him to conquer Naples, which he entered in triumph on October 1, 1253. Innocent intended to oppose to Conrad, as king of the two Sicilies, Henry, the son of Isabella of England, then seventeen years old, to whom his brother Manfred had already committed the government of Sicily. But j nn0 gg n ^ iv he died suddenly in December 1253, and was soon after followed to the grave by Frederick, the son of the unhappy Henry (VII.), so that the only legitimate heirs of the great Frederick were his son Conrad and his grandson Conradin , whom the Bavarian Elizabeth had borne to Conrad during his absence in Italy. During the siege of Naples, Innocent had offered the Neapolitan crown to Charles of Anjou, brother of Louis IX., and to Bichard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., both of whom refused. But in 1255 Henry accepted it for his younger son Edmund, the chief result being to give the Pope an excuse for demanding Conrad large sums from England, and to increase Henry's embarrassments. Meanwhile, on May 21, 1254, Conrad died suddenly at Bavello, near Melfi, leaving as his heir a baby of two years old in the mountains of Bavaria. The fate of the rival king, William of Holland, need not detain us. He had no real power, and under his weak rule the disruptive forces which always existed in Germany had full play. On January 28, 1256, mounted on a heavy horse and clad in full armour, though more accustomed to walk barefooted to church in a woollen robe, he rode across the ice to attack the Frisians. His horse broke through the ice, and he was killed by the peasants, and buried under the doorstep of a house in Hoog- woude ; but in 1282 his bones were removed by his son Frederick to a monastery in Middelburg. Innocent was not less delighted at the death of Conrad than he had been when Frederick perished. After the emperor had been buried in the cathedral of Messina, Manfred went with an embassy to the pope at Anagni, to ask for the re- cognition of the child Conradin as successor to his father. Instead of taking the opportunity of securing the power of the 384 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1250 to church by accepting the guardianship of the infant whom his father had left to his care, Innocent excommunicated Manfred and all the most powerful Hohenstauffens, and Con n radi d n and sent lli,s lie P hew > Cardinal William Fieschi, as legate to Sicily, with orders to seize it for the Holy See. The Ghibellines were driven to resistance, and had no alternative but to place Manfred at their head. Once more Manfred offered peace, but the pope met him with duplicity, proposing to make him prince of Taranto and count of Andria, and to recognise Conradin as duke of Swabia and king of Jerusalem, when he had already given Taranto to the Frangipani, and Sicily to the English Edmund. The pope now left Anagni with a crowd of fugitive Guelphs and entered Apulia at Ceprano. Manfred held his stirrup as he crossed the bridge over the Garigliano, and on October 27, 1254, he entered Naples. Nobles came to take the oath of allegiance, but there was no mention of the rights of Conradin. Manfred saw that he was surrounded by treachery and intrigue, and fled for his life through the mountains to Lucera, where he found the protection of his faithful Saracens, and an abundant treasure. He attacked the papal troops, and drove Cardinal William back to Naples, where he heard that his I Ga °t IV mas ^ er ; Innocent, was dead. The pope, with his heart broken by the defeats of Foggia and Troja, died on December 7, 1254, in the palace of Pietro delle Yigae. He was a man of ability, energy, and ambition, but was devoid of piety and of elevation of character. He was a bitter partisan, and deserves neither our respect nor our admiration. After nine days, a new pope was elected, the bishop of Ostia and Velletri, of the house of Conti, a nephew of Gregory IX., and in three weeks he was consecrated under the Alexander title of Alexander IV . He continued the old policy, but not with the same success. The growth of Manfred's power compelled him to leave Naples, and to retire first to Anagni and then to Rome. There the rising of the Roman people, who were anxious to recall their hero, Brancaleone, the avenger of wrong, the friend of the law, the protector of the people, from Bologna, drove him to seek refuge in Viterbo, where he remained for the rest of his life. Manfred occupied first Naples and then Sicily. The pope was obliged to give up his political plans, as the English would not allow Henry III. to incur the expense of making his son Edmund king of Sicily or his brother Richard emperor ad. 1268] FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN 385 of Germany. The year 1259, which we have now reached, saw the end of the monster Ezzelino da Romano. Age only stimulated his evil qualities : the ban of two popes Death of hardened his resolution. We can only suppose Ezzelino da that he was mad, and it was a sign of the times Romano. that a madman should be allowed to rage unfettered. Every- one who aroused his jealousy, stirred his anger, stimulated his passions, or stood in the way of his ambition, was so treated that the living envied the dead, and whole families of nobles were put to death. Race, riches, genius, and virtue were punished as crimes, and the streets of his dominions resounded with the groans of those who were being tortured with the rack. Padua and the Marches were as if stricken with the plague ; fugitives, if caught, were deprived of their arms and feet. At last he was defeated by his enemies at the bridge of Cassano, and imprisoned in the castle of Soncino. He sat there brooding over his misfortunes, refusing the ministration of religion, regretting only that he had not exacted a fuller vengeance from his enemies, till, at last, on December 7, 1259, he tore the bandages from his wounds and died. His brother Alberic suffered a worse fate. He was captured by his former friend, the marquis of Este, together with his wife Margaret, their six sons, and two lovely daughters. After seeing his family strangled before his eyes, he was torn to pieces by wild horses and his limbs were buried. The all-powerful house of Romano thus came to an end. In the following year, Manfred, hearing a false report that Conradin was dead, was crowned king of Sicily and Apulia in the cathedral of Palermo, on August 11, 1258. Manfred Elizabeth sent to tell him that Conradin was King of still alive, and to order him to lay aside his Sicily and crown and acknowledge his nephew ; but Manfred Apulia, replied that the southern nobles would never accept a northern sovereign, that Conradin should succeed him after his death, but that in the meantime the boy had better come to him and learn how to rule a southern population. Manfred governed with wisdom and success, and established a court in Palermo equal to that of his father in splendour and in the encourage- ment of art, literature, and science. He even thought of extending his rule over Epirus and Aetolia. But the pope in- sisted on Sicily being held as a papal fief and on the Saracens being sent back to Africa, and, when Manfred proudly refused to surrender his independence and summoned more Saracens 2 B 386 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1250 to to help him, excommunicated the recalcitrant sovereign as his predecessor had excommunicated his father. But the weapon had become blunt by indiscriminate usage, and the ban only stimulated Manfred to make himself sovereign of an inde- pendent and united Italy. Happily for him, Ezzelino was dead, and he made Palavicini, the bitter enemy of the monster, his lieutenant in Lombard) 7 . He made treaties with Venice and Genoa, and appointed a Doria of Venice his viceroy in Spoleto and the March. The Ghibelline Farinata degli Uberti had been driven out of Florence by the Guelfs and took refuge in Siena, from which the Florentines advanced to expel him. Manfred sent his German mercenaries to assist him, and on September 4, 1260, the Guelfs were entirely defeated in the battle of Montaperti on the Arbia, a conflict celebrated in the verse of Dante, who was born five years after it. The Guelf caroccio was captured, the exiled Ghibellines returned, and their ene- mies took refuge in Lucca. Florence and nearly the whole of Tuscany acknowledged Manfred as their lord. The Guelfs sent to Conradin for assistance, begging him to come to Italy, upon which he declared war against Manfred ; but Alexander IV. died at Viterbo on March 28, 1261 ; Florence, Siena, and Pisa formed themselves into a Ghibelline league with Manfred as their protector ; and Perugia and Umbria alone remained faithful to the Holy See. The Cardinals in Viterbo elected James Pantaleone, a French prelate of humble extraction, now patriarch of Jerusa- lem, to the Papal throne. He took the name of M°anfred Urban IV., and pursued the "viper brood" of the Hohenstauffen with as much passion as his predecessors. But Manfred stood at the height of his power. The excommunicated king reigned in splendour at Palermo ; his voice was more powerful than that of the Pope on the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po ; and Peter of Aragon was not prevented Urban IV. DV pious scruples from marrying Constance, the and Charles daughter of Manfred by his first marriage. Urban, ofAnjou. m despair, turned to his countryman, Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, the husband of Beatrice of Provence, whose three sisters had married sovereigns, and a treaty was signed between them in 1263. But Urban's satis- faction was diminished by Charles being elected by the Roman Guelfs as senator of Home for life. In the midst of these troubles, Urban IV., who had never set foot in Rome, died at Perugia on October 2, 1264, ad. 1268] FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN 387 In the conclave opinions were divided, but the French party finally won the clay, and Guido le Gros, of St. Gilles in Languedoc, a Provencal by birth, was consecrated pope in the cathedral of Perugia on February 22, 1265, with the title of Clement IV. He had lived long as a layman, but, on the death of his wife, had become a emen Carthusian, then bishop of Puy, archbishop of Narbonne, and cardinal of Santa Sabina. He was reluctant to receive the throne at his advanced age, but, being a personal friend of Charles and being promised the assistance of Louis IX., he consented, and inaugurated a crusade against Manfred " the usurper and the sultan." In April 1265, the year of Dante's birth, Charles sailed from the coast of Provence first to Pisa and then to Ostia, where, owing ^^1 &S in to the stormy weather, he landed in a small boat, and entered the Holy City on Whitsunday, May 23. The Romans of all classes — nobles, clergy, and people — received him with acclamation ; he was invested as senator in the Capitol on June 21, and seven days later was crowned in the Lateran as king of Sicily, receiving the kingdom as feudatory of the pope. On October 14, he founded a university in Rome as a memorial of his new reign. He had, however, come to Rome without money and without troops, to take the crown from the head of a rival who was well provided with both. He was forty-six years of age, — strong, tall, and dignified, — stern, dark, and terrifying. He never smiled, and slept but little. He was a hard man, stubborn, cruel, and ambitious. He was pitted against the paragon of chivalrous manhood, generous, affable, and cultured, an enemy to craft and passion. But when Clement IV. publicly announced that the Church had found in the count of Provence a champion against the poisonous brood of a dragon of poisonous race, and gave absolution to all those who should take the cross or assist the Church with money — when swarms of friars spread over the country, declaring it to be a Christian duty to attack the condemned heretic king of the Mohammedans — many answered to the summons. The French crusaders who crossed the Alps numbered 30,000 men. Those who had fought on the side of the church against the Albigenses now turned their swords against The Crusade Manfred. In December 1265, the Provencals against reached Rome. On Epiphany Day, 1266, Charles Manfred, and his wife, Beatrice, were crowned in St. Peter's as king and 388 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1250 to queen of Sicily. Manfred desired a reconciliation, but the pope answered, " Tell Manfred that the day of mercy is passed, the armed hero is at the door, the axe is laid at the root of the tree." The decisive battle took place on February 26, 1266, on the Field of Roses, north-west of Benevento. The battle Be eWo was one k&fc ween French and Germans. The German knights, amongst whom was Rudolf of Hapsburg, fought bravely, but the French killed their horses with their short swords, and, when the riders fell, knocked them on the head with their clubs. When the Apulians saw the Germans defeated, they ran away. The silver eagle fell from Manfred's helmet ; he recognised the token of disaster, and, say- ing, " All is lost," rode with Theobald Asinibaldi into the thick of the mel6e, and met the death he sought. His naked body, covered with wounds, a great gash on his forehead, was found two days later, and was buried at the head of the bridge of Benevento. As each French soldier passed by his grave with reverence, he cast a stone upon it, and raised a cairn, but the bishop of Consenza, Manfred's bitter foe, at the bidding of the pope, dug the body up, and threw it across the border, out of the dominions of the church, where it lay exposed to rain and wind. Even to-day the peasants of that solitary valley think of the young king, beautiful, gifted and unfortunate, dying at the age of thirty-three, heroic in his death as in his life. At this time, the crown of Germany was disputed between Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., and Alfonso X. of The German Castile, known as the Wise. Money was the Inter- decisive factor in the choice. On January 13, regnum. 1257, Richard was elected king at Frankfort, and on April 1 Alfonso was elected to the same office at Trier. Richard was crowned at Cologne on May 17. This begins the period of the German Interregnum. Alfonso never visited his kingdom, Richard confined himself to spending money, and the English objected to the extravagance of the prince whom they called King of the Romans. Richard was German king for fifteen years, but exercised no influence over the country. After being imprisoned at home by the discontented barons, he visited Germany for the last time, and held a diet at Worms in March 1269. In June 1267 he had married, at the age of fifty-eight, the youthful Beatrice of Folkenstein, but died in 1271, mourned chiefly by those who had fattened on his bounty. Whilst Germany was fc in this state of weakness and confu- sion, Ottokar of Bohemia was consolidating his dominions and a.d. 1268] FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN 389 endeavouring to extend them. He first attacked Bavaria, but was defeated in the battle of Muhldorf on August 25, 1257, and then turned his attention to Salzburg and Styria, and also fought against Hungary. He B ,° a . r ° gained the battle of the Marchfeld in 1260, which greatly increased his power. The struggle between Richard and Alfonso gave him hopes of obtaining the German throne, but, for the moment, he attached himself to Richard, and, on August 9, 1262, appeared before him at Aachen, and asked to be invested with his Austrian dominions. He further strengthened his posi- tion by divorcing his wife, from whom he could expect no heir, and marrying a Hungarian princess in October 1261. He also made another war against Bavaria, and acquired Carinthia and Carniola in 1268 and 1269, so that at the beginning of the seventies he was the most powerful sovereign in Germany, and there was great likelihood that the crown of the Teutons would be placed on the head of a Slav when the death of Richard of Cornwall made a new election imminent. The peace of Press- burg, signed in July 1271, recognised Ottokar as lord of Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and the Wendish mark, upon which Duke Henry of Bavaria deserted his Hungarian friends and made an alliance against all the world with Ottokar. In Hungary, after the untimely death of Stephen V., the crown was disputed be- tween his young son Ladislaus, the Kuman, and Bela, brother- in-law of Ottokar. This produced a civil war, which made Ottokar more powerful than ever. He ruled over a well organ- ised and well governed kingdom, while the rest of Germany was a prey to weakness and disunion. The commanding position held by the Bohemian sovereign before the election of Rudolf of Hapsburg, although it is recognised by Dante, is too much neglected by historians. Pope Clement IV. heard of the victory of Benevento with mixed feelings. Although a Frenchman, he could not look with satisfaction on the position which his friend Charles p a t e f had now attained, nor could he approve of the Manfred's immorality and cruelty which the French ex- Party, habited in the country which they had conquered. When Man- fred's wife, Helena, heard in Lucera of her husband's death, she determined to retire with her children to her relations in Epirus. But she was seized at Trani and imprisoned at Nocera, where she died, after five years' miserable existence, at the age of twenty-nine. Her daughter Beatrice languished for eighteen years in the Castello dell' Uovo at Naples, till she was set 3Q0 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1250 to at liberty by the Aragonese. Manfred's three young sons — Henry, Frederick, and Enzio — innocent boys, grew up in prison, fettered and half starved. The two younger soon died, but the eldest, now blind, prolonged his miserable life for many years. Meanwhile, Charles entered Naples in triumph. Romans had triumphed over Teutons : the church had vanquished the Hohen- stauffens. Frederick of Antioch and his son Conrad submitted to Charles, and retired into obscurity. Enzio languished in prison ; the scaffold disposed of the rest of Manfred's party who were not in prison or in banishment ; the French continued an unrestrained career of robbery and lust. The condition of Sicily was as bad as that of Italy. The Ghibellines, in their distress, looked to Conradin, the youthful grandson of the great Frederick. Since the marriage Conradin °f hi s mother in 1259 with Meinhard of Gorz, and the who also possessed the Tyrol and Carinthia, he Ghibellines. had lived quietly, either with his uncle, Duke Louis of Bavaria, at Donauworth, or with his tutor, Bishop Eberhard, at Constance, nourishing his gifted soul on the songs of minnesingers, legends of Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and the Nibelungen, and stories of the greatness of his house. When ambassadors came to ask his assistance from Apulia and Sicily, calling on the king of Sicily, Apulia, and Jerusalem, and duke of Swabia to help them, he rose to the cry of woe, in spite of his mother's warning, like a young eagle, scarcely old enough to imp his wings. Charles and Clement met at Viterbo to concert measures against the common foe. In the autumn of 1267, Conradin set out from Augsburg with his cousin, Frederick of Italv Austria, his stepfather, Meinhard of Tyrol, and his uncle Louis of Bavaria, and left Swabia, never to return. He took leave of his mother and youthful wife at Hohenschwangau, — that spot of unearthly beauty, consecrated by the memory of another Bavarian Louis, — crossed the Brenner, and descended the valley of the Adige. But in Verona, where they found that his money was exhausted, most of his followers left him, even his uncle Louis, and his stepfather, Meinhard. Only 3000 knights remained faithful to the gallant lad. In Italy things were better ; Galvano Lancia was received at Rome with honour as his representative ; he was welcomed by embassies from Pisa, Siena, and the Tuscan Ghibellines. Henry of Castile, knight and troubadour, wrote verses in his honour, which urged him to take possession of the beautiful garden of a.d. 1268] FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFFEN 39 1 Sicily, and to grasp with a firm hand the crown of the Roman empire. The pope excommunicated him, and laid his interdict on all cities that were favourable to him. Charles and Clement met again at Viterbo in April 1268. The king wished to engage Conradin in the valley of the Po, but the pope persuaded him to remove the struggle to Apulia. At the beginning of May 1268, Conradin and Frederick of Austria united their forces at Pisa. They were received with enthusiasm in Tuscany, and on July 24 Conradin looked down upon Rome from the heights of . Rome Monte Mario. In the city itself he was awaited by a host of armed soldiers, with crowns on their helmets, while the people accompanied him with songs, bearing flowers and olive branches in their hands. The houses were decorated with costly carpets. Conradin mounted to the Capitol, where he re- ceived the homage of his subjects. On August 10, he marched into the mountains by way of Tivoli in order to effect a junction with his faithful Saracens, whom Charles was besieging in Lucera. The two armies met on August 23, at Scurcola, between Tagliacozzo and Alba, Charles marching northwards, to intercept the march of Conradin towards Solmona. In the shock of the onslaught the troops of J* ,.® ° • Charles were driven back, and it was reported that the king was dead. But, by the advice of Aymer de St. Valery, he had posted a band of 800 chosen knights in ambush behind a hill. Whilst the German troops, secure of victory, were plundering the Provencal camp, this reserve came steadily on, threw the disorderly mass into confusion, and gained a complete victory. Conradin and Frederick escaped the slaughter, and rode away by Vicovaro to Rome, which they reached on August 28, five days after the battle. Finding the capital unsafe, they rode down the Via Appia to the sea-coast, hoping that some friendly ship would carry them to Pisa or to Sicily. They found one in Astura and set sail, but were captured by John Frangipani, whom the pope had invested with the fief of Taranto. Influenced partly by fear and partly by a large sum of money which was offered him, Frangipani, deaf to all sense of honour, delivered his prisoners in chains to Charles at Genezzano. Charles was determined to put the last of the Hohenstauffens to death, but co^adin it was difficult to do so with any show of justice. Conradin was formally tried, but acquitted by all but one of his judges. Charles, nevertheless, pronounced the sentence 392 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1268 to of death upon him. He was executed on October 29, 1268, in the market-place of Naples, where the spot where the scaffold was erected is still shown. The boy, scarcely seventeen, and his cousin, Frederick, a few years older, suffered together. After he had prayed, Conradin said, as his last words, " mother, what terrible news you will hear about me ! " Before he died, he cast his glove into the crowd, and it was taken up by one who afterwards stirred up the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. Conradin was buried in the church of the Carmelites close by, where a beautiful statue, erected by Maximilian of Bavaria, commemorates his fate. His life and death have never been forgotten, and it was said in September 1870 that Sedan exacted vengeance for Tagliacozzo. Four weeks later, Pope Clement IV. died, the spirit of the murdered Conradin troubling his last hours. For two years the cardinals in Viterbo neglected to supply his place, but in September 1271 the choice fell upon Tibaldo Visconti of Piacenza, who was then engaged in a crusade, and could not be crowned in St. Peter's till March 1272, when he assumed the title of Gregory X. He strove to increase the independence of the Holy See, disregarded the claims of Alfonso of Castile to the imperial crown, and favoured those of Rudolf of Hapsburg, who was elected in the following year. He summoned an oecumenical council at Lyons in the spring of 1274, which placed the conduct of crusades on an orderly footing, took some steps towards the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and drew up rules for the election of popes in a secret conclave. Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura — the shining lights of the Dominican and Fran- ciscan Orders respectively — both died at the time of this council, one at Fossa Nuova, on his way to attend it, — the other of plague, in Lyons itself. After the death of Gregory in 1276 four Popes were enthroned within two years, — Innocent V., Hadrian V., John XXL, and the Orsini, Nicholas III., elected in December 1277, who succeeded, with the assistance of Rudolf of Hapsburg, in putting some check on the overweening power of Charles, which he did by increasing the power and importance of the papal families. His nepotism and his avarice induced Dante to find for him a place in Hell. The worldly- minded pontiff died on August 22, 1280, in his castle at Soriano, and, after an interval of party strife, was succeeded on February 22, 1281, by Martin IV., a friend of Charles, so that the French domination was established on a firmer footing. ad. 1301] NAPLES AND SICILY 393 But soon a conspiracy against the Angevin monarchy arose in Sicily, headed by John of Procida, the friend and physician of Manfred, who is said to have taken up the glove of Oonradin in the market-place of Naples. p roc ida He first addressed himself to Constance, the daughter of Manfred, and wife of Peter of Aragon, with a letter of recommendation from Pope Nicholas III. ; encouraged by her, he travelled secretly through Sicily, stirring up the island to revolt, with the aid of money from the court of Byzantium. On March 30, 1282, as a crowded congregation were gathered in the cathedral of Palermo at the vesper office of Easter Tuesday, a French soldier insulted an Italian girl, on the pretence of searching for arms. The chance match set light to a flame, a cry arose, " Death to the French ! " the passionate desire for vengeance spread through the whole veaners ™ n island, and thousands perished in the massacre, which still bears the name of the Sicilian Vespers. Palermo declared its independence, and raised the imperial standard ; the French garrison of Messina was burnt to death ; and Charles had to face the task of reconquering the whole island. No help could be expected from Martin IV., so the insurgents applied to Peter. At the end of August, the fleet of Aragon appeared before Trapani, and after two months peter of the Spaniard became master of the island. In Aragon in June 1283, Peter and Constance were crowned in Sicily. Palermo, and the government of the island was committed to John of Procida and Roger of Loria. Charles was in great difficulties. While he was absent in Marseilles, collecting a fresh fleet, his son Charles of Salerno was captured at sea by Roger of Loria, and was saved from the fate of Manfred and Conradin only by the intervention of Constance and Peter. These misfortunes so broke the spirit of Charles Death of that he died at Foggia on January 7, 1284, and Charles of he was followed to the grave by Martin IV. on Anjou. March 28, and by Peter of Aragon on November 11, 1285. As the eldest son of Charles was a prisoner, the government of Naples was undertaken by Robert of Artois. James of Aragon, the second son of Peter, was crowned king of Sicily at Palermo, and Roger of Loria exacted vengeance for Conradin by destroying the castle of Astura, and putting the son of the traitor Frangipani to death. Pope Honorius IV. died after a short reign, and, after a year's interval, a Franciscan friar was elected as his successor, under the title of Nicholas IV. on February 22, 1288. At last, 394 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1268 to by the mediation of King Edward of England, the son of Charles of Anjou was released from captivity, and, in May 1289, was crowned by the pope in Rieti as king of the two Sicilies, under the title of Charles II. We must complete the history of sonthern Italy before we return to that of Germany. Nicholas IV. saw the power of the Decline of papacy gradually wane. The crown of Sicily the Papal came into the hands of Frederick of Aragon, the Power. youngest son of Peter, the grandson of Manfred. Rome was torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the first represented by the Orsini, the second by the Colonna. Republican principles and municipal government made their way into central Italy. After the death of Nicholas, on April 4, 1292, the throne of St. Peter remained vacant for a year, until it was filled by Coelestine V., the son of a peasant of Molise, who had lived for years as a hermit in a cave in the hill of Murrone, close to Solmona. He was crowned with great pomp at Aquila, and lived in the palace of Charles II. at Naples. He had been chosen for his piety, but he found himself entirely unfitted for the position and the business of the pontificate, and, after four months' phantom rule, he did the best action of his life in a voluntary abdication in December 1294, although it is a general opinion that Dante placed him in Hell for having been guilty of the " gran rifiuto " (the great refusal), the casting-off of public duties deliberately entrusted to him. He was succeeded by one of the most vigorous of the Popes, Benedict Gaetani, who took the name of Boniface VIII. Boniface immediately went to Rome, carrying ace w ith him the abject Coelestine as a prisoner. When he escaped to his cave and the society of the Coelestine Order which he had founded, Boniface dragged him out and imprisoned him in the castle of Fumone, where he soon afterwards died. Boniface endeavoured to restore the power of the papacy, and began with Sicily, which, however, succeeded in preserving its independence under Frederick of Aragon. He then attacked the Colonna,, whom he reduced to submission. Unable to conquer Frederick, he summoned to his assistance Charles of Valois, also count of Anjou, brother of Philip IV., king of France. Charles met Boniface at Anagni on September 3, 1301, and discussed with him and Charles II. the possibility of subduing Frederick in Sicily. Before their arrangements were concluded, Charles of Valois marched into Florence and established there the authority of the Guelf party. At last peace was made a.d.1301] END OF THE CRUSADES 395 between Charles II. and Frederick, on condition that Frederick should marry Charles' daughter Eleanore and reign for life as "King of Trinacria," and that the island should, after his death, pass to the house of Anjou, a condition which was never fulfilled. The last two crusades, which are connected with the name and fortunes of Louis IX. of France, arose from the conquests of the Mongolian leader, Genghis Khan, who, proclaiming himself emperor (1206), turned his Crusades 6 arms against the Charasmians and became master of Palestine. In 1248, Louis IX. landed in Cyprus; next year he advanced to Egypt and took Damietta, but was after- wards defeated and made prisoner, and had to renounce his conquests. At last, after five years spent in the East, Louis returned to France in 1254, in consequence of the strong representations of his mother, Blanche of Castile, who had conducted the government in his absence. The last expedition of Louis to the East, in 1270, hardly deserves the name of crusade. It was undertaken with the object of separating the Saracens in Africa from those in Sicily, and preventing them from assisting each other. Louis died of fever at Tunis in August, and Charles of Anjou, who had hastened to assist him, found his brother a corpse. CHAPTER IX. THE HANSA, 1150-1400— THE IBEKIAN PENINSULA, 1000-1344 —ENGLAND, 1087-1189. It is impossible to write the history of the world with any clearness or success, unless it is regarded from some central point of view. The central position adopted in this history has been that of the empire and the papacy, the two powers which kept the states of Europe together as a single society, and whose dissolution in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century brought about a new epoch and began modern history. We have now reached, roughly speaking, the end of the thirteenth century, when the empire is receiving a new form under the house of Hapsburg ; the papacy is approaching a time of weakness, by the removal of the see to Avignon, from which it has never recovered ; and the kingdoms of Europe, in consequence of the loosening of these bonds, are beginning to assert themselves ; while the crusades and the spirit which animated them have come to an end by the fall of Acre in 1291. We must now deal with Spain, England, and France separately, taking the history of each of them down to the middle of the fourteenth century, leaving the fortunes of the empire and the papacy to be described later, except so far as they are dealt with in the annals of the countries we have mentioned. To follow a completely chronological order is impossible, and we must adopt a compromise. The weakening of the central power of Europe produced leagues to insure the mutual protection which the superior authorities were not able to supply, and we will give some account of the most powerful and distinguished of them — the Hansa — which will serve as a specimen of the rest. The inner unity of Europe, apart from political alliances, was begun by commerce, and its first notable appearance is found in the connection between England and Germany, or, more exactly, between the two great commercial cities of Cologne and London. Cologne was the only seaport of the German 396 a.d. H50-1400] THE HANSA 397 empire, and as early as the reign of Aethelred II. we find a statute regulating the tolls payable for German participation in London markets. Henry II , in a decree of Birth of 1157, took the merchants of Cologne under his European special protection, and Richard Cceur-de-Lion, on Commerce, passing through Cologne after his imprisonment, gave the citizens the privilege of free commerce in all England, with liberty to visit all fairs. The Plantagenet kings were favour- able to foreign trade, and in the fourteenth century foreign merchants were useful to English kings for the purposes of loans, and the English barons, who were in conflict with the monarchy, found it also to their interest to encourage them. On the other hand, the English towns and guilds, which had begun to assume an important position, were anxious to preserve a monopoly. Another important commercial league was formed in Belgium, where seventeen towns leagued together for mutual protection. The Flemish towns were chiefly occupied in weaving cloth, for which the raw material came from England, the English climate being specially suited to the production of pure wool. The manufactured cloth often came back to England, but we do not find fine cloth made in England till the time of the Tudor s. The growth of international commerce made new financial arrangements necessary, and the Italians were the first financiers. In the fourteenth century they first adopted the interna- system of companies of shareholders, which had tional their consuls and other agents in northern Europe. Finance. The financiers also began to frequent certain quarters in different towns, such as the Rialto in Venice, which may be regarded as the parent of our modern exchanges. The Lombards became famous as lenders of money, but their business was regarded as unchristian, and the taking of usury was forbidden by the church ; consequently money-lending fell into the hands of the Jews. But the Lombards had accumulated a large amount of capital, and, to some extent, took the place of the Jews, who were expelled from England under Edward I. in 1290. Dante has made us familiar with the hatred with which the Caorsini, or inhabitants of Cahors in France, were regarded, who were usurers, but the name was given to all the usurers in southern Europe, just as bankers were called Lombards. The Caorsini came first into England in 1285, under the protection of the pope, to whom they lent money. In the next century, their place was taken by the so-called Lombards, who were chiefly 398 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1150 to Florentines, represented by the great houses of Bardi, Varrazzi, and Frescobaldi, and who lent money to sovereigns, sometimes at a great loss. In the thirteenth century, a new set of merchants came from the Baltic, under the name of Easterlings. The Cologne Hansa The Hansas opposed them strongly, and they had to ask for and the assistance from Frederick II. The Hamburgers Easterlings. obtained the right to make a separate Hansa in 126G, and the Liibeckers in the following year. At last Cologne had to give way, and the three Hansas of Hamburg, Liibeck, and Cologne became one. They established, in 1282, a factory on the Thames, called the Steelyard, and it remained the property of the Hansa till 1852. Similar factories were founded at Bruges in Belgium, Bergen in Norway, and Novgorod in Russia. They were surrounded by walls, and the gates were closed at night. One of the principal seats of the Hansa was the town of Wisby, in the Swedish island of Gothland. It is still worth a visit, but it once had forty-two towers sixty or seventy *' feet high, eighteen churches, mighty walls, and 12,000 citizens. In Russia, Kiev was for many years the great market for exchanging the products of the East with those of northern Europe. But at last it was found that an easier passage lay through northern Italy. A settlement of the Hansa was now established at Great Novgorod, and the merchants of St. Nicholas' Hof , in Wisby, transferred themselves to St. Peter's Hof in Novgorod. The river Volkov divided the city into two parts, the trading town being on the right bank, the municipality on the left. The Novgorod merchants assembled in the church of St. John, and founded St. John's Guild. The town was a virtual republic, and was governed by a popular assembly. But it was difficult of access. Ships bound for it passed from the gulf of Finland up the Neva, and through Lake Ladoga to the mouth of the Volkov, and had to tranship their goods into lighter vessels, for the completion of the journey of eighty miles. Two convoys came from Germany every year, the winter convoy and the summer convoy. There was also a land convoy, but it was considered of less importance. The foreign traders were known as Latins ; they were under the special protection of the church, and had an or- ganisation of their own, with a code of laws. St. Peter's court, as it was called, was governed by two aldermen, and in cases of difficulty appeal was made to Wisby, but Liibeck a.d. 1400] THE HANSA 399 gradually asserted herself, and obtained first a share and then a supremacy in the government of the Novgorod Hansa. Liibeck did not secure her power without a straggle. She had to contend with Denmark, who was ambitious for the control of the Baltic trade. In order to maintain her position as the staple between East and West, she was always trying to pre- vent direct communication between the two, and there was no difficulty in this when the Sound was impassable from ice. But in the earlier times the most important centre of inter- national commerce was Bruges. It was a place for the ex- change of the products of western and southern _ Europe for those of the East. The produce of the Levant came from the Rhine and from France. Ships laden with wine arrived from Gascony, Portugal, and Spain. In the thirteenth century the Easterlings appeared, though at first they had no permanent settlement. Bruges owed its mercantile importance to being a seaport : it was connected by canals with Sluys and Damme, both on the coast — though transhipment was generally necessary — and great dykes, built at the end of the twelfth century, pi-otected it from floods. But, like Ghent and Ypres, it was also a manufacturing- town, its chief product being cloth, which it wove, refined, and dyed. During the weakness of the empire which succeeded the fall of the Hohenstauffens, the commercial towns began to form leagues of mutual protection. There were three principal groups. The Wendish group, which Leagues' 51 * 1 formed the kernel of the Hansa league, consisted of Liibeck, Rostock, Stralsund, Wismar, Greifswald, Hamburg, and Liineburg. Liibeck and Hamburg formed an alliance in the middle of the thirteenth century, making common cause against pirates and sharing the expense. There were also the group of the lower Rhine and Westphalia, and the group of the Nether- lands. With other smaller groups, these principal groups made up the Hansa. But a well organised confedera- Constitu- tion of all the commercial towns never existed, and tion of the all attempts to form such a league were failures. Hansa. Liibeck indeed did her best to create one by holding meetings, passing statutes, and imposing contributions, but the meetings were not attended, the statutes were not obeyed, and the con- tributions were not paid. No looser confederation is known to history. Liibeck was no Athens, and the Hansa no Delian League. It had no powers of armed compulsion : indeed, most of its com- 400 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. c. 1000 to ponent towns were subject to the emperor. The Teutonic Knights exercised jurisdiction over the towns in their domain, which did not become independent till that Order fell. And, though at one time or another, some ninety towns paid contributions to the Hansa, the payment was not continuous and the geo- graphical limits were very badly defined. Liibeck exercised a supremacy, and summoned meetings, but the only sanction for their resolutions was amongst themselves the boycott, and against foreigners the strike ; and the use of these weapons at different times was often the cause of disaster to the towns who employed them. It is difficult to lead commerce back into paths which it has once deserted. At the close of the fourteenth century, a body of pirates made their appearance in the North Sea, known as Vitalian Brothers, a name which is supposed to be connected with a desire to provide themselves with victuals. They conquered Gothland, passed into the North Sea, and plundered Bergen, so that the Hansa had to arm themselves against them and summon the southern towns to their assist- ance. However, in April 1402, the pirates were defeated, and their leaders made prisoner. The history of the Hansa after 1400 will be treated of later. THE IBERIAN PENINSULA, A.D. c. 1000-1344. We must now turn our attention to the Iberian peninsula, where the struggle between the Christians and the Moors was proceeding with great intensity. The dynasty of the Ommaijads died out about the end of the tenth century with Hisham III., a descendant of the great Abderahman. The power of the khalifs still continued in Bagdad and Cairo, but in Cordova it was lost for ever. The empire, once so powerful, was broken up into tiny principalities, each town with its emir, vali, or cadi. Perpetual war raged between them, the stronger always endeavouring to suppress the weaker. In this manner, some thirty years later, Cordova fell into the hands of the emir of Seville, who was the most powerful Mohammedan sovereign in Spain, except the emir Conquests of °f Toledo. But in May 1085, Alfonso VI., king of Alfonso VI. Castile, made his triumphal entry into Toledo. He of Castile. promised the inhabitants the possession of their property, the practice of their religion, and the maintenance of their laws and privileges. But many Christians from the north settled in the town, and swelled the numbers of the Mozarabian Christians, whose worship had been tolerated by the ad. 1344] THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 401 Moors. Archbishop Bernard of Sahagun took possession of the great mosque at Toledo for Christian worship, while Talavera, Madrid, and other towns gradually suffered the same fate as Toledo. In 1086 the Almoravids of Morocco, a very powerful tribe, which from a family of simple Bedouins had gradually become masters of Morocco, were invited into the penin- sula to oppose the encroachments of the Cross. Almoravids In the great battle of Solara, not far from Badajoz, Alfonso and the Castilian knights were severely defeated, and ten thousand Christians' heads were sent to deck the battlements of Spanish and African fortresses. The Almoravids soon proved themselves rather masters than allies, and, by the close of the century, they were ruling over the southern portion of the peninsula. Seville was conquered by them in 1090 ; Granada, Malaga, Jaen, and Cordova fell before their victorious onsets. Saragossa alone remained independent, and, with its surrounding districts, formed a buffer state between the Christians and the Moors. To this period belong the exploits of the great com- mander, the Cid, Buy Diaz, the Campeador, praised in Spanish romances as the paragon of heroic virtue, the crown of chivalry, the pattern and prototype of the manly warrior. The last action of his life was the con- quest of Valencia in 1095. After his death, deeper misfortunes fell upon the banner of Castile. On May 30, 1108, was fought the battle of Ucles, in which Sancho, the youthful son of the aged king, The Alfonso, hoped to drive the unbelievers from that Christian mountain city, and to show himself worthy of sue- Kingdoms. cession to the crown. But he was slain on the battle-field, and with him perished the flower of Castilian chivalry. Alfonso could not survive this disaster, for Sancho had been the hope of his life. He was the son of his fifth wife, the daughter of the Emir Mohammed of Seville, who had been converted to Christianity. His first four wives had only borne him daughters. He died just a year afterwards — the "Shield of Spain," as he was called, the conqueror of Toledo, the strongest barrier of his country against the Moors — and his death gave new lustre to the line of the Almoravid rulers. Thus, at the beginning of the twelfth century, the peninsula was still divided between Mohammedans and Christians, the Christians being settled in the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal, and in the marquisate of Barcelona. The individualism, the spirit of 2 c 402 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. c. 1000 to separation, which has, through a large portion of her history, so fatally weakened Spain, was even then apparent, and a powerful prince ,of Navarre, Leon, or Galicia could easily assert his inde- pendence against his feudal sovereign. However, the Moors began to yield ground, and in 1118, Saragossa, so long the abode of Moslem emirs, became the capital of Alfonso I. of Aragon, who reigned from 1104 to 1134. He received the title of Batallador, the fighter of battles. In the middle of the century, a rising of the original Spanish Moors against the Almoravids took place in Andalusia, led by Dissensions Abdel Mumin, the successor of a mahdi who among the had founded a religious sect, and had preached Moors. a crusade in Morocco. Algeciras was conquered ; Gibraltar, and Xeres opened their gates ; in Seville and Malaga public prayers were offered for the success of the new prophet. In their distress the Almoravids called to their assistance Alfonso VII., the successor of Alfonso VI., the " Shield, of . Spain," whose career we have related. Alfonso was glad to. seize an opportunity which was so much to his advantage, and, with the help of Count Raymond Berengar of Catalonia and Count William of Montpellier, wrested Tortona from the Moors, and gained, for a time, possession of Almeria. To the period immediately preceding his death we owe the military orders of Calatrava, Alcantara, and Compostella, which for some time defended the frontiers of the Ebro and the Douro against the Moslems., in spite of the internal dissensions of the Christian kingdoms. But, since the days of Almanzor, no prince had fought with such success against the Christians, as Almohad Empire of Abdel Mumin, the Commander of the Faithful. i Abdel In twenty years, he founded an empire which ex- Mumin. tended from the edge of the Sahara to the banks of the Guadiana, and from the shore of the Mediterranean to, the coasts of Cyrene. He was equally great as a general and as a statesman ; he gave his empire a firm political organisation, and placed his army and his fleet on a solid foundation of security. In Morocco he founded an empire for the training of civil servants and officers: in Seville and Cordova he revived the splendours of Ommaijad culture, but without the luxury and effeminacy which accompanied it. His life was simple, as his aims wer& clear. War and conquest were the chief objects of his soul. After a reign of thirty-three years, he was succeeded in 1163 by his son, the Cid Jusuf, and his son James Almanzor brought the century to a close. In 1195, the Moors won the. a.d. 1344] THE IBERIAN PENINSULA 403 victor}' of Alarcos, in which the flower of Christian chivalry — not only the knights of Calatrava, Alcantara, and Compostella, but those of the Temple and St. John — covered with their corpses the stricken field. But the Cross was at last avenged in the mighty battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, fought on Monday, July 16, 1212. Pope Innocent III. had proclaimed J^Navas a general crusade against the infidel. A crowd of ultramontane knights — it is said 110,000 in number— came from all parts of Europe to assist the Spaniards. Many of them retired before the battle, but, notwithstanding this, the Christians marched forth from Toledo on June 21 to meet the Moslem in- vaders. They found the passes of the mountains .strongly, guarded, and were despairing of success when St. Isidore, the patron saint of Marbad, presented himself in the guise of a bearded shepherd, and pointed out a bye-path by which the col could be turned. The victory was complete : it is said that more than 100,000 Moors were killed. The Moslem supremacy in Spain received its death-blow. For many years afterwards was celebrated in Madrid, July 16, the yearly festival of the triumph of the Cross. After the catastrophe of Las ISTavas, the decline of the Moslem rule proceeded with stead}? Decline of progress, only checked by the dissensions in the Moslem ranks of the Christians themselves. In 1 236, Ferdi- Rule- nand III. of Castile, who bore the title of Saint, became master of Cordova, the capital of the khalifs, after a long siege. The Moslem inhabitants were compelled to leave the town and to settle in other cities, and the mosque was turned into a cathedral, now one of the wonders of the world. In 1248, Seville suffered a similar fate ; the Moors emigrated from Andalusia in thousands, some to Granada, some to the Moorish settlements in Murcia, and some over the sea to Africa. To the loss of Seville is due the rise of the Alhambra. The kingdom of Granada was tributary to Castile, but the fertility of its soil and its commercial importance raised it i^e to eminence. Moorish customs, which were dying Kingdom out in Murcia, Valencia, and Andalusia, remained of Granada, unchanged in Granada, where a number of civilised Moors of good birth were collected together, who preserved inviolate the traditional culture of their race, the love of science and education, of poetry and song, of music and architecture. The Alhambra bears everywhere inscribed upon its walls, " There is no conqueror but Allah," like the " Honi soit qui mal y pense " of the English Windsor. The origin of this was that when 404 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. c. iooo-1344 Mohammed Ibn al Hamah returned to his dominions after the taking of Seville, he was saluted by his subjects with the cry of "Garlib" (the conqueror), and he replied, "There is no conqueror but Allah." Under him and his successors, the little Saracen kingdom was able, from time to time, to assert its independence, and to gain a few precarious triumphs. But in 1340 was fought the battle of Salado, the Salacfo theme of many a Spanish song. Here the Moorish power was crushed for ever, and four years later the harbour of Algeciras, the connecting link between Africa and Spain, fell into the hands of Alfonso XI. of Castile, leaving the expulsion of the Moors a mere matter of time. Still, to the outward eye, the kingdom of Granada presented a proud appearance, and retained rmich of its old splendour and magnificence. It was protected on the sides 1344-1481 ° f the n01 ' th and eaSt hy the loft y ran & e oi the Sierra Nevada, rich with mineral treasures, sup- plying in the heat of summer a refreshing breeze from its snow-covered heights. The valleys, watered by countless streams, contained pastures on their upper, and vines and fruits on their lower slopes. The lofty plateau of the Vega, watered by the river Xenil, was covered by cornfields and orchards, while the harbours of the coast received ships from all the nations of the world. In the midst of this earthly paradise there arose, like a crown of beauty, the city of Granada, seated on its double hills, defended by walls and towers, adorned by palaces and mosques, surrounded by pleasure gardens, filled with splashing fountains and shady arbours. On one of these hills stood the castle of the Alhambra, a jewel which needs no praise, " shining," as an Arab poet says, " like a star through the foliage of olive groves." Granada had a sufficient army to defend it, and, if its inhabitants failed, the warlike hosts of Africa could be summoned to its assistance. Under pressure, the Moorish prince could place 100,000 armed soldiers in the field, comprising formidable archers and light Arabian cavalry. But for more than a hundred years a good understanding was maintained with the court of Castile, until the reign of Muled Abul Hassan, which began in 1466. When, in 1476, a tribute was demanded by Queen Isabella, the emir replied that the mines of Granada no longer yielded gold, but steel, and in 1481 he attacked, on a stormy winter's night, the little mountain fortress of Zahara, on the frontiers of Andalusia. The garrison was cut to pieces, and the inhabitants — men, women, and chil- a.d. 1087-1189] ENGLAND 405 dren — were carried off as slaves to Granada. When the news reached the Moorish capital, an aged priest cried out, " The ruins of Zahara will fall upon our own head ; the days of the Moslem empire in Spain are numbered." We must now leave this history — the fall of Granada belongs to the close of the Middle Ases. ENGLAND, A.D. 1087-1189. The history of England now claims our attention, but, for the reasons before mentioned, it will not be treated in detail. On the death of William the Conqueror in 1087, his second son, William, called Rufus or the Red, was ^ 1 f crowned in Westminster Abbey, eighteen days later, by Archbishop Lanfranc. This excellent prelate died in 1089. His place as adviser was taken by Ranulf Flambard, the justiciar, an unscrupulous character, who rose to be bishop of Durham. His great object was to obtain money for the king's extravagance, and he did this by putting pressure on the law courts, and exacting more rigorously the payment of feudal dues. It is said that William neither feared God nor respected man, but, as he suppressed the power of the barons, he was popular with the English, who were also gratified by the separa- tion of Normandy, which had been left by the Conqueror to Robert, his eldest son. Rufus incorporated Cumberland with England, and fortified Carlisle ; he conquered South Wales, and established his authority in Scotland, so as to make the English and Norman elements of civilisation predominate in the Low- lands. After the see of Canterbury had been vacant for four years, it was filled by the appointment of the great Anselm to the archbishopric. But Rufus opposed all Anselm's wishes, and quarrelled with him so constantly that in 1097 Anselm withdrew to the continent, and thus in 1099 was present at the Lateran Council, which decided against lay investitures. In the next year, Rufus was killed by an arrow in the New Forest, while out hunting. Rufus was succeeded by his brother Henry, who reigned for thirty-five years (1100 to 1135). Robert of Normandy had not yet returned from the first crusade, and the English acknowledged Henry as their king, fear- g 6111 ^ ing an interregnum. He was an able man, and well educated, as his title " Beauclerc" implies, but he was wilful and immoral. At the same time, he respected the Christian 406 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1087 to faith, at least outwardly. On his accession, he issued a charter, which is memorable in English history. He promised the church freedom in its government and the abolition of evil customs, such as keeping bishoprics vacant. He also promised to the barons that he would exact nothing from them beyond what was authorised by law, that he would not force marriages on heiresses or widows, that he would render feudal dues less oppressive, and that he would allow the disposal of personal property by will. He promised to the people that he would enforce the laws of Edward the Confessor, as improved by William, and that he would maintain the standard of the coinage. This charter may be regarded as the foundation of the Great Charter, which was granted in 1215. In the first year of his reign, he imprisoned Ranulf Flambard, and married Matilda, daughter of Malcolm III. of Scotland and Margaret, the crranddauaditer of Edmund Iron- TTanvu q n rl Robert side, thus un iting the Norman and Saxon dynas- ties. In the following year, Robert, returning from the East, with the glamour of a successful crusader, and supported by the Norman barons, invaded England and attacked Henry, but the church and the people were too strong for him, and a treaty was made, by which Robert acknowledged his brother's right to the crown. Robert of Belesme, the most stubborn and most powerful of Henry's antagonists, a monster in human form, whose savage cruelties were long the subject of poetry and legend, was conquered by Henry and deprived of his castles. He fled to Normandy, and stirred up the impetuous Robert to rebel a second time against his brother. At this time Robert's Apulian wife died, and he was deprived of the revenues which she had brought him from southern Italy, so that he lost the allegiance of his nobles. Henry invaded Normandy, and offered Robert favourable terms, but he preferred the arbitrament of arms. On September 28, 1106, forty years to a day after the battle of Nor^ndv* Hastings, the battle of Tenchebrai was fought between the two brothers. The duke was de- feated and four hundred of his knights were taken ; Robert of Belesme escaped, but many years afterwards was captured by Henry and confined at Wareham, where he died. Robert and Edgar Aetheling, the last male of the Saxon royal line, the uncle of Queen Matilda, were among the captives. Robert was de- tained for twenty-eight years in confinement, dying in 1134 in the castle of Cardiff, a fiery spirit with a tragic history. a.d. 1189] ENGLAND 40:7 He had a son, William Clito, whose claims to the duchy of Normandy were supported by Louis VI. of France. This led to repeated wars with Fiance, until, after the death of Clito in 1128, Normandy and Maine were secured to England. In 1107, the question of Investitures, long disputed between Henry and Anselm, was decided by the Concordat of Bee. Bishops and abbots were to be elected by the church, but in the The king's court, and with his sanction ; the pope or Concordat the archbishop was to confer spiritual rights by of Bee. the gift of the ring and the crosier, but the bishop or abbot elect was first to do homage to the king for the lands of his see. Anselm died two years later, at the age of seventy-six, a worthy champion of papal power and of scholastic learning. Henry now set himself to give England a strong government. Roger, bishop of Salisbury, was made justiciar, and with his help Henry organised the kind's court, the curia regis, and connected the courts of the shire with .. „ , , , . . . , , .;. t tne Crown. the royal court. A ministerial nobility, depen- dent upon the crown, gradually grew up in the place of the independent barons, whose power Henry destroyed. Royal castles, well garrisoned, took the place of the feudal castles, which were allowed to fall into decay. Queen Matilda died in 1118, a terrible loss for Henry. She left a son, William, deeply loved by his father, and a daughter, Matilda, who mar- ried the Emperor Henry V. of Germany. But on November 25, 1120, a terrible catastrophe occurred. William was crossing from Normandy to England, with a throng of noble men and women, who were keeping themselves warm on a cold winter's night with copious libations. The White Ship, as she was called, ran upon a rock, and those in her were thrown into the water. William was drowned in an attempt to save his sister, the Comtesse de la Perche. It is said that Henry never smiled again. A second marriage brought him no children, so that the crown was left to his daughter Matilda, known as the Eoipress Maud, who was recognised as heiress to the kingdom of England and the duchy of Nor- p ress Maud mandy. After she had lost her husband, she married Geoffrey of Anjou, the son of the powerful crusader Fulk, who was known as Plantagenet, from the sprig of broom which he always wore in his cap. Henry died in Normandy, in December 1135, but his body was brought to England and buried, in the abbey of Reading, which he had founded. He was a 408 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1087 to wise and powerful sovereign, who loved war and the chase, living mainly in the forests of Windsor and Woodstock. He left a number of illegitimate children, the best loved of whom was Robert of Gloucester. He favoured science and learning, and encouraged the seminaries of Bee, Canterbury, Oxford, and Winchester. Under his reign, good historians made their appearance, and, although Latin was the common tongue amongst learned persons, Norman-French came into use and took the place of Anglo-Saxon among the upper classes. While Matilda was declared in Normandy to be the successor of Henry, matters took a different turn in London. The Angevin husband of the empress was unpopular, Blois whereas Stephen, count of Blois, a son of Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror, who was the possessor of great wealth from his marriage with the heiress of Eustace of Boulogne, was greatly beloved, and was supported by the seneschal, Hugh of Bigod, by his own brother Henry, bishop of Winchester, and by the majority of the people. He was crowned by the archbishop of Canterbury on December 22, even before King Henry was buried. But he had no capa- city for government. It was said of him by a contem- porary that he was the mildest of men upon earth, the slowest to take offence and the readiest to pardon, very easy of approach to the poor, and liberal of alms. He was entirely unable to keep his barons in order, so that in his reign anarchy triumphed and the poor were oppressed. The nobles, whether singly or combined, were equal in strength to the king, and were therefore able to resist his authority. As the law courts were impotent, war was the only resource. The consequences of this weak government were not long in showing themselves. David, king of Scotland, Empress Maud's uncle, invaded England, and was bought Anarchy °^ ' J y tne 8^ ts °^ t ^ ie eai 'l^ om OI Huntingdon to himself, and of Carlisle to his son. Robert of Gloucester, half-brother of Matilda, although he took the oath of allegiance to Stephen, maintained an ,armed neutrality, fortified by the possession of the strong castle of Bristol. Stephen allowed the nobles to build castles all over the country, filled with retainers who were no better than robbers, who plundered the country and burned the towns, so that the common people believed that " Christ and His saints were asleep." To secure his power, Stephen used the treasure left by Henry to engage a force of mercenaries, wandering soldiers, chiefly a.d. 1189] ENGLAND 409 from Flanders and Brabant, called Brabancons, assisted by others from Brittany, commanded by the counts of Penthievre and Richmond. In 1137, King David made another invasion of England, supported by a rising in the south-west. He was, however, opposed by the aged Thurstan, archbishop of York, who was carried through the army in a litter, ~f f ortne and so inflamed the courage of the soldiers. Also, Walter Espe, an old warrior with long hair and beard, addressed the host from a platform. A battle was fought near Northallerton, called the Battle of the Standard, from the appearance in it of the Italian caroccio. The Scots were entirely defeated. But, in the treaty of Durham, which closed the war, signed on April 9, 1138, Henry, the son of David, was invested with the county of Northumberland. Stephen now alienated the church by his imprisonment of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, and his nephew Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, who had offended him by setting themselves up like the barons and building castles in imitation of them. Even Henry of Winchester took the side of the clergy, and, as legate of the pope, summoned a council at Winchester, which, however, came to no conclusion. In 1139, Empress Maud landed, and was allowed by Stephen to pass freely to Bristol, where she found an army levied by her half-brother, Robert of Gloucester. In a battle at Lincoln in 1141, Stephen was defeated, made prisoner, and carried off to Bristol. In 1142, Maud was B a tt ie f crowned at Winchester. But she made herself Lincoln — unpopular by her strict government, and was Coronation compelled to fly to Gloucester. Robert was taken of Mau d. prisoner by William of Ypres, and Henry, who had crowned Maud, now returned to his brother's side. The civil war- continued for six years with varying fortunes. The empress was nearly captured at Oxford, and with difficulty escaped over fields covered with snow, and the king nearly suffered the same fate. In the anarchy which ensued, the west of England acknowledged Matilda, the east of England Stephen, the north of England King David of Scotland, and the centre of Eng- land was divided amongst the great earls. In 1147 Robert of Gloucester died, and the empress left England. The second crusade diverted the attention of the combatants to other matters ; Frederick Barbarossa became emperor, and Henry, Matilda's son, married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the divorced wife of Louis VII. of France. Henry now landed in England in 4io A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1087 to 1153, and by the efforts of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry of Winchester, a treaty was signed at Wallingfoid, at which it was arranged that Stephen should reign for the remainder of his life and be succeeded by Henry. This was made easier by the fact that Eustace, a son of Stephen, had died in the previous year. Stephen himself died shortly afterwards, on October 25, 1154. Henry II. reigned for thirty-five years, from 1154 to 1189. He was a great European prince, and the founder of the judicial and parliamentary systems of our country. Of his y four sons, two became kings of England, and of his three daughters, Matilda, the eldest, married Henry the Lion of Saxony ; the second, Eleanor, the king of Castile ; and the third, Johanna, William the Second, king of Sicily. Besides the kingdom of England, Henry ruled over Normandy and Maine, in right of his mother, Anjou and Touraine in right of his father, and Poitou, Saintonge, Limousin, Guienrie, and Gascony in right of his wife, so that he possessed a large portion of France. He was a man of great ability and untiring energy. He had the merit, shared by other English kings, of recognising that the real foundation of his power was the welfare of the nation which he governed. His reign may be divided into three periods. In the first, from 1154 to 1162, he succeeded in Royal weakening the feudal government of the nobles Authority and establishing the royal authority. He de- Restored, stroyed what are called the "adulterine" castles which had been built in the reign of Stephen ; he sent out of the country the foreign mercenaries whom Stephen had employed ; and he resumed the royal estates which had been alienated by his predecessor. Following a precedent set by Henry I., he allowed his feudal barons to commute their yearly service for a pecuniary payment called scutage, which, besides rendering the barons less warlike, gave the king money with which he could hire mercenaries. He levied it first in 1159 for the prosecution of a war in Toulouse. At this time the papal see was held by Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman who ever wore the tiara. He used the authority over islands supposed to be a prerogative of the pope by investing Henry with Ireland, which however, he had to conquer. The second period of Henry's reign, which lasted from 1162 to 1172, was occupied by his struggle with the church, his judicial reforms, and the conquest of Ireland. In 1162, Thomas Becket was made archbishop of Canterbury, at the age of a.d. 1189J ENGLAND 4x1 forty-four. He was born in London, of Norman descent, and belonged to tbe middle classes. He was educated at Merton Priory in Surrey, and at the University of Paris, and then entered the service of Theobald, archbishop w ith the of Canterbury. He was one of the most remark- Church — able of Englishmen, and deserves the reverence Thomas with which he has always been treated. He was Becket. extremely religious, an able ruler, very lovable, but, at the same time, headstrong and impetuous. He was made chancellor in 1154, and showed himself a good financier and an able judge. He succeeded in upholding at the same time the dignity of his office and the authority of the king. But when he became archbishop he transferred the zeal which he had displayed for the crown to extend the privileges of the church. When money was required for the war in Wales, Becket opposed Henry's attempt to appropriate a local tax called the " Sheriff's Aid " — the first instance of opposition to the king's financial measures since the Conquest. In 1164, at the royal palace ^he Consti- of Clarendon, near Salisbury, a document was tutions of passed, called the Constitutions of Clarendon, Clarendon, recording in sixteen clauses what Henry declared to be the English customs, of which the following are the most important : — (1) The separate trial of the clergy by their own order was for- bidden. Those accused of crime were to answer the charge in the king's court — to be tried, indeed, in the ecclesiastical courts, but, if convicted, to be degraded and sent to the king's court for sentence. (2) In order to check the appeals of the clergy to Rome, they were not allowed to leave the kingdom without the king's licence. (3) All appeals from the ecclesiastical courts were to go to the king, and were to be finally decided in the archbishop's court, unless the king allowed them to be taken to Rome. (4) All elections to archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and priories were to be made by the clergy in the king's chapel and with his assent, and the person elected was to do homage to the king before consecration. (5) The sons of villeins were not to be ordained without the consent of their lords. (6) No tenant in chief of the king or member of his household was to be excommunicated or placed under an interdict without the king's knowledge. After some hesitation, Becket accepted these articles as binding on the church. But he soon repented of his action. He shut himself up in his palace at Canterbury, and re- fused to perform any priestly functions until Pope Alexander 412 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. io87 to should older him to resume them. The pope, however, de- nounced the new constitutions. Whom was Becket to obey ? Flight and Hi a case which now arose, he violated them by Return of appealing to the Holy See. He was condemned Becket. f or this and other matters in a council held at Northampton, and fled to France, carrying with him his pallium and his seal. Crossing from Sandwich, he at length reached Gravelines on November 2, 1 164. After visiting Pope Alexander III., he took up his abode in the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, which had been assigned to him as a residence. From this refuge he was driven by the action of Henry. After expressing his confidence that God, who fed the birds of heaven and clothed the lilies of the field, would not desert him and his, he retired to the monastery of St. Columba at Sens. The quarrel between the archbishop and the king shook the courts of Europe, and efforts were made in every direction to reconcile them. We have no space to relate the thrilling story. At length, in 1170, when the king's eldest son had been crowned by the archbishop of York, to the disgust of Becket, who asserted his right to perform the ceremony — when the French king, Louis VII., was offended that his daughter Margaret, young Henry's wife, had not been crowned with him, and there was danger of war — -when the pope threatened Henry with an interdict, — Henry, like a wise statesman, yielded. A reconciliation took place between the two enemies in a meadow near Tours, on July 22, and on December 1 Becket returned in triumph to his cathedral at Canterbury. But he had many enemies, who declared that he had not re- turned in peace, but with fire and sword, to make his brother bishops a footstool under his feet. Three of the Becket bishops went to France, found the king at the castle of Bures, near Bayeux, and told him that he would have no peace so long as Becket was alive. Henry broke out into wrath against the man who had eaten his bread, and now trampled him under foot — whom he had covered with benefits, and who now treated him and his house with scorn. " By what cowards," he cried, " am I surrounded ! Is there no one who will rid me of this paltry priest?" Four of his nobles, fired by these words, immediately left for England by different roads — Richard Fitzurse, " Son of the Bear " ; Hugh of More- ville, a rich baron of Northumberland ; William Tracy • and Bichard Brito. The king sent to call them back, but it was too late. Becket had set out to visit young Henry at Woodstock, a.d. 1189] ENGLAND 413 taking with him three valuable horses as a present, but he heard in London that the young king would not see him. He returned in wrath to Canterbury, preached on Christmas Day, from the text " Peace on earth, good will towards men," and excommunicated all those who stirred up strife between him and the king. He embittered the feelings of his enemies, and on December 29, 1170, was barbarously murdered by the four knights in the cathedral. When the body was un- dressed, they found it clothed with a hair shirt, and bearing traces of recent penance. The people streamed to the scene of the murder, the very blood was reverenced as holy, and Becket was proclaimed a saint by the acclamation of the throng before he was canonised. Before this momentous scene, Henry had effected important constitutional changes. In 1166, the Assize of Clarendon had established in criminal cases the " Jury of Pre- sentment," by which twelve men of rank and posi- Reforms tion swore to reveal all guilty persons, but to accuse no man falsely, and which was the origin of our present grand jury. By the Grand Assize, a jury of recognition was introduced into civil cases, which was the origin of our petty jury. A free- holder who had been deprived of his land might demand a " Jury of Recognition " to judge his case. In 1215, when the ordeal was abolished as a method of trial, by the pope, it became the duty of the Jury of Recognition to judge the cases brought forward by the' Jury of Presentment. Also, in 1169, steps were taken to reduce to submission the island of Ireland, granted to Henry by the pope, which was effected ? Ireland by the labours of Robert FitzStephen, Richard FitzGilbert, better known as Strongbow, and Maurice FitzGerald. An opportunity had arisen when Dermot, king of Leinster, was driven from his kingdom and sought help from Henry. Dermot died in 1171, and Henry went to Ireland to receive the submission of Strongbow, who had become too powerful. A council was held at Cashel, by which the church of Ireland, which had hitherto been independent, was brought under the authority of the pope. After this, the population of Ireland was divided into three sections — the inhabitants of what was called the Pale, that is, the district immediately around Dublin, who were loyal to the English crown ; the mixed Anglo-Irish, who dwelt in the open country ; and the wild and rebellious natives in the west. These three sections were constantly at war with each other. After the conquest of Ireland, Henry was reconciled with the pope, 414 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. iost to and was solemnly absolved at Avranches in 1 172. He renounced ostensibly all new customs prejudicial to the church, but in effect a compromise was made — even, at last, on the question of the trial of criminous clerks. The last eighteen years of Henry's reign were clouded with sorrow. In 1173, three of his sons — Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey Revolt of — rose against him, assisted by their mother, the Henry's Queen Eleanor, and by the king of France. Young Sons. Henry did not care to wear the crown without having some regal authority ; Richard and Geoffrey hoped for appanages in France ; Eleanor was enraged against her husband in consequence of his infidelity ; and Louis VII. would have been glad to see the French and English possessions of the British crown in different hands. Hugh Bigod and several of the earls took the side of the rebels, and William the Lion, of Scotland, invaded the kingdom from the north. Civil war raged on both sides of the Channel. Henry called mercenaries to his aid, including the dreaded Brabancons. Battles were fought at Dol in Brittany, and at Bury St. Edmund's in England. Henry became convinced that the only remedy for these evils, which he regarded as a punishment for his own misdeeds, was to do penance at the shrine of the martyr. So, on July 12, 1174, happily in the middle of summer, after hearing a sermon from Gilbert, bishop of London, he went, clad in the shirt of penance, into the crypt, was flogged on his naked back by the priests and monks, and spent the night on the bare stones with prayers and tears. The next day he heard mass, presented the cathedral with costly gifts, was absolved from all his sins, and entered London with rejoicings. The penance soon produced its effect. On the very day that it was completed, "William the Lion was defeated at the battle of Alnwick, and was taken prisoner. Hugh Bigod submitted. The kings of France and England made friends at Gisors. William the Lion, released from prison, acknow- ledged the supremacy of the English crown over the Scottish in the treaty of Falaise. Henry, accompanied by his reconciled son, gave solemn thanks at the shrine of Becket for his friendly interposition. In 1176, Henry set himself to continue his judicial reforms. The Assize of Clarendon was amended by the Assize of North- Further ampton, which divided England into six circuits Judicial and established a system of travelling judges, Reforms. which still continues. A famous treatise on the laws of England was compiled, perhaps by the Chief Justiciar, a.d. 1189] ENGLAND 415 Ranulf de Glanville. The old curia regis was reorganised, five judges being separated from the general fisco- judicial staff in 1178, and required to remain always in the King's Court, and hear all cases brought before them ; the authority of the sheriffs was strengthened in the counties ; and all the departments of government were reformed. Henry obtained for himself so much reputation by these reforms that, in 1177, he was chosen as arbitrator between the kings of Castile and Navarre, who had long been disputing with regard to their respective frontiers. In 1181, the Assize of Arms made regulations for the national militia, known by the Saxon name of the Fyrd ; and in 1184 the Assize of the Forest laid down rules for the management of the forest lands. In 1183, the young Henry began to rebel once more against his father, but on June 11 he died suddenly at Marcel in Querci, the king sending him the ring from his finger, in token of forgiveness. He was more of a French- L * n , r l s man than an Englishman, but was admired by both friend and foe for his knightly virtues, and praised by the poets of both the south and the north. After his death Henry liberated his wife Eleanor from prison, in which she had been confined for ten years, and allowed her to come to Normandy. He might have looked forward to a few years of happiness, had it not been for his extravagant affection for his worthless son John, the stubborn temper of his son Richard, and the treachery of Geoffrey, who joined King Philip Augustus, Louis VII. 's successor on the throne of France, in an attack on Normandy, but died suddenly in Paris, a posthumous child, Arthur, being born to him on August 19, 1186. In 1187 occurred the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, the effect of which we have already described, and in the same year war broke out again between Henry and Philip II. The expense of the new crusade was met by the imposition of the Saladin tithe, already mentioned, which was the first tax on personal property. The war still continued ; Le Mans, Tours, and Samur fell into the hands of the French ; Brittany was in rebellion ; John and Richard deserted their father. Henry lay in the castle of Chinon, broken in mind and body. He acknowledged himself to be the vassal of the king of France, but when he saw that his son John was among the rebels he uttered a curse against him and Richard, and gave up the ghost on July 6 : he was buried in the monastery of Fontevrault. He was undoubtedly a great king, as we have learnt from the relation of his life. We have said nothing of 416 A GENERAL HISTORY La.d. 1087-H89 his love for the fair Rosamund Clifford, whose son Geoffrey became chancellor and bishop of Lincoln. Notwithstanding the domestic troubles of his reign, he left England in every respect in a better condition than he found her. But the court was French, and, in order that England might acquire her self-consciousness and proceed on the course of orderly advance, it was necessary that she should lose her possessions in France. CHAPTER X. HISTORY OF ENGLAND, A.D. 1189-1377. King Richard I. was the spoilt child of his mother Eleanor. Brought up in the civil wars of south-west France, he was a stranger to his own country, and spent less Richard than a year in it as king. He knew nothing Cceur-de- of statesmanship and constitutional legislation, Lion. but only cared for the excitements of war, the sports of chivalry, and the songs of the troubadours. Crowned in Westminster Abbey on September 3, 1189, he set to work to plunder and persecute the J ews, from whom he exacted money for the crusade. For the same purpose he sold offices, civil and ecclesiastical, in a reckless manner. His bastard brother Geoffrey obtained for =£3000 the archbishopric of York, as Henry II. had desired, and Bishop Hugh of Durham paid =£10,000 for the county of Northumberland. Richard said himself that he would have sold London if he could have found a purchaser. He sold the suzerainty of Scotland for ten thousand marks, and threw the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick into the bargain. In this way he amassed an enormous treasure, which he proceeded to squander. He gave as recklessly as he acquired, and his brother, John, and his mother, Eleanor, were recipients of his inconsiderate bounty. Having appointed William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, chancellor and justiciar of the kingdom, and made peace with King Philip of France, he left for the third crusade in June 1 190, joining Philip at Messina. In Cyprus, he married Berengaria of Navarre. William of Ely, a Norman of humble birth, exercised his office with great severity, and was opposed by John, who hoped to receive the crown in case Richard should not return, which was very likely, whereas William favoured the claims of Arthur of Brittany, son of Geoffrey, who was certainly the rightful heir. With the help of Geoffrey of York, Hugh of Durham, and the citizens of London, William was driven from his position and forced into France, where he appealed to the pope. His place was taken by Walter of Coiitances, arch- 417 2 D 418 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189 to bishop of Kouen. The events of the third crusade have been already narrated, the capture of Acre and the return of Philip to France, the conquest of Jaffa and Ascalon, the march on Jerusalem, and the truce with Saladin for three years, during which the Christians were to have free access to the Holy Sepulchre. On his return, Richard was captured by the duke of Austria and imprisoned by the Emperor Henry VI., in 1193- When the news of this event reached England, John en- deavoured to secure the kingdom with the help of Philip of France. Eleanor kept England true to Richard, fj^hif 1 *^ ^ u ^ Philip took advantage of Richard's imprison- ment to gain Gisors by treachery, and to get into his hands Aumale, the Vexin, and, indeed, the whole country as far as Dieppe. At length, Richard was set free by the payment of a large sum of money, and by the influence of his mother, and of Hubert Walter, who was now justiciar, came back to England. Walter was an excellent ruler, who laid the foundations of a future Parliament, by making the juries the representatives of the counties and giving them certain political powers. Richard returned to his country in March 1194, and was received with joy by the people. John went to France, in order to secure the French possessions of the Return*' 8 crown > with the hel P of Hulip- Richard pre- pared for war. William of Ely was recalled from exile. John, frightened at Richard's power, threw him- self at his brother's feet and received pardon. Bertrand de Born, the troubadour poet, says : " The merry time is back again, When motley tents bedeck the plain ; When walls are stormed by warriors bold, And captives languish in the hold ; When lance and banner fill the field, The horse, the helmet, and the shield." War raged from the Seine to the Garonne. The death of Henry VI. directed Richard's attention to Germany, as he was anxious to gain the imperial crown for his nephew Otto. The pope made, peace between the two kings. But in January 1199, Richard was wounded at Chaluz, in a quarrel with Guidomar of Limoges. He died a few days later at Limoges, at the age of 42, and was buried there, leaving John as his a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 419 heir, for he had no children. He was every inch a knight, tall and well made, with fair hair, very strong and courageous, deserving the name of " Lion Heart," fond of art, music, and poetry. Chateau Gaillard (" the saucy castle "), which he built for the defence of Normandy, remains his characteristic monu- ment. He was renowned for his generosity. His reign gave opportunity for the growth of liberty in the towns, especially in the city of London. John, supported by the last will of Richard and the influence of Eleanor, was crowned in Westminster Abbey on May 29, 1199, but the rightful heir to the throne was his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, the son of his ?° M rf elder brother Geoffrey. Philip Augustus, king of France, supported his claims ; and the two kings were also divided on German questions, John supporting his nephew Otto, Philip the Hohenstauffens. Peace was, however, made between them in May 1200, when Blanche of Castile was betrothed to Philip's son Louis, and Arthur was compelled to do homage to his uncle for the possession of Brittany. At the close of the same year, John divorced his wife Hadwisa of Gloucester and married Isabella of Angouleme. Arthur still continued to assert his rights, and, in 1203, besieged the castle of Mirebeau, where Queen Eleanor was lying ill. But he was captured, and afterwards murdered by John's contrivance. His murder gave Philip a handle against John. He was summoned to be tried by his peers at Paris, and, when he did not come, was condemned to lose his French possessions by contumacy. Chateau Gaillard was taken, and Caen, Coutances, Bayeux, Lisieux, and Avranches were compelled to submit. Rouen held out longer, but finally surrendered. Thus Normandy came back to France three hundred years after it had been conquered by „ oss , j.t/ Noriii3,ndv Rollo. The Plantagenet possessions soon followed. In the summer of 1205, Hubert de Burgh surrendered Chinon, and soon all the country between the Loire and the Garonne — Anjou, Maine, and Touraine — came into the hands of Philip. John was a man without character, for whom it was impos- sible to feel respect. His Norman nobles had deserted him, and it was difficult for his English vassals to remain Quarrel faithful to him. He was soon to find a more with the formidable antagonist in Pope Innocent III. The Pope. dispute arose about the appointment to the see of Canterbury, 420 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. liso to which had become vacant by the death of Hubert Walter. On the death of Hubert, the younger monks elected Reginald, their sub-prior, as archbishop, whereas the king nominated John de Grey, bishop of Norwich, who was elected by the senior monks. The bishops of the province also put forward their claims to elect their metropolitan, and the decision of the question came to Pope Innocent III. The pope hesitated for a long time, and at length determined that the right of appointment belonged to the monks, and not to the suffragan bishops or the king. But he said that the sub-prior, Reginald, had been elected irregularly, and ordered the chapter to choose Stephen Langton, a man of excellent character and profound learning. The king became very angry, and refused to acknowledge Langton ; but the pope consecrated him at Viterbo and gave him the pallium on June 17, 1207. When John heard of what had happened at Viterbo, he was beside himself with rage. He drove the monks of Canterbury England ou ^ °^ their cells, and confiscated their property. under Seventy monks and one hundred lay brothers Interdict. sought refuge in Flanders at St. Bertin and other monasteries. The bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester there- upon received orders to rebuke the king, and, if this produced no effect, to place the country under an interdict. John swore by the teeth of God that he would drive the bishops and all the clergy out of his kingdom and confiscate their property, and, if the pope sent messengers to England, he would send them back without eyes or noses. On March 28, 1208, the three bishops issued the interdict, and then fled the kingdom. The churches were closed, no bells rang, no masses were celebrated, no children were baptized, no dying were anointed, no dead were buried in consecrated earth. Many bishops and other ecclesi- astics left the kingdom, and their property was confiscated, only those of Norwich, Durham, and Winchester remaining faithful to the king. In the following year, the pope issued a ban against the king himself. Shunned in his own country, John betook himself to Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Wales. He also renewed rela- tions with his nephew, the Emperor Otto IV. In the meantime, he treated England with the utmost severity. The bishops of London and Ely went to Rome, and stirred the pope to action. He looked about for assistance. No one was so fit to execute his purpose as Philip Augustus of France. The danger was not great. Wales was in rebellion. England ready for revolt. ad. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 421 Frederic II. had crossed the Alps to wrest the imperial crown from Otto. Raymond of Toulouse, John's brother-in-law, was nearing his fall. So Innocent III. declared John j hn de- deposed from his throne and all his subjects ab- posed by solved from their allegiance, and offered the crown the Pope, of England and Ireland to Philip, as a reward for his fidelity. On April 8, 1213, the French king summoned a meeting of notables at Soissons, and received from them general support. Only Ferrand of Portugal, count of Flanders, dissented, and with Rainald, count of Boulogne, and other princes of the Netherlands, allied with John and Otto IV. At Easter, 1213, all Europe was in movement. But, before John marched in de- fence of the Welfs, he thought it prudent to become reconciled with the pope, and on May 13, 1213, he swore on the gospels submission to the pope. He promised to receive Langton as archbishop of Canterbury, and on May 15 he placed the crowns of England and Ireland in submits the hands of Pandulf, the pope's nuncio, and re- ceived them back as the pope's vassal, promising to pay a yearly tribute of a thousand marks into the pope's coffers. John was absolved from excommunication, and Philip was told that he must stop his warlike operations. John was now able to send a fleet to Flanders under his bastard brother William Longsword, who destroyed most of the French fleet at Damme. We now approach the period of the Great Charter. On August 4, 1213, a council was held at St. Alban's by Geoffrey Fitz Peter and Peter des Roches, at which pro- clamation was made of the restoration of good and , ,° x 5 n ° the abolition of bad laws, and, on August 25, at a council held at St. Paul's, Stephen Langton read the charter of Henry I. to the assembled barons. At this time, Geoffrey FitzPeter died, and Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, became justiciar. Although John was reconciled with the pope, this did not prevent him from taking part w T ith Raimond of Toulouse and Otto IV., who were both excommunicated. He himself sailed to La Rochelle, while William Longsword joined Otto, Ferrand, and Rainald in the Netherlands. The great battle of Bouvines, which we have before de- scribed as one of the decisive battles of the Bouvines world, took place on July 27, 1214, and the French cavalry gained a victory over the forces of the allied nations of Germany, England, and the Netherlands. John had to surrender, in the treaty of Chinon, his western territory in 422 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189 to France from the Seine to the Garonne, and retained only Aquitaine and the harbour of La Rochelle. John was now entirely at the mercy of the barons. He attempted to form a party for himself by promising freedom of election of the bishops to the church, taking c , e Jr re the vow of a crusade, and appealing to the pope. But the barons collected an army and forced him to sign the Great Charter at Runnymede, a large meadow by the side of the Thames, near Staines, with an island in the stream, where the king is supposed to have pitched his tent. Magna Oharta (the Great Charter), as it was called, was signed at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. It was a statement of the rights of the English barons. The king was expected to keep the law, and the charter stated what the law was, but it was entirely feudal in character. It was a statement to which Englishmen could appeal in their struggle for liberty against the king. Its principal provisions were as follows : — The church was promised freedom, especially with regard to the election of bishops. Feudal abuses, as to reliefs, wardships, marriages, and collection of debts, were remedied. No aids or scutages were to be collected unless by consent of the common council of the realm, except in certain cases. The common council was to consist of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and greater barons, summoned individually, and of the lesser barons summoned through the sheriffs. For justice, the court of common pleas was to sit in some fixed place ; judges were to ride the circuit four times a year ; justice was not to be refused or sold ; no freeman was to be punished without trial by his peers, or against the law of the land. In commerce, merchants were to go and come freely, weights and measures to be uniform, and all rivers to be open to navigation. London and all other- towns were to have their ancient liberties and customs. Besides these provisions, the forest laws were to be reformed, the exac- tions of the crown with regard to purveyance limited, the foreign mercenaries dismissed, and a body of twenty-five barons, including the mayor of London, was to see that the charter was observed. The king returned to Windsor in great disgust, brooding over plans of vengeance. He tried to collect a new army, and „. .. w had recourse to the pope. The nobles met at rvi ar. Oxford and Northampton, and sought assistance from France. They offered to acknowledge Philip's son Louis, who had married John's niece, Blanche of Castile, as king of England. But the barons were defeated at Rochester, and a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 4^3 Innocent used all the artillery of the church to assist John. In January 1216, the king marched northwards, to put down the rebellion. Fire and desolation marked his advance. William Longswoixl did the same for the south, and Savary de Mauleon for the east. By March, nearly all England, except London, was in the king's hands. But Louis landed in Eng- land on May 21, 1216, and entered London on June 2. Then, on July 16, Innocent III. died, and John followed him to the grave on October 19, at the age of 49. John was small, ugly, corpulent, and immoral. He murdered his nephew and lost his possessions in France. He justified in his career the nick- name, early given to him, of Lackland. He was one of the worst of the English kings. It is not to his credit that his career incidentally assisted commerce both at home and abroad, and that his intolerable tyranny favoured the development of law and order. Dante, when he introduces us to Henry III. of England, in Ptugatory, calls him the king of the simple life, and gives us a pleasant idea of him. This is a contrast to the „ English historians, who represent him as vain, ex- travagant, and false, hated and despised. The probability is that Dante was right, that Henry was greater than his con- temporaries believed him to be, and that Englishmen regarded him too much from their own point of view. He is admitted, even by them, to have been pious and personally courageous. He reigned for fifty-six years, one of the longest reigns in English history, from 1216 to 1272, covering nearly the whole of the thirteenth century, which is regarded by some historians as the most brilliant period of modern times. His reign falls natu- rally into four divisions — the first of eleven years (1216-1227), before he came of age; the second of thirty-one years (1227- 1258), called the period of his misgovernment ; the third of seven years (1258-1265), the period of revolution and civil war; and the fourth of seven years (1265-1272), ending with his death. A few days after King John had been buried in the cathedral of Worcester, Henry, then nine years of age, was proclaimed king in the abbey church of Gloucester, and was crowned by the papal legate, Cardinal Gualo, after he had taken the oath and acknowledged the pope as suzerain. His ministers were William Marshall, earl of Pembroke, who was regent and represented the English party; Gualo, the papal legate; Peter des Roches, who favoured the foreign party; and Hubert de Burgh, who was justiciar. The Great Charter was reissued, 424 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189 to omitting, among others, the clauses which made the consent of the great council necessary for taxation, and established a council of twenty-five. A foreign prince was in England, acknowledged as king by many of the barons, but, now that the hated John was dead, the strength of the king's party grew every day. On May 20, 1217, Louis was defeated in the battle of Lincoln* Lincoln, and three hundred of his adherents were made prisoners. Shortly afterwards followed the battle of Sandwich, in which Eustace the Monk, with sixty ships, was defeated by Hubert de Burgh with forty. By the treaty of Lambeth, Louis received 10,000 marks and returned to France. On May 17, 1220, Henry, now a boy of thirteen, was crowned again at Westminster by Stephen Langton, archbishop of Oanter- bury. Langton had been sent back to England o^Henrv ^ Pope Honorius III., and before that took place William Marshall had died and been suc- ceeded as regent by Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, and Gualo had made way himself for Pandulf, a more tyrannical and overbearing character, while Peter des Roches was the king's guardian. Also the foundation-stone had been laid of a new abbey at Westminster, and the bones of Becket had been placed in a gorgeous shrine, so that a new epoch seemed to be opening for England. Discontent and dissension still con- tinued, but Langton and de Burgh worked hard for order and good government. Langton obtained a promise from the pope that, during his life, no foreign legate should reside in England, and Pandulf left the country. And, in 1224, Fulke de Breaute, the leader of John's foreign mercenaries, who had acquired for himself great wealth and position, was defeated by de Burgh and driven from the kingdom. In the same year Louis VIII. became king of France, and war between him and the English naturally broke out, lasting two years, but leaving Henry in possession of Gascony. In 1227, at the age of twenty, Henry became of age. The government was wisely administered by Hubert de Burgh, the great justiciar. Peter des Roches went on a crusade for four years, and even the death of Stephen Langton in 1228 did not produce much mischief, except that, in the year following, a demand of a tax of one tenth on all personal property was made by the pope and was consented to by the clergy. But in 1232 des Roches returned from the crusade, persuaded Henry to dismiss de Burgh as being too powerful, took his place, and proceeded to fill the offices of state with foreigners from his own a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 425 country of Poitou. A new leader was required for the English and constitutional party, and this was found in the person of Richard, earl of Pembroke, the son of the famous Dismissal of William. Henry was weak enough to attack him Hubert de with Flemish and Poitevin mercenaries, and a civil Burgh, war broke out, in which the feelings of the English were entirely against the king. But Richard, with the help of the Welsh, de- feated the king's troops ; and in 1234, Edward Rich, archbishop of Canterbury, persuaded the king to dismiss des Roches, and his nephew Peter of Rivaulx. They went to Italy, and served the pope, but in 1239 des Roches returned to Winchester, and died there. Richard was killed by the treachery of a doctor in 1234, and Henry mourned bitterly at his death. But his brother, Gilbert Marshall, took his place ; Hubert de Burgh regained his power, and was assisted by Sir Philip Basset, and the great Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, the friend of Simon de Montfort, and of the Franciscan and Dominican Friars. In 1236, Henry married Eleanor, the second daughter of Raimund Berengar of Provence, sister of the queen of France ; and the Emperor Frederic II. married Henry's lovely sister, Isabella. The fatal effects of the submission of John to the pope now began to appear. Pope Gregory IX., the successor of Honorius III., whose conduct towards Frederick II. we have already described, began to treat England with Exactions similar severity. He filled the sees and benefices with foreigners, and appropriated the church revenues, so that his representatives in England were ill-treated and even jkilled, and his bulls trodden under foot. The needy brothers and friends of Queen Eleanor regarded England in a similar way, and our island was exposed to the ravages of foreigners. Among them were the four sons of the Count de la Marche, who had married the widowed Queen Mother, Isabella ; and Richard, earl of Cornwall, the king's brother, who had married the queen's sister, Sancha, after his return from the crusades, and the great Simon de Montfort, the distinguished patriot, who had married Eleanor, the king's sister, the widow of William Marshall, at this time seemed to side with the foreign and papal party. Matters became worse under. Pope Innocent IV. In 1241, Boniface of Savoy, uncle of the queen, though utterly unfit for the post, was made archbishop of Canterbury. In 1242, Henry undertook an expedition to Poitou in alliance with his step-father. The French and English armies met at Taillebourg, but little fighting took place, as the English de- 426 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189 to camped in the night. Henry returned to England with a number of Poitevins, but Poitou was lost. At the council of Lyons in 1245, the English nobles and people made a solemn complaint against papal exactions, and Grosseteste repeated it at Rome in 1250, the year of the death of the great Emperor Frederick II., the wonder of the world. The necessities of the crown proved to be the beginnings of popular government. In 1254, the knights from each shire were The summoned to meet for the purpose of levying and Parliament aid. As we have before seen, Henry accepted the of 1254. crown of Sicily from the pope for his son Edmund, which led to great expense, and Richard of Cornwall was elected king of the Romans, which caused more. In 1257, Henry, already deeply in debt, demanded an aid for the conquest of Sicily, and this led to the revolution of which Simon de Montfort made himself the head, earning an undying name in the history of England. In 1258, Henry consented to the summoning of a Parliament at Oxford, and to the appointment of twenty-four commissioners, The barons and bishops, twelve chosen by himself and Provisions twelve by the barons, to inquire into the grievances of Oxford. of the kingdom. The Parliament which met at Oxford was called the Mad Parliament, and by it resolutions called the Provisions of Oxford were passed. They were six in number. The first established the commission of twenty-four, which has just been mentioned, the second appointed another commission of twenty-four to treat with the king, the third re- quired a council of fifteen to be elected by four barons out of the first twenty-four to give the king advice, and the fourth estab- lished a body of twelve men to meet the council of fifteen at least three times a year, and this was to constitute a Parliament. The two last provisions determined that the castles of the king should be placed in the hands of Englishmen, and that the chief justice, the treasurer, the chancellor, and the sheriffs should hold office for one year only, and then give an account of them- selves. In the following year, the provisions of Westminster were passed, to remedy the special grievances of the barons, the bad administration of justice in feudal as well as royal courts, and the excessive power of the sheriffs. Henry was obliged to consent to the Provisions of Oxford, but turned for assistance to the king of France, Louis IX., and to the pope. He surrendered to Louis his empty claims to Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou, and a.b. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 427 did homage for what he possessed of Aquitaine. By the leave of the barons, he went to France, and spent six months in the Louvre and St. Denis. In April 1261, Pope Alexander IV. issued a bull which condemned the f \ . ise Provisions of Oxford and released Henry from his oath to preserve them, and this was confirmed by the next pope, Urban IV. In 1263, war broke out between the king and the barons, under the leadership of Simon de Montfort, who was supported by the citizens of London. Matters were not im- proved by the fact that Louis, called in to arbitrate, by a decision called the Mise of Amiens, declared all the Provisions illegal, and that the pope countenanced this by a fresh bull. A battle took place at Lewes on May 14, 1264, in which the king was entirely defeated. The result of this was an arrangement called the Mise of Lewes, bv f Jattle ot L1GW6S which the matters in dispute were to be settled by fresh arbitration. The king was bound to confine himself to native councillors, and Prince Edward, the eldest son of the king, and his cousin Henry of Almaine, son of Richard, king of the Romans, were kept by the barons as hostages. A Parliament was now summoned, which was composed of four knights from each shire, and a new constitution was drawn up. Three electors appointed a council of nine, ^he without whose advice the king could not act, and Parliament who should appoint the ministers of state. In °f 1265. 1265, the first regular Parliament met, which was composed of barons, bishops, and abbots, two knights from each shire, and two barons from certain towns, this being the first time that representatives of the shires and counties had sat together. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was now regent and pro- tector of England. Queen Eleanor did her best to find adherents for the disgraced king in France, and mercenaries were hired in Flanders, but the popular party ^3 m ° n , e forbade the pope's legate, Cardinal Guido of Sabina, to land in England, and he was forced to return to Rome, where he became pope under the name of Clement IV. But the royal party received a powerful ally in Gilbert of Clare, earl of Gloucester, whose father had been a bitter enemy of Simon, and he was soon joined by others. The result was the battle of Evesham, fought on August 4, 1265, etoSuuii in which Simon was defeated and killed. Simon deserves the reputation which he has always had in the history of England. He was very religious, a friend of the friars, but 428 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1189 to a persecutor of the Jews. After his death he was reverenced by the people as a saint, and was regarded as " Simon the Righteous," who, by his death, made England free. His great achievements were that he placed the administration of England in the hands of Englishmen, and that he conceived and executed the idea of a Parliament representing all classes and interests of the people. The battle of Evesham was ruin to Montfort's party. The city of London had to submit, and the countess of Leicester had to retire to France. Queen Eleanor returned in triumph to Windsor. The remaining adherents of Simon took refuge in the Castle of Kenilworth, but a civil war raged until, at last, by the influence of the legate and the earl of Gloucester, peace was arranged on terms which bear the name of the " Dictum de Kenil- worth," by which Henry was restored to his authority. An Royal amnesty was proclaimed to the rebels on payment Authority of a fine, the Provisions were annulled, but the restored. authority of Magna Oharta and the charter of the forest was established, and in the following year, 1267, the Statute of Marlborough re-enacted almost all the Provisions of Westminster. In June 1268, Prince Edward and his brother, together with a hundred and fifty knights, took the cross from the hands of the papal legate. Henry III. died on November 20, 1272. He was a pious, God-fearing man, who supported the clergy and led a pure life, but he was deficient in the qualities of a statesman, and was much influenced by those around him, so that he became uncertain in his policy and extravagant in his way of living, and often found himself in pecuniary diffi- culties. The simplicity of life attributed to him by Dante must refer rather to his personal character than to his public actions. Prince Edward heard of his father's death whilst he was stay- ing with Prince Charles of Anjou in Sicily, on his return from the crusade. He did not hasten his return, but Long^hinks. P assed through Italy and France, visiting Pope Gregoiw X., the learned doctors of Padua, and the rich merchants of Milan, and defeating the count of Chalons in a tournament in Burgundy. Indeed, he was not crowned at Westminster till August 1274. He is, perhaps, the greatest of our English kings. He knew that England required good laws and a strong administrator, but he knew that a powerful govern- ment could not exist without the co-operation of the whole country, and he carefully refrained from increasing his own power, which he might easily have done, at the expense of a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 429 popular government. He adopted the position of a national king, that is, of a leader of the nation, depending on national support, but in Scotland he maintained the position of a feudal lord. Like Victor Emmanuel of Italy, the " Re Galantuomo," he made " keep troth ! " his guiding maxim. He was unselfish and truthful, hardworking, religious, and affectionate. His life was frugal and simple ; he loved field sports, but at the same time was a patron of art and was fond of literature. His chief advisers were his chancellor, Robert Burnell, and Accursi, the Italian jurist of Bologna. In appearance he was tall and well made, and his long legs earned for him the appellation of " Long- shanks." Until the year 1290, he was chiefly engaged in conquering Wales, and passing some important legislation, the chief object of which was to remedy the abuses of feudalism. The Statute of Wales was passed in 1284. It in- J^yST* troduced English laws, reformed the administra- tion, and divided the territory of Llewellyn into counties, whilst it provided for the maintenance of some Welsh customs. It favoured the building of castles and the settlement of English in many large towns. Edward's son was made Prince of Wales in 1301. The legislation, although it had definite ends in view, was spread over the whole period. In 1275, the principle of customs was confirmed by a statute giving the crown half a mark on every sack of wool and a mark on each last of hides exported. The king also raised money by compelling persons holding land of twenty pounds a year and upwards to become knights and to pay the fees. In 1278 commis- Taxation sioners inquired by what title (Quo Warranto ?) and Legis- landowners held property or jurisdiction once lation. belonging to the crown, and in this way many royal rights were recovered. In 1279, the important Statute of Mortmain forbade the grant of lands to corporations. In 1285, a second Statute of Westminster was passed, which was really a code of existing English law, a first statute having been passed in 1275. Besides, it added some important improvements, established and regulated the practice of entailing property, improved the system of itinerant judges, and ordered that people dwelling in the country should be answerable for robberies done in their dis- trict. The gates of towns were to be shut from sunset to sun- rise, and other precautions taken against robbers and high- waymen ; the Assize of Arms was revived, by which every man between the ages of fifteen and sixty was to have armour 430 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. H89 to according to his rank, reviewed twice a year. In 1290 the important statute called Quia Emptores put an end to the split- ting up of property by subinfeudation. In the same year, Edward banished the Jews from the kingdom, chiefly because of their practice of usury and their habit of clipping the coinage. The second half of Edward's reign, from 1290 to 1307, was taken up with trouble in Scotland, Wales, and France, and the perfecting of the English constitution. Scotland Succession was a ^ ^ s ^ me divided i llto Lothian, which was part of the old kingdom of Northumberland, and was settled mainly by Normans ; Strathclyde, inhabited by British; and Greater Scotland in the north. In 1290, after the deaths of Alexander III. and his little granddaughter, " The Maid of Norway," there were three serious claimants to the Scottish crown — John Balliol, Robert Bruce, and John Hastings, all descended from David, earl of Huntingdon, who was the brother of William the Lion. Edward decided for John Balliol, but his insistence on his feudal rights as Balliol's overlord produced constant friction, and when war France"* bl ' oke out between Edward and Philip IV. of France, owing to the French occupation of Gascony, an alliance was formed between Scotland and France, and Balliol repudiated his allegiance. The troubles with Scotland and Fiance made it necessary for the king to raise money, and for that purpose a model Parliament was summoned in 1295, con- sisting of spiritual lords, lay peers, representatives of the lower clergy, two knights elected from each county, and two repre- sentatives from each borough and from each city. To return to the affairs of Scotland. At Easter, 1296, an army was collected at Newcastle, consisting of 4000 horse and 30,000 foot soldiers, while a considerable fleet Invasion sailed to the Gironde under Edmund of Lancaster and Hugh of Lincoln. On April 27, the Scotch were entirely defeated at Dunbar. The coronation stone was carried off from Scone to Westminster. Balliol was deposed, and imprisoned in the Tower of London, and Earl Warenne was made governor of Scotland. But in Gascony, the English were entirely beaten, many nobles were taken prisoners, and a large part of the country was recovered by the crown of France. This was 'accompanied by troubles at home. The new pope, Boniface VIII., had issued, before the Scottish expedition, a bull, known as Clericis Laicos, forbidding the king to levy taxes on the clergy, or the clergy to pay them. Hence, in 1297, a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 431 Archbishop Winchelsey refused to pay taxes. Edward replied by declaring the clergy outlaws, and Boniface, finding Philip IV. also resolute, had to explain away his bull. But Dispute Edward had offended not only the clergy by his with the taxation, but also the barons by his popular reforms, Church, and the merchants by his seizure of their wool. The constable of England, Bohun, earl of Hereford, and the marshal, Bigod, earl of Norfolk, refused to go to Gascony. Edward, ostensibly reconciled to the clergy, exacted an aid, and went to Flanders to gain assistance against the French. But Bohun and Bigod opposed the collection of the aid, and, supported by Archbishop Winchelsey, demanded a confirmation of the Great Charter and of the Forest Charter, and the addition of articles forbidding the exaction of taxes without the consent of Parliament. The Scotch were encouraged by the ill success of Edward in Gascony and by the revolt of the English nobles, and they found a leader in William Wallace, who, from being the son of a humble gentleman, rose to become a national wliia 1 ^ hero. He was assisted by William Douglas, and Robert Bruce, the grandson of the pretender. In September 1297, Warenne was entirely defeated at Cambuskenneth. The news reached Edward in Flanders, so that he determined to make peace with Philip IV., and devote himself to the reduction of Scotland. He also satisfied his discontented ip^g Q 0n . nobles by issuing a document at Ghent, which is firmation called the " Confirmation of the Charters," that no of the " aids, tasks, or prises," except those which were Charters, customary, should be exacted without the consent of Parliament. This is a great landmark in English history. Peace at home being thus secured, William Wallace was defeated at Falkirk in 1298. But the intervention of Philip IV. and Boniface VIII. hindered Edward's advance. Philip's quarrel with Boniface, however, enabled Edward to flout the Pope's pretensions to be lord of Scotland. He also strengthened his position by marry- ing Margaret, Philip's sister, and betrothing his son, Edward, to Philip's daughter, Isabella. Returning to Scotland, he forced Comyn and the chiefs of the national party to submit, but Wallace still held out. A price was set upon his head, and, in August 1305, he was betrayed and brought to England. He was tried, condemned for high treason, dragged to Smithfield at the tail of a horse, and executed. His head was cut off and exhibited on London Bridge, while various parts of his body were exposed at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth, and Aberdeen. The task of defend- 432 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. H89 to ing Scotland now fell to the charge of Robert Bruce. Betrayed by John Oomyn, he murdered him in the Franciscan church at Dumfries on January 29, 1306, and was crowned g er king of Scotland at Scone in March. But before Edward could reach the Scottish frontier Bruce was defeated on June 26, 1306, at Methven, by Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, and had to fly for his life. Edward was preparing for a fourth expedition when he died at Burgh- on-Sands, near Carlisle, on July 7, 1307. He was the great lawgiver of the English nation ; he called the English Parlia- ment into existence, and gave it the control of taxation. He won for England a great position on the continent, but he secured the undying hatred of Scotland, which was not appeased for many years. His son, Edward II., who reigned for twenty,years (1 307-1327) was a man of very different character. He was idle, fond of pleasure, extravagant, and obstinate. He had some w ' refined and cultivated tastes, but he did not possess his father's manliness of character or strength of intellect. He was under the influence of unworthy favourites, the first of whom was Piers Gaveston, a Gascon knight, who had been banished by Edward I., but was recalled to the court on his death. In 1310, Parliament was obliged to appoint | . or s Lords Ordainers, the chief of whom was Arch- bishop Winchelsey, to regulate the royal house- hold and the government. Ordinances were published in 1311 by which the government was transferred from the king to the barons, who had the nomination of the great officers of state, and power over war and peace. Parliament was to be summoned every year. Edwaixl recalled Gaveston, who had been banished under the Ordinances, but he was attacked by the barons, excommunicated by Winchelsey, besieged in Scar- borough Castle, and executed on Blacklow Hill. The govern- ment of the barons was not a success. Bruce acquired great Battle of power in Scotland, and, in 1314, at the battle of Bannock- Bannockburn, the English were entirely defeated, burn. which led to the practical independence of Scotland, and to risings in Wales and Ireland against English rule. More powerful than the king, at this time, was Thomas of Lancaster, the largest landed proprietor in England, related to the royal houses of both England and Fiance. He was the son of Edmund, brother of Edward I., who once had the opportunity of becoming king of Sicily, and of Blanche of a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 433 Artois, granddaughter of Louis VIII. He had received from his father the earldoms of Lancaster, Leicester, and Derby, and, owing to his marriage with a member of the family de Lacy, claimed the reversion of those of Lincoln and Salisbury. In 1316 he became president of the royal council, but the other barons would not submit to him, and civil war broke out. In 1317 Robert Bruce was defeated, and his brother slain at Dundalk, and English rule was established in Ireland ; but in 1318 he captured Berwick. The place of Gaveston was now taken by the two Hugh Dispensers, father and son, who became favourites of the king. The English nobles took up arms against them, and they were banished, but divisions among the Me'Barons barons gave the king his opportunity, and in 1322 they were recalled. Lancaster and his supporters, Clifford and Hereford, were defeated at Boroughbridge, and Lancaster, the possessor of five earldoms, was beheaded at Pomfret. He was not a better man than Edward, but he was regarded as a martyr by the people, and was reverenced as a saint. Edward had the good sense to throw himself upon the support of Parlia- ment, and to declare that what concerned the whole nation should be treated of by a Parliament fully representative of the nation. During the remaining four years of his reign, however, England was ruled by the Dispensers. A truce was made with Scotland, and, in 1324, Charles IV., the new king of France, summoned Edward to do homage to him under pain of the forfeiture of his estates. Queen Deposition Isabella went to France instead, and Prince and Death Edward did homage in the place of his father, of the King. But Isabella and her lover Mortimer formed a conspiracy against the king, and returned to England in September 1326. In January 1327, Edward was deposed, and his son was pro- claimed king in his place. Edward, rejected by his wife and son, was carried about from castle to castle, and was, at last, killed in a barbarous manner at Berkeley Castle, on September 27, 1327. He was not a bad man, but he was weak, and he did not succeed in securing the support of either barons, clergy, or people, and thus he fell. His son, Edward III., reigned for fifty years (1327-1377). Edward 1IL He was not a very great king, and was far inferior to his grand- father ; but by his bravery, self-assertion, and magnificence he gained a distinguished name in English history, and has pro- bably a greater reputation than he deserved. He was respon- 2 E 434 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189 to sible for the war with France, which was unjust in its origin, and did the country much harm. But he took care to be on good terms with his Parliaments, and assisted the constitutional de- velopment of his country. He fostered English commerce and manufactures, and attempted to establish a powerful commercial union, which was to include the south of France, England, and the Netherlands. His long reign may be divided into four parts — first, the regency, which lasted three years (1327-1330); then the troubles with Scotland, from 1331 to 1336; then the war with France, from 1337 to 1360; and lastly, the constitu- tional struggle, which darkened the last seventeen years of his reign, from 1361 to 1377. The first act of Edward's reign was to put an end to the war with Scotland, by acknowledging its independence under King Treaty of Robert Bruce. This was effected by the treaty of Northamp- Northampton, which was concluded in March ton- 1328. Bruce died in the following year, and was buried in the abbey church of Dunfermline. His heart was to be taken by James Douglas to Jerusalam, but on the way Douglas was killed by the Moors at Granada : the heart, however, was saved and buried in Melrose Abbey. Bruce was succeeded by his son, David, a child of eight years old, who was crowned and anointed in Scone. Mortimer and Isabella meanwhile misgoverned Eng- land, but in 1330, Edward, who was already the father of a son by his Dutch wife, determined to take the government into his own hands. Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn, and Queen Isabella was confined for the rest of her life at Castle Rising. Peace reigned in England, but, in 1332, Edward Balliol rose against Bruce, defeated his troops, and was crowned in Perth as a vassal of the English crown. The Scotch did not approve of this, and asserted their independence, but they were defeated on Battle of ^ iu y 18, 1333, at the battle of Halidon Hill, in Halidon which Bannockburn was avenged. The flower of Hill. the Scottish chivalry, the Regent Douglas, the earls of Ross, Lennox, Carrick, and Sutherland, were among the slain, which are said to have numbered 30,000. Berwick was taken ; David Bruce, and his wife Johanna, Edward's sister, fled to Holland ; Balliol was recognised as king. But Balliol had soon to retire to Berwick, whilst the heads of the national party, Moray and William Douglas of Liddesdale, made an alliance with France. This led to a border war between Scotland and England, which lasted for a long time. Parliamentary government now received a further develop- a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 435 merit by the division of Parliament into two houses. The knights of the shire first deliberated apart from the lords and then with the burgesses, so that, by 1341, the division Growth of into two houses was complete. The division of the House of Parliament into two houses, instead of three, as Commons, in France, was favourable to the unity of the realm. The knights of the shire were connected by birth with the nobles, but their interests lay with the people, and by sitting in the lower house they prevented the severance of classes, and the union of the clergy and the nobles against the people. What is called the Hundred Years' War, between France and England, broke out in 1337. It arose from the help given by the French king to Bruce against Balliol, from his The Hun- seizure of certain English lands in Guienne, and dred Years' from his interference in the wool trade between War begins. England and Flanders. Edward had, as allies, Robert of Artois, a vassal of Philip, who had been banished from France ; the famous James von Arteveld, the brewer of Ghent ; the Emperor Louis IV., the Bavarian, who was at enmity with the pope, and the princes of the empire in Brabant, Guelders, Juliers, and Cologne. Philip was assisted by the count of Flanders and the Scots. In 1340, Edward took the title of king of France, to which he had no right whatever. It was based upon the principle that, although the Salic Law forbade a woman to reign in France, it did not prevent a woman from passing on her claim to her son, provided such a son was born in the lifetime of his grandfather. Thus, Edward III. was the grandson of Philip IV., the elder son of Philip III., while Philip VI. was the son of Charles of Valois, who was the younger son. In this year was fought the battle of Sluys, in which the English obtained command of the Battles of sea, after which a truce was made between the Sluys and two countries. The next great event of the war Crecy. was the battle of Crecy in 1346, in which the victory was due to the efficiency of the English archers and the great good discipline of the English soldiers, as compared to the feudal levies of Philip — in other words, to the steadfastness and tenacity of the English, compared with the lighter and less solid character of the French. When Napoleon saw that he was defeated at Waterloo, he said, with a sigh, " It has always been the same since Crecy." In the same year, the Scotch were defeated at Neville's Cross, and David Bruce was taken prisoner. When Calais was taken in August 1347, Edward III. stood at the 436 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1 189 to height of liis power. In this year he founded the Order of the Garter, the first order of chivalry in the world, whose only rival was the Golden Fleece — its rival no longer. But just at this time occurred the terrible calamity of the Black Death, Deat? laCk wllicl1 killed a large part of the population of England and produced important economic results. Owing to the scarcity of labourers, and to the large profits to be derived from the trade in wool, sheep farming was introduced on a large scale, and the system of leasehold farming began. Landowners could not afford to pay labourers to work their estates, and therefore broke them up into holdings, which they stocked and let out to tenants for rent. Meanwhile a war of succession was raging in Brittany, which was decided in favour of the English ; Count Charles of Blois, Philip's nephew, was defeated and imprisoned in the Tower. A Spanish fleet, which took advantage of the war between France and England to attempt piratical excesses, was defeated at Winchelsea in the summer of 1350. During these years, several important statutes were passed. The Statute of Labourers (1351) forbade labourers to receive higher wages than had been paid them before the Black Death. The Statute of Provisors protected the patrons of livings against the encroach- ments of the pope. The Statute of Treasons (1352) defined the crime of treason, the heavy penalties of which had hitherto been inflicted with excessive frequency. Henceforward some act designed against the king or his heir, or their wives, or the king's eldest daughter, or one of certain specified minor offences had to be proved. The first Statute of Praemunire (1353) for- bade the prosecution of suits in foreign courts, such as the pope's. In the same year the Act of the Staples settled the number and site of the staple towns to which the wool export was restricted, and confirmed the privileges of the merchants. In 1355 the war with Fiance was renewed. The Black Prince wasted the south of France from Bordeaux to Narbonne, but, on the other hand, the Scotch, who were allies of the French, captured Berwick. This was avenged in the following year by the " Burnt Candlemas," a name given to the devastation of the Battle of country round that border city by Edward III., Poitiers and by the great battle of Poitiers, in which King Treaty of John of France was taken prisoner. In 1357, Bretigny. peace was made with Scotland, and King David was released from prison, and in 1360 the peace of Bretigny put an end, for a time, to the Avar with France. In this treaty the a.d. 1377] HISTORY OF ENGLAND 437 king of England renounced all claims to the throne of France and to the Plantagenet possessions north of the Loire, comprising Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Normandy. The French king ceded to Edward the duchy of Aquitaine, Ponthieu, and Calais in full sovereignty, and was released on promising to pay a heavy ransom, which was of great service to the exhausted coffers of the English crown. After the peace of Bretigny, the war with France slumbered for nine years, but the time was occupied with important events, both foreign and domestic. In 1361, Edward the Black Prince, the hero of Poitiers and the darling of the English people, was married to Johanna of Kent. In 1362, Parliament enacted that no subsidy should be granted by merchants on the exportation of wool without the consent of Parlia- roSsfation ment, and the exportation of manufactured wool, as well as of butter and cheese and similar commodities, was forbidden. It was also ordered that the English language should take the place of Norman-French in the law courts. In 1366, Parliament repudiated the papal claims to tribute admitted by John in 1213. In Ireland the Statute of Kilkenny forbade English colonists in Ireland to intermarry with the Irish or to act as foster parents or sponsors to Irish children, or to adopt the Irish language, dress, or laws. All these provisions showed the growing strength of the national consciousness and confirmed the principle of " England for the English." The The Black Black Prince reigned in Gascony, and, in 1267, Prince in undertook an expedition to help Pedro the Cruel, Spain. king of Castile, against Henry of Trastamare, who was helped by the French. He won an important victory in the battle of Navaretta, and Pedro was restored to the throne. But war cannot be conducted without expense, and the Gascons complained at having to pay for an enterprise in which they had no concern. In 1369, they appealed to the king of France, and the Hundred Years' War broke out again. The Constable du Guesclin now became the hero of France, and the English had to give way. In 1375, a truce was made which left only Calais, Cherbourg, Brest, Bayonne, and Bordeaux in English hands. The year 1376 is memorable in the history of our country for both good and ill. The Black Prince, a worthy successor of Edward I., was in favour of popular government and opposed to the autocratic spirit of his uncle, p ,."' . John of Gaunt. By his influence, the Good Parliament, as it is called, established the principle of im 438 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1189-137? peachment, by which Parliament for centuries controlled the king's ministers. The ministers of the king and others who are accused of high treason are accused by the Commons and tried before the Lords. In this manner, Lyons and Lord Latimer and Alice Ferrers were found guilty and were punished. But, just at the moment when the Black Prince had set this seal to his reputation, he died, after a lingering illness, from the fever which he had contracted in the south of France. He died on June 8, 1376, and was followed to the grave, on June 21, 1377, by his father, Edward III., who was succeeded by his grandson, Richard II., a child ten years old. This year was also made memorable by the return of the pope from Avignon to Rome, and by the trial of the reformer John Wycliffe at Saint Paul's before Archbishop Sudbury. CHAPTER XI. FRANCE, A.D. 1180-1350— GERMANY AND ITALY, A.D. 1272-1347. Philip II. of France, dignified by his contemporaries with the name of Augustus, the son of King Louis VII., succeeded to the French throne in September 1180, and reigned for forty-three years. He was the most Augustus distinguished of the Capetian kings who had lived rip to that time. His main object was to establish the unity of his country and the power of the crown, and, for that purpose, he tried to overthrow the predominating influ- ence of England. Ten years after his accession, in March 1190, shortly after the death of his wife, he undertook an expedition to Acre with Richard of England, but he was back again in his own country by Christmas 1191. He took full advantage of Richard's imprisonment and of the interdict pronounced over John. Immediately after his return from Palestine he married Ingeborg, a Danish princess, but he divorced her shortly after the wedding, and married Agnes of Meran. For this, Pope Innocent III. pronounced an interdict against him, similar to that which he pronounced against John. After a long struggle Philip had to give way, and to promise to take Ingeborg back, upon which the Pope removed the interdict. But Agnes remained his real wife till her death in 1201, and Ingeborg was not received by her husband until 1213, when she had been for seventeen years a prisoner in Etampes. Meanwhile, Normandy, Brittany, and other French possessions of the Plantagenets fell into his hands ; the weakness of England became the strength of France. Philip obtained a position in France which no French monarch had held since the first Callings. The important battle of Bouvines, which we have already mentioned, confirmed his atithority, and Paris became the capital of the kingdom. He also made con- quests in the south, and was just preparing for a crusade against the Albigenses when he died in July 1223, and was 439 440 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. liso to succeeded by his son, Louis VIII., who, however, died himself in November 1226. Louis IX. succeeded to the throne at the age of eleven, and France was governed by his mother, Blanche of Castile. Louis . IX., afterwards dignified with the name of Saint, is one of the few good kings that France ever had. He always treated his mother with great respect and followed her advice. Notwithstanding his general modest and religious character, he was always able to keep his nobles in due subordination. A pattern of Christian chivalry, like a knight of the Holy Grail, the true son of his nation and his age, an example of domestic virtues, a wise and far-seeing statesman, the darling of his people, he not only deserved the title of Saint himself, but cast a glamour of sanctity over the crown of France which never left it. It was never forgotten that French kings were sons of Saint Louis, however much their private character might diverge from his standard. He increased his dominions rather by diplomacy than by war. In December 1259 he made a treaty with Henry III., which acknowledged his claim to Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, Maine, and Poitou, and established a solid basis for the future monarchy of France. We have no space to deal with his constitutional reforms. He died, as we have seen, on a second crusade, where a church, which overlooks the ancient harbour of Carthage, marks the place of his decease. Louis IX. was succeeded by his son, Philip III., who bore the title of Le Hardi, and reigned from 1270 to 1283. He followed in the steps of his father, but was not Le^ardi ' fortunate in his councillors. He took as his principal adviser Pierre de la Brosse, a man of humble birth, who was hated by the nobles and the queen, and was eventually turned out of his offices, and hung in 1276, though he still lives in the pages of Dante. Mean- while, on the death of Philip's uncle, the childless Alphonse of Toulouse and Poitou, almost all his territories fell in to the crown. In 1284, Philip became involved in a useless war with Castile. By marrying his son Philip to Joanna, the heiress of Navarre, he secured to France the eventual posses- sion of Navarre, Champagne, and Brie. In 1284 he was persuaded to undertake an expedition to conquer Aragon for his son, in the interest of his uncle, Charles of Anjou, the rival of Aragon in Sicily. He started in the spring of 1285, but the fleet was destroyed by Roger of Loria, the army a.d. 1350] FRANCE 44 1 was decimated by sickness, and the king himself died at Perpignan on October 5, 1285. Although his reign is marked by no great event, he bore an honourable part in the building up of the unity of France and developing its constitution. His son, Philip IV., called Le Bel, who now came to the throne at the age of seventeen, wielded with a strong hand and political wisdom, but also with reckless despo- tism, the sceptre which Philip Augustus had sup- Be j ip ported by force of arms and Saint Louis by justice and virtue. He reigned from 1285 to 1314, and was a powerful personality. He was essentially a worldly man, and with his practical spirit dealt fatal blows both to feudalism and the power of the church. As we have already seen, he contended successfully against Edward I. of England, and he came out of his Flemish quarrel with an increase of dominions. His quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. about the taxation of the clergy, the bull Clericis Laicos, and other matters, resembled the strife between Henry II. and Becket. In November 1302, Boniface issued the bull Unam Sanctam, in which he declared the supre- macy of the papal see over all worldly thrones. This led to open war, and to the attack upon Boniface by William of Nogaret and other French knights at Anagni, immortalised in the verse of Dante, the shock of which caused the pope's death. It is said that he dashed out his brains against the walls of his bed- chamber. Benedict XL, the successor of Boniface, only reigned for a few months, and his successor, Clement V., removed the papal see to Avignon and remained a passive instrument in the hands of Philip. Philip made war against the Flemish, but was beaten at Courtrai in the "Battle of Spurs," on July 11, 1302, peace being made two years later. The last great enterprise of his reign was the destruction of the Order of the Templars, one of the most unjust and tyrannical actions of the Middle Ages ; the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, perished on the scaffold on March 17, 1313. Philip died at Fontaine- bleau on November 29, 1314; he may be regarded as the founder of the absolute monarchy in France, but the means which he employed were condemnable, and the final result was ruin, notwithstanding the splendour of the intervening period. His system reached its culmination in Louis XIV., but ended in the disgrace of Louis XV. and the catastrophe of his suc- cessor. Philip le Bel left three sons, Louis X., Philip V., and Charles IV., who all reigned, but with them the direct line of the 442 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. iiso-1350 Capets came to an end, the next king, Philip VI., being the son of Charles, count of Valois, brother of Philip IV., and the The last founder of the line of Valois, the house of Bourbon Capetian being descended from Robert, count of Clermont, Kings. S on of Saint Louis, and brother of Philip III. Louis X. died on June 4, 1316, a year and a half after his father. He had imprisoned his wife, Margaret of Burgundy, for infidelity, and had her killed in order to marry Clementine of Naples. He left a daughter, Joanna, by his first marriage, and his wife with child. Philip V., called the Tall, reigned for six years (1316 to 1322). He was not a bad king, but the curse of the Templars seemed to hang over his race. As he was taking measures for suppressing the Pastoureaux, a throng of peasants who marched through the country creating every kind of confusion, and driving the Jews out of France, he died suddenly on January 3, 1322, leaving his country in the wildest confusion. He was succeeded by his brother, Charles IV., who reigned for six more years (1322 to 1328). He continued the struggle with Flanders, tried to obtain the crown of the empire for his house, and utilised the weakness of England, under his brother-indaw, Edward II., for the aggrandisement of his throne, but his enterprises cost much money and involved heavy taxa- tion. He died on February 1, 1328, leaving behind him a daughter and a wife who was expecting her confinement. Philip of Valois became regent for the time, and when, three months later, the widowed queen gave birth to a daughter, he was acknowledged as king. The house of Valois T ® ouse was now established on the throne of France, and a short time before the head of the barony of Bourbon, the third branch of the Capetian house, had been raised to the dignity of duke and peer. Up to this time, the descendants of Hugh Capet had followed each other without a break from father to son for three hundred and forty years. Philip VI., the first king of the house of Valois, reigned from 1328 to 1350. He inaugurated a different policy from his predecessors, making the crown more masterful, surrounding himself with a brilliant nobility, and holding a splendid court. N^hTf 611011 ^- e even planned a new crusade for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. The monarchy of France pursued an entirely different path from that of England. It had no king like Edward I. to bind together the common interests of crown, nobles, and people. In England there was no caste of aristocracy — the nobles were continually rising from the ad. 1271-1347] GERMANY AND ITALY 443 people and descending again to be mingled with them, joining with the crown in a common democratic patriotism. In France the nobles were separated from the people, and had to be kept in order by the king, so that, when troubles arose, there was no middle class to act both as a buffer and as a cement between the king and the nation. Hence came the miseries of the French Revolution : what the Valois had begun, the Bourbons continued. GERMANY, A.D. 1271-1347. We left Germany in the troubled times of the Interregnum. We must now relate how order was restored to the confused mass and a powerful government established. After the death of King Richard of Cornwall, Electors, there was a danger lest the empire should come into the hands of Philip III. of France. The pope therefore urged the electors to a speedy choice. On January 17, 1273, Werner of Eppenstein, archbishop of Mainz, made a treaty with Duke Louis of Bavaria and the Palsgrave of the Rhine, which was joined by the bishops of Worms and Speier, to elect a worthy prince to the German throne, and the archbishops of Trier and Cologne soon gave their adhesion. This led to the definition of the college of electors — three ecclesiastics, the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier, and four laymen, the Count Palatine, the duke of Saxony, ' the margrave of Brandenburg, and the king of Bohemia, if he were a German. A majority of the electors now chose as king Rudolf of Hapsburg, who had large possessions in Switzer- land and Alsace, and was one of the richest nobles Hapsburg of his time. He was elected German king on September 29, 1273, and founded the German empire anew. He was a man of untiring energy, and sound common sense. He was invested at Aachen with the crown of Charles the Great. He soon gained the favour of the pope, who recognised him as emperor and invited him to be crowned at Rome, commanding Alfonso of Castile to surrender his claims to the empire. Rudolf cared little for Italy, and confined his attention to con- solidating his power in Germany. The first adversary with whom he had to contend was Ottokar of Bohemia, who had the support of the duke of Bavaria, and there was considerable difficulty in persuading the Bavarians to take the side of the Germans against the Slavs. Similar difficulties were found in uniting the scattered princes of Germany in a common effort. 444 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1271 to Eventually, on June 24, 1276, an imperial ban was pronounced against Ottokar, and war was declared. The decisive battle took place on the Marchfeld on August 26, 1278, Ma^chfeld 16 one of the most memoraDle conflicts of the Middle Ages. Ottokar was defeated and slain. This victory of German over Slav was one of the most momentous events in the history of Germany and of the world, and its con- sequences continue to the present day. Rudolf now set himself to consolidate his power. Bohemia and Moravia, which fell to the lot of Ottokar's youthful son, Settlement Wenzel II., were reunited with the empire, and of the remained under German government until Empire. Wenzel attained his majority in 1281. About the same time, Rudolf was beset by domestic calamities — by the death of his wife, Anna, who is said to have died of grief in parting with her daughter Clementina, who was married to Charles of Sicily, and by the drowning in the Rhine of his beloved second son, Hartmann, who was betrothed to the daughter of the king of England. However, in December 1282, Austria, Styria, Carniola, and the Wendish March, having been wrested from Ottokar, were given as fiefs to the emperor's sons, Albert and Rudolf, and the power of the house of Hapsburg was finally established. Rudolf then devoted himself to bringing about internal peace and to the knitting of the various parts of the empire together. In effecting this, he was perhaps more busied with petty details than with great enterprises, and we cannot here deal with those minute occurrences which belong mainly to the history of Germany. However, at Christmas, 1289, a great festival was held at Erfurt, such as Germany had not seen for many a year. Thither came the princes of north Germany, ecclesiastical and secular, the dukes of Brunswick and Luneburg, of Mecklenburg and Saxony, the margrave of Branden- burg, the landgrave of Hesse, the burgrave of Nuremberg, and countless others. Strong measures were taken in the cause of order : nine-and-twenty robber knights were executed, and a large number of castles were destroyed. But there was a darker side to this brightness. Albert of Austria had many difficulties to contend with. A war broke out between him and Salzburg, and the weak Wenzel II. of Bohemia gave a great deal of trouble. The question of the succession caused the aged emperor serious anxiety. His eldest son, Rudolf, died suddenly in May 1290, while Albert had few friends, and the princes refused to elect him king in 1291- This was the last a.d. 1347] GERMANY AND ITALY 445 blow, and the aged sovereign died on July 15. His reputation has steadily increased since his death. He cared little for outward show, for crusades, or for expeditions to Rome ; but by painful assiduity and conscientious labour, he placed the house of Hapsburg upon a firm foundation, which has preserved its power and authority for more than six hundred years. Rudolf had always a great desire to secure the succession of the empire to his house. But he knew that Albert was unpopular with the princes and could not be The elected emperor, and so it was not until his two Imperial younger sons had been the victims of an early Succession, death that he turned his attention to his proper heir. And it was found after his death that, although Albert had the imperial ensigns in the castle of Trif els and the Count Palatine on his side, yet the other lay electors were working for the king of Bohemia, while Mainz and Cologne were putting forward Adolf of Nassau, in which they were afterwards M a g Sa u joined by Trier. Adolf was elected German king at Frankfort on May 5, 1292, a chivalrous, cultivated man, but lord only of a small territory and unfit for the burden of empire. He was consecrated and crowned in Aachen on June 24, and then set himself to attack Albert, who was arrayed against him. The decisive battle did not take place till July 2, 1298, at Gollheim on the Donnersberg — the Thunder Mountain, the Mont Tonnerre of the French — on the old Roman road between Kaiser- slautern and Worms. It was a great cavalry struggle, in which personal bravery and energy went for much. Adolf did his best, but he was thrown from his horse and killed. His party was entirely defeated, and his cause lost. Albert was elected king on July 27, 1298, and crowned ^^burg. at Aachen by the archbishop of Cologne on August 24. He held a brilliant court at Nuremberg in November, and his sons Rudolf, Frederick, and Leopold were invested with the government of the hereditary provinces of Austria. But he had a powerful opponent in Pope Boniface VIII. , who sought the assistance of Philip IY. of France. Hungary and Bohemia now took part in the struggle. Andrew III., the last king of the Arpad stock, died on January 14, 1301, and was succeeded by Charles Robert, r^e Crowns sometimes called Carobert, the son of Charles f Hungary Martel, the grandson of Charles of Anjou. In and Bohemia, Wenzel II. abdicated in favour of his son, Bohemia. Wenzel III. On August 4, 1306, Wenzel III. was murdered, 446 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1271 to and Albert seized the vacant heritage. His son Rudolf, was elected king, marrying Elizabeth of Poland, the widow of Wenzel II. But he died on July 4, 1307, and the crown of Bohemia was claimed by Henry of Carinthia, the husband of Wenzel's daughter Ann, opposed by Frederick, the brother of Rudolf. But the situation was changed by a terrible event which happened on May 1, 1308. Rudolf, eldest son of the Emperor Rudolf, had, as we have seen, died young. He left a widow, Agnes, daughter of Ottokar, and a son, John, who was educated at the court of Bohemia. When John reached the age of fourteen, Albert summoned him to his court and brought him up with his cousins. But the youth saw himself set aside and his cousins advanced before him, and, meditating a deep revenge, which was stimulated by the enemies of Albert, he at last determined to kill his uncle. The fatal act was committed at the ford across the Reuss, close by the cradle castle Albert ° °^ ^ ie Hapsburgs. The crime caused a feeling of horror throughout the world, which finds its echo in the verse of Dante, and John is stamped in history with the title of " parricide." The monastery of Konigsfeld was founded at the scene of the murder, and there Agnes passed the rest of her days. John became a monk, and died in obscurity. Albert left behind him twenty-one children, all born of Elizabeth of the Tyrol, but he was succeeded by Henry VII. of Luxemburg, from whom Dante expected the re- L e b generation of Italy. At the close of the year he was elected at Frankfort and crowned at Aachen on January 6, 1309. Henry had already gained a great reputa- tion as a brave and chivalrous ruler, just, pious, and statesman- like, highly cultivated, speaking Latin, German, and excellent French, a handsome man of moderate stature, with light brown hair and a healthy complexion. He soon added Bohemia to his dominions, accepting the crown for his son John. But the great task before him was the settlement of Italy. Crossing the Mont Oenis on November 1, 1310, he entered \t°\^ m Turin, and was received with acclamation, and, on November 11, advanced to Asti. Here he received the aged Matteo Visconti, the head of the Ghibellines, as well as embassies from Verona, Pisa, and even Rome. After a month's stay at Asti, he proceeded to Milan, which he entered on December 23. Guido della Torre kissed his feet, and when he received the iron crown of Lombardy on January 6, 1311, it seemed as if party quarrels were at an end. But disorder soon ad. 1347] GERMANY AND ITALY 447 broke out. Milan became the scene of a civil war : disorder raged in Cremona and Brescia. Easter Sunday was spent in the imperial city of Pavia, but Cremona was severely punished. The leaders of the revolt threw themselves at Henry's feet, but the walls of the city were destroyed, and she was deprived of all her privileges. This severity stimulated her ill-feeling against the king, and Padua and Yicenza remained doubtful in their allegiance. Tuscany now awaited the peacemaker, but King Robert of Naples, the head of the Guelfs, was an active opponent of the German invader. Henry hesitated to advance until he had pacified the north of Italy, which was t^ 11 }? an no easy task, and Dante in vain urged him to energetic action. Brescia had to be subdued, and to suffer the fate of Cremona. A diet held at Pavia in October 1311 had little effect, as Henry was master of only a small military force. Then, not daring to encounter the opposition of the Tuscan League, he turned aside to Genoa. Here he was well received, reconciled the quarrels of the houses of Doria and Spinola, and appointed Uguccione della Faggiuola imperial vicar. He, however, 'Suffered a severe blow by the death of his wife on December 13, 1311. In February 1312, he com- mitted himself and his court to the uncertainties of the sea, and, after a stormy voyage, reached the faithful imperial city Pisa. Here he pronounced a ban over the disobedient towns of Tuscany — -Florence, Lucca, Siena, Parma, and Reggio. On April 23, he was able to set out for Rome, and, on May 7, entered the Eternal City and lodged in the Lateran Palace. But St. Peter's and the Leonine City were in. the hands of his enemies. Much fighting took place in the streets, and Henry had to content himself with being crowned in the Lateran on June 29, 1312. He now made an alliance with Frederick of Sicily, and his daughter Beatrice was betrothed to Frederick's eldest son, Pedro. As the summer heats approached, his followers became tired of Rome, and on July 20, he left the city and retired to Tivoli, where he remained till August, and reached Florence in September. He spent the winter at Poggibonzi, and moved to the imperial city of Pisa in the spring. There he took measures for crushing the enemies who were gathering; round him on both sides of the Alps. Bohemia and Austria were marshalling their hosts in the north : Frederick of Sicily was preparing his fleet in the south. Galleazzo Yisconti, the 448 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1271 to imperial vicar, held his own against the Gnelfs in Lombardy. Henry's efforts were producing their effects, and his triumph Henry's seemed to be at hand, when he suddenly died, sudden As he travelled in August from Pisa to Siena, Death. fever seized him, and he was carried in a litter to the little town of Buonconvento in the hills. He received the host from the hands of Brother Bernardino, a Dominican monk from Montepulciano, and died on the same day, August 24, 1313, at the age of fifty-one. It was said that the host was poisoned, but the heats of Italy are sufficient to account for his decease. He was buried in the Campo Santo of Pisa, one of the few towns in Italy which was really true to him. His army broke up. Frederick of Sicily hurried home to protect himself against Robert of Naples. Henry's son John, who had crossed the Alps to assist his father, went to his new kingdom of Bohemia. The two ladies, Katherine of Hapsbnrg and Beatrice of Luxemburg, who had crossed the Alps to marry their respective husbands, Henry and Pedro, had to seek other alliances, Beatrice being married to Charles Robert of Hungary, and Katherine to Charles of Calabria, the heir of King Robert, while Robert was now made by the pope vicar over the whole of Italy, including Genoa. Italy fell back into the confusion and disorder which excited the scorn and indignation of Dante. But who was to succeed to the imperial crown 1 Five sons of Albert of Austria were still alive, the most prominent of whom were Frederick the Beautiful and the chivalrous Election* Leopold. The archbishops of Trier and Mainz would have preferred John of Luxemburg, but he was too young and inexperienced, so their eyes were turned to the house of Wittelsbach, which was represented by Louis of Bavaria. The result was a double election. Louis was chosen by four electors and crowned at Aachen, Frederick by three and crowned at Bonn. The sword had to decide between them. The civil war continued for eight weary years, and was not concluded till the battle of Miihldorf, on September 28, 1322, when victory fell to the house of Wittelsbach. John of Luxemburg remained in possession of Bohemia. To this time belongs the rise of the Swiss confederacy, as, when kings are fighting against each other, the people get Yhe their own. After the death of the Emperor Swiss Con- Rudolf, the three Forest Cantons, as they are federacy. called, Uri, Schwytz, and Unterwalden, formed a confederacy in August 1291, which is the kernel of the ad. 1347J GERMANY AND ITALY 449 modern Switzerland. It is obvious from the events which we have described that the Hapsburgs were not in a position to assert their sovereignty over this country, and the Luxemburg emperor confirmed their liberties. After Henry's death, the Swiss supported the Bavarian cause, and the battle of Morgarten, fought on November 15, 1315, 5 r attle ° f f e 4. e a i. ■ rri i Morgarten. was a defeat tor Austria. lne league was con- firmed on December of the same year, and Frederick, hard pressed by Louis, was compelled to acknowledge Swiss indepen- dence, which was also fully recognised by Louis. The battle of Miihldoif, and the captivity of Frederick which followed it, did not decide the struggle between Hapsburg and Wittelsbach, because Duke Leopold, Frederick's brother, still thirsted for revenge. He was assisted by Pope John XXII., an ugly little man of low birth, who had succeeded Clement V. in 1316, and now reigned at Avignon. The pope was stimulated to attack Louis by the influence of the French king, Charles IV., who was anxious to obtain the imperial crown for himself, and had strengthened his position by marrying Maria, of the house of Luxemburg. In October 1323, John ordered Louis to lay down the imperial crown within three months, and when he refused he was deposed and excommunicated. Louis was driven to negotiate with the king of France and with Frederick, whom he released from prison. But the claims of Hapsburg suffered a terrible loss by the death of Leopold at the age of thirty-four, on February 28, 1326, followed by the decease of his brother Henry, just a year later. This reduced Frederick to insig- nificance, and he retired from the field of history, sufficiently occu- pied with the management of his own territories, where a civil war was raging. He died on January 28, 1330. Louis now prepared to march to Rome, which he reached at the beginning of 1328, and was crowned in St. Peter's on January 17, by the will of the Roman people, in Louis of spite of the opposition of the pontiff at Avignon. Bavaria Louis issued from the capital an imperial ban Crowned, against "Jacob of Cahors, falsely called Pope John XXII. ," on the grounds of simony, heresy, and high treason. He ordered that in future the pope should always reside in Rome. A new pope was elected, who bore the p opes name of Nicholas V. Louis was temporarily weakened by the desertion of Castruccio Castracani, who had been his active supporter, the most powerful despotic prince since Ezzelino, but he died in September, and Louis was 2 F 450 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1271-1347 relieved. Yet, when he returned to Germany in the following year, he had gained nothing by his expedition. Even Pope Nicholas was forced to resign his power to John XXII., and was kept in confinement at Avignon until his death. John of Bohemia pursued a wild adventurous career, fighting sometimes against Arabs, sometimes against the heathen in Prussia, some- times on the Rhine; but at length, in 1330, he concluded an alliance with Albert and Otto, the two surviving sons of Albert, son of Rudolf. Then he went to Italy, where the memory of his father was still vivid, and had considerable success, being acknowledged even by Milan. But he was recalled to Germany, and left his youthful son Charles, after- wards the Emperor Charles IY., in his place. Louis was not strong enough to undertake a new expedition to oppose him, and the two now made a kind of friendship, but John's designs on Italy had no permanent result. We cannot follow in detail the troubles which distracted Germany for the next fifteen years. Louis pursued a policy of family aggrandisement. He himself obtained Holland, Zealand, and Friesland by marriage. He made his eldest son, Louis, margrave and elector of Brandenburg, and married him to Margaret Maultasch (i.e. Pouch Mouth, for she had the underhanging lips which have remained ever since the hereditary mark of the Hapsburgs), heiress of the Tyrol, annulling for this purpose her earlier marriage to John Henry of Moravia, son of John of Bohemia. He made a short-lived alliance with Edward III. of England against France. And in the famous decrees of Rhense (1338) he was joined by the electors in repudiating the claim of the papacy to meddle in the choice of German kings. Yet he alienated Luxemburgs and Hapsburgs alike by his land-hunger, and in 1346 he was deposed by Pope Clement VI., of Louw n an( ^ Charles of Luxemburg, son of John, was elected in his place. John, who was now blind, took sides with Philip of France, and met with his death at Crecy. Charles was crowned at Bonn on November 28, 1346, but his success seemed very doubtful. Louis, however, died by a stroke of apoplexy on October 11, 1347. His life was one long struggle, beginning and ending in war. He did not succeed in any of his enterprises, but his reign gave prosperity and economical advance to his dominions, CHAPTER XII. FRANCE, A.D. 1350-1380— ENGLAND, A.D. 1377-1509— THE IBERIAN PENINSULA. We have already related the history of England down to the death of Edward III. We must now give some account of the history of France down to the same period. Philip VI. died on August 22, 1350, and was sue- %^ the ceeded by his son John, a brave and chivalrous prince, but devoid of statesmanlike qualities. While his country was suffering from the defeat of Crecy and the loss of Calais, his mind was set on the pleasures of a splendid court. He took John of Bohemia as his model. Almost the first act of his reign was to make the count of Eu and Guines constable of France. To obtain the assistance of Spain, he married Blanche of Bourbon to the young king, Peter the Cruel of Castile, and his own daughter Joanna to Charles of Navarre. He made his favourite, Charles d'Espagne, constable of France. When the renewal of the war in 1355 made it necessary for him to get supplies, he summoned the States-General to Paris, which only produced confusion and discontent in the kingdom. His hasty and tyrannical temper estranged the affections of his subjects and nearly produced a condition of civil war. The battle of Poitiers, called by the French the battle of Maupertuis, followed on September 19, 1356. Attempts were made in France to curb the authority of the crown, as had already been done in England. The leaders of the movement were Robert Lecoq, bishop of Laon, and Stephen Marcel, provost of the Paris merchants. A kind of Parliament of 800 members met in Paris, and passed ordinances similar to the Provisions of Oxford, which pointed to the establishment of parliamentary government. These reforms were accepted by the Dauphin as the only means of obtaining money, but the whole country was in disorder, and civil war raged from the northern coast to the Mediterranean. Marcel joined with the king of Navarre, and marched on Paris, and what is called the Jacquerie broke out— a name derived 45i 452 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1350-80 from Jacques Bonhomme, the usual appellation of the French peasant. It was a foretaste of the Revolution of four centuries later. The Dauphin took refuge in Compiegne, j e . but he collected his forces and managed to sup- press the revolt. Provost Marcel and his friend Jean Maillart were killed, the bishop of Laon fled to Navarre, and, on August 3, 1351, Charles the Dauphin entered Paris in triumph. The peace of Bretigny followed in May 1360. King John now returned from his imprisonment in England, but he did not long enjoy his freedom. At the beginning of 1364, he returned to London voluntarily, his son Louis, a hostage for the unpaid lansom, having escaped from Calais; and he died there on April 8. John was one of the least satisfactory of the French kings. The easiness of his character won him the title of the Good, but he worked great misery for his country. Just before his decease, the death of Philip of Burgundy, a descendant of Hugh Capet, gave this rich county to the crown of France ; but, instead of keeping it for himself, he gave it as an appanage to his son Philip, whom he created the first peer of France — an act which produced disastrous consequences. His successor, Charles V., who received and deserved the title of the Wise, had a weak body and feeble health. He was fortunately able to commit the conduct of his war- Charles the like p era tions to Bertrand du Guesclin, one of the heroes of French history. By his efforts, France, was cleansed from some of the mercenary troops, who, under the name of companies, devastated the provinces. His coronation at Reims on May 16, 1364, was Exploits of brightened by the news that du Guesclin, with the help of Marshal Boucicault, had defeated Charles of Navarre at Cocherel, not far from Evreux, Charles having defended his claim to the duchy of Burgundy by arms. In Brittany, however, in the same year, the English party won the battle of Auiay. Charles avoided his father's errors, by the practice of economy, the establishment of a trustworthy coinage, and the reform of the bureaucracy. Although he kept the towns in order, he was accessible to all and fostered a national spirit. In 1369, the war broke out again. The Black Prince, being in want of money, imposed a hearth tax, called Fouage, in Aquitaine, which was resisted by the nobles, who complained to a.d. 1377-1509] ENGLAND 453 the king in Paris. He reserved his decision until Henry of Trastamare had, with the help of du Guesclin, defeated his brother, Peter the Cruel, put him to death, and ascended the throne of Castile. Charles then summoned the Black Prince to his court, and received as a reply that he would come, but with his helmet on his head and 60,000 men in his train. Charles summoned the States-General to Paris to insure the support of his people, and among them were representatives of the towns, so that it had the character of a Parliament. The national spirit was aroused, and he strengthened his house by the marriage of his brother, Philip of Burgundy, to the heiress of Flanders. The Black Prince had now to withdraw from the war in consequence of bad health, and, distressed by the death of his eldest son at the age of six, he left Bordeaux, never to return. The star of English victory sank. The English English fleet was beaten by the Spanish Armada, and La Rochelle acknowledged the sovereignty of Charles V. By the summer of 1374, the English possessions in France were confined to Calais, Bayonne, Bordeaux, and some castles on the Dordogne. But Charles did not succeed in driving the English from France as he had hoped. On July 13, 1380, du Guesclin died at the siege of the castle of Bandon, and on September 10 Charles died himself, at the age of forty-four, leaving the crown to his son, a child of twelve. The reign of Charles V. was a time of peace between two periods of unrest. Though he never put on armour or be- strode a warhorse, he was served by distinguished generals, who held their own against the English. He was supported by the French and the Scotch, and had friendly relations with Castile and the empire, so that he was able to hold in check his evil-minded brother-in-law, King Charles of Navarre. He left behind him an honourable name in the history of his countiw. ENGLAND, A.D. 1377-1509. At the death of Edward III., John of Ghent, commonly called John of Gaunt, the brother of the Black Prince, was the most powerful man in the kingdom, having gained this position by the weakness of his aged father i° n ? and the ill-health of his brother. He was duke of Lancaster and Leicester, and was head of the national party, which was attempting to break the yoke of the papacy, which 454 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1377 to had become more oppressive since the removal of the papal see to Avignon. He was assisted by John Wycliffe, of Balliol College, Oxford, a man of deep learning, equally skilled in scholastic philosophy and canon law, who set himself against the corruptions of the Roman church, and especially against the occupation of English church preferments by foreign priests, the exactions of the papal Curia, and the abuses of non-residence. The beggar orders, Franciscans and Dominicans, were enthusiastic supporters of the pope. At an early stage in his career, Wycliffe proposed that the papal tribute, which was much needed at home, should be withheld, and was supported by John of Gaunt, so that the fulmination of Rome against him had but little effect. Wycliffe became more cour- ageous. Barefooted, clad in a rough robe of serge, he walked from village to village, attacking the demoralisation of the church and the clergy and urging the necessity of root and branch reform in head and members. He also translated the Bible from the Latin Vulgate into the English language, although the Curia declared that it was casting pearls before swine. He went so far as to describe the existing system as the reign of Antichrist and the synagogue of Satan, and to denounce the worship of saints, purgatory, masses for the dead, indulgence, confession, and transubstantiation. This preaching, however, produced an unexpected result in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. When Richard II. succeeded to the throne in 1377, there was an attempt to reduce the power of John of Gaunt, and he and his brothers were excluded from the royal council. England was exposed to attacks from the French on the south coast and from Scotland on the north, and the subsidy which was raised for the war was placed under the control of two London citizens. The following year (1378) saw the beginning of the Great Schism which divided the papacy into two parts, Urban VI. being acknowledged by England and Germany, Clement VII. by France, Spain, Scotland, and Sicily. The revolt of 'the peasants in 1381 was due to various causes, but was connected with a similar movement in France, The the knowledge of which was brought. to England Peasants' by the return of the English mercenaries from Revolt. that country. Some of the wandering priests of the Wycliffite party, known as Lollards, a name of uncer- tain derivation, had been preaching the equality of man and giving currency to the saying, " When Adam delved and a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 455 Eve span, where was then the gentleman ? " This aspiration after equality was intensified by the hatred of the peasants to the compulsory service of villeinage and the oppressive exaction of a poll tax intended to bring the lower classes under contribution. The leaders of the peasants were Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and a priest named John Ball. Their demands were the abolition of villein tenure, which provided that the occupation of land should be paid for by compulsory labour instead of by a money rent. The rising broke out first in Kent and Essex, and the in- surgents soon numbered 100,000. As in the Jacquerie of France, the peasants destroyed country houses, killed the game, burnt title-deeds, and murdered many people. In London they broke open the prisons, burnt the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, seized the Tower, and murdered Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury. The boy king, Richard, rode out to meet the insurgents, and tried to pacify them • but John Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, indignant at the impertinent behaviour of Wat Tyler, stabbed him with his dagger and killed him. Richard then said, " What do you want, my people? Tyler was a traitor; I will be your leader." He then rode on, followed by the crowd, and the rising was suppressed. This rising naturally strengthened the desire of the government for the preservation of order, and made it less inclined to liberalism. It also discredited the principles of the Lollards and postponed the Reformation for a hundred and fifty years. Villeinage died out in course of time, but this was mainly due to causes which were independent of the rising. The revolt was put down with great severity. In Kent and the eastern counties, the leaders were executed, and it is said that 1500 men were executed by the Chief Justice Tresilian at St. Albans. John of Gaunt lost his enthusiasm for democracy and reformation. The feeling turned against Wycliffe, who was forbidden to teach at Oxford, but was allowed to retain his rectory at Lutterworth till his death in December 31, 1384. At the same time, Wycliffe' s faction spread after his death, and Lollards were persecuted as late as the sixteenth century, while, in spite of the Lollards opposition of the church, Wycliffe's Bible continued to be read. The Lollards, like the Protestants, looked upon the Bible as the foundation of faith and morals, but they 456 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1377 to also had a political character, and were generally opposed to the government and principles of authority. Lollard doctrines would have spread more widely if printing had allowed their wider dissemination, and if their political associations had not rendered them unpopular. The first years of Richard's reign were spent in endeavouring to get lid of the overweening authority of John of Gaunt. Michael de la Pole, the son of a wealthy merchant in Hull, was Richard II niade chancellor; of the king's uncles, Edmund, earl assumes the °f Cambridge, was made duke of York, and Thomas Govern- of Woodstock duke of Gloucester, while Robert de ment. Yere, earl of Oxford, was made duke of Ireland. In 1386, John of Gaunt went to Spain to claim the throne of Castile in light of his wife, who was daughter of Peter the Cruel. But all these measures had little effect. Richard was discredited by the failure of his expedition against Scotland, and, in 1386 his chancellor, Michael de la Pole, was deposed. He was impeached for the misappropriation of public money and for enriching himself by grants from the crown. He was acquitted of the first charge, found guilty of the second, deprived of his status, and imprisoned. Parliament became convinced that Richard was a weak king who fell under the influence of favourites, so that a com- mission of regency was appointed for one year to govern the country and to reform abuses. Richard resented this, and obtained an opinion from the judges that the action was illegal. The result was civil war. Five " Lords Appel- lant" — the duke of Gloucester, and the earls of A ellant Arundel, Warwick, Derby, and Nottingham — took up arms against the supporters of the king, and defeated them in 1387 at Radcot Bridge. In the following year a Parliament, which is known in English history as the " Wonderful or Merciless Parliament," passed what was called an act of "appeal," accusing the king's friends of subverting the con- stitution, so that those who could not save themselves by flight were executed or banished. However, in May 1389, Richard, who was now twenty-two years of age, suddenly declared to the council that he intended to take the government into his own hands. He dismissed Gloucester, and gave the great seal to William of Wykeham, and the command of the fleet to his own half-brother, the earl of Huntingdon. For eight years (1389-1397) Richard governed well. In a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 457 1394, he made an expedition to Ireland, and succeeded in settling the country and receiving homage from the chiefs, while he left behind him his cousin, Roger Mortimer, as lord deputy. In 1396, he made a truce with France for twenty- five years, and, as his first wife, Anne of Bohemia, Ireland had died two years before, married Isabella of France. However, in 1397, his government underwent a change. He became convinced that Gloucester was plotting against him, and took strong measures against him and his adherents. He banished Thomas Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, exe- cuted the earl of Arundel, murdered Gloucester, and banished the earl of Warwick. The two remaining Lords Appellant, Derby and Nottingham, supported the king, and were made dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. A Parliament was held at Shrewsbury in 1398, which annulled the proceedings of the " Wonderful Parliament," delegated its power to a committee of eighteen, all friends of the king, who were to act as a Parliament for the future, and gave the king the customs of the country as a revenue for life. A quarrel now , took place between Henry of Lancaster, duke of Hereford, and Thomas Mowbray, duke of , anca t Norfolk. The king intervened, and they were both banished from the kingdom, Hereford for six years and Norfolk for life. Norfolk went to the, Holy Land, and died at Venice on his return, where his monument still exists. In this year, Roger Mortimer, lord deputy of Ireland, died, leaving a son, Edmund Mortimer. Roger was the rightful heir to the throne, being the son of Philippa, daughter of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. ; on the other hand, Henry of Hereford was the son of John of Gaunt, the third son. In 1399, Richard, being in need of money, levied forced loans from seventeen counties, and on the death of John of Gaunt took possession of his estates. This was resented by Hereford, who, during the absence of Richard in Ireland, landed in England and claimed his father's property. The feeling of the country was obviously in favour of Henry, and Richard was compelled to abdicate, Parliament accepting his resignation. Henry had no claim against Edmund Mortimer, but Parliament elected him, and that gave him a right to the throne. Richard was im- prisoned in the Tower. Henry IV., who reigned for fourteen years (1399-1413), was a commonplace king, whose success was due rather to mediocrity 458 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1377 to than to genius. He was an orthodox and honest Catholic, and had been a crusader in Lithuania, and was always prepared „ to undertake a crusade. He had no sympathy with Lollardry, and was generally averse to new ideas. He won popular favour by his chivalrous and energetic character, and took a middle line between the despotism of Richard and the vindictiveness of Gloucester. But he never surmounted the fundamental falseness of his title to the throne. His last years were darkened by ill-health and by remorse for past misdeeds. He, however, succeeded in founding a powerful dynasty, supported by influential alliances, and he has left behind him a fairly honourable name. His moderation led him to respect the constitution, which at his death was stronger than he found it. The reign of Henry IV. may be divided into two parts. During the first nine years of it (1399-1408), he was endeavour- ing to enforce his authority and to assert the principles of strong government ; during the last four, the struggles of the earlier period quieted down, and he reigned in a constitutional manner. His first procedure was to revoke the acts passed by the Parliament of Shrewsbury and to degrade the dukes who were friendly to Richard. They were betrayed by one of their number, and the consequence was that Richard Richard was ^ a ^ en ^° Pomfret Castle, where he died in a mysterious manner. Henry had now to establish his authority over Scotland and Wales. He crossed the Scottish border, to compel King Robert III. to pay him the homage which he had refused, but he was obliged to return without effecting his purpose. Wales was at this time under the influence of Owen Glendower, a powerful leader, to whom the people attributed magic powers. The English border nobles, Lord Grey de Ruthyn and Mortimer, fought against him, and by the intervention of Henry he was compelled to submit and his estates were confiscated. In this year Manuel Paleologus, emperor of Constantinople, visited England in the hope of obtaining assistance against the Turks. He failed in this object, but the danger was for the time averted and Constanti- nople did not fall till more than fifty years afterwards. In 1401, Glendower still continued his resistance, and assumed the title of Prince of Wales. Henry marched against him, but without success, and his two opponents, Grey de Ruthyn and Mortimer, were captured by Glendower at the a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 459 same time. The Scots invaded the English border, but, in the battle of Homildon Hill, the great border family of the Percies defeated the Scotch leader Douglas, and took him Battle of prisoner, as well as Murdoch, heir of the earl of Homildon Albany, who was brother of Robert III. This Hill, victory did not contribute to the peace of the kingdom. The Percies, represented by the earl of Northumberland, his son Hot- spur, and the earl of Worcester, the brother of Northumberland, made common cause with Glendower. Their quarrels with the king were mainly personal, but showed the little authority pos- sessed by Henry over the great nobles of the kingdom. The rising was crushed in the battle of Shrewsbury, fought on July 21, 1403, and immortalised by Shakespeare, in which the Percies were defeated by the king and the Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry V. Hotspur ghrewsbur was killed, Douglas was taken prisoner, and Worcester was captured and beheaded, Northumberland making his submission. Reluctance to submit to Henry and to acknow- ledge his title to the crown continued for four years longer. Louis, duke of Orleans, brother of King Charles VI. of France, who was insane, supported the claims of Mortimer, and married his mother, Queen Isabella, to his son. He also supported Owen Glendower, who was recognised as prince of Wales by Pope Benedict XIII. In 1405, Mowbray, son of the duke of Norfolk, who had died at Venice, Scrope, the archbishop of York, and the old earl of Northumberland, con- spired in favour of Mortimer, earl of March, who was the right- ful heir to the throne. At the same time, Glendower, with the help of the French, captured the castle of Carmarthen. But fortune favoured the house of Lancaster. The rebellion in the north was put down by Henry ; Mowbray Further and Scrope were executed, and Northumberland opposition fled to Scotland. Robert III. of Scotland died put down, on April 4, 1406 ; his heir, James, was a prisoner in Eng- land. Louis of Orleans was killed in the streets of Paris on November 23, 1407, and France fell under the power of John the Fearless of Burgundy, an ally of England ; and when the aged Percy, with the help of Thomas Percy, again raised the banner of insurrection, he was defeated at the battle of Bramham, on February 19, 1408, and risings against Henry were at an end. The power of Glendower was restricted to a small district in Wales. 460 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d 1377 to Henry had, at last, undisputed possession of royal power, and obtained the position of a sovereign, which he owed to his Persecu- alliance with the church and with the House of tion of the Commons. Hence he persecuted the Lollards and Lollards. gave his consent to an act for the burning of heretics, by which teaching and preaching without a licence from the bishop were forbidden, and relapsed heretics were handed over from the bishop's court to the sheriff and Power of burned. He also allowed Parliament to have control over the proper auditing of accounts, he regulated the election of knights of the shire so as to prevent the sheriff from giving false returns, and he conceded to the Commons the right of originating money bills. After four years of peaceful reign, interrupted only by two expeditions against France, Henry died on March 20, 1413, at the age of forty-seven. His successor, Henry V., who reigned for the next nine years (1413-1423), was a typical medieval hero. His youth had been wild and stormy, but as king he was pure enry ' and upright. He was a great warrior, possessed by the crusading spirit, and he bitterly persecuted the Lollards, whom he hated and despised. He was not disturbed, like his father, by any doubts as to the validity of his title to the throne. He took up the position of the leader of the nation, supported by the Parliament. He was essentially a man of action. On his accession, he made Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, chancellor in the place of Archbishop Arundel ; he released the earl of March, and other political prisoners ; but, at the same time, he condemned Sir John Oldcastle for heresy, and drove the Lollards to make plans for the subversion of the government. In 1415, he renewed the war with France, which was thoroughly unjust, but was popular with all classes in England — with the clergy, the nobles, and the people. Henry was undoubtedly led to undertake the war by his desire for military glory and by the weakness of France, which seemed to lie like a victim at his feet. After putting down the conspiracy of the Earl of Cam- bridge, Lord Scrope of Masham, and Sir Thomas Grey to place the earl of March on the throne, Henry set out for France, and, on September 22 captured Harfleur. He then marched upon Calais, and, on October 25, fought the battle of Agincourt, — a brilliant victory, won by superior generalship over larger numbers. He then returned to England, and received a a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 461 visit from the Emperor Sigismund, who desired to make peace between France and England and to heal the papal schism. In 1417, he built a fleet, and, having reformed his army, again invaded France, and captured . a . e ° , Rouen in 1419. In this year the duke of Bur- gundy was treacherously murdered on the bridge of Monterau by the adherents of the dauphin, which induced the queen and the Burgundians to take the side of the English. In 1420, a treaty was made at Troyes, by which Henry was to marry Catherine, the daughter of the T r ^ imbecile king, Charles VI., to act as regent for him, and to be king of France after his death. In 1421, Henry returned to England with his queen, but, in the same year, a third invasion of Fiance took place, in which Henry besieged and captured Meaux, dying himself in the following year, leaving his crown to a baby, and his kingdom to be punished for the brilliant excesses and injustice of his reign. Henry VI. was a saint, but was little fit to be a sovereign. The typical effort of his reign was the foundation of King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, still noble places of education, but intended to be nobler ™ than they are. The thought of them occupied the whole of his life. He was unable to control his turbulent barons, and he lost the dominions in Fiance which his predecessors had added to the English crown. His wife, Margaret of Anjou, was one of the most fascinating and attractive of our queens. Henry succeeded at the age of nine, so that the kingdom was governed by his uncles, John, duke of Bedford, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester and cardinal. Bedford and Gloucester were sons of Henry IV., and grandsons of John of Gaunt by Blanche of Lancaster; Beaufort was son of John of Gaunt by Catherine Swinford. Bedford was regent of France ; Gloucester, protector of England. Beaufort after a time became anxious for peace with France, and his policy was continued after his death by William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk. The people preferred Richard, duke of York, son of Richard, earl of Cambridge, and grandson of Edmund of York, son of Edward 111. and a younger brother of John of Gaunt. The struggle between the houses of Lancaster and York was called the War of the Roses, the red rose being the badge of the Lancastrians, the white rose the badge of York, while the 462 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d.1377to combination of the white and red formed the Tudor Rose after peace was made between the rival houses. The war was waged first to decide who should be the king's adviser, and later, who should be king. The history of the French war has been already related from the French side. The first seven years strengthened the English power in the north of France, England being e oss closely united with Burgundy against the French 01 r rcince. & j & crown. The battle of Crevant in 1423 helped to unite England with Burgundy, and the battle of Verneuil in 1424, by the conquest of Maine, did the same for Brittany. By 1428 English authority was supreme north of the Loire, and an attempt was made to extend it by the siege of Orleans. The siege of this town was raised by Joan of Arc, who pursued her victorious career for two years, till she was captured by Burgundy at Compiegne in 1431. In 1435 Bedford died, Burgundy joined Charles VII., and Richard, duke of York, was made regent in France. The next fifteen years mark the decline of the English power in France, and Normandy was lost in 1450, Calais, however, remaining English. The loss of Normandy led to the rebellion of Jack Cade, who defeated the royal forces at Sevenoaks, seized London, and beheaded Lord Say. The result was that the duke of York came forward as the leader of the opposition, being thought likely to establish a more effective form of government. The struggle between York and Lancaster occupies the eleven years from 1450 to 1461, the War of the Roses beginning in The Wars 1455 because the duke of York was dismissed of the from the office of lord protector. In the civil Roses. W ar which ensued, the house of York had greater wealth and a more legitimate claim to the throne, whereas the Lancastrians were discredited by the disasters of the French war, the weakness of the sovereign, and the power assumed by the nobles. The Lancastrians were supported by the Beauforts and the Percies, the church, and the north of England generally ; the Yorkists by the Nevilles of the younger branch, including the earls of Salisbury and Warwick, and the leading houses of the south. In the first battle of St. Albans, the Yorkists won, Somerset was slain, and York again became protector. The influence of Queen Margaret gained the assistance of the Scotch and the French for her side, but at Bioi'eheath, in 1459, the Yorkists were again successful, a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 463 and still more so at Northampton in 1460. After this, the duke of York claimed the throne, and an arrangement was made by which Henry was to reign for life and be succeeded by the duke of York. Margaret rejected this compromise, and fought like a lioness for her son, Edward. She conquered at Wakefield, where York was slain, and at the second battle of St. Albans, but lost at Mortimer's Cross, where Edward of York defeated Jasper Tudor, the half-brother of Henry VI. Edward joined the defeated Warwick, hastened to London, and on February 25, 1461, was declared king. On March 29, Edward and Warwick met Margaret at Towton Heath, the red rose army being sixty thousand strong, the white rose fifty thousand. The battle took place on the eve of Palm Sunday, and lasted all through the night and till the after- noon of next day. The Lancastrians were entirely war defeated, and Edward was crowned at Westminster by the arch- bishop of Canterbury. Margaret kept up the struggle, fighting valiantly for her son, till he was slain after the defeat of Tewkesbury in 1471. Edward, in 1464, married Elizabeth Woodville, daughter of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, who had first married John of Bedford and then Richard Woodville. The war still continued, and, in 1470, Warwick, who had fled to France, invaded England, drove Edward IV. to Flanders, and restored Henry VI.; but in 1471 the Yorkists gained a final victory at Tewkesbury, and Henry VI. at last died. In 1475 Edward IV. invaded France, but a peace was speedily arranged at Pecquigny. In 1478, he put his brother Clarence to death, fearing his ambition, and in 1483 he died. He was succeeded by the child Edward V., whose mother was supported by the Wootlvilles, but opposed by the new nobility, represented by Hastings and Stanley, and by the old nobility led by Richard, duke of Gloucester, brother of Edward IV., and the duke of Buckingham. The crimes of Richard are one of the commonplaces of history, although attempts have been made to defend his character. He executed Rivers and Grey, heads of the Woodville party ; he seized Edward V., and was recognised as protector, afterwards getting possession of Edward's little brother, Richard ; he arrested and executed Hastings ; and, on June 26, was declared king, the crown being offered to him by Buckingham. The reign of 'Richard III. lasted two years, from 1483 to 1485, He was a very able man, was popular in the country; 464 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1377 to and certainly intended to rule well ; but the crimes by which he obtained the throne stained him with indelible infamy. „. . . T T There is no doubt that he murdered the little princes in the Tower of London, where their bones have been discovered. A rebellion was formed against him by Buckingham, Morton, bishop of Ely, and the Wood- villes. The object was to marry Henry of Richmond, after- wards Henry VII., son of Margaret Beaufort, great-grand- daughter of John of Gaunt, to Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., and thus unite the two houses of York and Lancaster. The rebellion, however, was suppressed, and Buckingham was executed. In 1484, Edward, only son of Richard III., died, and his place as heir to the throne was taken by John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, son of Richard's sister Elizabeth. However, in 1485, Henry, who had fled to the north of France, made preparations for the invasion of England. He landed at Milford Haven, and, in the battle of Bosworth, fought on August 22, gained a complete victory, Richard perishing in the struggle. After the death of Richard, Henry, earl of Richmond, as- cended the throne with the title of King Henry VII. He held the crown by three titles — first, as representing the line of Lancaster, which was by many held to have a superior claim to the line of York ; next by marriage with Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV. and head of the house of York ; and lastly, by the decision of a stricken field. A week later, he made his entry into London, not on horseback, as a warrior, but in a close carriage, as one of modest bearing. He was crowned two months later, and on the same day established a body of archers, who were to act as a body-guard and were styled yeomen of the guard, and have continued, in a different form, to the present day. His title to the throne was confirmed by an act of Parliament, and a year later by a papal bull, so that, as Bacon says, the wreath of three became a wreath of five, and to his three original titles to the throne he added two more, the parlia- mentary and the papal. The beginning of his reign was disturbed by the impostors Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, the first am er Q £ w } lom personated the earl of Warwick, son Simnel. x „ „., , of the duke of Ularence, and the other the mur- dered duke of York. Hiinnel was put down in the battle of a.d. 1509] ENGLAND 465 Stoke, after which the queen was crowned, so as to secure the adhesion of the house of York, and the court of Star Chamber was organised to give a summary trial to powerful offenders. Simnel was crushed in 1 189, but Warbeck did not appear till 1492, and was not finally captured and executed till 1499. In 1489 was passed the Statute of Fines, putting an end to conflicting claims upon land, which, in the disturbed state of the country, had become very troublesome. By it, any person holding land could, by paying a sum of money, have a proclamation issued in a court of law as to the tenure of his land, and after five years was safe against all claims that might be made against his title. In 1491, taxes called benevolences had to be raised for the French war, made against Charles VIII., king of France, in consequence of his marriage with Anne of Brittany, giving France a power which seemed to threaten England. The levying of the tax was directed by Morton, archbishop of Canterbury and chan- cellor, who ordered the commissioners to say that if they met with any who were sparing they should tell them that they must needs have money because they laid up, and if they were spenders they must needs have money, because it was seen in their bearing and manner of living. So neither kind could escape. This dilemma was called Morton's Fork or Crutch. The war was soon put an end to by the treaty of Estaples, by which it was agreed that Charles should pay Henry a considerable sum of money by instalments, a claim which was not satisfied till many years afterwards. In 1494, Poynings' Law was passed to destroy the power t of the Yorkist lords in Ireland. It provided £°^ mngS that no act could be introduced into the Irish Parliament without having first received the approbation of the king's council in England. Passed to check oppression, it afterwards became a means of restricting the liberties of Ireland, and was a main cause of Irish discontent. Warbeck continued to edve trouble, and was used by all • ■ Perkin the enemies of England as a means of attacking w ar beck her. The law of treason was altered by a statute entitled, " De Facto," by which no one could be punished for serving the reigning king, even if he were not the lawful king. In 1496, a commercial treaty between England and Burgundy, which received the curious name of " The Great Intercourse," 2 G 466 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1336-1479 provided that neither country should assist each other's rebels, which deprived Perkin Warbeck of the help of that country. Warbeck was assisted by the Irish, but was deprived of their help by the energetic action of the earl of Kildare, and the invasion of England by James IV. of Scotland on his behalf produced no result. The tax levied for the Scotch war pro- duced a rising in Cornwall, and Warbeck went to help the rebels, but was captured. Escaping from prison, he was re- captured and executed, and the earl of Warwick, who had been kept all this time in confinement, was also put to death. The last nine years of Henry's reign were mainly devoted to foreign affairs, when the modern state s} 7 stem of Europe came Henrv's hrto existence. Henry based his foreign policy Foreign on alliance with Spain, which had become a single Policy. country by the marriage of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon. Maximilian of Germany married Mary of Burgundy, his son Philip of Austria married Joanna of Spain, and Henry VIII. married Catherine of Aragon, Joanna's sister. All these alliances were directed against France, and resulted in the union of the Spanish empire, the Burgundian provinces, and Austria with the imperial dignity, in the person of Philip's son, Charles V. In 1503, Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., was married to James IV. of Scotland, an alliance which eventually brought about the union between Scotland and England. In the same year, Elizabeth of York died, and the remaining years of Henry's life were spent in matrimonial schemes for himself and the extortion of his agents, Empson and Dudley. He died in 1509. He deserves the character given to him by Bacon, of being a wonder for wise men, and governing his country not only with a view to the present, but out of prudence for the future. ARAGON AND CASTILE, A.D. 1336-1479. In treating of the Pyrenean peninsula, we must deal sepa- rately with Aragon, Castile, and other provinces, as well as with Portugal. Pedro IV. was king of Aragon from Aragon. 13g6 ^ ug7 ^ Th& chief ^ rf Mg ^.^ ^ ^ existence of the Justicia, a tribunal which held the balance be- tween the crown and the armed nobles. Its success was chiefly due to the wise minister Cabrera. Pedro was succeeded by his son John (1387-1395), a frivolous and extravagant sovereign, a.d. 1325-1433] PORTUGAL 467 who was forced by the Justicia to reform. With Martin, king of Aragon and Sicily, the dynasty came to an end in 1410. He was followed by Ferdinand I., called the Great, the son of Eleanor of Aragon, who reigned for six years, till 1416. The next king, Alfonso V. (1416-1458) ruled in Sicily and conquered Naples : Aragon he entrusted to his brother, who, as John II. (1458-1479), was the last king of Aragon before its union with Castile. The kingdom of Navarre had a closer connection with France at this time than Spain. Charles the Bad reigned from 1349 to 1387; his Navarre - son, Charles III., a peace-loving friend of literature and art, died in 1425, when Navarre passed to his daughter Blanche, wife of John II. of Aragon. In Castile, the constitution was not as liberal as in Aragon. Pedro the Cruel, who well deserved his name, reigned from 1356 to 1369, and murdered his stepmother, Eleanora Guzman, and his French wife Blanche. His chief opponent was his half-brother, Henry of Trastamare, who drove him from the throne by the help of du Guesclin, but he was restored by the Black Prince at the battle of Najera, called by English historians Navaretta. Henry at last succeeded in defeating and killing his brother in 1369, and became king under the title of Henry II. He reigned for ten years (1369-1379), and was succeeded by his son John (1379-1390), who attempted to gain the throne of Portugal, but was stopped by his defeat at Aljubarrota in 1385. There was also a danger of Castile's falling into the hands of John of Gaunt, who had married Constance of Castile, but the treaty of Bayonne in 1387 prevented this by the marriage of Henry, prince of the Asturias, to Catherine, the daughter of Constance. Henry III. (1390-1406) was weak in body but strong in mind, and secured the possession of the Canaries to Castile. Dying early, he left a young son, who, as John II., reigned for 47 years (1406-1453), first under the regency of his mother Catherine and the care of his uncle Ferdinand. His successor, Henry IV. (1453-1474) rightly nicknamed "the Impotent" left no son, and at his death his half-sister, the famous Isabella of Castile, became queen. PORTUGAL, A.D. 1325-1433. Portugal was disturbed by disputes in the royal house, as well as among the nobles. Indeed, the Spanish and Portuguese 468 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1325-1433 aristocracy, having no longer the Moors to fight against, turned their arms against each other. King Diniz (1279-1325) was succeeded by Alfonso IV. (1325-1357), whose reign was stained by the murder of the beautiful Inez de Castro, to whom Pedro, the crown prince, was secretly married. On coming to the throne, which he occupied for ten years, Pedro exhibited the virtues of an excellent ruler, peace and prosperity flourishing under him. His son Fernando (1367-1383) was a very differ- ent character, weak and sensual, dishonoured by his connection with Leonard Tellez, and by the assistance which he gave to John of Gaunt againt Castile. After his death, there was an interregnum of two years, caused by the attempt to unite Castile and Portugal, which was bitterly resented by the Portuguese, and defeated, as we have seen, at Aljnbarrota. John of Avis, called the " Spurious," the bastard brother of Fernando, became king and reigned for 48 years (1385-1433). He wrested Ceuta from the Moors, assisted by his heroic youngest son, Henry the Navigator. From this time, the energy of Portugal was spent in foreign exploration, which gave her the possession of Porto Santo and Madeira. CHAPTER XIII. THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY, A.D. 1347-1449. On the death of Louis of Bavaria, Charles IV. became in fact, as well as name, German king. He had been baptized as Wenzel, but changed his name to Charles, and, being at fli a rlflo TT7" an early age betrothed to a French princess, was educated in Paris. At the age of fifteen, he was left by his father, John of Bohemia, to act as viceroy in Italy, and dis- tinguished himself in the battle of San Felice, fought on November 25, 1332. Recalled from Italy, he ruled in Bohemia and Moravia during his father's absence, and ruled with wisdom and strength. He became extremely popular, assisted his father in his wars, spoke five languages, and was a great patron of literature. Pope Clement VI., who had been his tutor, was deeply devoted to him, and when he was crowned at Prague with his wife, Blanche of Valois, September 2, 1347, the pros- pect of his reign excited the warmest hopes. We need not spend time over the trouble which accompanied his accession, or the election of a counter king, Gunther of Schwarzburg. His first act after his election was to found the university of Prague on April 7, 1348. Indeed, he created that splendid city. Charles naturally desired to be crowned emperor at Rome, and to settle the affairs of Italy, which was in a disordered con- dition, as we shall see later on. It was the time of republican independence at Florence, of Cola Condition di Rienzi at Rome, of the Visconti at Milan, of the Pepoli at Bologna, of the rise of the power of Venice, of its rivalry with Genoa. Charles was incited by Lombardy and Tuscany and by Pope Innocent VI., who had succeeded Clement VI., to crush the overweening power of the Visconti. But he had no desire to destroy so useful a counterpoise to the power of the popes, and made an alliance with that powerful family. He received the iron crown of Lombardy on January 6, 1355, and his first act was to make peace be- 469 470 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1347 to tween the Visconti and the Lombard League. He was crowned in St. Peter's on Easter Day, April 5, but left Rome the day after, as he had promised Clement VI. He returned home after a peaceful journey, interrupted only by an outbreak at Pisa. The truth is that the struggle between Guelfs and Ghibellines was now at an end, and it was recognised that the emperor could never have any predominant power in Italy. The age of Guelfs and Ghibellines had been succeeded by the age of the Condottieri. When Charles returned to Germany as crowned emperor, he turned his attention to legislation. A Bohemian Diet met at Prague at the end of September, and the law e Go den ^q^ called the Majestas Carolina was promul- gated. Immediately after this came the Golden Bull, drawn up at a diet which sat at Nuremberg from November 1355 to January 1356, completed at Metz, and pub- lished on Christmas Day, 1356. The Golden Bull established the election of the emperor or rather of the German king on a fixed basis, appointing seven electors for this purpose, but it also weakened the power of the emperor by increasing that of the electors ; and, although it seemed to add to the power and prestige of the imperial crown, and to confirm the strength of the constitution of the empire, it really con- tributed to undermine both. A great object of Charles IV. was to increase the power of the house of Luxemburg, and this was made easier by the fact that, after the death of the Emperor Louis, Bavaria was divided between his six sons, which reduced the Wittelsbachs to a condition of impotence. Charles fixed his eyes on Brandenburg, then held by Louis' eldest son, but he had to contend against the claims of the house of Hapsburg. The head of this house was Rudolf IV., son of Albert II., and husband of Catherine, the daughter of Charles IV. He quarrelled with his father-in-law, laid claim to Bohemia, called himself palatine of Austria, and duke of Swabia and Alsace, and joined Wiirtemberg against the emperor. But a so-called Erbverbriiderung, or brotherhood of inheritance, Dynastic between Luxemburg and Hapsburg was concluded Arrange- at Briinn, on February 10, 1364, by which it was ments. settled that Margaret Maultasch, daughter of Henry of Carinthia and wife of Louis of Brandenburg — whose son, Meinhard III., had married Margaret, daughter of Albert II., duke of Austria — should keep certain castles in the Tyrol, with a yearly allowance, but that after her death, which ad. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 471 happened in 1369, the Tyrol should go to either- the Hapsburg or the Luxemburg house, whichever might have heirs, ex- cluding the house of Wittelsbach. After Meinhard's death, Margaret married John Henry, margrave of Moravia, and Albert III. married Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles. But the Tyrol went eventually to Austria. Charles, however, obtained possession of the mark of Brandenburg. When Charles was at the height of his power, he possessed Luxemburg, Bohemia, Moravia, the Lausitz, Brandenburg, Silesia, and part of the Netherlands. When Pope Innocent VI. was succeeded on September 12, 1362, by Urban V., Charles went to Avignon to persuade him to take up his abode in Rome, and met with a favourable attempt to answer. Italy was a prey to the Condottieri, of restore the whom a principal leader was Fra Moreale, a monk Popes to who commanded the so-called English Company, Rome, which had been employed by Edward III. in his wars in France. The pope desired to clear the country from these plagues and to undertake a crusade, in which the emperor promised to assist him. Charles received the crown of Aries on June 18, 1365, but he did not make a second journey to Borne till 1368, when his wife had borne him a second son, Sigismund, afterwards emperor. He returned in August 1369, having established the pope in his capital. But Urban was obliged to come back to Avignon shortly afterwards, and it was left for his successor, Gregory XL, to restore the papacy permanently in Rome, seven years later. Charles had the happiness to see his eldest son Wenzel crowned King of the Romans at Aachen at the age of thirteen in 1376. He arranged that, after his death, Wenzel should have the greater part of his possessions, together with the guardianship of his younger brother, and Sigismund Branden- burg, except what was given to the third son, John. Just before his death, Charles paid a visit to Charles Y. in France, anxious to see again the scenes clear to him in his youth. He also arranged that his son Wenzel should succeed his brother Wenzel in Luxemburg. He died in the Hraclshin at Prague on Novem- ber 29, 1378. He was a great king and a powerful emperor, but his fondness for his own country has impaired his reputation among the Germans, to whose hand the narrative of his reign has been generally committed. Wenzel was a weak ruler, and under him the German towns developed their leagues, which weakened the imperial power and diminished its prestige. 472 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1347 to At the time when the south German towns were at war with their lords, the Swiss Confederation, the beginnings of which The Swiss have been already related, set itself to win in- Confedera- dependence, and sealed its faith in blood at the tion battle of Morgarten. On May 3, 1334, Louis of Bavaria surrendered his feudal rights over the states of the confederacy. In 1332 Lucerne joined the union, making it one of four cantons instead of three ; and, after many struggles with its suzerains, both clerical and lay, the important town of Zurich finally joined the confederation on May 1, 1351, and soon gained in it a predominant position. The Swiss now cast their eyes on the town of Bern, which had been founded by Berthold V. of Zahringen in 1191, and had been recognised by Frederick II. as an imperial town. In the battle of Laupen on June 22, 1339, the men of Bern, under Rudolf of Erlach, defeated the nobles, and, on March 6, 1353, made an everlasting union with the three original cantons, to which Lucerne and Zurich were admitted under certain conditions. Switzerland now consisted of eight cantons — Uri, Schwytz, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zurich, Bern, Glarus, and Zug, which had joined in 1352. Charles IV. made several attempts to break up the confederacy, and besieged Zurich, but he finally recognised the union in 1362, and the peace of Thoiberg, as it was called, was continued till his death. Attempts were made to consolidate the union, and a document called the Pfaffenbrief , or Priests' Letter, was signed on October 7, 1370, for that purpose. Some twelve years after this, the lords of Kyburg, who were deeply in debt, went to war with the confederacy with the hope of recovering Thun and Aarberg, which had been mortgaged by them to Bern, and were supported by Leopold III. of Austria. But he was afraid to attack the Swiss because of the treaty of Constance, by which in 1384 they allied with the Swabian Leagues, and which made them very powerful. However, the unavoidable struggle took place at Sempach on Sempach ^ u ^ 7 ^' 1386, when the Austrian chivalry, de- pending on their phalanx of 25,000 men, armed with long spears, were entirely defeated. Arnold von Winkel- ried is said to have broken the Austrian phalanx by seizing a number of Austrian spears and thrusting them into his heart. The Austrians were again defeated at Nafels on April 9, 1388. At the beginning of the next century, Appenzell joined the league, and fought in the battle of Speicher on May 15, 1403, but bad great difficulty in maintaining its ad. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 473 izidependence, and St. Gallen still continued under the suze- rainty of its abbot. Wenzel IV. went on from bad to worse. He neglected busi- ness, and gave himself up to sport. The large dogs which he kept in his bedroom tore his first wife to pieces. Later on, he took to drinking, and was guilty of iiseonauct the most cruel tyranny, but he did not lose the affection of his Bohemian subjects. In the papal conflict, he took the side of Urban, but Clement had many supporters in Germany. With the death of his wisest councillors, the character of his government became worse. He quarrelled with the archbishop of Prague, and, on March 20, 1393, threw John of Pomuk from the bridge of Prague into the Moldau, which gave rise to the legend of St. John Nepomuk, whose statue is found on many bridges. At last, a coalition was formed against him, and he was taken prisoner, and imprisoned in the Hrad- shin. His brother, Sigismund, king of Hungary, tried to help him, but in vain. After many Wenzel ClCDOSGQ struggles, he was eventually solemnly deposed by a majority of the electors at Rhense on the Rhine on August 30, 1400; and the Count Palatine, Rupert III., was elected in his place and crowned at Aachen, Cologne refusing to receive him. King Rupert naturally desired to be crownel at Rome, but, owing to his defective title, there were difficv lt'.es in the way. He assembled his troops at Augsburg in September 1400. But he was defeated by the Milanese at u ^ Brescia, and forced to retreat to Trent. However, he would not give up the struggle, and advanced again to Padua. But he could g*jt no farther. He returned home, without money and without fame, and got the name of " Rupert with the empty pockets." His attempted journey to Rome had done him nothing but harm. Moreover, he was unfit to govern the empire entrusted to his care. The authority of the emperor was everywhere despised and disregarded. Rupert did his best to restore order, entered into negotiations with Wenzel for the recognition of his position, and even contemplated a second ex- pedition to Rome. He was recognised by the Italian pope, and the death of Galeazzo had put an end to the power of the Visconti. But his vicar in Italy, Francis of Carrara, had been imprisoned and executed by the Venetians ; the imperial city of Pisa fell into the hands of Florence ; Perugia was recovered by the pope; Venice seemed likely to take the place which Milan 474 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1347 to had held under the Visconti. In Germany, a league was formed at Marbach in 1405 by John, archbishop of Mainz, which set itself against Rupert's authority, and, in 1407, the archbishop possessed more power than the king. If the Marbach League could unite itself with Wenzel, all would be lost. Rupert at last, by recognising the League, succeeded in getting crowned at Aachen on November 14, 1407, but it was a poor satisfaction. He was in a miserable position ; without friends, threatened by Wenzel, excommunicated by the pope as a heretic and a schismatic, without any firm support in any direction. He had the alternative of either abdicating or crushing John of Mainz. But John had been appointed papal legate for Germany by the new pope, Alexander V., and had submitted to the suzerainty of France, the first German elector to suffer this indignity. And, as Rupert was preparing for war, he died, on May 18, 1410, and was buried with his wife, who survived him only for a short time, in the church of the Holy Ghost at Heidelberg. Rupert had many excellent qualities. He governed the pala- tinate well, and worked hard to fulfil his duties, but the welding of the empire into unity, and the healing of its divisions and quarrels, were far beyond his strength. After Rupert's death, there was a division among the electors. Some were in favour of recalling Wenzel. Others supported Sigismund n * s brother, King Sigismund of Hungary, who had and Jost of exhibited in the government of his kingdom powers Bavaria. f statesmanship and diplomacy, and had recently subdued Bosnia, and established his power in Servia and Dal- matia. He was strongly supported by Frederick VI., burgrave of Nuremberg. The election took place at Frankfort, on September 20, 1410. The Elector Palatine, the archbishop of Trier, and Frederick II., acting for Brandenburg, chose Sigis- mund as king. Twelve days later the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, and the representatives of Wenzel, chose Jost, mar- grave of Moravia, a son of John Henry, brother of Charles IV., so that the world had now three popes and two emperors. Luckily, before war broke out, Jost died at Josi!^ ° f Briinn on January 17, 1411, leaving no heirs. Of his possessions, Brandenburg went to Sigis- mund and Moravia to Wenzel, so that Moravia and Bohemia were now united. By the intervention of Stibor, voiwod of Transylvania, peace was made between the two brothers, and Wenzel recognised Sigismund as king of the Romans. On July 21, 1411, Sigismund was solemnly chosen by Jost's electors ad. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 475 and the duke of Saxony, the other two naturally standing aloof, so that the unity of the empire was restored. He was crowned at Aachen on November 8, 1411, and his queen, Barbara, with him. Immediately after this, Sigismund set out for the Council of Constance, which had been summoned to reform the church in head and members, and to heal the divisions in the empire itself. Before we relate the history of the Council of Constance, we must go back. As we have before stated, Pope Urban V. (1362-1370) had returned to Rome, but was, soon afterwards, compelled to leave it, in spite of . j .°^ es the prayers of the Romans and the prophecies of St. Brigit, who foretold his death if he should return to Avignon. Brigit was right, and the excellent and worthy pope died on December 19, 1370, being succeeded by Pierre Roger, count of Beaufort, who took the name of Gregory XI. and reigned for seven years (1371-1378). He did return to Rome, but died before he was able to do any good. The Romans now insisted on having an Italian pope, and Bartolomeo di Prignano, archbishop of Bari, was elected, taking the name of Urban VI. (1378-1389). However, the French cardinals declared the election illegal, as having been extorted by force, and chose Robert of Geneva, bishop of Cambrai, who as- sumed the title of Clement VII. (1378-1394). ^hism^ Clement retired to Avignon. He was obeyed by France, Spain, and Naples, whereas Urban received the allegi- ance of Italy and Germany. The division lasted for forty years. Urban VI. was followed by Boniface IX. (1389-1404), by Innocent VII. (1404-1406), and by Gregory XII., who died in 1417. Clement VII. was succeeded by Peter of Luna, Benedict XIII., who died in 1423. At last a General Council assembled at Pisa in 1409, to which both popes were summoned in the hope of healing the schism. The council was attended by the cardinals of either obedience, by archbishops, bishops, and abbots of all countries, personally or by deputy, by doctors of the universities, by kings and princes. The learned Gerson of Paris sup- p^ 101 ported the view that the church could exist without a pope, and was, indeed, superior to the pope, whom she could, if necessary, depose. The council deposed both popes, calling them heretics, and chose Peter Philargi, archbishop of Milan, to reform the church. The new pope, under the title of Alexander V., accepted the duty, but deferred it to a council 476 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1347 to which was to be summoned in three years. So there were three popes, Benedict being still recognised in Spain and Scotland, and Gregory in a part of Germany and Italy, by King Rupert. Alex- . ander was of no use, and, dying on May 3, 1410, Pones nVa was succee( l e< l by Balthasar Oossa, cardinal legate of Bologna, as John XXIII. John lived till 1419. He was a Neapolitan, a man of infamous character, who began life as a pirate, and had then been ordained, gaining the favour of Boniface IX. Pope John was received in Rome, attempted to gain the support of the university of Paris, and held a council in the Lateran for the reform of the church, which was a mere farce. Driven from Rome by King Ladislaus of Naples, he agreed to the calling a fresh council, and Sigismund compelled him to hold it outside Italy. He gave way, and it was summoned to Constance. A movement was proceeding in Bohemia, like that of Wycliffe in England, the leaders of which were John Huss and Jerome of Prague, and this matter was also left to the decision of the council. A more brilliant assembly was never seen in the middle ages than the Council of Constance. Besides cardinals, archbishops and bishops, doctors and professors, there were ounci o electors and counts, and ambassadors from all Constance. n , . . . Christian princes, together with the Emperor Sigismund and the pope. Men of learning were there, Francois d'Ailly, Gerson, Biogni and Zabarella, Robert Hallam, bishop of Salisbury, the great English scholar, Aretino and Chrysoloras. Among the visitors, who were reckoned at fifty thousand, were camp-followers male and female, good characters and bad. Pope John went there with reluctance, full of anxiety and fear. The council opened on November 5, 1414, and found three great problems before it, those of faith, unity, and reformation. John Huss was intimately connected with the first of these. Sigismund had promised him a safe-conduct, and the pope was favourable to him, but he had many enemies. His forebodings were only too well founded. He was loaded with chains and kept in prison in the Dominican convent on the Boden See. The emperor arrived with his wife, Barbara of Cilly, on Christmas night, after his crowning at Aachen. He was angry at the imprisonment of Huss, and threatened to leave the city, but he gave way to pressure and sacrificed Huss to the unity of the church. On March 1, 1415, Pope John, after many struggles, was persuaded to abdicate. Three weeks later he ran away in the dress of a groom, and took refuge with Duke Frederick of Austria. Many a.d. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 477 cardinals and prelates followed him, including the archbishop of Mainz. The authority of the council was rudely shaken, but was strengthened by the decree called Sacrosancta, affirming the supremacy of the council, passed on April 5, 1415, chiefly by the authority of Gerson, who was called the " Soul of the Council." On the following day, the ban of the council was pronounced against Frederick, and the secular arm was sum- moned to execute it. On May 5 he humbled himself before the emperor, and promised to bring John back to Constance. He was deprived of all his dominions except the Tyrol, and received the nickname of "Frederick with the empty pockets." The wrath of the council was now directed against the pope, who was deprived of his office and confined in the same prison as Huss, until he was removed to Heidelberg. Now came the turn of Huss. His friend Jerome of Prague hastened to Constance to support him, and Sigismund exerted himself in his favour. Huss defended himself Trial and before his judges, but was constantly interrupted. Death of One of his main contentions was the right of the John Huss. laity to receive the communion in both kinds, whence his followers were called Calixtines, and the churches of his per- suasion were marked by a chalice. But, on June 15, doctrines were condemned, and on July 6 Huss was solemnly pronounced a heretic in the presence of Sigismund, and given over to the secular arm. He was stripped of his priest's clothing, and a high paper cap was placed on his head, decorated with three devils, and an inscription, "This is an arch heretic." When he heard his soul devoted to hell, he exclaimed, " And I recommend it to my Lord Jesus Christ ! " The Palgrave Louis gave him over to the town authorities, with orders that he should be burned, and, on the following day, the orders were fulfilled. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine that they might not be worshipped in Bohemia. Jerome of Prague underwent the same fate on May 30, 1416. When the council came to an end, it had fulfilled two great tasks, and these alone — the de- position of Pope John XXIII. and the burning of John Huss. Before the end of the year, Benedict XIII. was deposed at Xarbonne, whither Sigismund had betaken himself. He con- tinued his progress to Chamber} 7 , where he raised Amadeus of Savoy to the rank of duke, then went to Paris and to London, where he was forced to make an alliance with Henry Y. against France. He returned to Constance in January 1417. During his absence things had not gone well. Frederick of Austria 478 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.b. 1347 to had broken bis parole, and Pope John XXIII. was hoping to recover his power. However, in 1418, an arrangement was made between Sigismund and Frederick. The council, on October 9, 1417, passed five decrees of no great value, one providing for the periodical meeting of councils, which was never carried into effect, and, on November 11, Cardinal Otto of Colonna was chosen pope under the title of Martin V. The last meeting of the council was held on April 22, 1418, and it was settled that the next council should assemble at Pavia. The burning of Huss lighted a flame in Bohemia. The archbishop of Prague had to flee from the wrath of the people. A Catholic League was formed to resist the Hus- Hussites sites, but on July 22, 1419, a Hussite meeting was held in which many thousands, calling them- selves brothers and sisters, swore to be true to " the cause of the chalice." The unfortunate Wenzel IV. died on August 16. This brought matters to a crisis, and a civil war broke out. Sigismund, the new king of Bohemia, was in Hungary preparing for war against Turkey. He appointed WenzePs widow Sophia as regent, with the burgrave of Wartenburg to help her. The Hussites now received assistance from two powerful men, Nicholas of Pistna, burgrave of Hust, and John Ziska or Trocnow. Great meetings were held on the mount of Tabor, or the hill of Horeb, near Hohenbruck, and on the hill of the Cross, near Prague ; and a league was formed to protect the freedom of the word of God, and to guard the national faith, and Tabor, the stronghold of the cause, gave its name to the extremists of the party, who were known as Taborites. The war which followed dragged on for many years. It was waged with far more vigour by the Hussites than by their opponents, and Sigismund's attempts to end it were vain, though papal bulls summoned crusaders to help him in crushing the heretics. Ziska died of the plague on October 11, 1424, but a new leader for the Taborites appeared in Prokop the Great, while Korybut of Lithuania helped the men of Prague. At Aussig, in 1426, these two gained a complete victory over the Germans, who are said to have lost 15,000 men. Aussig was captured, plundered, and burned. The Hussites carried on the war with continued success, through five campaigns, and won another great victory at Tauss on August 14, 1431. Pope Martin was not a success as pope. He had no money, and was saluted by the children of Florence with the rhyme "Papa Martino, senza quattrino " (Pope Martin, without a ad. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 479 farthing). He died on February 1, 1431, and was succeeded by a Venetian, Condolmieri, who took the name of Eugenius IV. When he was elected, Eugenius promised to call a council, which met at Basel in 1431. No sooner, however, had the council met than it was dis- solved by the pope on the ground of the uncertainty of the roads and the distance of Basel from the centre of affairs. He promised that another council Council of should meet at Bologna after a year and a half's delay, at which he would be present himself. But the council refused to accept its dismissal, and asserted the supremacy of councils over the pope. The council declared Tn e Oues- that the pope was not, and could not be, more tion of powerful than the whole church ; and the papacy, Supremacy, however much it might oppose these principles, was not strong enough to enforce its authority. Sigismund now determined to be crowned at Rome. Accompanied by a small body of Hungarian cavalry, he set out in the late autumn, and received the iron crown of Lombard} 7 at Milan on November 25, 1431. Venice was now at war both with Hungary and Milan, who had in their service the great Condottiere Car- magnola. Sigismund entered into negotiations with the pope, who offered to crown him if he would give him his support at the Council of Basel. During this time Sigismund remained in Siena, promising to persuade the council to give assurances that it would undertake no measures against Eugenius IV. At length a treaty was signed between Sigismund and the pope at Ferrara, as well as between Venice, Florence, and Milan. Sigismund promised to recognise the pope as the true pontiff and to induce all Christendom to do the same. Eugenius had won the battle, and Sigismund was crowned at Rome on May 31, 1432. In October, the emperor suddenly appeared in Basel, where the struggle between the council and the pope still continued. He could not, however, effect much, and soon left the city against his will. In Rome, Eugenius had his own difficulties to contend with. He was opposed to the powerful family of the Colonna, who were assisted by Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan, who could command the services of the condottieri Fortebraccio, Sforza, and Pioccinino. The pope was taken prisoner, and had to escape to Florence in disguise. The council was delighted at the humiliation and weakness of its adversary. The next problem before the council was to make peace with 480 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. iui to the Hussites, who, after the victory of Tauss, were divided into two parties — the Taborites, wishing to continue and even to The Council extend the war ; and the Oalixtines, who gradu- and the ally grew in influence, desiring: to bring about a TT ... ° Hussites. reconciliation. The leaders of the council were Cardinal Julian, Ousanus, and Capranica. Julian wrote that the gate was open to let in the lost sheep. Negotiations went on, and a certain agreement was reached at Prague on November 30, 1433. But passions were too violent to be appeased in this manner. Civil war broke out, and the irreconcilable party was defeated at Lipan on May 30, 1434. The war, however, still continued, the leader of the Calixtines being John Rokycana. Peace was not made till 1436, and on August 23, in that year, Sigismund, accompanied by his wife, Barbara, and a stately company, entered Prague in triumph as king of Bohemia, having promised to observe what was called the Compactation of Prague. This, however, was not done. The pope and the council were too enthusiastically devoted to the old catholic faith. Monasteries were restored : monks and nuns were re- called. It was only very slowly that the stormy waters of Bohemian revolt subsided into peace and calm. The council itself was sharply divided into parties, some for and some against the authority of the pope. The heads of the Dissensions fi l ' s ^ were Cesarini of Venice, Cervantes, and in the Albergati, aided by Torquemada and Cusanus. Council. The supporters of the council were more in number, consisting chiefly of the French, led by Louis d'Alle- mand, bishop of Aries, the English, Germans, and also many Italians, led by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., who now made his appearance in Basel. He was a man of commanding ability and of great literary culture, but of worldly temper. A middle position was held by John of Segovia, who represented the university of Salamanca. But as the feeling of the council became more democratic, and power seemed to come into the hands of the inferior clergy, the bishops were more inclined to support the claims of the pope. Passions were now roused by the consideration of the hard question of the union between the Latin and Greek churches. A violent quarrel broke out on May 7, 1437. The archbishop of Taranto, defeated by his opponent, the democratic Louis dAllemand, took refuge with the pope, who rewarded him with a cardinal's hat. Each party condemned the resolution passed by the other. In July, Eugenius dissolved the council and a.d. 1449] THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 481 summoned another to meet at Ferrara. In September the council declared the orders of the pope to be null and void. These quarrels were too much for the aged emperor, and his anxieties were increased by troubles at home. When his son- in-law, Albert Y. of Austria, whom he had designated as his heir in Luxemburg and Bohemia, came to Prague to claim his in- heritance, a conspiracy broke out against him, in which the empress took part and was imprisoned in consequence. Weary of life, he died at Znaim on December 9, 1437, the last of the brilliant house of Luxemburg. During his life he did his best to heal the disorders of a divided church and a distracted empire, but he did not possess the clearness of view, the unity of purpose, and the strength of will which were necessary for this overwhelming task. He was succeeded by Albert II., who was elected on March 18, 1438. He Albert IL was king of Bohemia and Hungary and heir to Luxemburg, a strong and worthy prince, who might have done much for the good of the empire, assisted by his trusted chancellor, Schlich, if he had not been involved in a war with Turkey and died on his return from it on October 27, 1439. His cousin, Frederick III., of the Styrian line, was elected as his sue- cessor in 1440, and reigned over Germany for ™ enc fifty-three years, but with so little strength or prestige that the empire fell into greater disorder than ever. The Council of Ferrara met on January 8, 1438, attended by Greek prelates, with the Emperor John Paleologus and the Patriarch Joseph at their head, and, having been adjourned first to Florence and then to Rome, proclaimed a hollow union of the Roman Communion first with the Orthodox Church and then with minor churches of the East. Meanwhile a " Rump " of the Council of Basel — ignoring Eugenius' bull of dissolution — continued to sit. It professed to depose Eugenius on June 25, 1439, and Amadeus YIIL, duke of Savoy, was elected in his place as Felix Y. But Felix did nothing. He spent his life in the magnificent castle of Rapaille on the shores of Lake Leman ; and when, in 1449, Frederick III. finally dissolved the council, he submitted to the reigning pope, the learned Thomas Parentucelli, who, as Nicholas Y., had succeeded when Eugenius died on February 23, 1447. Thus the final victory in the long struggle rested with the papacy. 2 H CHAPTER XIV. THE GREAT CITIES OF ITALY— EASTEKN EUROPE. 1. Rome and Naples, a.d. 1341-1435. While the popes were in Avignon, Rome was in a terrible condition ; it remained poor and obscure, ruined and debased, Rome ^ ne rubbish heap of politics, while its lord and without master was accumulating riches in France. Per- the Popes. haps its brightest day was the crowning of the great Petrarch in the Capitol in 1341. Among the crowd who witnessed it was a young man, Cola di Rienzi, the son of an innkeeper called Lorenzo, who was seized with the idea of reviving the glory and the power of his native city. In May 1342, Clement VI. became pope, and, on January 19, 1343, King Robert of Naples died, leaving his throne to his granddaughter Joanna, wife of Andrew of Hungary, the son of his nephew, Charles Robert. It was thought a favourable moment to send an embassy to Rome to beg the pope to return, and Cola was a member of it, spending some time in Avignon, in intercourse with Clement and Petrarch. By fiery speeches and exhibitions of ancient monuments, he stirred the Romans to enthusiasm, protected by the pope, who, however, still delayed to return. Joanna of Naples was N° ^es" ° a woman °f ability, but of unbridled passions, and, when Andrew had been crowned king by order of the pope, he was murdered, with the connivance of his wife, in the palace of Aversa, on August 21, 1345. Joanna had two cousins, Charles of Durazzo, who married her sister Maria, and Louis of Taranto, who claimed the throne of Constantinople. Joanna married Louis in August 1346, but his hopes of being king had been marred by the birth of a posthumous son of Andrew, Charles Martel, who, however, died in 1348. After Louis' own death in 1362, Joanna married James of Majorca; and, when he died in 1375, Otto, duke of Brunswick, who died in 1381, Joanna dying herself in 1382. 482 1341-1435] THE GREAT CITIES OF ITALY 483 In the summer of 1347, Rienzi declared himself tribune of Rome, at a time when Stephen Colonna, the most powerful noble of the city, was collecting supplies at Corneto. Ri enz i and Returning to Rome, Stephen had to take refuge in the Roman Palestrina, and the rest of the nobles accepted Republic, the republic founded by Rienzi, who now determined to make Rome the head of an Italian federation. Joanna bowed to the storm and accepted the situation ; Rienzi appeared in a dress of white silk on a white horse, with a banner waving over his head, and a bodyguard of a hundred youths. He proceeded to make himself a knight by bathing in the bap- tistery of the Lateran, and made himself ridiculous by extravagant ceremonies. At last he was overthrown, and took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. The cardinal legate, Bernhard, took possession of the city for the pope, and gave the government to the Orsini and Savelli. In the meantime, Louis of Hungary conquered Naples, and Joanna had to escape to Provence. In 1350, a Jubilee was held in Rome, which restored the prestige of the papacy and put all ideas of a republic out of the heads of the citizens. Rienzi fled to Prague, where he sought the protection of Charles IV., who, anxious to conciliate Clement, threw the tribune into prison, and, after a year's confinement, sent him to Avignon, where he remained till Clement VI. died and was succeeded on December 6, 1352, by Innocent VI. Rome continued in even worse confusion than ever. The new pope created Cardinal Albornoz his vicar-general. He set Rienzi at liberty, and took him with him Return and to Rome, where he was made senator. In August Death of 1354, he entered the city in triumph, with a Rienzi. bodyguard of a hundred men under the command of Fra Moreale. As these troops were difficult to pay and their leader was suspected of treachery, Rienzi captured him by a trick, and had him executed on the steps of the Capitol, seizing the hundred thousand gold florins which he left behind him. When this treasure was exhausted, Rienzi had to get money from the people, which made him as much hated by them as he was by the nobles. On October 8, 1354, Moreale's brother, Brettone, attacked Rienzi in the Capitol ; he was driven from the palace, endeavoured to escape in the dress of a monk, was recognised, and killed on the same spot where Moreale had fallen. His body was burned in the mausoleum of Augustus, and his ashes scattered to the winds. The death of Rienzi and the futile expedition of Charles 484 A GENERAL HISTORY [1341-1435 IV., which we have already related, increased the prestige of the papacy. But the wandering condottieri were still the real masters of Italy. Albornoz governed the patrimony of Renewed St. Peter well, but, in 1357, he was recalled to vigour of Avignon by Innocent VI. He died in 1367, the Papacy, equally great as a statesman, a general, and a legislator, and was buried in Toledo. Pope Urban V. returned to Rome in the same year, and took up his abode in the Vatican, honoured by Petrarch, visited by Joanna of Naples, and by the emperor, whose fourth wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania, he crowned in St. Peter's. But in 1370 he returned to France to die there. Rome was not permanently occupied by its lord till the return of Gregory XL, on January 17, 1377, and he died fifteen months afterwards. He was succeeded by Urban VI., but the Great Schism followed, and, as we have seen, did not come to an end for many years. Urban supported Louis of Hungary against Joanna of Naples, who summoned a second Anjou, Louis, brother of King Charles The V., to her aid. Catharine of Siena, who had spent Struggle her life in endeavouring to bring the pope back for Naples, to Rome, died on April 30, 1380. Charles of Durazzo, brother of Louis, entered Rome in November 1380, and attacked Joanna. Though bravely defended by her husband, Otto of Brunswick, she was defeated and captured, and eventually murdered on May 22, 1382. Louis of Anjou died two years afterwards, leaving Naples to his son, Louis II., and Provence to his younger son, Charles of Maine. Blood seemed to cling to the house of Anjou, as it did to the house of Oedipus. Within forty years, Andrew, Joanna, and two Charleses of Durazzo, father and son, had met with violent deaths, but, in 1369, the new pope, Boniface IX., recognised Ladislaus II., son of Charles, as king. Louis II. of Anjou and his brother, the count of Maine, came to Naples to claim their inheritance, but Ladislaus reigned in Rome. In 1404, his protector Boniface died, and was succeeded by Innocent VII. After two years, Innocent was succeeded by Gregory XII., a Venetian, eighty years old, who supported Ladislaus, but the rights of Louis of Anjou were recognised by Alexander V., who had been made pope at the council of Pisa. At last the chivalrous Ladislaus died on August 6, 1414, leaving his kingdom to his sister, Joanna II. But the anarchy still continued, with conflicts too complicated to be related here, till Louis II. of Anjou was succeeded in 1423 by Louis III., who held the title till 1322-1482] THE GREAT CITIES OF ITALY 485 his death in November 1434. Joanna herself died in February 1435, leaving her kingdom to Rene, the brother of Louis III. of Anjou and the father of Queen Margaret, wife of Henry VI. of England, who bore on her six-fold shield the arms of Hungary, of both Anjous, of Bar, of Jerusalem, and of Lorraine. 2. Milan and Piedmont, a.d. 1322-1482. In Milan, Matteo Visconti, who had succeeded in the govern- ment of that city the Guelf family of della Torre, died in 1322, leaving his position to his distinguished son, f^e Galeazzo. The Yisconti continued in power with Visconti Azzo, who died in 1339, — Lucchino, who died in at Milan. 1349, — Giovanni, who died in 1364, — and Bernabo, the blood- thirsty tyrant, who died in 1385, — till the succession of Gian Galeazzo, whose only daughter, Valentina, married Louis of Valois, the brother of Charles VI. of France, with a dowry of 400,000 gold florins. In 1395, the Emperor Wenzel gave him the rank and title of duke of Milan, which placed him among the princes of Europe. He died in 1402, leaving a nun as his heir, which resulted in the downfall of his race. In 1450, Francesco Sforza, a condottieri leader, who had succeeded Carmagnola as defender of the city, was elected duke by the people, and governed his country with wisdom and success till his death on March 8, 1466. Piedmont was divided into marquisates, the principal of which were Susa, Montferrat, and Saluzzo, of which Montferrat was the most distinguished. The best known among the rulers of Montferrat was Giovanni, who got possession of Ivrea, Valenza, Asti, and Alba. After his death the country was attacked by Susa on one side and Milan on the other, and the house of the Paleologi came to an end at the death of Giovanni IV. in 1461. The house of Savoy was founded in 1056 by Humbert- with- the- White-Hands, count of Maurienne, who in of Savoy 1034 had received valuable territory from the Emperor Conrad II. He was succeeded by Amadeus I., Oddo II., Peter I., and Amadeus II., whose sister, Bertha, married the Emperor Henry IV., and who made valuable additions to his dominions. He was followed by Humbert II., Amadeus III., Humbert III., and Thomas I., who was made imperial vicar by Frederick II. Amadeus V.,who was called the Great 486 A GENERAL HISTORY [1284-1453 (1285-1323), founded a new dynasty, and about this time Piedmont was reunited to Savoy. Amadeus VI., the " Green Count," was succeeded by Amadeus VII., the "Red Count," who got possession of Nice and Ventimiglia. Amadeus VIII., who bought the Genevois in 1401, became duke in 1416, inherited Piedmont in 1418, resigned the duchy in 1434, was elected pope in 1439, and died in 1451, as an Augustinian hermit in Geneva. He was followed by Louis, who failed to make good his claim to Milan as against Sforza, — by Amadeus IX. (1465-1472),— and by Philibert I., who died in 1482. 3. Genoa, a.d. 1284-1453. The power of Genoa was founded on its struggles with Pisa, from whom it wrested Corsica, and whom it entirely defeated Wars with ^ n ^ ne battle of Molara in 1284. It had gradually Pisa and acquired the rocky sea-coast of the Mediterranean Venice. from Nice to Spezzia, as well as the isle of Elba. It then had to contend against Venice, with whom it fought the war of Chioggia, put an end to by the peace of Turin in 1381, after which time the decline of the Genoese republic began. The republic of Genoa had neither the good fortune The Genoese nor the capacity to secure freedom for its citizens. Constitu- Even as early as the twelfth century, the people tion. were divided into eight companies, which included both patricians and plebeians and elected all the officials both civil and military. A nobility of public service arose which excluded the common people from the conduct of affairs. Membership -of the great council was confined to a few, and the popular assembly lost its power. The city was torn by factions, the families of Doria and Spinola being Ghibellines, the Fieschi and the Grimaldi Guelfs. At the head of the government we find, in turn, consuls, then a podesta appointed from a foreign city, but the example of Boccanera, about 1261, showed that such an official might be dangerous to liberty. Henry VII. did something to check the strife of parties, and Robert of Naples became Signor in 1331. A popular rising in 1339 led to the creation of a Doge, of whom Simon Boccanera was the first, assisted by twelve councillors, six from the nobles and six from the people. The companies were assisted by guilds. When Boccanera laid down his office in 1344, and withdrew to Pisa, Giovanni di Murta was elected 1250-1429] THE GREAT CITIES OF ITALY 487 in his place. But party quarrels soon came back, and between the years 1363 and 1527 the office of doge was held almost exclusively by the families of Adorno and Fregoso. The hank of St. George, in whose hands the ^ance finances of the republic lay, began to have great power at the beginning of the fifteenth century ; the French, who had occupied the city to restore order, were driven out, and the government entrusted to a council of twelve anziani, with the marquis of Montferrat at their head. But Marshal Boucicault, the commander of the French garrison, returned, and the financial credit of the republic improved. In 1436, the Genoese, who had been under the power of Filippo Maria Visconti, again elected doges ; but after the loss of Pera to the Turks, and the conquest of Constantinople by them in 1453, the republic came entirely under the influence of France. 4. Florence, a.d. 1250-1429. In Florence, a great change took place after the death of Frederick II. in 1250; party quarrels raged fiercely between Guelfs and Ghibellines, Manfred, at the head of Tlie the second, becoming master of Tuscany by the Florentine battle of Montaperti, and the Guelfs returning Constitu- te power after his death at Benevento. The * 10n - citizens were divided into guilds, each with a consul, a captain, and a standard-bearer. Originally there were seven higher guilds, forming the popolo c/rasso, or wealthy people, and five representing the poorer, the popolo minuto, but they were gradually increased to twenty-one. In 1282, Florence was governed by priori., whose numbers rose by slow stages from three to twelve, and the Ghibelline Pisa fell into the hands of the Guelfic rival. Ordinances of Justice were passed in 1292, under the influence of Giano della Bella, to secure the people against the encroachments of the nobles, and a Standard-bearer, " Gonfaloniere," of Justice, was placed in the public palace to assist the priori in this respect. Under this regime, Florence gained a great prosperity. In the time of Dante, about 1300, the city was divided into the two parties of the Bianchi and ISTeri (Whites and Blacks) , both Guelfs, - m ^ Cit but bitterly opposed to each other, represented by the families of Cerchi and Donati, the one being rich merchants, the other poor nobles. Dante was exiled in 1302 by Oorso 488 A GENERAL HISTORY [1172-1457 Donati, who was killed in 1308. Florence now made a league with Naples, and the duke of Calabria became signor. His representative, Walter of Brienne, duke of Athens, made himself detested by his severity, and became worse on the death of Charles of Calabria on November 9, 1328. Indeed, he desired to make himself master of the city, but was driven out in 1343, on July 26, which always remained a day of popular rejoicing. The government of Florence now came into the hands of the guilds, the noble families of Donati, Adimari, Cavalcanti, Frescobaldi, and Nerli being driven out. The p 013U i ace labour party got the upper hand, a change which was assisted by the losses incurred by the great banking houses of Bardi and Peruzzi, who lent money for the wars between France and England. Florence fell gradually under the power of a Guelf oligarchy, all who did not belong to this party being carefully excluded. This oligarchy had almost unrestrained power, the families of Buondelmonte and Ablizzi being at its head. Against them the " Ciompi," the populace, rose on July 22, 1378, and gained a complete victory, being led by Michele Lando, a wool-comber, who went about with bare feet. But the insurrection was gradually Medici ° suppressed by the wisdom of Salvestro de Medici, whose family acquired supremacy in the city for the first time in the person of Giovanni de Medici, who died in 1429. He protected the poorer citizens, but did not flatter them. He obtained his power by wise moderation, wisdom, and great unselfishness. At his death his power, founded on the wealth and business connection of a great banking house, passed to his sons Cosimo and Lorenzo. 5. Venice, a.d. 1172-1457. Venice owed its rise to the destruction of Aquileia, after which the population took refuge on a number of islands situated in a lagoon, protected from the sea by a strip of land origin called the Lido. After being governed by tribunes, they gradually came under the power of a doge, who was elected for life. Venice is an example of a pure aristocratic government threatened by the danger of becoming a monarchy on the one hand and a democracy on the other, and having to protect itself against both evils. The Venetians gradually succeeded in preventing the office of doge from being confined 1172-1457] THE GREAT CITIES OF ITALY 489 to a particular family, which would have established a kind of monarchy ; in attaching permanently to the doge certain advisers whom he was bound to consult ; and finally in creating, in 1172, a Great Council, composed of noble families, which Tlie eventually got for itself all the powers of govern- Venetian ment which ought to have belonged to the popular Constitu- assembly. So long as this aristocratic govern- tion- ment was really patriotic, and thought more of the interests of the country than of its own power, Venice held a great position, which gave her a commanding voice in the councils of Europe. This was shown in the congress held at Venice in May 1177, and in the exploits of Dandolo in the near East. In 1297 a momentous change was made in the Venetian constitution, by which not only was the Great Council limited to certain families, but it was ordered that every member of these families should be admitted to it on attaining the age of twenty- five. The government was thus changed from an aristocracy to an oligarchy. This was called " II Serrate del Gran Consiglio," the barring of the doors of the Great Council. Dissatisfaction with the change was shown by the conspiracy of Tiepolo in 1310, punished by the execution or banishment of those who took part in it. This gave rise to the creation of ten inquisitors, called the Council of Ten, whose duty it was to Watch against any attempts to impair the constitution. ofTen*" 101 Established at first as a temporary instrument for two months, they became permanent in 1335. In March 1335 an attempt made by the Doge Marino Faliero to destroy the oligarchical tyranny, by establishing either a seniory like that of other Italian cities, or else a doge who should really re- present the people, was discovered by the Ten, and Faliero was executed on the staircase in the courtyard of the doge's palace, a tragedy immortalised in the verse of Byron. A war with Genoa, the chief rival of Venice, called the war of Chioggia, lasted from 1379 to 1381, and ended by JjJJjj^ the surrender into the hands of the Venetians of five thousand Genoese and thirty-two galleys, and the signature of the peace of Turin through the mediation of Count Amadeus of Savoy. The beginning of the next century saw the extension of Venetian power on the mainland, by which Vicenza, Bassano, Feltre, Belluno, and Padua came under the control of the island city. But a little later it became necessary to make war against the Turks, who were pressing their conquests in 490 A GENERAL HISTORY [997-1437 the East, and against the Emperor Sigismund. At the close of the first quarter of the fifteenth century all the coasts of The the Adriatic from the mouth of the Po, through Venetian Yenetia, Friuli, Istria, Dalmatia, down to Albania, Empire. together with Corfu and Negropont, belonged to the republic. Salonica was also in the power of Yenice until it was conquered by the Turks. Under Doge Foscari (1423-1457) an attempt was made to make Yenice mistress of the north of Italy and to crush the power of the Yisconti in Milan, and for this purpose a league was formed with Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, and Ravenna. The forces of the league were commanded by Francesco da Carmagnola. When the operations of the league were not successful, Carmagnola was accused of treachery, and on March 5, 1432, was beheaded between the two columns in the Piazzetta of San Marco. The war continued until it was put an end to by the peace of Lodi in April 1454, when Constantinople had already, by the shameful divisions between Greeks and Latins, fallen into the hands of the Turks. Yenice had not succeeded in crushing Milan, but she had secured a position of superiority in the affairs of northern Italy. This success was mainly due to Foscari, but his enemies triumphed over him, and on October 25, 1457, he was compelled to leave the palace in which he had lived and worked for thirty-four years, and died a few days afterwards of a broken heart. EASTERN EUROPE. 1. Hungary, a.d. 997-1437. We must now turn our attention to the East, and first to Hungary, which learned something of Christianity under Geisa Hungary a (972-997), but was not organised as a Christian Christian state till the reign of St. Stephen (997-1038), who Kingdom. received the title of king from Pope Silvester II. Under him it became a Christian feudal state with a king at its head, and was strengthened by the addition of Transylvania. Stephen was succeeded by Peter I. (1038-1041), and eventually by Geisa II. (1074-1077), who was a contemporary of Gregory VII., by whose influence Hungary became attached to the Latin church instead of to the Greek. A very important king was St. Ladislaus (1077-1095), who energetically rooted out the remains of heathen worship. Under Kolman (1095-1114), Croatia was added to the Hungarian crown, and the reduction of Dalmatia was attempted. He was succeeded by Stephen II. 997-1437] EASTERN EUROPE 491 (1114-1131), who suffered much in wars with Austria and Constantinople, and died childless, and, in 1131, by Bela the Blind, who reigned till 1141, and was followed Wars with by Geisa III., a minor, who ruled for twenty Constanti- years. He welcomed German colonists into Tran- nople. sylvania, who still flourish there. Geisa was a warlike prince, and his reign was occupied by quarrels with Constantinople. His son, Stephen III., succeeded at the age of twelve, but civil war broke out, and Hungary found itself with three kings, two Stephens and a Ladislaus, recognised in different parts of the kingdom. It was settled that Bela, brother of _ , ,,, • Bela II Stephen III., should be educated in Constantinople, and marry the emperor's daughter. When Stephen died at the age of twenty-three, Bela returned from Constantinople, but secured his crown with difficulty, as his Greek education and connections made him an object of suspicion. He proved, how- ever, a wise and powerful king, and reigned till 1196. He did much to introduce European culture into Hungary. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Emmerich (1196-1204), Croatia and Dalmatia falling to his brother Andrew, who married an ambitious wife, Gertrude of Meran. Emmerich got his young son Ladislaus recognised as king, but he only wore the crown for a year, and Andrew II. obtained the object of his desires. Constance of Aragon, the mother of Ladislaus, who had fled to Austria to escape the jealousy of Andrew, eventually married the Emperor Frederick II. Andrew II. (1205-1235) proved a very weak king. His wife was murdered in 1214, and Andrew consoled himself with Iolanthe of Auxerre. In 1217, he went on a crusade, and on his return quarrelled with his son Bela, who had governed the kingdom in his absence. In 1222, he published the so- called " Golden Bull," which long continued to be the corner-stone of the Hungarian constitution. „ f, ° en He died in 1235, and was succeeded by his son, Bela IV., a powerful king, who reigned till 1270. In his reign occurred the terrible invasion of the Mongols, which entirely ruined his country, while he himself took refuge in Austria. His last years were saddened by the death of his son and his wife, and he died himself at the age of sixty-five, one of the best kings that Hungary ever had. His successor, Stephen V., reigned for two years (1270-1272), and was followed by Ladislaus IV. (1272-1290). The reigns of both coincided with the struggle between Rudolf of Hapsburg and Ottokar, 492 A GENERAL HISTORY [862-1472 and Hungarian cavalry assisted the Germans in the struggle on the Marchfeld. The race of Arpad was now nearly extinct. Stephen, brother of Bela IV., of doubtful legitimacy, had married Catherine Contest Morosini, a noble Venetian, and had a son named for the Andrew. Ladislaus summoned him from Venice Hungarian to Hungary, made him duke of Slavonia, and Crown. designated him as his successor. But his claim to the throne was hotly disputed, first by the nobility of Croatia, then by Albert of Austria, whom Rudolf had invested with the fief of Hungary, then by Charles Martel, grandson of Charles of Anjou, son of Maria, the sister of Ladislaus, and, after his death in 1296, by his son, Charles Robert. When Andrew died in 1301, the greater portion of the Hungarian clergy and the magnates hesitated to receive a sovereign from the hands of the pope, and turned their eyes to Wenzel of Bohemia, whose mother was an Arpad. He was accepted as king, and took the name of Ladislaus, but died in 1306 in consequence of his evil life. In 1310, Charles Robert of Anjou was recognised as king, and reigned well till 1342, when he was followed by his son, Louis the Great, who occupied the throne for forty years (1342-1382). He was ouis e frequently engaged in Italy, but in his own country he subdued the Lithuanians, the Tartars, and the Dalmatians. He became king of Poland, so that his dominions extended from the mouth of the Vistula to the Adriatic, from the western coasts of the Black Sea to the Baltic, and, ruling over a motley crowd of nationalities, he was equally beloved and honoured on the Vistula and the Save. He was a good legislator, and exerted himself to extirpate heathendom and to put Christianity in its place. At the Diet held at Of en in 1351, he confirmed the Golden Bull of Andrew II. His death was followed by a time of trouble and confusion, which ended by the reception as king of Sigismund, who had married Maria, daughter Sigismund. of Louig _ He reigned from 1386 t0 U37) and was, as we already know, emperor, king of Germany, and king of Bohemia. 2. Poland and Russia, a.d. 862-1472. The fortunes of Poland, Russia, and the Turks must be passed rer lightly. The first came under the rule of the Piasts, 862-1472] EASTERN EUROPE 493 a family who, starting from the Warthe and the Neisse in the middle of the tenth century, gradually extended their power. The greatest king of this race was Casi- piasts mir III., who was succeeded in 1370 by his nephew, Louis the Great of Hungary, of whom we have already heard. Louis' younger daughter, Heclwig, married Jagello, grand prince of Lithuania, and founded a new dynasty, which continued far beyond our period. The earliest rulers of Russia were called Grand Princes of Kiev, and the first of these was Rurik, who reigned in Novgorod from 862 to 879. Vladimir, who was afterwards The Grand recognised as a saint, the true founder of the Princes of Russian empire, reigned in Novgorod from 972 Kiev, to 980, and in Kiev from 981 to 1015, having been baptized in 988. His dominions extended from the mountains of Volhynia to the gulf of Finland, to the White . Sea and the northern Dvina, to the Oka and yiadimir. the cataracts of the Dnieper, and in the south were only separated from the Black Sea and the Crimea by the Petschenegen and the Chazars. After Vladimir's death, his crown was disputed by his two sons, Svatopluk, who reigned at Kiev, and Jarislav, who remained at Novgorod ; but eventually Jarislav was recognised as the successor of Vladimir, and had a long reign, from 1016 to 1054. At his death he divided his kingdom amongst his five sons, the eldest, however, main- taining a position of superiority over the rest. He, however, proved an entire failure. The " Golden Horde " of the Mongols invaded the country, and became masters of it in 1241. But the race of Rurik survived, and i nvas i on continued to assert its claims to the principality of Kiev. At length, in 1328, Ivan Kalita, grandson of Saint Alexander Nevski, founded the principality of Moscow, which he held till 1340. He defeated the Mongols in the plain of Kulikov, on the upper Don, and Qreat the horde was dispersed. Moscow now became the capital of the new kingdom, and the power of the Mongols was finally broken by Ivan III., who reigned from 1462 to 1505. He gave unity to the Russian empire, making it one in language, religion, and government ; and, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1456, made Russia the successor of the Byzantine empire by marrying Zoe (called in Russia Sophia) Paleologus, in 1472. 494 A GENERAL HISTORY [] 288-1453 3. The Turkish Empire, a.d. 1288-1453. The Turkish empire was founded by Osman in 1288. He was the head of a conquering horde who, in the first half of the thirteenth century, had, to escape the sword of the Mongols, wandered from Chorassan, where they had previously lived, to join their cousins, the Seljukian Turks, in Armenia. They numbered 50,000 souls. When Genghis Khan died in 1227, they attempted to return to their country, but Suleiman was drowned in crossing a river, leaving four sons. Two of them reached Chorassan, but the other two went west- ward, and found protection with Aladdin, sultan of Iconium. One of them, Ertughrul (1231-1288), was able to establish him- self in Karahissar in Asia Minor, which became the cradle of the Turkish empire. Osman succeeded him in 1299. Osman was a great conqueror. He obtained possession of Chios, which he used for the subjugation of the other islands of the Aegean. Cenchrea, Philadelphia, Sardis, and Ephesus fell into his hands. He treated the Christians with great barbarity, from Thasos to Rhodes, from Troy to Cnidus. He even threatened Constantinople, which was weakly defended by its Emperor Andronicus. In 1326, Orchan, son of Osman, entered Brusa in triumph, and the news of its fall cheered the deathbed of the aged sultan. His body was bulled in the palace chapel at Brusa, and the silver casket which held his remains was long an object of pious pilgrimage. Osman was a nomad prince of genius, who owed his success to his sword, his bravery, his religious zeal, and the nobility of his character. His son, Orchan, reigned from 1326 to 1359, and soon became master of Nicaea and Nicomeclia. Nicomedia fell in the year 1326, and, two years later, Andro- nicus III. became sole emperor of Constantinople, reigning till 1341. He lost Mcaea by the battle of Philo- of Orchan crene in 1330, and from this time the Turks were masters of the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. Shortly afterwards, Bithynia fell into the hands of the Osmanlis, and Mysia, with Lydia and Ionia, followed the same fate. Orchan founded the Janissaries, a body of converted young - e . . Christian soldiers, forming a brotherhood or re- ligious oicler, who fought manfully for their new faith, but at last became too powerful, and the Spahis, the kernel of the Turkish cavalry. Andronicus III. was followed in 1288-1453] EASTERN EUROPE 495 the government of Constantinople by Kantakuzenos (1341-1347), who acted as the guardian of John Paleologus, a boy of nine years old. He was opposed by the high admiral, Apokaukos, who conspired with Anna of Savoy, the empress-mother, so that the empire was distracted by civil war. An arrangement was made in 1347 by which Kantakuzenos was to keep the regency for ten years, and the young emperor was to marry his daughter. At the same time, his daughter Theodora was married to the aged sultan, by which he secured the assistance of the Osmanlis. Eventually, by the co-operation of the Genoese, Kantakuzenos was deprived of his power, and spent the rest of his life as a monk on Mount Athos, while John Paleologus held the Byzantine throne till 1391. It is said that during the hundred years which preceded the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Turks crossed the Bosphorus twenty times. In the eighteenth of these expedi- tions, Suleiman Pasha, son of Orchan, conquered in Europe- Gallipoli in 1356. He died in 1358, and two months later was followed to the grave by his father. Murad, Orchan's second son (1359-1389), conquered Adrianople, and made Servia and Bulgaria tributary. He confirmed the Turkish possession of Asia Minor. In June 1389 was fought the fatal battle of Kossovo, the " blackbird " field, in which Christians fought against Turks for the possession Kossovo of Eastern Europe, and the Christians were beaten. Lazarus, prince of Servia, commanded an army comprising Bosnians, Albanians, Wallachians, Herzegovinians, and a certain number of Hungarians and Bulgarians. No battle was ever fought with more personal energy and vigour. Man fought against man, breast to breast. Murad and his son Bajezid, with his iron mace, performed prodigies of valour. At last victory inclined to the side of the Turks, whose unity prevailed over the disunion of the Chris- tians. But both the leaders perished. Lazarus fell in the battle, and Murad was murdered by a servant. He was buried in Brusa, and was honoured with the titles of lord and conqueror. Bajezid (1389-1403) was saluted as emperor on the field of Kossovo. John Paleologus, being devoted to his second son Manuel, had excluded his son Andronicus and his son John from the succession in his favour, blinded them, and thrown Baiezid them into prison. Hearing of Murad' s death, and the they escaped to Bajezid and claimed his assistance. Byzantine He gave them an auxiliary force of 6000 cavalry Succession, and 4000 infantry, by which John and Manuel were conquered 496 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1288 to and Andronicus was placed upon the throne. He refused to put his father and his brother to death as Bajezid advised, the consequence of which was that they also fled to Bajezid and persuaded him to effect their restoration. As Andronicus and John still retained some of their power, Bajezid was master of the situation, much as Napoleon was in his dealings with the court of Spain. All these events led to the battle W o & Y °^ ^i 00 ? ^ 8 ! fought in September 1396, the decisive moment of a new crusade, preached by the pope, instigated and led by the future Emperor Sigismund, supported by French and Germans, English and Poles. The crusaders marched together to join Sigismund's Hungarian forces, which raised their numbers to something like 100,000 well armed troops. But the bravely contested struggle was decided in favour of the Turks, though, while the Christians lost 12,000 men, among them some of the noblest blood of France, the losses of the Turks numbered 20,000. Constantinople was in abject terror, but Manuel refused to capitulate to Bajezid, and in 1399 abdicated in favour of his nephew John, and journeyed to western Europe in a vain search for assistance. Bajezid had now to withstand the onslaught of a more powerful enemy in the person of Timur the Mongol, called Tamur the Lame or Tamerlane, a successor of amer ane. Q^ghig Khan, whose empire he endeavoured to revive. Having conquered Chorassan and Kandahar, he set out in 1380 to reduce Persia. He occupied the Caucasus, Armenia, and Mesopotamia, and, in 1390, attacked southern Russia, and, in 1398, India. In 1400 he was recalled from the banks of the Ganges to put down a rebellion, and this time came into contact with Bajezid. In 1401, he marched into Syria, destroyed Aleppo, burned Damascus, and then, turning back to Persia, stormed Bagdad. At last a battle was fought between him and Bajezid at Angora, on July 20, 1402, in which Bajezid was defeated and taken prisoner ; while Timur was pre- paring to carry him to Samarcand to adorn his triumph, he died on March 8, 1403, and was followed to the grave by Timur himself on February 19, 1405, when he was about to invade China. Timur's empire fell to pieces after his death, but he left a representative in India in the person of the Great Mogul. Bajezid left several sons, who resided in their respective appanages, Suleiman in Adrianople, Mohammed in Tokat, Musa in Kntahia, and Isa in Brusa. Mohammed was the strongest, and, after ten years of strife, ruled alone from 1413 to 1421. a.d. 1453] EASTERN EUROPE 497 He may be regarded as the second founder of the Osman empire. His successor, Murad II. (1421-1451), began by attacking Constantinople, but without effect. John Conquests of VII., Paleologus, son of Manuel, held the throne Mohammed of Byzantium from 1425 to 1448. Murad II. and Murad II. pursued a career of victory. He conquered Thessalonica in 1430, came into conflict with the Venetians, and besieged Belgrade, the outpost of the Hungarian kingdom, in 1440. The Turks were driven back by John Hunyadi, who conducted a heroic struggle in 1441 and 1442. At this time i ,. a serious attempt was made to unite the Greek and Latin churches, and in 1438, John VII., Paleologus, went to Italy for this purpose. A council was held first at Ferrara and then at Florence, and Pope Eugenius IV. and the Greek emperor — the heads of the Greek and Council of Latin churches respectively — were addressed by Cardinal Julian in Latin and by Cardinal Bessarion in Greek. The conference found the chief obstacles to union in the question whether the Holy Ghost proceeded from God the Father alone or from the Father and the Son, and in the papal claim to supremacy. A temporary union was secured by means of vague formulae, but the bitterness between the churches remained and prevented co-operation against the infidel. Still an attempt at co-operation was made. Eugenius preached a crusade, but in this the political interests were more powerful than the religious. However, in 1443, an army, ^ n collected chiefly from the east of Europe, set forth attempted accompanied by Cardinal Julian. The Danube Crusade. was crossed, and Sophia and Nissa were conquered by Hunyadi on November 3, the Turks being defeated in a battle near the latter town. The war was closed by the peace of Szegedin, in July 1444, by which the Danube was fixed as the frontier between the Turks and the Hungarians. Murad now abdicated in favour of his son, Mohammed, who was fourteen years of age. This led to a breach of the peace of Szegedin, and to a new campaign, in which Castriota, prince of Albania, better known as Skanderbeg, was the leading figure. The western powers refused their assistance, so that the invading army did not exceed 30,000 men. It was attacked by second Murad at Varna on November 10, 1444, and Battle of entirely defeated. In 1449, a second battle took Kossovo. place on the field of Kossovo, where, after a three days' conflict, the Hungarians were entirely routed by the Turks. 2 1 498 A GENERAL HISTORY [1288-1453 Hunyadi and Castriota remained the onl}' champions of Christianity. On February 5, 1451, Murad II. died, after having found a suitable wife for his son, Mohammed, who now became sultan. The fall of Constantinople was not long delayed. The last emperor of Byzantium was Constantine XII., Paleologus, who succeeded in 1448. He at first attempted stantino le to renew friendly relations with the Turks, to which Mohammed was not averse. The young Sultan even went to Byzantium to make a truce with Hunyadi, but he knew that the fall of the great city could not be long delayed. Constantine did everything in his power to defend his capital : he sent for assistance to the pope and the other princes of Europe, who returned nothing but empty promises. The Western Christians were more enraged against the Eastern heretics than they were against the common foe of all Christen- dom. In the spring of 1453, Mohammed besieged Constanti- nople by both land and sea. He made use of a colossal cannon, cast in Wallachia, drawn by fifty pairs of oxen and two hundred men. His forces consisted of some 150,000 soldiers, his navy of 420 ships, to which the Greeks could only oppose 6000 of their own troops and 3000 auxiliaries. But, even in the crisis, the strife between the orthodox party and their opponents con- tinued. At last the storm took place, on May 23, 1453. The brave emperor took his stand opposite the Janissaries, but he did not gain his desire of being slain by a Christian. At midday, the conquering sultan entered the town, and gave thanks for his victory in the cathedral of St. Sophia, which was soon after to become a mosque. CHAPTER XV. FLORENCE, A.D. 1429-1492— THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, A.D. 1453-1519. The fall of Constantinople, in 1453, has by many writers been considered as the close of medieval history and the beginning of a new period of development. A large por- The End of tion of the civilised world is henceforth cut off the Middle from the interests of central Europe, which is Ages, the chief object of our attention, and that portion of Europe begins to extend itself towards the west, creating new objects of interest and founding a new centre of gravity for the affairs of the world — a process which is still going on. But so much of the medieval spirit remained in life and in government that it is more convenient to fix the date of the tiansition some fifty years later — at the discovery of America, or the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy, or even the accession of Charles V. It is impossible to embrace these years in a single view, and it is not the object of this book to give a detailed account of the states of Europe which now begin to form themselves, so we must hurry towards the end. But, before narrating the close of the Middle Ages,, it will be convenient to describe the fortunes of Florence under the government of the Medici as an example of the transition which was taking place elsewhere. We have already heard of the Medici — of Giovanni, who defended his city against the assaults of the Visconti of Milan in the north and of Ladislaus of Naples in the south, and died in 1429, leaving his power and f Florence fortune to his sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo. At this time, Florence, having subdued her rival, Pisa, was in undisputed possession of the whole course of the Arno from the Casentino to the sea, and controlled the commerce of Tuscany. Her love of freedom and commerce had so developed that she stood on a pinnacle of greatness when the other cities of Europe were losing their power. The city was full of splendid buildings, unrivalled works of art, of sturdy men and beautiful 499 5oo A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1429 to women. Arezzo and Volterra recognised her supremacy, and she cast longing eyes on Lucca and Siena. The most dreaded of the Condottieri, the commanders of bands of mercenaries, preferred the service of Florence to that of any other city, because she was always able to pay them their wages. The Albizzi, who were the rivals and enemies of the Medici, determined to drive them out of the city, which was the usual The Albizzi course taken in Italian political quarrels, and and the struck at Oosimo. They invited him to the Medici. Town Hall, which, under the name of the Old Palace, still dominates the great square of the city, and, when he came there, deaf to the warnings of his friends, threw him into prison. He was in clanger of poison and also of being condemned to death, but he succeeded, by bribery, in commuting his sentence to banishment, and was sent for ten years to Padua, his friends and relations suffering the same fate. This happened in 1433. Cosimo was received at Padua with the greatest honour, and the rulers of Venice, whither he soon removed, treated him not as a banished man, but as one of the highest rank. His friends in Florence were active in his favour, and when, in August 1434, the government of Florence was renewed, it was found that the ballot boxes were filled with names which belonged to Triumph of the party of the Medici. A rising took place in Cosimo de the city which reached its height on September 26. Medici. The aristocratic party, headed by the Albizzi and Peruzzi, were defeated, and would probably have been put to death if it had not been for the intervention of Pope Eugenius IV., who happened to be in Florence. As it was, they were either imprisoned or banished, and Cosimo and his friends and sup- porters were recalled from exile. He was greeted at the gates of the city by a joyous crowd, as the father of his people, and the saviour of the republic. Serious and magnanimous, he did not attempt to avenge himself, but endeavoured to secure the favour of the citizens by liberality and bene- t Ri licence. The commercial operations of the Medici extended over the whole world, and were the strength of Florence. By the wealth of the Medici, she was able to hold the balance between Milan and Venice on the one hand and the king of Naples on the other. She had also become the metropolis of western culture and a centre of enlighten- ment for the civilised world. To this period is due her majestic cathedral, dedicated to our Lady of the Flower, and consecrated by the pope himself. As we have heard, a council for the A.D-. 1492] FLORENCE 501 reconciliation of the Western and Eastern churches was held in Florence, which was a great honour for the town. Machiavelli, the historian of Florence, tells us that Oosimo was a man of middle height, of dark, olive complexion, and of noble mien. He was eloquent in speech, and, though with no learning himself, loved and honoured it in others. He intro- duced the study of Greek into Florence, and founded a Platonic Academy. The head of it was the great scholar Marsilio Ficino, whom he established in his palace, and also gave him a country house in the neighbourhood of his own villa at Careggi, where he might have more leisure to pursue his studies. Cosimo ruled the state for thirty-nine years, with honour and distinction. He died at the age of seventy-six, in 1464, and was succeeded by his grandsons Lorenzo and Giuliano, their father Pietro being alive, but weak in body and in mind, having always to be carried about in a litter. Cosimo had a rival iu the person of Luca Pitti, who built the great palace in Florence which now bears his name, and is the habitation of the king of Italy. An attempt of the Pitti to assert their power, in 1466, only made the Medici stronger than ever. The friends of the Pitti were banished, and the republic soon assumed the appearance of a monarchy. When Lorenzo was married to Clarice Orsini in June 1469, the festivities were celebrated with all the magnificence of a court. Pietro, the father of the two brothers, was released from his miserable life six months later, and Lorenzo, always called the Magnificent, was acknowledged as head of the ° ren p° ih ^ family, and was regarded, together with his brother Giuliano, as a prince. The lordship of Lorenzo lasted for twenty- two years, from 1469 to 1492, a golden age for art and science in Florence. The form of republican institutions still remained, but the government was virtually a monarchy. But the exiles refused to accept the state of things, and worked hard for their return and for the overthrow of the brothers. For this, Bernardo Nardi was beheaded at Florence in April 1470, and the town of Volterra, which had joined their side, was captured in 1472, and was compelled to receive a Florentine garrison. The conquest of Volterra increased the reputation of Lorenzo. Not only was the government entirely in the hands of the Medici, but they used their political position for great financial speculations which brought many people into their control. Almost the whole of the alum mines were in their hands ; they had banking houses in many towns and countries, which were 502 A GENERAL HISTORY U429-U92 branches of the head bank of Florence, and were directed by friends and clients of the central house. They treated the state income as if it were their private property. This success excited envy and hatred, and the attempts of Prato and Volterra were renewed in Florence itself. Next to the Medici the most distinguished family in Florence was that of the Pazzi. They had, at one time, been members of the Medici party. Bianca, the daughter of Pietro, c e _^g was married to a Pazzi, and many of the family were placed at the head of the Medici banks ; but this confidence gradually cooled, and turned into jealousy and hate. A cause for quarrel was soon found, and it was not diffi- cult for the Pazzi to unite the enemies of the powerful house in a conspiracy for its destruction. Among them was Pope Sixtus IV., and Francesco de' Pazzi, who lived in Rome, came to Florence to stir up his cousins. Montesecco, a Oondottiere engaged to assist Cardinal Riario, came also, to make the final arrangements. It was first intended to murder the brothers in their beautiful villa in Fiesole, well known afterwards as the Villa Mozzi, but the attempt was given up because Giuliano was not present. The crime was therefore consum- mated in the cathedral, at the very moment when the priest was elevating the host at the altar, and the whole congregation was kneeling. It had at first been arranged that one of the Pazzi was to murder Giuliano and Montesecco Lorenzo; but the Oondottiere refused to commit sacrilege in a church, and the crime was entrusted to two priests named Antonio and Stefano, who would have less respect for the scene of action, but at the same time would be less experienced in assassination. It was intended that, after the deed, the conspirators should seize the palace of the government, and arrest the priors. On May 2, 1478, the deed was done. Giuliano fell, but Lorenzo escaped with a slight wound. The plot was an entire failure, and was punished with condign vengeance. Such was the conspiracy of the Pazzi, of which Machiavelli has left us an eloquent description. The power of the Medici was vastly increased. Lorenzo had the authority of a king, but used his position for the advantage of the commonwealth. The ages of Pericles and Last Years Augustus seemed to revive in Florence. As Pope Sixtus IV. had been his enemy, Pope Inno- cent VIII., his successor, was his friend. Maddalena Medici married Franceschetto Cibo, of the pope's family, and her brother 1453-15191 END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 503 Giovanni, who was afterwards Pope Leo X., received the car- dinal's hat. At length, Lorenzo's life began to draw to a close. He had suffered long from gout, and withdrew himself from state affairs, living chiefly in his villas or in baths, where he sought alleviation from his pain. Assisted by the learned scholars Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, in whose conver- sation he delighted, he gave the education of a statesman to his sons Giuliano and Pietro, to make them worthy of their inherit- ance. It is said that at the close of his life he sent for the great preacher and reformer Savonarola, to ask pardon for his sins, but Savonarola refused to give it unless he granted liberty to Florence. He died at his villa at Oareggi on April 6, 1492, forty-four years old,- and three weeks later Pope Innocent followed him to the grave. All Italy seemed to mourn for him. Two popes, Leo X. and Clement VII., sprang from his house, and two French kings took their wives from the Medici family. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 1453-1519. The distinguishing mark of the Middle Ages is the authority held by the two great powers, the empire and the papacy, — sometimes striving for mastery, sometimes uniting Decay of tlie for the benefit of civilisation, never attaining the Empire and high ideals formed in different ways by Otto III., the Papacy, by Hildebrand, and by Dante, of representing in harmony the material and spiritual forces of the world. We have seen how the papacy, tossed about on a stormy sea, raised to pre- dominance by Gregory VII., and Innocent III., lost its power, first, by the removal to Avignon, and secondly by the Great Schism, not to be restored by the unspiritual culture of Pius II., or by the worldly^ strivings of Julius II. The empire was now to follow a similar course, and to yield to the in- evitable influences of a new age. The Reformation destroyed for ever the bond by which the papacy had held together the spiritual forces of Europe. Charles V. was the last emperor who kept the countries of Europe in even outward unity, and all the time each was contending for individual independence and development. In Germany the struggle between old and new political conceptions im- posed its influence and weakened the position of f ?f ^ ss the empire. Germany oscillated between a re- publican and a monarchical institution. The empire, the terri- torial princes, and the towns and the peasant republic of 504 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1453 to Switzerland were engaged in rivalry with each other, cherishing different ideals, unwilling to sacrifice any of them to obtain a new order of things. Nor were the relations of Germany to the other powers of Europe satisfactory. In the East, the Slavonic countries were increasing in power to the detriment of the Teutons. Something had been done by the creation of the German knights and the German conquest of Lithuania, but the Polish monarchy was supported by both Bohemia and Hungary. This led to a diminution of German influence, especially when it was realised that the Slavs and the Magyars were the best defence of Western civilisation against the invading Turks. Pius II. attempted to remedy the loss of Constantinople by a new crusade, but times had changed, and religious interests Christendom nac ^ given way to political. The Genoese in and the Galata made a treaty with the sultan to protect Turks. their commerce in the Black Sea ; the doge of Venice in vain attempted to declare war. A Diet was held at Regensburg in September 1453, where Turkish affairs formed a natural subject of discussion. But the apathy of Frederick III. and the disunion among the states prevented any common action. Aeneas Silvius, the most accomplished diplomat of his time, could not, even after (as Pius II.) he had mounted the papal throne in 1458, succeed in stirring up the powers of Europe against the Turks. The congress which he had summoned to meet at Mantua in 1459 only showed the im- possibility of a common action ; the southern Slavs were left to maintain their independence, — even their existence, — by their own strength. Frederick III., threatened by a rebellion in Austria, had set free his ward Ladislaus of Bohemia, but Ladislaus died on T , November 13, 1457, which gave independence to Kingdoms Bohemia and Hungary, and dissolved the suze- of Bohemia rainty which Austria had exercised over them. an d At the beginning of 1458, George Podiebrad was Hungary. elected king of Bohemia, and Matthias Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi, king of Hungary. It happened that, at this time, Podiebrad was the prisoner of Corvinus, but he immediately set him free and entered into friendly relations with him. These two countries now became national kingdoms on an independent basis. Hungary turned her attention to the southern plains of Germany : Hussite Bohemia remained a thorn in the side of Catholic Germany. Podiebrad found a.d. 1519] END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 505 himself at the head of a powerful national army, and rich in mineral wealth. He gained influence in Germany by acting as arbitrator between the rival German houses, which were always quarrelling with each other. Two important German towns remained a firm defence of Teutonic influence. Breslau, German and Catholic, refused to bow its neck to Hussite Bohemia, and Dantzig set itself in opposition to the Teutonic i^g Knights, who, in spite of their name, were be- Teutonic coming Slavic in character. Frederick III. dis- Knights, solved the Order in September 1453, an action which was resisted by its mercenary soldiery, who were largely Bohemian and Polish. When the finances of the Order were exhausted, the mercenaries attempted to recover their pay by selling to their enemies the castles which had been pledged to them for it. Chief among them was the stately fortress of Marienburg. The Master of the Order took refuge in Konigsberg, and in 1466 the war was put an end to by the peace of Thorn. The remains of the Order surrendered West Prussia to Poland, and received Samland and Pomerania as Polish fiefs. Liibeck, the capital of the Hansa, was delighted at the fall of the Order, as its members had become commercial rivals, bringing their own ships and sending their goods to Flanders, Holland, and England, and had thus made themselves unpopulai\ At this time arose the Capetian monarchy of Burgundy, which originated in the grant of the duchy by ip^g King John to his son Philip, and now included Burgundian the richest and most prosperous countries of Monarchy, western Europe, Brabant and Flanders, which had been since the thirteenth century great centres of commerce. There the Lombards and the Hansa exchanged their products. Also in the fourteenth century a new system of agriculture was developed in these countries, which gave them great wealth, and the whole of these possessions, consisting of large fiefs of land and trading towns, instinct with a republican spirit, fell into the power of the dukes of Burgundy. The Burgundian court was marked by the splendour of city architecture, by the development of painting in oils, by the genius of John van Eyck, and Philip de Comines, and by the establishment of the Order of the Golden Fleece. The creation of Burgundy not only threatened France but weakened Teutonic influence. Between 1439 and 1449, Philip the Good destroyed the power of town councils in Rotterdam, Haarlem, and Amsterdam. In 1465 he broke the independence of Liege, and in 1466 he 506 A GENERAL HISTORY [aj>. 1453 to punished with terrible cruelty an attack on his possessions by her ally Dinant. When he died in 1467, he left to his son, Charles the Bold, an enormous treasure, which made him one of the richest and most independent monarchs of Europe. Charles' dominions stretched, with occasional interruptions, from Friesland to Savoy, — and, while, as a French baron, he Projects opposed the centralising policy of Louis XI., and of Charles " loved France so much that he wished her to the Bold. have six kings instead of only one," — in his own lands consolidation and centralisation were his dearest aims. He wished to acquire the territory necessary to connect all his French and imperial fiefs, and then to convert them into an independent centralised kingdom. He began in 1468 by annexing Liege. Then he took in pledge the Alsatian pos- sessions of Sigismund of Austria, who hoped for his aid against the Swiss. In 1472 he made his last direct attack on France, ravaging Normandy, ostensibly to avenge Louis' brother Charles, whom he alleged to have been poisoned. Henceforward he devoted himself more and more to his German schemes. In 1473 he annexed Guelders, established a protectorate over Lorraine, with the right of garrisoning its strongholds, and visited Frederick III. to secure a royal crown and the succession to the empire, in return for betrothing his heiress, Mary, to Frederick's son Maximilian. He failed in these negotiations, and meanwhile the harshness of Hagenbach, his agent in Alsace, and his own attempts to obtain far more power there than Sigis- mund had possessed, drew together in a common alarm the free towns of Alsace, — Strassburg, Basel, and other Rhenish cities, and some of the Swiss cantons. Trading on this alarm and on Sigismund's disappointment at Charles' failure to help him, Louis craftily united all parties in the League of Constance, to redeem Sigismund's lands. Charles, meanwhile, helping the archbishop of Cologne against his subjects, was authorised to garrison his towns, and in July 1474 began to besiege Neuss. But the siege Siege of dragged on for nearly a year : it drained his re- Nguss CO *J */ sources ; it drew into the field against him a great imperial army, and even — at last — the reluctant emperor him- self. Meantime Hagenbach was done to death by the League ; the Swiss attacked Franche Comte ; Ben6 of Lorraine deserted Charles for Louis ; Louis invaded the Netherlands and the Burgundies ; and Charles' promise to harass France in prepara- tion for its invasion by Edward IV. became overdue. a.d. 1519] END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 507 So, in June 1475, Charles abandoned the siege and made peace with Frederick. But the English expedition proved a fiasco. Charles had no army ready to stipport it. The Constable St. Pol, — Edward's uncle by marriage and Charles' ally, — played them false. Louis offered a high price for peace. And Edward — disgusted with Charles and eager to save the balance of his war supplies — accepted the " Treve Marchande " of Pecquigny, receiving an indemnity, a pension, a ransom for Margaret of Anjou, and the vain promise of the Dauphin's hand for his daughter Elizabeth. Charles himself, though furious, made a truce with Louis which enabled him to conquer Lorraine. But his refusal to be content with this and renounce Alsace involved him in war with the hated and despised Swiss. Their pikemen easily outmatched his Burgundian knights and Lorn- Charles and bard mercenaries, and Savoy only lost territory the Swiss— by aiding him. He was beaten at Grandson His Defeat in March 1476, and at Morat in June. Then and Death. Rene attempted to recover Lorraine ; the Swiss — hardly per- suaded by Louis — gave their assistance ; and at Nancy, on January 5, 1477, Charles' last army was routed, and Charles himself killed. His death caused democratic movements throughout the Netherlands. Mary — distracted between the intrigues of Louis and the insolence of the Flemish towns — married Maximilian on August 18, 1477. He made peace with the Swiss, but the war with the French, who were defeated at Guinegate or Therouenne in August 1479, went on till (on March 27, 1482) Mary died, leaving two children, Philip and Margaret. Then, backed by the Flemish cities, whose jealousy of Maximilian made them eager to see him weakened, Louis secured by the treaty of Arras the cession of the duchy of Burgundy, while both Artois and Franche Comte were assigned as the dowry of the child Margaret, who was betrothed and soon formally married to the Dauphin, who, however, when king repudiated the match and married Anne of Brittany. Maximilian was elected King of the Romans in February 1486. At the outset of his career, he stood between opposing forces of great strength. He was not old enough Maximilian or sufficiently mature to give effect to the ideal and the which he had conceived, and which his edu- Empire. cation had implanted in him. He represented two dynasties, whose union offered him a predominant position in Europe, but 508 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1453 to their interests were in many respects discordant. He was bound to support the power of Austria, but it was difficult to obtain the money necessary for these purposes by laying bur- dens on the Netherlands. Teutonic influences had suffered severe losses in the East, but this was largely compen- sated for in the West, by the fall of the power of the papacy. Italy was divided into four governments, the feudal government of Naples in the south, Milan and Venice in the north, and the States of the Church in the centre. Between the despotism of the Sforza in Milan and the aristocratic com- mercial republic of Venice on the one hand, and the territory of the Roman church on the other, the banking house of the Medici had obtained a predominant position in Florence by their prudence, their wealth, and the political support which they had acquired. Their dynasty, founded on finance, brought a new factor into the old state system. It was at the same time a centre of culture and the leader in a new intellectual move- Florence ment. Florence became the asylum for the and the Re- classical learning which the capture of Oonstanti- naissance. nople by the Turks had driven towards the west. The court of the Medici, which has been already described, was the birthplace of the Renaissance. A new art and a new literature began to nourish, founded on ancient models, instinct with the best part of the pagan spirit, and developing a more or less constant opposition to the education of the cloister which had hitherto prevailed. Even the papacy was affected by this new movement, but what it gained in culture it lost in moral force, and Germany profited by the woridliness of the popes. In the midst of these changes the government of Germany remained unaltered. The Diet still comprised about forty princes and about seventy or eighty imperial towns. ny * These princes were beloved and obeyed by their subjects, but none of them had as yet developed the despotic power which characterised the tyrants of Italy. They were chiefly employed in administering peasant communities, and in increasing their revenues as much as possible. They were assisted by counsellors of gentle birth and by trained jurists. But the necessity of a better military organisation, caused by the Hussite wars, demanded the raising of new revenues. The richest princes were naturally the best armed, and the wealthiest of all were those of Saxony, who derived large revenues from the silver mines of the Erzgebirge. The military trains, the cannon, a.d. 1519] END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 509 and the horses of Saxony were the best in Germany. Duke Albert, who assisted Maximilian in his wars against the Nether- lands, was the greatest commander and the richest speculator in mines of his age. To meet the demand for money, which, at an earlier period, had been supplied by the Jews, large Christian banking houses were founded in southern Germany. Hans Fugger established a banking house in Augsburg, and on his death in 1409 left a property of 2000 gulden. In 1473 the Golden Counting House, as it was called, of the Fuggers was the largest banking house in central Europe, and managed the financial affairs of the house of Hapsburg. In 1480 the Bankers""" 1 house of Roth in Ulm failed for the sum of 80,000 gulden. These Swabian bankers formed a connecting link between Venice and the Netherlands, and also took part in the new commerce which was arising between Portugal and the Indies. But none of these German houses attained a monarchical position like that of the Medici. The activity of the German banks was confined by the town councils on the one hand and the guilds on the other, and even when they had surmounted these obstacles they had little share in the government of the cities to which they belonged. As has been already said, they never produced a despot, and the German towns were spared the party conflicts which distracted Italian cities. The Emperor Maximilian was essentially a despotic re- former. He was the organiser of German mercenaries, the creator of that type of military government called " Regiment," in which the principal offices were held by the standard-bearer, the captain, the sergeant, and the mayor. They had courts of their own, and, when judgment had been pronounced, the lands- knechts stood around and stabbed the condemned prisoner to death with their spears. He helped to form the Tn e Swabian League, the object of which was to provide Swabian the empire with a more efficient army. This came League, into existence in February 1488, but, just a month before, Maxi- milian had been taken prisoner in the market-place of Bruges. He was not released till May, when he had renounced the regency of Flanders and had sworn to dismiss his troops. The emperor, his father, soon came to his assistance with a large army collected by the Swabian League, upon which Maximilian recalled his oath, and proceeded to punish those towns which had treated him so badly. By the help of the Swabian League, Maximilian was able to strengthen his position both in the Netherlands and 510 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1453 to Austria. In May 1490, Sigismund, count of Tyrol, abdicated in his favour; King Matthias Corvinus died on April 6, 1490; and, a few months afterwards, Maximilian, with the assistance of the army of the league, drove the Turks back again to their own country, and his title as king of Hungary was recognised by Ladislaus of Bohemia, who had been elected king of Hungary after the death of Matthias. This arrangement was confirmed by the treaty of Pressburg in 1491. In 1492, Albert of Saxony completed the pacification of the Netherlands. In May 1493, Maximilian concluded the treaty of Senlis, by which Charles VIII , having married Anne of Brittany, returned Accession of Franche Oo nite and Artois. When Frederick III. Maximilian. n . n . , _,. , . n „ ., P1TT died on August 19, 1493, the power or the Haps- burgs was completely established both on the lower Rhine and on the Danube, and the result was greatly due to the Swabian League. Outside Germany, Europe was governed partly by monarchs and partly by aristocracies. Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary had aristocratic constitutions with very limited monarchies. On the other hand, the monarchies of France and England were strengthened by their struggles with the powerful families. In England the Tudors were at the head of a nobility which had been sorely weakened by the Wars of the Roses. The Valois kings of France had formed a standing army to keep down their vassals. They possessed a^ copious supply of mer- cenaries in the Swiss, and after the conclusion of the war with England, the fall of Charles the Bold, and the annexation of Provence, they ruled over a kingdom which presented a geo- graphical and a national whole. At the same time, the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile, and the conquest of Granada, had created in Spain the mightiest monarchy in Europe. The Spanish rpj ie no bi es sa nk under the power of the crown, now that the Moorish wars were at an end. The Inquisition, which had begun to act in 1480 against Moorish ancl Jewish heretics, became, under the protection of the crown, the most dangerous implement of Spanish absolutism against The States every kind of opposition. In Italy, the States of the of the Church, under Pope Alexander VI., who Church. reigned from 1484-1503, grew to be the seat of a military despotism, so that, with the exception of Venice, the whole of the peninsula was filled with monarchical govern- ments. In the midst of this condition of things, Germany remained with her ancient antiquated constitution. a.d. 1519] END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 511 Just at this time, Charles VIII., king of France, marched over the Alps to invade Italy, crossing the mountains in August 1494, and entering Naples in 1495. The bastard Charles house of Aragon, which since 1435 had taken the VIII. place of the Angevin dynasty in southern Italy, invades retired to Sicily on March 30, 1495 ; but Maxi- Naples, milian joined the powerful league which Ferdinand the Catholic now made with the pope, Milan, and Venice against France. At the beginning of April, he invested Ludovico Sfoiza, whose daughter he had married, with the fief of Milan, on condition that it should revert to the empire. Just before this, on March 26, he had opened his first Diet at Worms, and had obtained from the German Estates not only a supply of money for his journey to Rome, but funds for the creation of a Maximilian standing army against the enemies of the empire, and the In the same year, Charles VIII., having left Estates, garrisons in Naples, returned to upper Italy. On July 6, he defeated at Fornovo the army of the league, which was lying in wait for him in the north of the Apennines, and the politicians in Worms were alarmed lest he should conquer Milan and attack the Netherlands. This fear brought about a closer union between the emperor and his Estates on August 7, 1495. It was settled that Maximilian should receive a new contribution from the empire, called the Common Penny, being partly a property, partly an income, partly a poll tax. A new Diet was to meet every year to control expenses, decide peace and war, and promulgate the judgments of the imperial courts. This was the first serious attempt to reform the German constitution, but the circumstances of the country prevented it from coming into operation. The imperial Failure of knights clamoured for their ancient right of Attempts at serving the empire with the sword, and objected Reform, to commute this service for a money payment. The Swiss refused to accept the decisions of the imperial courts, and remained firm in their connection with France. The Nether- lands followed an independent policy of their own. Philip, the son of Maximilian, who, a short time before had married the Spanish princess Joanna, made a separate peace with France in 1498, to the great disgust of his father. Maximilian himself cared more about retaining the strength of the empire in his own hands in order to play an important part in European politics, than about establishing a new constitution. He opposed with a certain asperity of temper the movement for reform, 512 A GENERAL HISTORY [aj>. 1453 to and he was irritated by successive failures in his foreign| policy. At the same time, the Estates watched every movement of their sovereign with natural anxiety, being alarmed lest their liberty should be endangered by a successful war with an external foe. In this manner, Maximilian failed to gain a secure position for the imperial power against the Estates, and the supporters of reform were not able to find a permanent basis for the creation of the new constitution. The Swabian League, which was the chief support of the king, threatened to fail him, and the Swabian towns would have broken away from it if it had not been held together by the imperial knights. The weakness of its military organisation was shown in the war which it undertook against the Swiss in 1499. Maxi- Abortive milian suffered a double defeat by the French Schemes of occupation of Milan in August of the same year, Maximilian, and by being compelled, a month later, to recog- nise the independence of Switzerland. Notwithstanding this, he would not give up his plans for the subjugation of Italy, and he made concessions to the Diet of Augsburg in 1500, in order to obtain supplies. But these arrangements came to nothing, and he was obliged to invest the king of France with the duchy of Milan. During the next' five years his position improved. He had many friends among the princes ; his son Philip succeeded to the possession of Castile; he obtained a victory over the Elector Palatine ; and the opposition in Germany was seriously weakened by the death of Berthold of Mainz, who was its principal leader. He was able, therefore, in 1505, to obtain from a Diet, held at Cologne, sufficient supplies for an ex- pedition against Hungary, which was successful, and confirmed his hold on that kingdom. In 1506, Philip died, leaving two young sons, Charles and Ferdinand. This made it not im- probable that a monarchy which would embrace the empire of Germany and the kingdom of Spain would be permanently established, and the result was that the emperor met with much opposition in the Diet held at Constance in 1507. When, the following year, he joined France in a war against Venice by the league of Cambrai, matters became worse, although in 1509 the Fuggers gave him a supply of 170,000 gulden. He held his last Diet in Augsburg in 1518. Here the electors declared that they would not submit themselves to the decisions of the imperial courts, thus opposing the very principles which they had before supported. The supplies a.d. 1519] END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 513 which he asked for an expedition against Turkey were refused, the princes saying that they must first discuss the matter with their Estates. Consequently, when Maximilian died on January 12, 1519, the constitution of the German • J ■ ,.,. p 1 j. j- i Death of empire was in a condition 01 complete disorder. Maximilian Germany had failed in the attempt to form herself into a nation, while other countries had succeeded in doing so. The consequence was that the national energy was diverted from political struggles into the domain of religion, and questions of church reform occupied the attention of Germany for a hundred and thirty years. We find that, at the close of the Middle Ages, the two great powers who ruled the European world— the empire and the papacy — had completely changed their character. £ n( j f the Maximilian had assumed the title of emperor, Middle not only without being crowned in St. Peter's, Ages, but without receiving the consent of the pope to the innovation. The efforts of the papacy under Julius II. were directed entirely to a military despotism in the centre of Italy. Under him as well as under his predecessor and successor, Alexander VI. and Leo X., the papal court was completely divorced from religious ideals, and was surrounded by an atmosphere of intellectual culture, which on the one hand destroyed the traditions of the faith, and on the other weakened the funda- mental principles of morality. The monastic orders had entirely lost their ancient discipline. The state system of the western world no longer recognised the authority of the emperor or the pope, and the era of modern history may be said to have begun. 2 K BOOK III. CHAPTER I. CHAKLES V. AND THE REFORMATION, A.D. 1519-1556. In the first half of the sixteenth century, Charles V., who united the possessions of Burgundy and the Hapsburgs, was in posses- sion of an empire such as the world had not seen since Charles the Great. He was born at Ghent ch^l* V in the year 1500, a man of singular prudence, of acute intellect and untiring industry, eminent both in council and in the field. He was silent and determined, and carried out the policy which he had fixed, sometimes with more tenacity than scrupulosity. His body was weak, tormented with gout ; his pale face and melancholy expression gave, at first sight, little promise of his genius. His possessions were enormous. Inheriting the Netherlands as a child on the death of his father Philip, he succeeded as a boy of sixteen to the monarchy of Spain, including the kingdom of Sicily and Naples, together with the new discoveries in America and the islands of the West Indies. At the age of nineteen, he became sovereign of the Austrian possessions of the house of Hapsburg, which he handed over to his younger brother, Ferdinand, first to govern and then to possess, and six months later, on June 28, 1519, he succeeded his grandfather, Maximilian, as emperor. With truth it might be said that he governed an empire over which the sun never set. It happened that he had two Charles great rivals in Europe, Francis I., who was king Francis,' and of France from 1515 to 1547, and Henry VIII,, Henry, who was king of England from 1509 to 1547. Seldom has the world seen three sovereigns of such singular capacity reigning together side by side. The two last mentioned were very like each other, but formed a singular contrast to Charles. They were passionate and impetuous, Charles slow and cautious. The morality of all alike was loose, but, while Francis was 516 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1519 to governed by his mistresses, and Henry largely influenced by his wives, Charles sought guidance from experienced statesmen, the chief of whom was Granvella. Between Francis and Charles there ruled a bitter jealousy. Charles got the upper hand, but Francis was always a thorn in his side, and after the divorce of Catherine of Aragon Henry took the side of Francis. The Reformation, begun by Luther in the little university of Wittenberg, in 1517, spread with surprising rapidity. It The Re- conquered the north of Germany, made great formation progress in Franconia and Swabia, on the Rhine in Germany. an( j the Danube, and extended itself from Frank- fort over Alsace and Lorraine. It was especially supported by the towns. In 1525, Albert of Brandenburg, Master of the Teutonic Knights, became a Protestant, and his example was followed in Curland and Livonia. The teaching of Luther made its way into Sweden under Gustavus Vasa — into Denmark, Norway, and Iceland under Christian III. It conquered in Bohemia and Hungary, where the reigning house remained true to the ancient faith, but the reformers obtained freedom of religion and equality before the law. Kings found the Pro- testant faith more favourable to their independence than the Catholic. The house of Wettin in Saxony was divided into two lines, the Ernestine and the Albertine, the royal house of England being descended from the latter. The princes of the elder line, Frederick the Wise, John the Steadfast, and his son John Frederick, were ardent supporters of the Reformation. What Luther had effected in Germany, Zwingli began in Switzerland, but, while the first laid stress on the purity of religious belief, the second, a strong republican, Zwingli m p a id more attention to social and political reform, and they differed hopelessly in their views of the Mass. The teaching of Zwingli took root in Zurich and Bern, and in the eastern cantons, and might have been accepted by the whole confederation had not its author perished in the . battle of Kappel in 1431. Calvin, who agreed with Luther in his doctrines of predestination, but with Zwingli in his views about sacraments and the government of the church, occupied a middle position. From Geneva, which was entirely under his control, his teaching spread to Holland, to the south of France, and even to Italy and Spain, while it founded the presbyterian church of Scotland. In Germany it was represented by the Catechism of Heidel- berg, which was bitterly opposed by the Lutherans. It also ad. 1556] CHARLES V. AND REFORMATION 517 laid great hold on the clear and logical intellect of France, though Francis I. had in 1515 concluded a Concordat with Pope Leo X., which gave the Gallic church a i>he certain character of independence and placed it Gallican under the authority of the crown. The In qui- Concordat. sition made short work of the Reformation in Spain, its adherents being partly imprisoned and partly burned, in what were called Autos-da-Fe, or Acts of Faith. In Italy it was welcomed by the Humanists, and protected in Ferrara by the house of Este. In the Roman dominions it had not much chance, and was extinct before the end of the century. In Spain and Italy a new sect arose under Socinus, who died in 1561, and his nephew Faustus, who situs'"" 1 denied the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity, giving rise to the Socinians in Poland and the Unitarians in England. The Spaniard Servetus, who held similar opinions, was burned by Calvin in Geneva (1533). Martin Luther, the originator of these divisions, was born at Eisleben in Thuringia on November 10, 1483, the same year as Raphael, which shows that the Renaissance and the Reformation were connected. He was educated for the law, first at Eisenach and then at Erfurt, but changed his mode of life, and became an Augustinian monk. After deep reflection, and many conflicts of the soul, he came to the conclusion that man was to be saved not by works but by faith, through the mercy of God in Christ. By the advice of his friend, Staupitz, the head of his order, he removed to the university of Wittenberg, recently founded by Frederick the Wise, where he gave theological lectures. He worked very hard in preaching and in the government of his convent, and, in 1511, came to Rome, where he lodged in the Augustinian church of the Piazza del Popolo. Some years later, Pope Leo X., in order to obtain money for the building of St. Peter's, issued a bull offering indulgences — that is, a remission -j-ne of the pains of purgatory — for various sums of Question of money, and the Dominican Tetzel was entrusted Indulgences, with the sale of these in Saxony. This aroused the anger of Luther, who resented the action with all the energy of his nature. On All Saints' Eve, 1517, he fixed on the doors of the Castle Church of Wittenberg ninety-five theses, in which he declared that the pope had no right to promise absolution on these terms, and that forgiveness of sins could come from God alone. In consequence of this, he was tried before the 518 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. loio to Dominican Oajetan, in Augsburg, in October 1518. The result was uncertain. Luther appealed to a " better instructed pope," and took refuge with his protector, Frederick. The Emperor Maximilian died in January 1519, and it became necessary to choose a successor. Some of the electors were in favour of Frederick the Wise, but the pope, afraid of Charles, supported Francis I. of France, and Frederick took his side. The pope sent his chamberlain, Miltiz, to Germany, to offer to Frederick the Golden Rose. Miltiz tried to accommodate matters with Luther, admitted that there were abuses in the indulgences, and persuaded him to admit the supremacy of the Roman see. But John Eck, professor in Ingolstadt, summoned Luther to a disputation at Leipzig, which had the effect of driving him still further in the direction of reform. At this time, also, he was joined by the great scholar, Philip Melanchthon, who lived from 1497 to 1560, and whose activity in founding Protestant schools earned for him the title of the Preceptor of Germany. Eck now went to Rome, and persuaded the pope to issue a bull condemning Luther's principles, and ordering that his books should be burnt, and that he should retract within sixty days. This drove Luther to deny the infallibility both of the pope and the councils, and, on December 19, 1520, he marched with a number of students to the Elster Gate at Leipzig, and there solemnly burnt the pope's bull and some volumes of canon law. When Charles was crowned at Aachen, at the beginning of 1521, he was advised by Hiitten, Sickingen, and others to place himself at the head of the reforming movement, u er at j^ ^ )e p p e » s l e g a te, Aleander, persuaded him to take the other side. A Diet was held at Worms on April 16, 1521, which Luther attended, not without fears of suffering the fate of Huss. He boldly acknowledged him- self the author of his writings, said that he could not retract unless it were shown that his opinions were opposed to Scrip- ture, and ended with the memorable words, " Here I stand : I cannot do otherwise, God help me, Amen ! " He left the Diet in safety, but, on May 26, his opinions were solemnly con- demned by an imperial decree. Luther, under the protection of Frederick, lay hid in the Wartburg for nearly a year, under the name of " Gentleman George." During his absence, Carl- stadt, who had assisted him at Leipzig, defended his principles at Wittenberg, but his cause was weakened by intemperate adherents, such as the Prophets of Zwickau and the Anabaptists. Yet the Reformation spread rapidly in Germany. Luther trans- a.d. 1556] CHARLES V. AND REFORMATION 519 lated the Bible, which he issued in parts, completing it in 1534. Hans Sachs, the shoemaker poet of Nuremberg, greeted him as the Nightingale of Wittenberg, whose coming announced the spring. Philip of Hesse joined the Elector of Saxony in sup- porting him. The imperial towns declared in his favour. Pope Hadrian VI., wdio had been the tutor of Charles V., did his best to reform the church and to remedy abuses, but he died in the second year of his pontificate, and was succeeded by Clement VII., a subtle Medici, who endeavoured to stifle the Reformation by acts of diplomacy. Germany was divided into two camps. Campeggio, the nuncio, persuaded the dukes of Bavaria and Austria and the greater number of the south German bishops to support the pope, The German while John of Saxony and Philip of Hesse, to- gether with a number of other princes and towns, took the other side. In the Diet of Spires, held in 1526, a compromise was agreed upon, by which the creed was to follow the territory, on the principle of " cujus regio, ejus relir/io." A rising of the peasants now took place in Germany, known as the Peasants' War, accompanied by great distress and destruction, and was put down with difficulty. Meanwhile Charles had other affairs to attend to. By the battle of Marignano, in 1515, Francis I. had acquired possession of Milan, Genoa, and a great part of Lombardy, which Charles determined to recover for the Battles of imperial crown. He made an expedition into Italy, supported by the pope, Venice, and Henry VIII. In 1521, Milan was conquered, and given to Francesco Sfoiza. Bayard, the French general, the knight without fear and with- out reproach, fell in battle. Charles's world-famous general was the Constable Bourbon, a Frenchman who had renounced his allegiance to the French king, against whom he swore revenge. He was at the head of Germans, Spaniards, and Italians, whom he had welded into a formidable force. The battle of Pavia took place on February 24, 1525, in which Francis I. was defeated, and carried off to Madrid as prisoner. By the peace of Madrid, signed in the following year, Francis gave up his claim to Milan. But no sooner had he returned to his own country than he was relieved from his oath by the pope, and formed, with Henry VIII. and some Italian princes, a Holy League, against "Spain. This led to a new attack upon Italy, led by the Constable Bourbon and Frundsberg. Rome was stormed on May 6, 1527, 520 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. loio to and Bourbon fell in the moment of victory. The triumphant army, without its leader, committed every kind of excess, burn- ing palaces and churches, while the pope shivered, 5 ac ot with fever, a prisoner in the Vatican. Francis sent an army into northern Italy, under Lautrec, who penetrated as far as Naples. But Andrew Doria, with his Genoese galleys, went over to the emperor ; Lautrec died ; his army was decimated by the plague; and, at last, in 1529, the peace of Cambrai was signed, by which Francis l*eace o surrendered his claims to Milan, and paid Charles a ransom of two million crowns for his sons, who had been kept as hostages in Madrid, but remained in possession of Burgundy. Pope Clement VII., disturbed by the spread of Lutheranism in Germany, and enraged with Florence because it had expelled the Medici, made peace with the emperor for the suppression of heresy. On December 20, 1530, Charles received both the Lombard and the imperial crowns at the hands of Clement in Bologna, after which he laid siege to Florence, deprived it of its republican constitution, and placed it under the domain of a Medici duke. A Diet was held at Spires in 1529, which altered the position of the emperor towards the Lutherans. Against this, a protest was sisrned, which gave the reformers the name te t t "" °* Protestants. To support this at the Diet of Augsburg in June 1530, a document, drawn up by Melanchthon and approved by Luther, was accepted which defined the position of the reformers in matters of belief and received the name of the Augsburg Confession. The Diet having decided against the reformers, they made a defensive league at Schmalkalden in Thuringia, which led to the peace of Nuremberg in 1532, putting an end to religious conflicts for a eace o time. John Frederick, elector of Saxony, became, in 1532, leader of the Protestant cause in place of his father John, a position which he held till his death in 1554. It was not possible that Charles should attain such an emin- ence of distinction without having to fight for it. Francis I. married his son Henry to Catherine of Medici, the pope's niece, in order to attack Charles in Italy, but, in the same year, 1535, Charles increased his reputation by the capture ar es at f Tunis and the destruction of the pirate, Hairaddin Barbarossa, who made the seas un- safe. Twenty thousand Christians were liberated from his prisons. The death of Francesco Sforza induced Francis to renew his a.d. 1556] CHARLES V. AND REFORMATION 521 claims upon Milan, and as a preliminary he overran Savoy and Piedmont. Charles hastened to Provence, where he was opposed by the Constable Montmorenci, who flooded the low country, and by the obstinacy of Marseilles. How- „ . ™ ever, by the exertions of Pope Paul III., a truce was concluded for ten years in 1538, which enabled Charles, in the following year, to pass through Paris to put down a rising in Ghent. In 1541, Charles, in his enthusiasm for civilisation, undertook an expedition against the Saracens of Algiers, which ended in complete disaster. This gave Francis an opportunity of renewing his attacks, and led ,. ar es a to a fourth war against Charles, who was now allied with England, which began in 1543 and was ended by the peace of Crespy in 1544. Francis died on March 31, 1547. He was one of the most brilliant of the kings of Fo^k France, which has been generally unfortunate in French War its sovereigns. He was a fine handsome man, — Death of full of the splendour and the enjoyment of life, Francis *■ fond of dress and of every kind of pleasure. He helped litera- ture by founding the College de France and art by protecting Leonardo da Vinci and Benvenuto Cellini, but he set no bounds to his passions. He represented, only too faithfully, the strength and weakness of the French character, and this has made him one of the heroes of his country. In the meantime the Reformation in Germany was pursuing a victorious course. Luther, worn out with the struggle of a tempestuous life, died at his birthplace, Eisleben, on February 18, 1546, and was buried at Witten- LutheV* berg. A few months before, on December 13, 1545, Pope Paul III. had summoned a general council at Trent, which has remained as a landmark in the history of Christen- dom. The result was to confirm and harden the resistance of Catholic doctrine, and to destroy all hopes of accommodation and peace. Charles nerved himself for the struggle, and prepared for war. He obtained the assistance of the duke £ n( j f y^ of Bavaria, who induced Maurice of Saxony to Religious join the Catholics. He had succeeded his father Peace. Henry in 1541, as head of the Albertine line, and through hatred of his cousin, John Frederick, the supporter of Luther, had deserted the league of Schmalkalden, although Philip of Hesse was his father-in-law. At the Diet of Regensburg, held on March 28, 1546, which was attended almost exclusively by Catholics, he did homage to Charles, and received the decrees of 522 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1519 to Trent, under the condition that in his protected dominions the doctrine of justification by faith, the reception of the cup by the laity, and the marriage of the clergy should not be interfered with. The war of Schmalkalden now broke out, the leader of the Protestants being Schartlin of Burtenbach, and fighting taking place on the Danube and the Elbe, the details of which need not concern us. The Catholics won a great victory M?hlbe°rg. at Muhlberg on April 21, 1547, in which John Frederick was taken prisoner. He was con- demned to death, but the penalty was commuted to imprison- ment for life, and by the capitulation of Wittenberg on May 10, 1547, his dominions and his electorate were transferred to Maurice, so that the supremacy in Saxony was transferred from the Ernestine to the Albertine line, the last remaining Catholics in a Protestant country. On June 19, 1547, the Protestant leader, Philip of Hesse, together with Moritz and Joachim of Brandenburg, was invited to dinner by the Duke of Alba and treacherously captured. Thus Charles conquered, and his brother Ferdinand set himself to reduce Bohemia. Prague was occupied, Bohemia lost her liberties, and the Estates were deprived of their power of electing their kings. The council which had met at Trent on December 13, 1545, continued to hold its sittings. Although intended for Germans, it consisted almost entirely of Italians and f m ^ ouncl1 Spaniards, which gave it a character hostile to Protestantism. It declared the Vulgate to be the only authorised translation of the Bible, and gave tradition an authority equal to holy writ. It maintained justification by works, the authority of the priesthood, and the seven sacraments. Charles was disappointed, as he wished for peace between the two confessions, and desired the decisions to be kept secret. But Paul III., who was afraid that Action of Charles would diminish the power of the papacy, not only published the decrees, but, under the pretext of a pestilence, removed the council into his own dominions at Bologna, broke his alliance with the emperor, and joined France. A minority of prelates remained in Trent, faithful to the emperor, so that the council was split into two divisions. Just at this time Charles had established his authority in Germany, which was a serious blow to the pope. A brilliant Diet was held at Augsburg on February 24, 1548, where the emperor induced the Protestant princes to accept the decisions of the council of Trent, provided that the dis- a.d. 1556] CHARLES V. AND REFORMATION 523 cussions were renewed in that place. The pope could not accept this, but in May 1548 a truce was made, which bore the name of the Augsburg Interim, drawn up by T^e Pflug acting for the Catholics, and Agricola for the Augsburg Protestants, a compromise between the two con- Interim, fessions on the principle of Home Rule. When Charles attempted to enforce this, a number of dissenting clergy took refuge in Magdeburg, which was under a papal ban, and an attempt of Melanchthon to establish another compromise under the name of the Leipzig Interim was no more successful. On September 1, 1551, Pope Julius III., who was devoted to the emperor, brought back the council again to Trent, and there seemed some chance of its decrees being accepted, Julius III. not only by the Catholic electors, but by Protestant and the Trent states such as Saxony and Wiirtemberg, in which Council, case the emperor would have become the secular head of a united Christian church, and this distinction would have remained in his family. But these plans were rendered vain by the conduct of Maurice of Saxony. The aggrandisement of the empire threatened the power of the princes with destruction ; south Germany was oppressed by the presence of Spanish and Italian troops, and there seemed a danger of Germany being converted into a Spanish province. Matters were brought to a head by the execution of the imperial ban against Magde- burg by Maurice of Saxony in October 1550. f^° e ° f Maurice met with universal opposition. He be- came convinced that his position was untenable, and he deter- mined to change his policy. But he acted with a diplomatic cunning which is scarcely distinguishable from duplicity. Still continuing the siege of Magdeburg, he made alliances with the friends of the Protestants. He even made a treaty with Henry II. of France. He then offered Magdeburg freedom of religion on the condition that it should recognise his suzerainty. He contrived a conspiracy against Charles, who was at Innsbruck, busied with the affairs of the council, attacking him from every side. Augsburg was occupied in April 1552, her religious freedom was restored to her, and the garrison of the emperor expelled. Metz was attacked by a French army, which pene- trated to Lorraine, Alsace, and the upper Rhine ; Maurice him- self stormed the defiles of Ehrenberg and approached Innsbruck, so that Charles, to escape capture, fled over the mountains and took refuge at Villach in Carinthia. It was now the duty of Ferdinand to make peace, and, on August 22, 1552, the treaty 524 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1519 to of Passau was concluded. It established complete religious freedom on the basis of the Augsburg Confession, abrogated the Interim, arranged that the council of Trent rea y ot should have no authority over Protestants, and set the landgrave of Hesse at liberty. This was a great victory for the Protestants, to whom a second amnesty was conceded, all who had been imprisoned for their religious beliefs being set at liberty. John Frederick of Saxony died two years later, in March 1554, and Maurice died in the previous July of a wound which he had received in the battle of Sievershausen. He died the hero of the Protestants. He was succeeded in the electorate of Saxony by his brother Augustus (1553-1586), whose more famous grandson, John George (1611-1656), bore so prominent a part in the Thirty Years' War. The recognition of religious freedom entirely shattered the plans of Charles V., with regard to both the empire and the church, and he was induced to leave the affairs rea y ot j Q erman y m0 re and more in the hands of his ■A.U.2TS Durst- brother Ferdinand. A final arrangement was made by the peace of Augsburg, signed on September 26, 1555, by which the Protestant states who accepted the Augsburg Confession were granted not only entire freedom of conscience and religion, but also complete political equality with the Catho- lics. The subjects who did not agree with the religion of their prince were allowed to remove to another province, and were granted toleration if they remained. If this liberty settled the question of the disestablishment of the ancient faith, the more difficult question of disendowment remained, and became the cause of bloody conflicts, so that the peace of Augsburg was not a final solution of difficulties, but a temporary compromise. Still, the principle of the religion following the territory (cujus regio, ejus religio) established that authority of the German princes on which the constitution of Germany was afterwards based, the power of the emperor being correspondingly weakened. The emperor, who saw his great object, the unity of the western church, now entirely destroyed, lost his interest in the affairs of the world, and, his constitution being ruined by gout, determined Abdication t° withdraw to the seclusion of a monastery and and Death to prepare for death. In October 1555, in a of Charles. brilliant assembly held at Brussels, he solemnly invested his son, Philip, with the government of the Nether- lands, and in the following year with that of Spain and Naples, leaving Germany in the hands of his brother Ferdinand. On """'■-/c? / A«^^ ^^ ^5*. / ^v " "'] ^s'eilfes 7) f\V> 'I a.d. 1556] CHARLES V. AND REFORMATION 525 September 7, 1556, he Laid down the imperial crown, and retired to the monastery of San Juste, in the neighbourhood of Placencia, where he lived for two years in complete retirement, still, how- ever, taking an interest in public affairs. He died in 1558, having solemnly rehearsed his own funeral. Ferdinand I. suc- ceeded him as emperor, having solemnly engaged himself to preserve the religious peace, and a similar policy was followed by his son, Maximilian II. We have thus far followed the fortunes of Lutheranism, but Calvinism now claims our attention. William Farel of Dauphine and his friend the eloquent Viret fought vigorously for the new faith. Their doctrine was received in Calvinism the Pays de Yaud (wrested from Savoy by Bern), in Neufchatel, and above all in Geneva, which also, liberated from the authority of its duke and its bishops, was lying as un- claimed property waiting for its master. The task was taken up by John Calvin, born at Noyon in Picardy on July 10, 1509, who, beginning as a jurist, turned his attention to theology, was persecuted as an adherent of the Reformation, was compelled to fly, and settled in Geneva, where he administered the republic, reformed morals, and founded a Geneva* 1 church. His tyrannical government led to a second expulsion, but he was restored, and up to his death on May 27, 1564, he exercised a commanding influence in every department of the government, so that Geneva became for the south what Wittenberg was for the north. He was supported by able assistants. Theodore Beza (1519-1605), a gifted French nobleman, became head of the Geneva Seminary ; the printer Stephanus circulated reforming literature. Geneva became a frontier fortress of religious freedom, a liberty strictly restrained by Calvin's personal opinions. Calvin had little imagination, but great intelligence, and was fanatically severe in both thought and action. He was strict with others as with himself, and cared nothing for popularity. He took a central position on the sacramental question, but was an ardent supporter of pre- destination and of the narrowest view of the atonement. He opposed all ritual, pictures, ornaments, organs, candles, and crucifixes. AVorship was to consist of prayer, preaching, and psalmody. Goudimel was the Palestrina of this new movement. The Sabbath, strictly kept, was the only feast day. The govern- ment of the church was presbyterian, the presbyters or elders chose the clergy, administered strict discipline, morals, and alms- giving. Discipline was very severe : sinners were to be punished 526 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1519-56 in this world to escape worse punishment in the next. Amuse- ments such as the theatre and the dance were strictly forbidden. Calvinism was better received by the wealthier and more edu- cated citizens than by the common people. The doctrines of Calvin soon spread over French Switzerland, and found a home in France, especially in the south, where the Albigenses had left behind them an example of endurance. The Calvinists received here the name of Huguenots. Persecution and death could not extinguish them. The faith spread into Holland, and gave rise to the Presby- res y- terians in Scotland and the Puritans in England. It found many adherents in Germany, its chief supporter being Frederick III., Elector Palatine, the author of the Heidelberg Catechism. It also made way in Hesse, in Anhalt, in Bremen, and even in Brandenburg. Calvinism Melanchthon was kindly disposed towards it, and at the close of his life was the willing or un- willing author of sects called Philippists or Cryptocalvinists, which at the end of the sixteenth century were violent opponents of Lutheranism. CHAPTER II. ENGLAND, A.D. 1509-1558— THE COUNTER REFORMATION— THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS, A.D. 1556-1609. The Reformation in England is inextricably bound up with the mind and character of Henry VIII. , and it is impossible to describe the spiritual movement without recount- Henry VIII ing the unworthy material policy which ap- and the Re- parently caused it, although, in truth, the causes formation, of this revolution, like those of so many others, lie beyond our powers of investigation. Henry VIII., who ascended the throne in 1509, and married Catherine, the sister of Joanna, mother of Charles V., in the same year, was a man of affability, good looks, courage, and kingly presence, of great ability, skilled in French, Latin, and Spanish, an excellent musician, well versed in theo- logical controversy and a patron of the learning of the Re- naissance. In early life he wrote a book against Luther, in defence of the seven sacraments, in which he defended, amongst others, the sacrament of marriage, and received from the pope, as a reward, the title of Defender of the Faith, which is still held by English sovereigns, although with a different meaning. In 1515 he appointed to the chancellorship his chief adviser, Thomas Wolsey, perhaps the ablest man who ever held that office. Wolsey desired that England should take a predominant position in the rivalry between the three young potentates of Europe — Charles, Francis, and Henry — and in Wols ey- this he partially succeeded. He was an ardent patron of learn- ing, and wished to reform the abuses of the Church, without any great alteration of doctrine, or weakening the connection with the papacy. He was an admirable chancellor, and administered the office with impartiality and justice. His blind devotion to the king, who treated him with the most cruel ingratitude, pre- vented him from conciliating the support of the people, and it is said that he was deficient in spirituality, but he is hardly to be blamed for being more of a statesman than an ecclesiastic. England was not much affected by the earlier movements of the 528 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1509 to Reformation. In 1518, Wolsey was made papal legate, and, on the death of Maximilian in the following year, Henry sup- ported the claims of Charles to the empire. The Charles^ ^ ear 152 ° waS memorable for tlie visit of Charles V. to England, and the meetings of Henry and Francis at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and of Henry and Charles at Gravelines. In 1521, Henry joined the allies of Charles and the pope against Luther, and received, as we have before noticed, the title of Defender of the Faith. Five years later, when Charles married Isabella of Portugal instead of Mary of England, Henry joined Francis against him, but this did not prevent Charles from sacking Rome, making the pope prisoner, and becoming the master of Europe. Henry now began to desire a divorce from his wife Catherine, a dignified Henry's anc ^ estimable lady, of whom he was getting tired, Divorce and he used the pretext that she had been pre- Question. viously married to his brother Arthur, who had died at the age of fifteen. Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio were appointed by the pope to try the case, but forbidden to give a decision, Clement VII. reserving this to himself. There- upon Wolsey was dismissed from office, and Sir Thomas More appointed chancellor in his place. A Parliament met, which sat for seven years, and is known as the Reformation Parliament. The Re- I n 1*529 it passed an act which regulated the fees formation payable to the clergy, and forbade non-residence Parliament, and engagement of the clergy in secular business. In 1530, Wolsey was arrested on a charge of treason, and died at Leicester, and in 1531, the clergy recognised Henry as head of the church " as far as the law of Christ should allow." In 1532, the first Act of Annates was passed, by which the first year's income of bishoprics, called annates, was taken from the pope and given to the king, and the clergy promised not to meet in convocation and not to pass new canons without the king's consent. On January 25, 1533, Henry married Anne Boleyn. Cranmer, a Catholic, but in favour of the creation of a national church, independent of Rome, was made arch- bishop of Canterbury, and in that capacity pronounced a sentence of divorce against Catherine. The Act of Appeals was passed, by which appeals to Rome, both in spiritual and temporal matters, were made illegal. The year 1531, during which the badge of Henry was formed by the lett3rs H and A, united by a true lover's knot, was' memorable in the progress of the Reformation, A second a.d. 1558] ENGLAND 529 Act of Annates ratified and enlarged the first, and the chinch was deprived of the power of electing bishops, which was practically given to the king, although the Complete form of election was still preserved. Convocation break with was rendered powerless : Peter's Pence and all Rome, payments to Rome were put an end to. The marriage with Anne Boleyn was pronounced lawful, and her children were recognised as heirs to the throne. More and Fisher, who supported the legality of Catherine's marriage, were thrown into prison, and the first Act of Supremacy was passed, which abolished the authority of the pope in England, and gave Henry the title of Supreme Head of the Church in England. In 1535, Thomas Cromwell, the " Malleus Mona- chorum," the Hammer of the Monks, was made _ omas vicar-general. He had been secretary to Wolsey, and rose in favour at court by his master's fall. Able and unscrupulous, he did his best to make the king absolute both in church and state. He began an inquiry into the condition of the monasteries, which were the principal supporters of papal authority in the country. More and Fisher were executed for refusing to admit the king's supremacy, upon which Pope Paul III. prepared a bull of excommuni- cation against Henry, which was issued in 1538. In 1536, the Reformation Parliament came to an end, after completing its work by the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. Henry was now supreme in church and state, and we shall see how he used his power. His first acts were to divorce Anne Boleyn, who was executed, and marry Jane Seymour, and to summon a new Parliament in *> e y which gave him the power of naming his suc- cessor. Ten articles were passed by Parliament and Convo- cation defining religious dogma. Coverdale's translation of the Bible was authorised, and was ordered to be placed in all churches. These revolutionary changes were not submitted to without resistance, and a rising called the The Pilgrimage of Grace took place in the north Pilgrimage of England, partly in defence of the ancient faith. of Grace. It was suppressed in 1537, and resulted in the establishment of the Council of the North, a court for the maintenance of order, which lasted till 1641, and in the dissolution of the larger monasteries. In this same year also Queen Jane Seymour died a natural death, after giving birth to a son, who afterwards became Edward VI. In 1539, the suppression of 530 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1509 to the larger monasteries was completed, the king's proclamations were given, under certain restrictions, the force of law, and six articles were passed, — known as the Bloody Articles, — harshly enforcing the doctrine of transubstantiation, the refusal of the cup to the laity, the celibacy of the clergy, vows of perpetual chastity, private masses, and auricular confession. In 1540, Henry married Anne of Cleves, but, as he did not like her, she was divorced, and he next married Catherine Howard, niece of the Duke of Norfolk and cousin Fall of £ Q Anne Boleyn. Thomas Cromwell was driven from power and executed, Henry delighting in getting rid of his instruments as soon as he had no further use for them. A more conservative party, led by Gardiner and Norfolk, administered the kingdom. In 1541, Henry became king of Ireland and head of the Irish church, but Ireland continued to be Roman Catholic, although the state church was Protestant. In 1542, Catherine Howard was executed, and in the following year the king married his last wife, Catherine Parr, who survived him. A Succession Act was The Act of p asS ed in 1544, which left the crown, first, to Succession. ^, , , , , . , , . , , .- n \ Edward and his heirs, then to Mary and her heirs, and then to Elizabeth and her heirs, but, by his will, if these heirs should fail, as they eventually did, Henry left his crown to the descendants of his younger sister, Mary, duchess of Suffolk. Henry died in 1547, his last act being to order the execution of the duke of Norfolk and his chivalrous son the earl of Surrey, though Norfolk was saved by Henry's death. Edward VI., the son of Jane Seymour, was nine years old at the death of his father. He received a strange education, being full of an erudition which was too oppressive war ' both for his mind and body, and inspired by an intolerant hatred of the old learning. It is idle to speculate as to what kind of a king he might have become. He was extremely conscientious and very devout, but he might have developed a tyrannous disposition like that of his father. The government was conducted by his uncle, the duke of Somerset, under the title of Protector, who did his best Somerset to p er f orm his duties. He favoured the Reforma- tion, was desirous of a union between England and Scotland, and was devoted to the interests of the poor, who reverenced his memory. But he was not a born statesman, and he followed the example of Henry VIII. in enriching himself out of the spoils of the old church. His first acts were to a.d. 1558] ENGLAND 531 defeat the Scots at the battle of Pinkie, to repeal the six articles of 1539, to send commissioners round the country to remove pictures and images from the churches, and, while severely punishing vagrants, to inquire into the best means of relieving the poor. In 1549, the first Prayer Book of Edward VI. was published, and an Act of Uniformity passed by which all were compelled to use it. This TJniform'tv produced a rising in Cornwall, while a rebellion under Ket took place in Norfolk, to protest against the en- closure of common lands. Both were suppressed, and measures were taken for preventing trouble in future by increasing the powers of the lords-lieutenant in the counties and by re- modelling the militia. But the disturbances produced the fall of Somerset, who was sent to the Tower, his brother, Lord Seymour, having been previously executed for high treason. Somerset was succeeded in the protectorship by the earl of Warwick, who was made duke of Northumberland. He made peace with Scotland and France, restoring Bou- Northum- logne to the latter, and, two years later, sent berland Somerset to the scaffold. Northumberland's re- Protector, ligious convictions were weaker than his desire for his own aggrandisement. In 1552 was published the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., which was much more Protestant than the first, and a second Act of Uniformity was passed. At the same time, the personal zeal of Edward VI. for education was shown by the founding of more than fifty grammar schools out of the wealth of the monasteries and the chantries. Meanwhile econo- mical changes, due partly to the destruction of the monasteries, were producing great unrest. Sheep fjconomic farming became so profitable ■ that large tracts of corn land were turned into pasture, which deprived man} 7 labourers of work and multiplied vagrants, who had to be suppressed. Also the new landlords had a desire to enclose lands which would have remained common under the monasteries. At the same time the opening up of new mines in America depreciated the value of gold, and the Tudor sovereigns were not ashamed of increasing the revenues by depreciating the coinage, a process the economical danger of which was not at that time fully understood. All this made the reign of Edward less successful than it otherwise would have been, but it will always remain remarkable as a period of stimulus to education. Although the country was devoted to the old religion and cared little for the Reformation, the government was unwilling 532 A GENERAL HISTORY La.d. 1509-1558 to see a Catholic sovereign on the throne, and in his last days Edward was induced to leave the crown to his gifted and pious cousin, Lady Jane Grey, who, alone among the Lady Jane sovereigns of England, deserves the name of Saint. Grey. She was the daughter of Henry Grey, marquis of Dorset, who had married Frances, daughter of Mary, sister of Henry VIII., who, after marrying Louis XII., king of France, had made a second union with Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. Lady Jane had married Dudley, the son of Northumberland, and by his influence she was proclaimed queen on Edward's death.' The rightful heir was Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, who was naturally a Catholic, and was proclaimed A ' n queen on July 19, nine days after her cousin. an( j On the following day, Lady Jane Grey was Marriage of arrested, together with her husband and his Mary, father Northumberland, who was beheaded. The Catholic bishops were reinstated, and the church legislation of Edward VI. was repealed. In the following year Mary was betrothed to Philip II. of Spain, son of Charles V. Discontent against this Spanish marriage caused a rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyatt in Kent, and of the duke of Suffolk in the Midlands, which led to the execution of Lady Jane Grey, her husband, her father, and others, and the imprisonment of Princess Eliza- beth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, in the Tower. No fairer or purer head than Lady Jane's ever fell upon the scaffold. Mary, having now rid herself of her chief opponents, duly married Philip. Mary was, perhaps, not so bad as she is generally represented. It must be remembered that her mother was cruelly persecuted, and that she had five stepmothers. She was a Catholic strong Papist, and surpassed in bigotry even her husband, who compelled her to make an alliance with Spain against France, but probably deprecated her harshest measures against the Protestants, though in Spain he freely used burning as an instrument of conversion. Mary was devoted to her husband, but he had no love for her whatever. Immediately after her marriage, he left England for two years. The principal advisers of Mary were Renard, the Spanish ambassador ; Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, who had been neglected under Edward VI. ; and Cardinal Pole, a scion of the house of York, who had come to England as papal legate, and after Gardiner died became Mary's chief counsellor, and, in 1556, was made archbishop of Canterbury. The Marian perse- ad. 1540-1609] COUNTER REFORMATION 533 cutions of Protestants began in 1555, and produced two hundred and seventy-seven victims, the principal of whom were Rogers, Hooper, Latimer, Ridley, and Oranmer. A large proportion of them came from the diocese of Bonner, bishop of London. The reign of Mary was short and miserable : she was always hoping for a child which never came, and she yearned for the love of her husband, who had none to give her. He had married her as prince, but in 1556, by the resignation of his father, he became ruler of Spain, the Sicilies, the Netherlands, and the Indies, — the most powerful sovereign in the world. In 1557, he compelled her to make war with France, which resulted in the loss of Calais, a calamity which contributed to her death. She said that Calais would be found imprinted on her heart. The next year both she and Cardinal Pole died. Meanwhile the Reformation had spread to Scot- rp^e land, where religion and politics became inextri- Struggle in cably interwoven. James V. had died at war Scotland, with England in 1542, leaving only an infant daughter, the famous Mary Queen of Scots. The union of England and Scotland by her marriage with Edward VI. was the aim first of Henry VIII. and then of Somerset; but the battle of Pinkie and Mary's retreat to Fiance put an end to the pioject, and strengthened the old Franco-Scottish alliance. In 1554 her mother, Mary of Guise, became regent of Scotland, but here the Protestant nobles, styling themselves " Lords of the Con- gregation," and supported by many of the people, opposed her as a French woman and a Catholic, In 1558 the Queen of Scots married the Dauphin, but the same year the accession of Elizabeth enabled the Scottish Protestants to seek in England a natural ally against Popery and French domination. THE COUNTER REFORMATION The advancing tide of Protestantism was met by vigorous efforts on the other side, which are comprised in the general name of the Counter Reformation. The first of these was the creation of the order of the Jesuits, +h J Jesuits founded by Ignatius Loyola, born at a village of that name in the Basque country. The order was recognised by Pope Paul III. in 1540. Ignatius died in 1556, but before this the order had been wisely organised by his helper and successor, Lainez, who died in 1564. The leading principle was 534 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1540 to absolute submission to tbe authority of the General of the order, who obtained the popular name of the Black Pope. In this obedience, each member was to be " tanquam cadaver" like a corpse, as if he had no life or spirit of his own. One important work of the Jesuits was in education, on which they had a powerful effect, being perhaps the foremost educating body in the world : their educational system, organised by Aquaviva in 1594, had great influence in determining the curriculum of our English public schools. They also defended the church by maintaining intercourse with the highest classes in every country, their members being trained in courtly manners and address, and being drawn from good families. Further, they not only preached the gospel at home but also sent missions abroad — to India, China, and Japan (mainly by the efforts of St. Francis Xavier), to Africa, and to South America, where Paraguay be- longed to the Jesuits entirely ; and they had great authority in Brazil and the Spanish colonies. For the purpose of these missions, the great college of the Propaganda was founded in Rome. A second weapon of the Counter Reformation was the Council of Trent, which still continued its sittings. Begun for the purpose of reuniting the divisions of the church, The Council itg firgt twQ sittings? f rom 1545 to 1548) anc l f rom 1551 to 1552, were ineffectual for this purpose. A third period began under Pope Pius IV. in January 1562, in which all idea of reconciling the church with Protestantism was given up, and the organisation of a new and stricter form of Catholicism was alone considered. Twenty-five sessions were New held, and their decisions were confirmed by the Catholic pope in 1563, and were generally accepted by the Orders. Catholic world, with the exception of France. New orders were founded in the church in accordance with the new spirit which animated it— the Theatines by the powerful Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV. ; the Oratorians, a more democratic branch of the Franciscans, especially devoted to the work of foreign missions, by Philip Neri ; the Brothers ancl Sisters of Mercy, blessed in every hospital and on every battle- field, by John of God and Vincent de Paul ; the Ursulines, devoted to female education ; and the Lazarists. These activities were greatly assisted by the saintly Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, who died in 1587, and Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, who died in 1622. a.d. 1609] REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 535 THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS. Philip II., who succeeded Charles V. in 1556 and reigned till 1598 — an almost exact contemporary of our English Elizabeth, who came to the throne two years and died five •«.«. years later — was a sombre, cold, and suspicious nature, a great contrast to his illustrious father. His chief objects were the increase of his power, the extinction of Pro- testantism, and the destruction of democracy. For these objects he sacrificed everything — the happiness and prosperity of his dominions, the love of his people, and the sanctity of family ties. The war with France which he found proceeding at his accession was put an end to by the peace of Cateau Cambresis in 1559. But almost immediately after this broke out the Revolt of the Netherlands, a notable factor in the history of ^he Inquisi- modern Europe. The Netherlands were governed tion in the at this time by Margaret of Parma, half-sister of Netherlands. Philip, a woman of masculine intelligence and character. She suffered from the fact that Cardinal Granvella, son of the famous chancellor of Charles V., a narrow, crafty nature, was at the head of the council of state, and that the country was occupied by a Spanish garrison. In older to strengthen the Catholic faith and to extirpate heresy, fourteen new bishoprics were founded and placed under Granvella as archbishop of Marines, whereas four had hitherto been considered sufficient. The Inquisition was introduced from Spain, inquisitors were ap- pointed for each bishopric, and Granvella was made chief inquisitor. Petitions for the removal of the hated ecclesiastic were presented to Philip, but received little attention, until they were powerfully supported by William of Orange, the Stat- holder of Holland, by Lamoral, count Egmont, Statholder of Flanders, and by Count Hoorn, who had withdrawn himself from the sittings of the council of state. In 1564, the decisions of the Council of Trent were introduced into the country, and attempts were made to reduce all the provinces to a uniformity of religion, both the Protestant north and the Catholic south, Philip saying that he would rather die a thousand deaths, and lose every inch of his territory, than allow the slightest alteration in religion. Imprisonments and executions of heretics followed in such numbers that William of Orange, although he had been born a Catholic, now admitted himself a Protestant. 536 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1556 to The new belief was supported mainly by the middle classes : the nobles remained in the old faith, but they were strongly opposed to the proceedings of the Inquisition. In , ;f f ,, November 1565, four hundred nobles signed a petition against it which went by the name of the Compromise. When they presented their petition to Mar- garet on April 5, 1566, she was astonished at the number of distinguished persons who supported it. Some one said that she had no reason to be afraid of " these beggars " {r/ueitx). The name was taken up, the petitioners called themselves Gueux, and hung around their necks a medal with a portrait of Philip and a motto, " Faithful to the king, even to the beggar's wallet." The petition had no effect, and the persecution continued. But evangelical doctrines spread, hymns were sung, sermons were preached in the open air, monks and images were derided. A storm was evidently brewing, which broke out on be he ii? VOlt Au §' ust 14 ' 1566 > in St 0mer ' Ypres, Antwerp, and Brussels. In three days four hundred churches and chapels were destroyed, and the streets covered with brok.n pictures and images and articles of church furniture, costly works of art not being spared. This violence estranged the more educated amongst the reformers, and Margaret used her statesmanship to utilise this discord, while the Spanish troops reduced Valenciennes and Antwerp to order. But the court of Madrid was opposed to Margaret's moderation. The Duke of Alba, the despotic servant of a tyrannical nation, was sent to the Netherlands, with a picked army ofAlb 1 ? 6 of Italians and Spaniards in August 1567. The inhabitants fled in terror, more than a hundred thousand tradesmen and artisans taking refuge in England and other homes of freedom. William of Orange, justly called William the Silent, returned to Germany, the country of his birth, to await events. He took leave of his friend Egmont at a village called Wilbroek, between Antwerp and Brussels, warning him in vain against Spanish treachery. The darling of the people, with his bosom friend Hoorn, was captured, and they were executed in the market-place at Brussels on June 5, 1568. Margaret, in despair, resigned her position and returned to Italy. Alba set himself to cany out Ins bloody work ; the scaffold and the rack claimed their victims. The citizens of Antwerp were compelled to build a citadel for their own sub- jection. The son of William of Orange was carried off from Liege to Madrid, and brought up in detestation of his father. ad. 1609] REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 537 Alba also made alterations in the taxes, which were beneficial to trade, but were unauthorised by local law and were hated by the people. The Estates protested : the Brusselers shut their shops, but were hanged for their pains. The exiles called them- selves Sea Beggars, and occupied the port of Brill and other places in Holland and Zealand. In 1572 William Return of of Orange returned, and attempted to unite the William the northern provinces. He was elected statholder Silent, of Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, and Friesland. The opposition to Alba took a more serious complexion. Alba replied by murdering the rebels without distinction of sex, and plundering their houses. His soldiers, having satisfied their cruelty and lust, burned down the houses and the churches until even the court of Madrid became weary of their excesses, and, in December 1573, Alba was recalled. His successor, Louis of Requesens and Zuniga, adopted milder methods, but he did not remove the taxes and could not restrain the troops, nor could the well- intentioned emperor, Maximilian II., bring about peace. In the battle of Mookerheide, near Nymwegen (1574), two brothers of the prince of Orange fell, but Leyden still continued to be a centre of resistance. The town was besieged, and suffered the extremity of famine, but the citizens cut their dams and the Spaniards fled lest they should be drowned like Pharaoh in the sea. When the town was at last relieved, a Protestant uni- versity was founded. Orange's offer of the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand to Elizabeth was refused, but on the death of Requesens in 1576 those provinces conferred it on Orange himself, and " the Spanish Fury " — the sack of Antwerp by Spanish soldiers — enabled him to unite all the Netherlands in the Pacification of Ghent. Requesens' successor, Don John of Austria, had to accept the Pacification and dismiss the Spanish troops. But he soon turned round, and — while Orange was hampered by the arrival of Archduke Matthias as sovereign of the Netherlands on the invitation of the Catholic party — Don John obtained the aid of an army under his nephew Alex- ander Farnese, duke of Parma, which defeated the rebels of Gemblours. Orange induced the duke of Anjou to become " Defender: of the Liberties of the Netherlands," and allied also with Elizabeth and with the German Calvinists, and he gained some successes. But Don John, dying in 1578, was succeeded by Parma, and his politic diplomacy, playing on religious sentiment, gradually won back the Catholic south to its old allegiance to Spain. 538 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1550-1609 Orange, to oppose him, formed in 1579 the Union of Utrecht, which joined Holland, Zealand, Guelders, Utrecht, Ober-Yssel, Friesland, and Groningen in a confederacy founded of Utrecht on a ksolute freedom of religion. In 1580, Anjou accepted the sovereignty, but alienated his subjects in 1583 by " the French Fury " in Antwerp, and died next year. A far worse blow to freedom was the murder of William the Murder of Silent by the fanatic Gerard on July 16, 1584, at William the Delft. His second son, Maurice of Nassau, was Silent. elected his successor, and the Estates were con- trolled by the strong hand of Olden Barneveld. But Parma succeeded in occupying Ghent, Brussels, Malines, Nymwegen and, at last, Antwerp. The United Provinces turned for help, first to Henry III. of France, who declined for religious reasons, and then to Elizabeth of England, who sent the earl of Leicester to their assistance in 1585. He received the name of General Statholder, but he only held the office two years, during which Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester's nephew, the most gifted English- man of his day, fell at the battle of Zutphen. Philip now prepared a final attack on England in the shape of the Invincible Armada, consisting of 136 ships, provided at the cost of about ten millions of money. The e bpanis destruction of the fleet commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia and supported by Parma belongs to the history of England. Parma died in 1592, broken- hearted at the failure of his plans. Just before his death, Philip had determined to make over the Netherlands and Franche Oomte to his daughter Isabella, who had married Albert of Austria, with the provision that if they had no children the provinces should revert to Spain. The southern provinces, the modern Belgium, accepted the arrangement : but Holland, backed by the northern provinces, whose inde- pendence had been recognised by several courts, continued its struggle for religious freedom. The Spanish General Spinola made head against Maurice, and took Ostend after a three years' siege, but the United Provinces held the sea and The United j -^ ^ ie f oun( J a tions of an extensive commerce. rfOVlllCGS A twelve years' truce was made by the contend- ing powers, by the mediation of Henry IV. of France in 1609, but the independence of the United Provinces was not fully recognised by Europe till the peace of Westphalia in 1648. CHAPTER III. FRANCE, A.D. 1560-1610— THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH, A.D. 1558-1603. In the year 1560, Henry II., the chivalrous king of France, a worthy son of Francis I., died of a wound received in a tournament, and was succeeded by Francis II., who had married the lovely queen of Scotland, Mary H ^ a ° Stuart, whose mother, belonging to the house of Guise- Lorraine, was daughter of Rene II., duke of Lorraine. The Guises were a very powerful and pushing family, who soon obtained great influence at the French court. m , _ . • Th6 Guises Their most prominent members were Francis, duke of Guise and prince of Joinville, and his brother the cardinal of Lorraine. They were staunch adherents of the pope, and eagerly anticipated the succession of their niece, Mary, to the English crown. They exhibited their Catholic zeal by burning a councillor of Parliament, Dubourg, a man of noble character, for heresy, although the Count Palatine did his best to save him by summoning him to the university of Heidelberg. The mother of the two Guises was Antonia of Bourbon- Vendome, sister of Anton of Bourbon, ip^e who had married the heiress of Navarre and was Bourbons father of Henry of Bourbon and' Navarre, after- and wards king of France, while his brother was Chatillons. prince of Conde. Another powerful family, closely related to those already mentioned, were the Chatillons, whose most prominent member was Admiral Coligny. There was a strong rivalry between the Guises and, the Bourbons, and, as the Guises were keen supporters of the old faith, so their adversaries placed themselves at the head of the Huguenots, having the advantage of being born Frenchmen while the -p^g q ou . Lorrainers were regarded as interlopers. The spiracy of conspiracy of Amboise formed by a Calvinistic Amboise. nobleman, La Renaudie, in 1560, with the view of setting the king free from the influence of the Guises, and placing 539 540 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. isgo to the government in the hands of the Estates, The plot failed, La Renaudie was killed, and his companions fell on the scaffold. This only caused the increase of the power of the Guises, and helped to give them an opportunity for severer measures. A meeting of the States-General, summoned at Orleans for the purpose of bringing about a religious peace, was used by the Guises for the destruction of the Bourbons, who were suspected oj being concerned in the conspiracy of Amboise. Conde and Anton of Navarre were arrested, and were only rescued from a horrible death by the sudden demise of the king on December 5, 1560. Francis was succeeded by his brother, Charles IX., who was largely under the influence of his mother, Catherine of Medici. Anton of de^M 6 ^ Bourbon, who ought to have been regent, had to content himself with a lower position. The Guises lost their authority, and retired with their niece, Mary Stuart, to Lorraine, which she soon left for Scotland — a fatal journey. Three religious wars ensued, which dated from 1562 to 1570. Catherine, in her heart a devoted Catholic, took up a middle position, and agreed to a conference beinff held at ro y p i SS y i n 1561, in which Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr held an argument against the cardinal of Lorraine and Lainez, the head of the Jesuits. They attempted to get the persecuting edict unwillingly issued by the chan- cellor, l'Hopital, modified, and freedom of preaching, prayer, and worship granted to the Calvinists, on the condition that their doctrines were in accordance with the Bible, and with the council of Nicaea, and that no synods were held by them without the royal authority. There seemed a likelihood of Protestantism gaining a surer position for itself, and at the same time the States-General at Pontoise threatened to endow France with a liberal constitution. The Catholics became frightened. The clergy voted a large subsidy to the new king. The duke of Guise, the Constable The First Montmorency, and the Marshal St. Andre" formed Religious a triumvirate for the protection of the ancient War. faith. Anton of Navarre, a man of weak character, whose wife, Jeanne d'Albret of Beam, daughter of Margaret, sister of Francis I., had allowed Beza to introduce the reformed doctrines into his dominions, and had educated his son Henry in that faith, was now persuaded, with the help of the Spanish court, to join the Catholics, and the massacre of the Calvinists at Yassy, in March 1562, gave the signal for the First Religious a.t>. 1610] FRANCE 54i War. France was divided into two hostile camps. On May 16, 1562, four thousand Huguenots were treacherously murdered at Toulouse. Where the Calvinists conquered, they destroyed pictures and ornaments in the churches, Massacr*^ threw down crucifixes and altars, and profaned relics, while their opponents burned the Bibles and compelled the evangelicals to be rebaptized. The Catholics were sup- ported by Spain and the pope, the Huguenots by Elizabeth. Mercenary soldiers were supplied by Germany and Switzerland. Death was rife among the leaders of the two parties. Anton of Navarre died before Rouen, in the battle of Dreux. Mont- morency was taken prisoner by the Huguenots, Conde by the Catholics, and St. Andre was killed. Francis, duke of Guise, was murdered, and the murderer Poltrot falsely charged Coligny and Beza with being privy to the crime. Henry of Guise succeeded his brother. At last, in 1563, the peace of Amboise allowed the Calvinists freedom of wor- ^mboise ship in all towns, with the exception of Paris, and all feudal lords were to permit freedom of religion to their subjects. When, after the peace, the young king and his mother travelled through France, and saw the mischief wrought by the Protestants, and had met the duke of Alba at Second Bayonne, they became more bitter against the Religious new faith. The Edict of Amboise was frequently War - violated, and in 1567 the Protestants again took up arms in self-defence. Conde formed a plan of seizing the king and his mother, which, failing, enraged them still more, and the Cal- vinists were defeated in the battle of Saint Denis, in which Montmorency was killed. The Calvinists, however, held posses- sion of La Rochelle. But the cardinal of Lorraine, assisted by Spain and the pope, had great authority, and the chancellor, l'Hopital, was dismissed from his office. The conduct of the war was committed to Henry, duke of Anjou, the younger brother of the king, his mother's darling. Anjou attacked La Rochelle, which was defended by Conde, who had nearly met with the fate of Egmont, and was sustained by English gold. This began the third war in 1568. The day of Jarnac, next year, was fatal to the Huguenots, and Conde was shot after having st Germain surrendered. His place was taken by Henry of Navarre, with Coligny as adviser at his side. The reformers suffered another defeat at Moncontour in October 1569, but, in 542 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1560 to 1570, both parties being weary of the struggle, the peace of St. Germain gave religions equality to the Huguenots. Now followed the terrible night of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572. Charles IX. invited Coligny to the court, and treated Marriage of nrm as a trusted adviser ; he talked of making war Henry of against Spain in favour of the Netherlands ; he Navarre. urged on the marriage of his sister Margaret of Valois to Henry of Navarre, now the head of the Huguenots. How far Charles was sincere in this, we do not know, but Catherine and Anjou were implacable. They hated the admiral and dreaded a war with Spain ; they remembered the advice of Alba, and joined the Guises in a plan to extermi- nate their rivals. Jeanne dAlbret died just before her son's marriage, it is believed, by poison, and, on August 18, an attempt to murder Coligny failed, as he was only wounded in the arm. The excitement of the marriage feast secured a favourable opportunity for the execution of their plans, which, after the attempt on Coligny, it was impossible to conceal any longer. At midnight on August 24, the great bell of St. Germain 1 Auxerrois gave the signal for the slaughter. Coligny, the first victim, was murdered in his room with the greatest Massacre of barbarity. The revel of butchery continued for St. Bartho- three days ; the example of Paris was followed by lomew. other towns, and it is said that at least 25,000 Hu- guenots perished. The king is thought to have been carried away by the excitement, and to have shot victims from the windows of the Louvre. At any rate, he spared the murderers and con- doned what had been done. Rejoicings were rife in Spain ; a solemn Te Deum was sung in Rome. The Protestants fled from France, and sought a refuge in Switzerland, the Palatinate, and England. Henry of Navarre saved his life by a temporary abjuration. La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nfmes defended themselves to the death. Elizabeth refused to speak to the French ambassadors who appeared before her throne. Charles IX., tortured by an avenging conscience and by evil dreams, died miserably on March 13, 1574, at the age of twenty-four, Accession of anc ^ was succeeded by his brother Anjou, under Henry of the title of Henry III., who had, a year before, Anjou. been elected king of Poland. He reigned for fifteen years, and showed himself a weak, vain, and self-in- dulgent sovereign, living with unworthy friends, neglecting public affairs, and, at the end of his life, seeking absolution for his sins by exaggerated repentance. The spirit of the Huguenots a.d. 1610] FRANCE 543 still survived. Supported by the new party of the Politicals, and with the sword in their hand, they had defied all attempts at recon- ciliation and rendered the crime of St. Bartholomew useless. To remedy the weakness of Henry III., a Holy League was formed in 1576, with Henry duke of Guise and Philip II. at its head, to defend their threatened religion. Henry III. met the danger half way by calling . e ^ himself the head of the league, which for a time interfered with its operations, and a peace was made at Poitiers in 1577, which allowed religious worship to the Huguenots and admitted them to all public offices. After a few years of uncertain peace, by the death of Henry III.'s only remaining brother, Henry of Navarre, a determined Protestant, became heir to the throne. This called the league again into life, as its supporters could not endure the prospect of a Protestant king of France. Henry of Navarre was placed under the papal ban by Pope Sixtus V., and declared unworthy of suc- cession to the throne. Henry III. was forced to recall all the concessions he had made to Huguenots and to support the operations of the league. The War of the Three ^- ar f ^e Henries ensued, in which the league asserted Three its superiority. Henry of Guise hoped to obtain Henries, the throne for himself, declaring that he had the best right to it as a descendant of Charles the Great. In Paris, a league of sixteen was formed, consisting of an inner circle of the most fanatical members of the League, and it was determined to drive Henry III. from the throne and to put him to death. Henry, warned in time, defended himself by Swiss mercenaries. Guise went to Paris, where he found himself surrounded in a short time by 30,000 adherents. He had an interview with the king which produced no effect. It was reported that the heads of the League were going to be murdered, and on May 12, 1588, the Day of Barricades, the streets were defended by the people against an attack of the royal mercenaries. The king fled to Chartres, and left the capital to Henry of Guise, who assumed a position like that of the mayor of the palace under the Merovingians. At length, on Christmas Eve 1588, after a States-General held at Blois, in which the Murder of Guises showed their superiority, the king took the Henry of decisive step of murdering Guise and his brother, Guise, the cardinal, and seizing the heads of their parties. This hastened the death of Catherine of Medici, who expired on January 5 ? 1589. 544 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. lseo-ieio. This violent action did not bring peace. The duke of Mayenne took his brother's place as head of the league. The king, deserted by his friends, excommunicated by the pope, despised by the people, without army or money, was forced to liitike an alliance with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots in July 1589. He besieged Paris, and threatened p"§g ° to destroy it, when the dagger of a fanatical Dominican monk, James Clement, put an end to his life and avenged the murder of the duke. The last Valois died on August 1, 1589, and was succeeded by Henry of Navarre and Beam, descended from the fourth HSr^m ' son of Saint Louis> Hem 7 IV - ha<1 to % ht for his throne. The League was supported by Spanish troops under the duke of Parma ; it would prefer to receive a king from the hand of Philip II. than to suffer a Calvinist to occupy the throne of Saint Louis. Henry, however, defeated Mayenne at the battle of Ivry in 1590, and blockaded Paris. Still his victory was incomplete ; Spain increased her forces, Mayenne openly claimed the throne, and was supported by many princes of France, so that the unity Henry IV. °f the kingdom was threatened. Henry IY. came becomes a to the conclusion that Paris was " worth a mass," Catholic. and on July 25, 1593, was received as a member of the Catholic church in the cathedral of Saint Denis. Upon this, Paris opened her gates, the heads of the League came to terms, the pope removed his ban, and Philip II. made peace in the treaty of Yervins, 1598. Henry IV. is justly regarded as the founder of a new French monarchy. On April 13, 1598, the Edict of Nantes was issued, by which Catholics and Protestants were placed T j 1 ® Edict in a position of complete equality. The reign of Henry was a time of peace, and stands in the annals of France as a golden age. Assisted by his admirable minister, the duke of Sully, the royal exchequer was always full and the people were relieved from taxes. The fondness of Henry for the female sex was scarcely regarded by his subjects as a crime, as Sully took care that France should not be governed by the king's mistresses. Henry's marriage with Gabrielle d'Estreys was prevented by her death. His marriage with Margaret of Valois having been dissolved by the pope, he took a second wife in the person of Mary of Medici. He was attempting to use his powerful position to bring about a union between the powers of Europe, to make a.d. 1558-1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 545 peace between the three confessions of Catholics, Lutherans, and Oalvinists, in order to oppose the rising predominance of the house of Austria, when he was murdered by Eavaillac on May 14,1610. He was especially Henr "iV a king of the people, living with them and beloved by them. He engaged in manly sports, partly from the impulse of an exuberant nature, partly to escape from gout. At the same time, the apparent simplicity of his nature did not prevent him from being a distinguished diplomatist. He was every inch a king, and no devotion to pleasure or conviviality ever induced him to forget his duties as a monarch. THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH, A.D. 1558-1603. We must now take up the story of the great Elizabeth, who reigned from 1558 to 1603— in spite of internal troubles, civil and religious, one of the most brilliant „,. , .. . ° ' . Elizabeth periods m Jinglisn history. Her accession came an d the at a critical period in the history of the world. Counter The Counter Reformation was making great Reforma- progress on the continent, and in the reign of n " Mary had been accepted in England. It threatened not only the religion of England, but the crown itself, because one of its doctrines was that no heretics could occupy a European throne. During the reign of Mary, England had been practi- cally a province of Spain. Philip, anxious to continue the state of things, offered marriage to Elizabeth, which was firmly declined, as Elizabeth desired above everything an independent position for her country. Pope Paul IY. had been a violent opponent of Spain, and his death in 1559 altered the relations between that country and the papacy, but the danger of alliance between Spain and France against England was removed by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth was able to ward off the influence of the Counter Reformation from England by keeping up friendly relations with France, though these were threatened by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and by secretly assisting the Netherlands against Philip. The Counter Reformation grew in strength till 1570, when the pope took the violent step of absolving the subjects of Elizabeth from their allegiance. But this action caused dissensions between the Catholic powers of Europe. The reign of Elizabeth falls naturally into three divisions, 2 M 546 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1558 to the first ending with the bull of excommunication issued by Pius V., the second with the beginning of the war against Spain in 1585, and the third with her death in 1603. The chief minister of Elizabeth was William Cecil, Cee'i am Lord Burghley, the founder of a family which has, ever since, rendered great service to the country. The main object of his life was to preserve peace. He was born in 1520, and was educated at Cambridge. By his marriage he became connected at court with the party which was favourable to the new learning and Protestantism. He was first appointed as secretary of state in 1550, but retired from political life after three years, and again became secretary of state in 1558. He was created Lord Burghley in 1571, and became lord treasurer in 1572. He died in 1598. His chief characteristics as a statesman were caution and moderation : he was deficient in initiative, but, as before said, he was a passionate lover of peace. He was before his age in possess- ing sound knowledge of commerce and finance : he reformed the coinage, encouraged maritime commerce, put down the irregular piracy which was rife at that time, and asserted the right of England to trade in the New World. His eminently cautious character tended to develop the same qualities in his sovereign, to which her temperament gave her a natural in- clination, and which have sometimes been the cause of accusation against her. In 1559 an Act of Supremacy was passed similar to that passed by Heury VIII. in 1534, which severed England from papal Acts of jurisdiction and established the Court of High Corn- Supremacy mission. This was accompanied by an Act of Uni- and formity which ordered the clergy to use a revised Uniformity, version of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., and imposed a fine of a shilling upon the laity for absence from church without reasonable excuse. The Protestant exiles returned and received the name of Puritans, and other religious refugees arrived during the progress of the reign. Matthew Parker, a high churchman, who had received Catholic ordination, was made archbishop of Canterbury. The year was also remarkable for the return of John Knox to Scotland. In 1560, the treaty of Relations Berwick made between Elizabeth and the Scotch with lords, who had expelled Mary of Guise from the Scotland. regency, provided that the English queen should drive the French garrison from Scotland, on condition that the lords acknowledged Mary as their queen, and, in the same year, a.d. 1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 547 after the conspiracy of Amboise and the fall of the Guises, by the treaty of Edinburgh, Mary was pledged to surrender her claim to the throne of England, and not to employ foreign troops without the permission of the Scotch Estates. But in 1561 Mary, returning to Scotland after the death of her husband, refused to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh. Mary Stuart was one of the most gifted and brilliant women known in history. She was beautiful, charming, and affable, well educated, accomplished in music and poetry, full of fun, and calculated to win all hearts. The ^ French poems which she has left us show the warmth of her feelings and her mastery over the language. Nothing is more touching than the poem in which she expresses her sadness in leaving her beloved France and returning to the fatal and repellent shores of her own country. Elizabeth also wrote poetry, but her compositions express rather reason and reflection than spontaneity and charm. She also impressed the hearts of men, but rather by masculine strength of character than by charms which inspired passion. Elizabeth had spent her youth in stern seclusion, which had trained her in self-command and had initiated her in the art of caution and even of duplicity. Mary's youth had been free, open, and cheerful. Fond of splendour and representation, she followed the impulse of the moment. While Mary sought to bend all events to her personal desires, Elizabeth had learnt to subordinate her own gratifica- tion to higher objects. But the circumstances of the time demanded characters like Elizabeth's rather than like Mary's, It was the mission of England, regardless of her ruler's personal tastes, to stand amongst the states of Europe as the vindicator of the Protestant cause and of political independence. In Scotland the situation was even less to the sovereign's mind. The Scotch had no sympathy with Mary's devotion to the Catholic religion or with her light foreign ways. The predomi- nant part of the Scotch character was displayed in John Knox, and it is difficult to imagine a stronger contrast to Mary Stuart. The struggle between the two remarkable queens represented in its character the antagonism of the age, one of those epochs which stand out brilliantly in history, like the age of Pericles or the seething rivalries of the last years of the Roman republic — a time when personal qualities are permitted to shape the destinies of the world. It is a pity that such a subject was not illustrated by the genius of Shakespeare, but it has received attention from the inferior talent of Schiller. 54§ A GENERAL HTSTORY [ad. 1558 to In 156], the Caraffa pope, Paul IV., made offers of reconcilia- tion with England, which were rejected by the queen. She met Elizabeth them by a stricter repression of Romanism, and and by imposing an oath acknowledging the royal Paul IV. supremacy over the church on every member of the House of Commons, on all persons taking a university degree, and on others similarly situated. She also gave help to the Huguenots, and in the following year the Thirty-Nine Articles were drawn up. But in 1564 a reconciliation was made between France and England by the signature of the peace of Troyes. In the following year, the fatal marriage took place between Mary queen of Scots and Darnley. He came of Marriage of a c atnolic f am ii y settled in England, a branch of the Stuarts descended from Margaret, sister of Henry VIII., by her second marriage with the earl of Angus. He was a man of twenty, tall and well made, with personal attractions which might fascinate a woman like Mary at first sight. She fell in love with him. The union was pressed on by his ambitious mother, and Henry was married and proclaimed king. But his true character soon became apparent to his wife. He was vain and weak ; his manners were rough ; he had no love of literature or art. He found congenial com- panions in the wild aristocracy of his country, who delighted in the chase and tumultuous living. Elizabeth was soon informed that Mary had lost her love for her young husband. She insisted upon his being regarded as consort instead of king, and omitted his head from the coinage on which it had previously appeared. Darnley was angry at this, and attributed it to the influence which an Italian favourite, David Rizzio, exercised over his wife. A conspiracy was formed, and Rizzio was murdered in the queen's apartments. Darnley was cer- tainly cognisant of the plot, if he did not take an actual part in it. Mary, who was deeply wounded in her feelings both as a woman and as a queen, said, with foreboding sullenness, " The time for tears has passed, — we must now think of vengeance." Less than a year later, on February 10, 1567, Darnley was murdered in the Kirk of Field. Dannie* ° f Bothwe11 was the chief author of the crime, but it is impossible to doubt Mary's complicity in it, although the so called " casket letters," which are held to establish it, may be to a great extent forgeries. Bothwell was tried for his life, appearing before the court attended by an armed throng and riding Darnley's favourite horse. He was a.d. 1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 549 acquitted, and the verdict was ratified by Parliament. Mary exhibited an infatuated passion for him, and said that she would sooner lose France and England, and wander in her shift to the ends of the world with Bothwell, than desert him in his time of need ! On April 24, Bothwell was divorced from his wife, and on May 15, he married Mary at Holyroocl, according to the rites of the Protestant church, and was created duke of Orkney and Shetland. This was too much for the Scottish lords. On June 15, 1567, was fought the battle of Carberry Hill, in which Mary and Bothwell were entirely defeated. Bothwell escaped to the Hebrides, where he led the life of a pirate, was taken prisoner by the Danes, and died in confinement Dethrone- as a lunatic. Mary was brought in triumph to ment and Edinburgh, and imprisoned in the island castle of Flight of Lochleven, where she was compelled to renounce Mary. the crown and to appoint her half-brother Moray regent, during the minority of her son, James VI. Mary contrived to escape, recalled her abdication, and, assisted by the powerful family of Hamilton, fought the battle of Langside, on May 13, 1568. Here, however, she was again defeated, and fled to England, to place herself under the protection of Elizabeth. Elizabeth refused to have an interview with Mary so long as she lay under the accusation of having murdered her husband, but promised that she would restore her to her throne if she could refute the charges which were „ ar . y 1T \ t t -tot i ,1 England, brought against her by Moray and otner accusers. Mary protested that Elizabeth had no right to try her, as she was an independent sovereign, and Moray was unwilling to admit the authority of the queen of England in this respect. Mary continued to live in England in a condition of half imprisonment, but there is no doubt that her existence there was a danger to Elizabeth's throne and life. The duke of Norfolk had designs on Mary's hand, but in consequence lost first his liberty and then his head. The old faith had many supporters in the northern counties, and the earls of Northumber- land and Westmorland raised the standard of rebellion, in order to persuade Elizabeth to set Mary free and to declare her right to the throne. They also proclaimed the restoration of the Catholic church, and sought help from foreign powers. Northumberland, betrayed by the Scots, with whom he had taken refuge, died on the scaffold ; Westmorland escaped to Flanders. Michael Ghislieri, a narrow-minded fanatic, held the papal 550 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1558 to throne under the title of Phis Y. from January 6, 1566 to May 1, 1572. He was a reincarnation of Paul IY., the embodiment „ „. „ of the Tridentine spirit. His one pleasure was Pone Pius V ... . v ' devotion ; his delight was to walk in processions with bare feet and bare head, with a long white beard. But he was a cruel tyrant ; he was obeyed everywhere, but obeyed with terror. He supported the Jesuits against England, Philip against the Netherlands, Catherine of Medici against the Hugue- nots, whom he hated so much that he ordered that they should never be made prisoners but immediately killed. On February The Papal 25, 1570, the pope issued a bull depriving Elizabeth Bull of of her kingdom, releasing her subjects from their 1570. allegiance, and forbidding both nobles and people to obey her any longer. The bull was handed to the cardinal of Lorraine, who was to publish it in England. It was intended to support the rebellion in the north, but it arrived too late for the purpose. It was eventually published in London by a devoted Papist named Felton, who was tortured and executed for his pains. It was met in 1571 by an Act of Parliament which made it treason to impugn the queen's title to the throne, followed by another which forbade the performance of Roman services, reconciliation with Rome, or the publishing Elizabeth °f bulls in England, under heavy penalties. But, and the although Elizabeth was stern against the en- Puritans, croachment of Rome, she was equally severe against Puritans. Strickland, a Puritan, who proposed to amend the Prayer Book, was forbidden to attend Parliament, and Cartwright, who professed the same opinions, was expelled from Cambridge. In 1576, the more moderate Grindal succeeded the high churchman Parker as archbishop of Canterbury, but, in the following year, he was suspended from his office for not being severe enough against the Puritans, and died in 1583. Pope Gregory XIII., the successor of Pius Y., had been, in his youth, devoted to the pleasures of the world, but, crowned with the tiara, he endeavoured to emulate the regory piety of his predecessor. He gave to the world, on February 15, 1582, the Gregorian calendar to take the place of the Julian ; it was, however, rejected by Pro- testant countries as a papal invention. He showed great favour to the Jesuits and in 1579 founded a Jesuit college Irel d m * n R° me ' with the special object of converting England. Their activity was not long delayed. A rebellion in Ireland, stirred up by FitzMaurice, executed ad. 1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 551 by Desmond, and blessed by the pope, failed, and the foreign troops sent to assist surrendered at Smerwick. A more formid- able attack, led by Campion and Parsons, was made upon England. They began by modifying the bull of Pius Y., explaining that it only referred to Elizabeth and . 1 Jesui s . in England, her councillors ; that the English Catholics might obey Elizabeth so long as she was queen de facto. If she were deposed or killed, it would be their duty to obey the bull. It was declared to be no sin to obey a de facto sovereign, but the bounden duty of Catholics to support any efforts made to change the government. The example of Judith and Holophernes was recommended for imitation. Mendoza, who had made him- self conspicuous in France, was sent to occupy the post of Spanish ambassador in England, which had been vacant for six years, and he gave every support to the Jesuit mission. He reported to his government that the nobles of the north, the supporters of Norfolk and Northumberland, were ready for a rising. Walsing- ham, the most powerful assistant of Burleigh, was charged with the task of defeating the designs of the foreign priests. They were denounced, seized, tried, and condemned for high treason. Campion, Sherwin, Bryant, and Execution & P , , . r '. ' J , ' , . of Campion, many 01 tneir companions were executed m November 1581. At the same time, the Puritans were sternly repressed by Elizabeth's third Archbishop, Whitgift, and the court of High Commission was vigorously used for this purpose. The blood of Campion did not cease to bear fruit. Francis Throgmorton, an emissary of the Jesuits, was executed in 1584 for his share in a Spanish plot. William Parry, Renewed who had been a favourite at court, returned from Plots Rome with the intention of murdering his former against benefactor, and even became a member of Parlia- Elizabeth. ment, and at his trial a letter was found written to him by the archbishop of Como giving the blessing of the Holy Father to his enterprise. These designs on Elizabeth's life and the murder of William of Orange, which happened at the same time, led to the expulsion of Mendoza from England in 1584, and the foundation in 1585 of an association to protect the life of the sovereign. A so-called bond was disseminated throughout the country and exposed for signature in the churches, binding everyone who signed it to contend personally against any attempt upon the life of the queen, so that if he violated his oath he would be guilty of perjury. All this threatened the position of Mary. She corresponded with the statesmen and 552 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1558 to sovereigns of Europe, not as a prisoner, but as a proud and independent sovereign : " Two things," she said, " you cannot take away from me — my royal blood and my devotion to the religion of my fathers." The conspiracy of Anthony Babington was formed in 1586. He was a young man of a mg on s f or t une anc | education, who had been Mary's pa^e Conspiracy. cn n , , , ' . n J . r • p. at Sheffield, and had conceived an enthusiastic admiration for her. Inspired by John Ballard, a friend of Campion, he came to England, found means of seeing Mary, who was then imprisoned at Chartley under Sir Amyas Paulet, and promised her that, with the help of a hundred trusty men, he would set her free and place her 'on the throne. Mary listened with favour to his proposal, but it is doubtful whether she had any knowledge that the murder of Elizabeth was part of the design. The plot was betrayed to Walsingham by Gilbert Gifford, who treacherously served both sides, and, just when Mary was expecting the day of her freedom, Babington, Ballard, Savage, and Tichborne were arrested, imprisoned in the Tower, and executed. Mary's correspondence was seized at Chartley, and her secretaries, Nau and Curie, arrested. Mary was removed to Fotheringay in Northamptonshire, where she was kept in close confinement. It was determined to place her upon her trial. Her cause was heard in the great hall at Fotheringay, and, although she Trial and pleaded that as a sovereign she was not subject Execution to the jurisdiction of any court, she was con- of Mary. demned to death. The verdict was laid before Parliament, which begged the queen to give effect to the sentence, for the maintenance of religion, the peace of the kingdom, and the security of her person. Elizabeth was in great difficulty ; for weeks and months she could not make up her mind. It is said that she endeavoured to induce Mary's keeper, Sir Amyas Paulet, to poison her, which he indignantly refused to do. The sentence and the vote of Parliament were published in London on December 26, 1586, and led to a demonstration of popular feeling. At length, on February 1, 1587, hard pressed by her advisers, she signed the fatal document, but said that she would defer its confirmation by the great seal. Burleigh deter- mined to dispense with this necessary formality, and gave orders for the queen's execution. On February 18, Mary passed from her apartments into the hall where she had been tried, clothed in black satin, an ivory crucifix in her hand, and met her fate with the dignity of a queen. She was now fifty-three years old, a.d. 1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 553 having been a prisoner for eighteen years. Her hair was grey with age and sorrow, but she died as she had lived, instinct with regal majesty, and faithful to the doctrines of her church. The news was received in London with acclamation, bells were rung and the streets were illuminated ; but Elizabeth burst into tears, and was filled with wrath. She complained that her authority had been violated ; she would not speak to Burleigh, and threw the Secretary Davidson into the Tower. The anger which Mary's son James ought to have shown was, however, entirely appeased by the promise of the succession and copious sums of money. Two years before Mary's death, war had broken out between England and Spain. The cause of the war was obvious. Philip had determined to extirpate Protestantism and to make Spain supreme in western Europe, and he a^ain 1 laid claim to the exclusive possession of the ISTew World, a pretension which was not likely to be tolerated by sea- faring Englishmen, the countrymen of Drake and Raleigh. Eliza- beth made a treaty with the Netherlands, and Leicester was sent to help them. Raleigh founded a colony in Virginia, and Drake destroyed San Domingo and Carthagena, and, in 1587, burned the Spanish shipping at Cadiz. But the culrnination of the struggle lay in the preparation of the Great Armada, which was to bring victory to Philip, and the destruction of which is still one of the foremost glories of our country's history. The Great Armada was a collective enterprise of the Catholic world to ruin England as the champion of Protestantism. Pope Sixtus V., the famous Felice Peretti, car- dinal of Montalto, the most powerful pope of the Armada century, occupied the papal throne from April 24, 1585 to August 24, 1590. He had accumulated in the castle of St. Angelo a larger treasure than any other sovereign possessed. His money enabled Philip to build his huge fleet in the harbours of Lisbon and Cadiz. Cardinal Allen wrote to Philip: "With the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, with which you have crushed the Turks and triumphed over your rebellious subjects, you will also chastise the English heretics and that cursed woman, hated by God and men, and bring our noble nation back to its ancient glory and freedom." A manifesto, issued by Allen and Parsons, called upon all English Catholics to take up arms against the excommunicated queen. The losses inflicted by Drake at Cadiz had been healed; more than 130 ships lay at anchor in that harbour fully equipped. So powerful a naval 554 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1558 to armament had never been witnessed in the western seas. A huge army of horse and foot, recruited in the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands and other places, was collected on the coasts of the Channel to support the fleet. Transports had been pre- pared in Antwerp, Nieuport, and Dunkirk. Success seemed certain. The appearance of the Armada in the Channel would be the signal for a rising of Catholics in Ireland, Scotland, and England herself. The expedition was to have set sail in the autumn of 1587, but the Admiral Santa Cruz represented that so stormy a season would be disastrous to the expedition, and it was put off. Santa Cruz died in the winter, and the command was given to Medina Sidonia. This breathing space was utilised by England for vigorous preparations. The whole country set itself to provide a navy. Howard of Effingham was made lord admiral, Drake and Hawkins lent their aid, the queen reviewed her troops at Tilbury, and the Catholic families declared that they would stand by their country in the hour of need. The Armada left Lisbon in the second half of May 1588, but the weather was stormy, and the expedition did not reach the Channel till the middle of summer. It had been Defeat o arranged that the fleet should meet the trans- ports off Margate, and that, while Medina Sidonia sailed up the Thames, Alexander of Parma should march to London. The Armada was sighted off Plymouth on July 31, and was immediately attacked by a crowd of light ships, who worried it as a crowd of terriers might bait a bull. They could not, however, stop it, and, on August 6, the admiral reached the Straits of Calais. A landing was impossible without the help of Parma, and he lay idle in his harbours. At midnight a swarm of fireships was let loose from Dover against the un- wieldy galleons of the Spaniards. A panic seized them, they weighed their anchors to escape the danger, and a south-west wind drove them towards the coast off Gravelines. Next clay the English attacked them in full force, and the work of destruction was completed by a storm : " God blew with His winds and scattered them." Nothing remained for the de- feated Armada but to return to Spain, and the only path lay by the coasts of Ireland and the north, and remains of the shipwrecked fleet are still found upon the iron-bound coasts of the sister island and in the fiords of Orkney and Shetland. England had for the first time in her history recognised her strength and the heroic character of her population. The defeat of the Armada is the beginning of England's greatness and the ad. 1603] THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH 555 triumph of her national consciousness. It justifies and explains the reputation of the reign of the Virgin Queen as the most brilliant epoch in our history. The remainder of the reign need not detain us long. An expedition undertaken by Drake and Norris against Philip in Portugal failed. In 1591, George Raymond and _ James Lancaster made a voyage to the East of Elizabeth. Indies, which led to the foundation of the East India Company. The death of Sir Richard Grenville at Flores in the Azores, celebrated in poetry and music, belongs to the same year. Elizabeth continued to take a middle course between different conflicting religions, and, in 1593, Acts of Parliament were passed against the separatist Puritans who had left the Church of England and formed bodies of their own, then- leaders Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry being hung on the charge of sedition, while a law was passed against Popish recusants. The last year of Elizabeth's life also saw the reduction and pacification of Ireland, which, by its Catholic religion, was a danger to the English throne. In 1595, the rebellion of O'Neill, earl of Tyrone, who was assisted by Philip, was put down by Sir John Norris ; a second Armada equipped for the relief of that country was destroyed like the first, for England is well defended by the stormy seas and tempests which break upon her shores ; and Ireland was at length systematically reduced by Mount joy. In 1598, as already mentioned, the long war between Spain and France was put an end to by the treaty of Yervins, and Philip also died in the same year, feeling that his attempt to establish a Spanish and Catholic supremacy over the neighbouring country had failed. Rather, in the course of history, Spain was to be subordinate to France. In England, meanwhile, monopolies were abolished, and a poor law was passed, which remained for a long time a guide for our treatment of poverty, and by which, in every parish, the churchwardens and the overseers of ^ aw the poor were empowered to levy a poor rate to be used in giving work to able-bodied persons out of em- ployment, in relieving deserving but destitute poor, in build- ing houses of correction, and in apprenticing suitable children. Elizabeth never recovered the shock of the execution of her favourite Essex, to which she had reluctantly consented, and the conviction that her power and influence were not what they had been. She spent days and nights lying on the floor 556 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1558-1603 supported by cushions, speechless, refusing medical aid. She rallied sufficiently to summon to her side Cecil, Egerton, and Howard, and declared to them that the king of the Scots should be her heir. Then she died on March 24, 1603, Archbishop Whit- gift kneeling at her bedside, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign. She had fought and won a victory memorable in the history of the world. The independence and power of England are inseparably bound up with the annals of her rule. CHAPTER IV. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, A.D. 1608-1648— ENGLAND, A.D. 1603-1649. The Thirty Years' War, which lasted from 1618 to 1648, and which now claims our attention, was a direct product of the Reformation struggle. The Protestants, clamouring for a trustworthy religious peace, persecuted in Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, where the Jesuits were supported by the Archduke Ferdinand, formed in the year 1608 an Evangelical ^he Union under the Elector Palatine, Frederick IV., Evangelical who was a strong supporter of the Reformation. Union. It was joined by the princes of Neuburg, Hesse, Cassel, Brandenburg, Baden, and Wiirtemberg, but not by the elector of Saxony. To oppose this a Catholic League was formed in 1609, under Duke Maximilian of Bavaria. They came to blows over the disputed succession in Julich, Berg, and Cleve, but soon made peace. The Emperor Rudolph II. was a clever and learned man, but he was no statesman, and he was unfitted to rule. He lost Transylvania, and would have lost Hungary too, if his brother Matthias had not insisted upon his delivering the country to him, together with Moravia and Austria. He was afraid of losing Bohemia also, and attempted to suppress the Protestants in that country ; but, when they threatened him with arms, he gave in and issued in their favour a " letter of majesty," in which he allowed them, as adherents of the confession of Augsburg, a free exercise of their religion. The Bohemian Estates assembled and chose Matthias for their king, while the German princes compelled him to summon a Diet for the election of a successor. This insult caused his death in 1612, and Matthias received the imperial The crown without opposition. As he was already Imperial advanced in years and without children, he was Succession, persuaded to nominate as his successor, his cousin Ferdinand, a descendant of Maximilian II., who was acknowledged by 557 558 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. leos to Bohemia in 1617, and by Hungary in the following year. But the violent action of Ferdinand against the Protestants in his hereditary dominions caused the Protestants of Bohemia to fear similar persecutions, notwithstanding the protection of the letter of majesty, and they resolved, if possible, to prevent his succession. At this time, party spirit was stimulated by the celebration of the Jubilee of the Reformation in 1617, the threats of the The Defene- Jesuits to root out heresy, and the appointment stration of of two men whom the Protestants specially Prague. detested, Martinitz and Slavata, as members of the imperial commission sent by Matthias to Prague. These things made the Bohemian Protestants more distrustful than ever. Matters were not improved by the treatment by the emperor of two new Protestant churches, one of which, at Klostergrab in the see of Prague, was pulled clown, while the other, at Braunau, was ordered to be closed. The remonstrance of the Protestants was met by threats. In consequence, their leading representatives made their way into the council cham- ber, where four of the imperial council were sitting, and threw two of them, Martinitz and Slavata, as well as the secre- tary Fabricius, into the castle ditch — a deed known in history as the " Defenestration of Prague." Seeing that a breach was now inevitable, the Protestant estates took possession of the government, drove out the Jesuits, and occupied some fortified towns. In this Years' War manner > the Thirty Years' War began in 1618. Ferdinand, who had, in the meantime, been crowned king of Hungary, invaded Bohemia with two armies, while the other party sought the protection of the Union, which had, since 1610, placed the Elector Palatine, Frederick V., at its head, and had received the support of Brandenburg, Anhalt, several counts, and sixteen imperial towns. It began to open negotiations with Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, holding out to him the prospect of the imperial crown. He could not accept these offers, but sent money to raise mer- cenaries, and Count Ernest of Mansfeldt to command them, who had recently defeated the imperial troops at Czaslau. Mansfeldt conquered Pilsen, and forced the imperial generals to treat for peace. But on May 20, 1619, the Emperor Matthias died suddenly, upon which Ferdinand seized his hereditary terri- tories, the inhabitants, however, refusing to do him homage. Lower Austria took the part of Bohemia, and Count Thurn, a.d. 1648] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 559 supported by Bethlen Gabor, prince of Transylvania, marched upon Vienna, but, when Mansfeldt had been defeated at Budweis, he was obliged to retreat. Ferdinand II. was unanimously elected emperor at Frank- fort, upon which the Bohemian Estates declared the throne of their country vacant and elected Frederick V., r^e Elector Palatine, as their king. He had married "Winter Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of England, a King "of princess who possessed, in great measure, the Bohemia, beauty and charm of her grandmother, Mary Stuart, and won all hearts, — and whose praises English poets like Sir Henry Wotton sang. Urged by the arguments of the court preacher Scultetus and of Christian I. of Anhalt-Bernburg, Frederick at last agreed to accept the precarious dignity offered to him. On November 29, 1619, he received the homage of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, and renewed the treaty with Bethlen Gabor, who had become master of Hungary. He was re- cognised by Sweden, Denmark, Holland, and the Evangelical Union. He did not, however, conduct himself with wisdom, and became less powerful than his rival Ferdinand, who was supported by the wise and powerful statesman, Maximilian of Bavaria. Ferdinand received assistance from the pope and from Spain, the government of Poland sent him 8000 Cossacks, and John George of Saxony, although a Lutheran, was induced to take his side by the promise of Lusatia. Maximilian marched into Upper Austria with the forces of the empire and the League, reduced the Protestants there to obedience, invaded Bohemia, and entirely defeated Battle of King Frederick in thebattle of the White Mountain, the White close to Prague, on November 8, 1620. Frederick, Mountain, who has always borne the name of the " Winter King," gave up all resistance and fled, first to Silesia and then to Holland. He now came under the ban of the emperor, who deprived him of his position as elector, seized the places occupied by Mansfeldt, reduced Moravia, and compelled Bethlen Gabor to make peace and to renounce his pretensions to the Hungarian crown. Bohemia was forced to become Catholic, the Union was dis- solved, and the struggle was reduced to a conflict between Tilly and Mansfeldt. Tilly was beaten by Mansfeldt at Wiesbach in 1622, but soon afterwards took ™£f eS his revenge at Wimpfen and Hochst, overran the Palatinate, and plundered Heidelberg and Mannheim. The cause of Frederick was entirely lost ; Mansfeldt and his faithful 560 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. leos to .supporter Christian of Brunswick took service in Holland. Maximilian received for life the rank of elector, forfeited by the conduct of Frederick. Tilly was made an imperial count, and commanded the forces of the League. After a short interval, Mansfeldt and Christian appeared in the field with fresh forces, enlisted with Dutch money, and the assistance of William and Bernhard of Weimar. But Christian was defeated by Tilly at Stadtlohn in 1623, so that he was obliged to return to Holland, where he was soon followed by Mansfeldt. At this time, France, under the control of the ic e leu illustrious Cardinal Richelieu, becoming jealous of the success of Austria and Spain, made a secret alliance with England, Holland, and Denmark, and sent assist- ance to the Protestants in Germany, although Richelieu was persecuting them in his own country. Christian IV. of Denmark also came forward as a leader of the Protestant cause, while the emperor accepted the support of Albert of Wallen- Wallenstein. ,J , L . -, rr , -, ■ stem, who raised an army at Ins own expense, and offered it in defence of the empire. This remarkable man, more properly called Waldstein, was born in 1583, the younger son of a rich Bohemian nobleman, educated by the Jesuits at Olmiitz, and also at Altdorf, Padua, and Bologna. In his youth, he fought in Hungary against the Turks, in Italy against the Venetians, and received the title of count. Becoming wealthy by an inheritance from his uncle and a rich marriage, he raised a regiment of cuirassiers at his own expense, with which he helped the emperor to subdue Moravia, and fought against Bethlen Gabor in Hungary. He was created duke of Friedland in Bohemia, and afterwards prince. He now commanded an army of 50,000 men. Richelieu, pressed by the Huguenots, was obliged to retire from the confederacy, of which the pope had never approved, and this gave new strength to the Catholic cause. The war reopened with a struggle between Mansfeldt on the one side and Tilly and Wallenstein on the other, until Mansfeldt, worn out with his exertions, died on November 20, 1626. It is said that, when he felt his end approaching, he put on his armour, and, supported by two aides-de-camp, died standing. Even before Wallen- this, Christian of Brunswick had reached the end stein's of his wild, passionate life at the age of twenty- Victories, seven, and King Christian of Denmark had been conquered by Tilly. Wallenstein occupied Silesia, and, uniting with Tilly, conquered Mecklenburg, and drove out both its a.d. 1648] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 561 dukes. He then advanced to Holstein, and laid waste Schleswig and Jutland, not sparing Brandenburg and Fomerania. In 1628, he was created by the emperor duke of Mecklenburg, attempted to get possession of the coast of Pomerania, and, with this object, laid siege to Stralsund, which was, however, success- fully defended by the help of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who now enters upon the scene. Wallenstein now Sweden and found himself opposed by Sweden and Denmark, Denmark who were supported by England, France, and intervene. Holland, so that, in 1629, he thought it advisable to conclude the peace of Liibeck with the king of Denmark. Yet the cause of the Protestants was in evil case. Bohemia had, by harsh measures of persecution, been driven to become Catholic ; Maximilian had procured for himself the hereditary possession of the Palatinate ; and the emperor had induced the Catholic Estates to pass an " Edict of Restitution," by which all the property which had fallen to the Protestants SjtSi?^? under the treaty of Passau was to be restored, including the bishoprics of Bremen and Magdeburg. The Jesuits, moreover, were masters of the situation, and the condi- tions of the religious peace were no longer observed. The terms of the edict itself were frequently changed so as to include property which had been Protestant before the peace of Passau. Augsburg, the cradle of the Lutheran creed, was placed under a Catholic bishop. Other imperial towns were forced to submit, but Magdeburg boldly withstood Wallenstein's Croatian troops. The emperor was, however, forced to mitigate his severity, because the German electors, led by Maximilian of Bavaria, became jealous of Wallenstein, and pressed Ferdinand in a Diet held at Regensburg, in 1630, to deprive him of his command. He had, indeed, assumed the arms of an independent prince, and the expense of his luxury had become enormous. His soldiers were guilty of great excesses : they destroyed churches, plundered indiscriminately, and reduced the peasants of the countries they occupied to such straits that they had to eat grass, and sometimes, it is said, the flesh of their own children. Ferdinand said that he would grant the electors' request if they would consent to the nomination of his son Ferdinand as his suc- cessor. They refused, but the emperor was compelled to dismiss Wallenstein, though he left him in possession of Mecklenburg. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, now took a leading part, landing on June 2, 1630, with 15,000 brave Swedish soldiers, on the island of TJsedom, and occupying the coast of 2 N 562 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1608 to Pomerania, whence he issued a manifesto to the Protestant princes to assist him in maintaining the cause of their religion. He possessed the soul of a hero in a powerful Adolrrtms Doc ty> anc ^ was ni the flower of his age. He united deep seriousness of character with friendliness and affability. He was versed in science, spoke four languages, and illustrated theological learning by heartfelt religion. He had exhibited great bravery in wars against Denmark, Russia, and Poland, and he now came into Germany, leaving the re- gency in the hands of a council of which his faithful minister Oxenstiern was president, and having persuaded the Estates to do homage to his only daughter, Christina, who was still a child. Gustavus Adolphus, assisted by Duke Bogislav of Pomerania, drove the imperial troops out of part of that country, advanced into the Marches, and made preparation for the defence of Magdeburg, which was threatened by Tilly. Having made an alliance at Leipzig with several German princes, who were reluctant to trust him as a foreigner, he liberated Mecklenburg, took Frankfort on the Oder by storm, obtained leave to occupy Spandau as a place of arms, and asked John George of Saxony to permit him to march through his country to the defence of the beleaguered city. But while the elector was hesitating as to whether he should grant this request, on May 10, 1631, Tilly and Pappenheim conquered and destroyed Kfcurdebure- ^ e town °^ Magdeburg, fifteen thousand of the inhabitants perishing in the storm. The storm- ing of Magdeburg and the terrible cruelties which accompanied it are without parallel in any event of modern history, and rest as an indelible disgrace on the characters of Pappenheim and Tilly, whatever pains have been taken to repel the charge. On September 7, four months later, Gustavus Adolphus exacted vengeance for this crime by completely defeating Tilly and nearly killing him in the battle of Leipzig, which Battle of a | g0 -^ ears the name of Breitenfeld. This caused the whole of Protestant Germany to regard him as their leader, and the wavering John George was compelled to take his side. Gustavus now marched through Franconia, established a Swedish governor in Wiirzburg, threatened Frankfort, crossed the Main at Oppenheim, took Mainz, and frightened the elector of Trier into seeking safety in neu- trality. As in the meantime Tilly had captured Bamberg, Gustavus, committing the defence of the Rhine territories to Bernhard of Saxe Weimar, advanced through Nuremberg, ad. 1648] THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 563 which received him with joy, to the frontiers of Bavaria, crossed the Lech, where Tilly was mortally wounded, and was solemnly received in Augsburg as conqueror on April 5, 1632. He then entered Munich in triumph just as the elector of Saxony was obtaining a similar honour in Prague. Tilly, who had conquered in thirty-six battles, died of his wounds at Ingoldstadt, leaving, in contrast to Tillv Wallenstein, only a small fortune. Ferdinand was now obliged to turn for assistance to this haughty general, who would only grant it on the condition of being endowed with absolute command, which Ferdinand was forced to concede. Wallenstein tried to recover the lost territories of Bohemia and Bavaria, and established himself at Eger on the frontiers of both. The armies lay opposite to each other for eleven weeks, at the end of which Gustavus stormed Wallenstein's camp with the loss of 2000 men. But on November 6, 1632, was fought the fatal battle of Liitzen, in which the hero Gustavus Adolphus was killed, his faithful Swedes , * avenging themselves by a complete defeat of Wallenstein, under Bernhard of Saxe Weimar. He would not have been killed if he had not fallen from his horse and revealed his name to the imperial cuirassiers, who shot him through the head. The death of the Swedish king was a terrible blow to the Protestant cause. His place was taken by Axel Oxenstiern in civil and by Bernhard of Saxe Weimar in mili- tary matters, but the situation was made better 5™ p er ° f . by the murder of Wallenstein at Eger on February 25, 1634. Finding that the Emperor was again jealous of his power, he had entered into negotiations with France and Sweden. The emperor was not in any way responsible for the murder. An Irishman named' Butler had promised the two imperial generals, Gallas and Piccolomini, that he would deliver Wallenstein to them, alive or dead, and the latter alternative seemed the easier of the two. His life and death have been immortalised by the genius of Schiller. His great fortune was confiscated, and divided amongst his enemies. After the departure of the two protagonists, the war loses its interest. The Swedes were defeated in the battle of Nordlingen in 1634, and Saxony made a separate ™: ~® of peace with the emperor in 1635. The war dragged on till 1648, but was now a' struggle between France and the empire for mastery in Europe rather than a conflict 564 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1608-1648 between two religions. The Emperor Ferdinand II. died on February 16, 1637, at the age of thirty-nine, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III. During these weary years, neither party gained any special advantage, but Germany suffered from both, and was exposed to a devastation from which it is some- times said that she has not even now recovered. Movements towards peace were begun in 1642, but the peace of Westphalia, a great European settlement, was not concluded till October 24, 1648. The peace of Westphalia stands on the same level as the treaties of Utrecht, Vienna, and Berlin. By it, France was confirmed in the possession of Alsace, and of the Westphalia three bisho P rics > Metz > Toul > and Verdun. Sweden obtained considerable possessions in Germany, which were of little use to her and eventually proved her destruction, together with an indemnity of five million thalers. Bavaria retained her electorship, but an eighth electorship was founded for Charles Louis, the son of the unfortunate Frederick. Switzerland and the Netherlands obtained the acknowledg- ment of their independence. Quarrels about property between Catholics and Protestants were settled on a reasonable basis. The pope, indeed, declared the treaty null and void, but the bull in which this judgment was pronounced was never pub- lished in Germany. The Thirty Years' War entirely destroyed Germany ^ ne prospects of Germany, as it existed at that after the time. Half its inhabitants perished by the sword, War. fire, and plague ; many towns were annihilated, all suffered loss ; countless villages disappeared ; the land was turned into a desert ; music, art, and literature ceased for a time to exist. It is said that in the war 10,000,000 human beings lost their lives. The population of Augsburg was reduced from 80,000 to 18,000. In Hesse there were burned 300 villages, 17 towns, 47 castles; in Wiirtemberg 158 manses, 65 churches, and 3600 other dwellings. Worst of all, the war produced a terrible deterioration of German manners and morals. Until the rise of Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, the place of Germany in civilisation was entirely occupied by France. The Thirty Years' War was nearly contemporaneous with the Civil War in England, of which we must give some account, but the plan of this book does not admit of much detail in English affairs, which ought to be studied in special histories, a.d. 1603-1649] ENGLAND 565 ENGLAND, A.D. 1603-1649. The reign of James I., the successor of Elizabeth, lasting from 1603 to 1625, may be regarded as a prelude to that of Charles I., which ended in 1649. The ruin of the empire and the debasement of the papacy upset the idea that royal power was derived from the one and con- secrated by the other, and sovereigns were driven to claim divine right independently for themselves. James made him- self conspicuous and even ridiculous in this respect, and he attempted to preserve the balance between the two religions by marrying his daughter to a Catholic prince, his son to a Catholic princess, having himself wedded the daughter of a country which was passing from Catholicism to protestantism. He, however, preferred the subseivience of the high church bishops to the brutal frankness of the Presbyterians. Al- though the Thirty Years' War broke out in his reign, and was closely concerned with members of his family, England took little share in it, partly from the national distrust of Buckingham and partly from want of money. For the first nine years of his reign, James was advised by Cecil, but after his death he fell into the hands of unworthy favourites. The year of his accession, which formed a personal union between England and Scotland (changed into a complete union in the reign of Anne), is marked by the Millenary Petition asking for relaxation in ceremonial observances ; and two plots, the Main and the Bye, the first intended to overthrow Cecil, and probably place Arabella Stuart, descended from the second marriage of Margaret Tudor, on the throne, and the second to secure tolera- tion. In the following year, a conference was held at Hampton Court between the bishops and the Puritans, which brought about the breach between the two parties, and produced the Authorised Version of the Bible, published in 1611, a master- piece of English literature. James held four Parliaments in his reign — the first in 1604, the second, called the Addled Parlia- ment, in 1614, the third in 1621, and the fourth in 1624. The first was marked by the peace with Spain, the Gunpowder Plot, and the persecution of Roman Catholics, and the quarrel between King James and Parliament with regard to the right of impos- ing customs. The Addled Parliament, elected by the influence of agents of the court called " undertakers," was so called because it was dissolved before passing any laws. Six years of arbitrary 566 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1603 to government followed, marked by the influence of George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, whose friendship was so disastrous to Charles I. This period contains the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1618, the sailing of the May Floiuer in 1620, and the foundation of New England by the Puritans. The third Parliament was summoned to obtain money to assist James' son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, which was refused, although the Commons were in favour of an anti-Spanish and and anti-catholic policy. The Commons, in opposition to the king, asserted their right to discuss all matters of state. James tore the protest out of the journals of the house, and dissolved Parliament. The fourth Parliament declared monopolies illegal, approved of a marriage between Charles and Henrietta Maria of France, which brought about a breach with Spain, and con- templated a war with that country for the recovery of the Palatinate, giving Mansfeldt 12,000 soldiers to help the Dutch, which ended in failure. In 1625 James died, and was succeeded by Charles I. Charles was certainly an admirable man, and, in many re- spects, an excellent sovereign. During recent years, historical research has turned public opinion in his favour, and few would now approve of his execution. He believed in the divine right of kings, and had little sympathy with popular government. He led a pure life, was deeply religious, and was devoted to art, and stands, perhaps, alone amongst our sovereigns in the last respect. His reign came at a time when the powers held by the crown and those claimed by the Parliament came into conflict, and Charles had not sufficient intellectual ability to cope with the difficulty. Consequently, as might be expected in that position, he was more obstinate than firm, yielding when he ought to have been severe, and refusing to change when he ought to have given way. He belived in the right and duty of a sovereign to govern, and said, upon the scaffold, that king and people were " clean different," which describes his fundamental principles of conduct. During the first four years of his reign, 1625 to 1628, Buckingham was his minister, and three Parliaments were held, of which the first and third had two sessions. A dispute immediately arose about First Dis- money. The Commons voted two subsidies, but putes with would only give tonnage, which was a tax upon Parliament, every ton of liquor, and poundage, which was a tax on every pound of dry goods, for one year instead of for life. Charles objected to this, and they were not given at all. In the a.d. 1649] ENGLAND 567 second session, Parliament attacked Dr. Montague, the king's chaplain, and Buckingham, showing that the troubles of the reign had both a religious and a political side. Parliament was dissolved. In the second Parliament, Sir John Eliot came to the front, a very strong man, who held the opinion that Parlia- ment, and not the king, should govern the country, a view which was not supported by legal precedent. To carry out this principle, committees were appointed to investigate the evils which existed in the government, and were certainly inherited from the time of James. At the same time, both Montague and Buckingham were impeached, and Charles, to save Bucking- ham, dissolved Parliament. He had to raise money by a forced loan, and by the collection of tonnage and poundage without a grant ; he also offended people by billeting soldiers in private houses. In 1627 Charles went to war with France, taking up the cause of the Huguenots against Louis XIII. , his wife's brother. Buckingham led an expedition to La Rochelle, the stronghold of the French Protestants, which entirely failed. The third Parliament held two sessions, one in 1628 and one in 1629, in which the conflict between the two divergent prin- ciples of government began in earnest. Sir Thomas Went- worth, afterwards earl of Strafford, though a strong supporter of the power of the crown, did not approve of the policy of Buckingham, which he saw was weakening the principles that he desired to secure. He therefore joined Buckingham's adversaries and introduced a bill for reform. His policy was not accepted by Charles, and the battle had to be conducted by Eliot, assisted by Coke and Selden, who were distinguished lawyers. They introduced a bill entitled a Petition of Right, demanding, on the ground that they were asking for ancient rights, that forced loans and taxes fo- m without the consent of Parliament should be con- sidered illegal, that imprisonment without cause shown should be declared contrary to law, that soldiers and sailors should not be billeted in private houses, and that martial law in time of peace should be abolished. As England has never had a written constitution, and precedents can be cited on both sides, it is difficult to draw a distinction between legality and illegality, and some claims asserted by the reformers were certainly dis- putable ; but it has been greatly for the advantage of England that the popular party won, and those who fought for it deserve honour. Charles reluctantly assented to the petition, and then prorogued Parliament and made Laud bishop of London, for he 568 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1603 to took decidedly the side of the high church clergy. Wentworth, not being able to follow Eliot, joined the king ; Buckingham was assassinated ; and tonnage and poundage continued to be collected without the sanction of Parliament. In the session of 1629, three resolutions proposed by Sir John Eliot were forcibly passed, the Speaker being held down in his chair. They declared that all who favoured innovation in religion, or advised the collection of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary authority, or voluntarily paid such taxes, were enemies to the kingdom. This was undoubtedly a great advance on previous action, and partook of a revolutionary character. Charles first adjourned and then dissolved the p , Parliament. Eleven years of personal govern- Government men ^ without a Parliament followed, lasting from — Went- 1629 to 1640, during which time the king's chief worth and advisers were Wentworth, Laud, and Weston. Laud. Wentworth was made president of the Council of the North and afterwards lord deputy of Ireland. He was a conscientious believer in government by a king, and was person- ally devoted to Charles. He was an excellent ruler and ad- ministrator, and estranged the nobles by his independence and impartiality. His plans failed because they were opposed to the spirit of the age ; this was no time for an autocracy. Laud was a conscientious but narrow-minded high churchman, who supported uniformity of religious ceremony. He would allow no divergence from his own principles and practice, and naturally drove England into a revolt. Weston held the post of treasurer till 1635 ; he was a high churchman, but a good financier. Charles ruled the country by means of Councils — the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, the Council of the North, and the Court of High Commission — the first two dating back to medieval times, the others being Tudor creations. Eliot was imprisoned in 1629, and died in the Tower three years after- wards. Peace was made with France and Spain. In 1633, Wentworth become viceroy of Ireland and Laud archbishop of Canterbury. Wentworth governed Ireland Avell, introduced the cultivation of flax, and formed a standing army. In 1634, ship money was levied in the maritime counties and towns, for the defence of the country against pirates, M JP which was perfectly legal, but in 1635 it was extended to the inland counties of the kingdoms, and John Hampden refused to pay it. At the same time Laud's attempt to impose a new liturgy and canons in Scotland a.d. 1649] ENGLAND 569 called into existence the National Covenant in 1638, in conse- quence of which Episcopacy was abolished and Presbyterian government restored. In 1639, Charles, in defence of Laud's scheme, fought what is called the " First Bishops' ip^g pi r3 t War" against the Scots, which was ended by the Bishops' peace of Berwick. This policy required money War. for its execution, and Went worth, now created earl of Strafford, advised the summoning of a Parliament, so that the fourth or Short Parliament was called in 1640, in which Pym was leader of the popular party. The p .. , House of Commons refused to grant supplies unless grievances were redressed, and Parliament was dissolved. The " Second Bishops' War" now took place, in which Charles was defeated by the Scots at the battle of Newburn, Second and by the Pacification of Ripon was compelled Bishops' to pay the expenses of the Scotch army until War. terms could be finally arranged. Charles, in his difficulties, now summoned a Great Council of peers to meet at York, a body resembling the council of the notables before the French Revolution, and they advised the calling of a Parliament. The fifth Parliament of Charles, called the " Long Parlia- ment," met in 1640. The Commons at once impeached Strafford and Laud and the lord chancellor, Finch. It beine; impossible to prove that Strafford was guilty t, e ,- on ^ r e + • 4. +1 1 • *- 1, • + / Parliament, or treason against the king, to whose interests his life was devoted, it was sought to establish that he was collecting an army in Ireland with the view of coercing Parlia- ment in England. Next year, finding that the impeachment was likely to fail, his enemies in the Commons introduced a bill of attainder against him — a violent and forcible action which it is difficult to defend. He was eventually condemned, and executed on May 12, 1641, Charles deserting his interests in a weak and cowardly manner. st^ff^d In this year, also, a Triennial Act was passed, providing that Parliament should be summoned at least every three years, and should not sit longer than three years : from distrust of Charles, however, it was afterwards enacted that the existing Parliament should not be adjourned or dissolved without its own consent, and the Long Parliament did not actually come to an end till the Restoration of 1660. Other acts passed in 1641 abolished the Star Chamber, High Com- mission, Council of the North, and other courts ; also ship money, distraint of knighthood, and tonnage and poundage not 570 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. leos to granted by Parliament. Finally, the " Grand Remonstrance," a vote of censure on Charles' government, passed the Commons The Grand D y a small majority. It denounced the acts of Remon- the king, recounted the good deeds of the Long strance. Parliament, sketched a programme of further re- forms, and demanded the appointment of ministers " in whom Parliament might have cause to confide," the removal of bishops from the House of Lords, and the settlement of church matters by the king and Parliament on the advice of an assembly of Protestant divines, English and foreign. In 1642, Charles answered this by attempting the arrest of five members of Parliament, Hampden, Pym, Holies, Haselrig, and Strode ; and when this action failed and the members were protected by the city of London, and it was certain that public opinion was against the king, he left London, and the civil war broke out which ended by his execution in 1649. The disputes which occasioned this war were both civil and religious. The conflict on the civil side was whether the country should be ruled by king or Parliament, War 1V1 an< ^ on ^ ie re ligi° us s ide whether Puritanism or the High Anglicanism of Laud should be the religion of England. During the struggle the Houses put before the king various schemes for a settlement — the Nineteen Pro- positions, and the Propositions of Oxford, Uxbriclge, and New- castle — at first demanding practically the transfer of sovereignty from the crown to Parliament — then, as their political demands relaxed, increasing correspondingly their religious claims from the settlement of religion by a Synod to the abolition of Episco- pacy, the establishment of Presbyterianism, and the taking of the Covenant by Charles himself. Speaking very roughly, the gentry took the side of the king, the middle and commercial classes supported Parliament ; the north-west of England was Royalist, the south-east Parliamentarian. In the first two years of the war, the king was successful. He set up his standard at Nottingham, and, having recruited his army in the west, marched to London. On the way the battle of Edgehill was fought. The result was indecisive, and the march continued ; but Charles was repulsed at Turnham Green and retreated to Oxford, which became his headquarters during the war. An Eastern Association was formed, to support Parliament, comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Hertford, while the king depended on his army at Oxford, and on the forces of the earl of Newcastle in the north, and of a.d. 1649] ENGLAND 571 Sir Ralph Hopton in the west. A number of battles took place in 1643, the result of which was generally in favour of the king, but he was unable to effect his main purpose of capturing London. In 1644, the war entered on a new phase, the king being assisted by an Irish army and by Montrose in Scotland, and Parliament by the Scots. On July 2, the battle of Marston Moor was fought, in which the vie Battle of tory was won largely by Cromwell's Ironsides, a Marston body of men which he had specially trained and Moor. organised on principles of strict piety and morality. The result of this was that York fell into the hands of Parliament, and the north of England was lost to the king. At the end of this year, Cromwell determined to remodel the army, and, owing to the growth of his influence, Independency threatened to out- weigh Presbyterianism in the Parliamentary party. In 1645 Laud was executed on January 10, and in February the parliamentary army was remodelled, officers being chosen for efficiency and soldiers receiving regular pay, but the majority of the officers were Independents. On June 14, Cromwell and Fairfax defeated Charles at Naseby, the royal army was destroyed, and letters were discovered It h which made it possible to accuse Charles of treasonable correspondence with France, just as Louis XVI. was accused in the French Revolution. The war continued, but the results were generally against the king; on May 5, 1646, he surrendered to the Scots at Newark ; and on June 20 the war came to an end by the surrender of Oxford. There was now an interval of peace. In 1647 the Scots handed over the king to the Parliament, and he was confined in Holmby House. But a division broke out be- Charles a irrison.Gr tween the Parliament and the army, as violent as that between Parliament and the king, Parliament being in favour of Presbyterianism and a more oligarchical government, the army in favour of complete religious toleration and demo- cratic government. Parliament voted that the army should be reduced in numbers and that all the officers should take the Covenant. It also opened negotiations with the king for his restoration. The army refused to disband, and seized the person of the king, confining him first at Newmarket and then at Hampton Court, and made proposals for a settlement based on a temporary limitation of the royal authority, the revival of Episcopacy, with toleration of all sects except Roman Catholics, the establishment of triennial parliaments, and the reform of $72 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1603-1649 the electorate. Charles temporised, and fled to the Isle of Wight. Discussions between the king and Parliament took place at Newport, but, at the same time, Charles was corre- sponding with the Presbyterian party and with the Scots, endeavouring to obtain better terms for himself. He was certainly guilty of duplicity, but his position was extremely difficult, and great allowances should be made for him. The result was a renewal of the civil war in 1648, thTwar ° cause d by an incursion of the Scots under Hamilton, in favour of Charles, and Royalist risings in the west and in Kent. The Royalists were defeated by Fairfax at Maidstone and the Scotch by Cromwell at Preston. The result of this was that the army, led by Crom- well, determined to put Charles to death for stirring up civil strife. By what was called Pride's Purge, the Presbyterian members favourable to Charles were expelled from Parliament, and what remained of it was called the Rump, ri es j n 1(349 the Rump appointed a special court of justice for the trial of the king, consisting of 135 commissioners, of whom only 67 attended, the charge being high treason for levying war against his subjects. The acting members of the court were ,all personal enemies of the king, and the consequence was that he was condemned, and, on Charles January 30, he was taken on a cold winter's tried and morning from St. James' Palace to Whitehall, executed. where he was beheaded on January 30, 1649 — an action certainly illegal and probably disastrous, although this conclusion will be always a matter of controversy. CHAPTER V. FRANCE A.D. 1610-1659— ENGLAND A.D. 1649-1660. The Thirty Years' War, which was closed by the peace of "Westphalia in 1648, left France in a predominant position in Europe, which she well knew how to use to gratify her ambition. The man to whom she chiefly owed her triumph was Cardinal Richelieu, whom Louis XIII. had- placed at the head of the French government after he had discarded the favourites who served him at the beginning of his reign. By genius and strength of character, he consolidated the unity of France ; by putting down the overweening power of the nobles, by crushing the Huguenots — so that France might not be split up, as Germany was, by the quarrels of two religions — and by fortunate wars and other transactions, he succeeded in weaken- ing both Spain and Austria, who might well have been serious rivals of his own country. For the first nine First Years years after the death of Henry IV. in 1610, Louis of Louis was entirely in the hands of his mother, Mary of XIII. Medici, assisted by foreign favourites, the chief of whom was the Florentine Concini, better known as the Marechal d'Ancre. The result of this was that the heads of the lower branches of the royal house, the prince of Oonde and the Guises, withdrew into their own provinces, and made war against the crown. They insisted on the king's being declared of age, hoping that when he was free from his mother they would be able to control him. But Mary retained her power, and married Louis to Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III. of Spain. Conde now endeavoured to upset the power of d'Ancre, but the wily Marechal got the better of him, arrested him, and made war against his adherents. In 1617, d'Ancre was murdered by another favourite of the queen, Luynes, upon which she retired from Paris with all her counsellors, and left the king to govern by himself. His first act was to summon an assembly of notables, in which he passed a number of reforms, which were never carried out. Luynes remained chief minister of the 573 574 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. i6io to king, but he was unable to curb the nobles in their attempts to make themselves independent of the crown, to protect the commons from their oppression, or to put an end to the disas- trous struggle with the Huguenots. But, when Luynes died, the king, finding that he could not govern without a minister, by the advice of his mother, appointed Armand Jean du Plessis, bishop of Lucon, afterwards cardinal and duke of Richelieu, who was born in 1585. Richelieu's strong will soon asserted his authority over the king, the queen, and even the queen mother herself. He effected this by his statesmanlike genius, but also by determining that he would be no mere favourite, that he would not attach himself to any prominent party, and that he would seek no exceptional favour either for his family or for himself. He became minister in April 1624, and soon gave evidence of his qualities. The marriage of Charles I. with Henrietta Maria was deter- mined upon, the alliance with Holland renewed, and a firmer attitude adopted against Spain. In August he got rid of his patron Vieuville, and became president of the council. He set himself to reduce the Huguenots to obedience, and made a treaty with them at Barcelona on May 10, 1625. A plot was made against the cardinal by the Marechal Ornano, governor of the brother of Louis, Gaston, duke of Orleans ; but Ornano and his confederate Chalais were imprisoned, Chalais being executed and Ornano dying in confinement before the end of the year. La Rochelle, the last refuge of the Huguenots, was finally conquered in November 1628. The two queens, Mary of Medici and her daughter-in-law, impatient of the influence of Richelieu over the king, at- tempted to drive him from the court, but the cardinal managed to make their efforts fatal to themselves, and Mary was com- pelled to leave Paris, and died in exile at Cologne. A more serious conspiracy against the cardinal's authority was that Conspiracy °f ^he marquis of Cinq-Mars, a young favourite of Cinq- of the king. It was formidable because among Mars. the conspirators were Gaston of Orleans, the duke de Bouillon, and the parliamentary councillor de Thou, son of the famous historian, and, worst of all, the king was aware of the plot, and yet said nothing about it. The conspirators had engaged in a treasonable correspondence with Spain, and when this was laid before the king he could not refuse to consent to the execution of Cinq-Mars and de Thou, but the two dukes were pardoned. During these trials, Richelieu was so weak in a.d. 1659] FRANCE 575 health that he had to be carried in a litter, and he died in Paris on December 4, 1642. Richelieu was a truly great minister. Asked upon his death-bed to pardon his enemies, he said that he had never had any enemies except the enemies of the government and the king, and this was true. Like Wolsey, he loved splendour in his mode of life. He was surrounded by a bodyguard of young nobles ; he built a palace at Rueil, where he lived in greater splendour than the king, received foreign ambassadors, and granted innumerable audiences. His prin- cipal palace in Paris was afterwards known as the Palais Royal. He surrounded himself with artists and men of letters, and paved the way for the brilliant epoch of Louis XIV., while he took great interest in the development of the French language. The French Academy, founded in 1635, was his creation, and four years earlier Paris saw the publication of the first weekly newspaper, the Gazette de France. Louis XIII. died himself on May 14, 1643; he was a prince without conspicuous merits or serious faults, not without goodness of heart, but easily influenced by those he liked, a puppet in the hands of Richelieu. By t ou j s xiv his will, he appointed a council of regency for his son, who was five years old, consisting of the queen — called Anne of Austria, although she was really a Spaniard — his brother Gaston, his uncle Conde, and five other councillors, to whom was added Cardinal Mazarin, a Sicilian TVL J3 7e\ T1T1 by origin, who had been specially recommended for the post by Richelieu. He had held the position of papal nuncio, and had shown great capacity for business. He soon acquired supreme power, not so much by the commanding qualities which distinguished Richelieu as by astute diplomacy and his power of making himself agreeable to the queen. He diverted the attention of Frenchmen from internal affairs by cleverly keeping up a condition of war on the frontiers, and in all the quarrels and intrigues which marked the commence- ment of the reign managed to extract advancement for him- self from the strife of others. His diplomacy determined the conclusion of the peace of Westphalia', and gained for France valuable possessions on the Rhine. The civil war called the Fronde followed in 1649. Fronde is a sling, and the Frondeurs were Davids slinging stones against the Goliath Mazarin. All who were discontented joined hands to overthrow the minister. It was a personal movement with very little principle at the root of it. 576 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. ieio to The leader of the Fronde was Paul Gondi de Retz, coadjutor of his uncle, the archbishop of Paris, and eventually cardinal. He was of Florentine origin, and his family had risen under the protection of the queen. He at first attempted to make Conde the head of the movement, but, when that failed, he turned to his younger brother Conti, and his sister the duchess of Longueville. The court moved for safety to St. Germain, while the leaders of the Fronde remained in Paris. The Parlia- ment asserted its independence, and withstood the tyranny of the court, and was assisted by the great nobles, Bouillon, Beaufort, Conti, Longueville, and Turenne. A war of skirmishes took place, and Conde defeated the Fronde at Charenton on February 8, 1649. Conferences for peace took place in Richelieu's palace at Rueil. The execution of Charles I. of England disposed the court to moderation, and with the help of Matthieu Mol4, the president of the Parliament, an outward appearance of peace was secured. As the war with Spain was still protracted, how could success be hoped for if the two great generals Concl6 and Turenne were at strife ? But Conde was not popular, and understood better how to win battles than hearts. His quarrel with de Retz and other Frondeurs divided Mazarin's enemies; Mazarin saw his opportunity; and on January 18, 1650, Conde, Conti, and Longueville were arrested in the Palais Royal and imprisoned at Vincennes. An attempt being made to release them, they were brought for safety to Havre, and Mazarin wrested Rethel from the Spaniards, and defeated Turenne, who came to relieve it. This success, however, increased the hatred against the minister, so that all parties united against him, and at the beginning of 1651 he was driven into exile. He left Paris in the night of Febru- L 1 ^ .° ary 6, went to Havre de Grace, set free the pri- soners, who returned to Paris, and sought refuge in Cologne, where the Elector was a friend of his. A state of anarchy ensued, but Mazarin never lost the favour of the queen, and continued to conduct the war from his exile in Cologne. On September 7, 1651, Louis XIV., who was in his fourteenth year, was recognised by the Parliament as of full age, and, in spite of the opposition of Conde and of the fact that the Parliament set a price on his head, Mazarin joined the king's army at Poitiers on January 29, 1652, and assumed the conduct of affairs, supported by Mole. A civil war ensued, in which Turenne took the side of the court. A battle took place in the very a.d. 1659] FRANCE 577 suburbs of Paris, in the quarter of St. Antoine, afterwards so prominent in the Revolution, on July 2, 1652, in which both sides fought with heroic bravery. But Conde was defeated, the court was able to return to Paris in October, and the Fronde was at an end. On February 8, 1653, the kins - met Mazarin at the gates of Paris, and conveyed £ ° him in his own carriage to the Louvre. Conde's star sank, and his brother Conti married a niece of the cardinal. Conde continued the war, with Spain, but Louis was crowned at Reims on June 7, 1654. As the opposition of the Parliament still continued, the king summoned a bed of justice, and coming suddenly from Vincennes, with his riding whip in his hand, addressed them with the memorable words, " L'Etat, c'est moi " (" I am the government"). Retz had had to take refuge in Italy, and could not return to Paris till 1662, where he lived till his death in 1669. Thus Mazarin made himself master of France. He was equally successful in his foreign policy. In March 1657 he made an alliance with Cromwell, the conditions of which were that the Stuarts should be expelled from France, freedom of religion granted to the French Protestants, and Dunkirk surrendered to England. With the help of Turenne and the English, not only Dunkirk but Gravelines, Oudenarde, Ypres, and other places were wrested from the Spaniards. In 1659 Mazarin ended the war, which had lasted for twenty-five years, by signing the peace of the Pyrenees, the crowning work of his life. By this Spain lost Perpignan and Roussillon, and the Pyrenees became the boundary between the two countries. Spain also ceded to France Artois, part of Flanders, Hainault, and Luxemburg. The death of Cromwell on September 3, 1658, made the peace easier to conclude. Louis XIV. was deeply in love with Maria Mancini, the niece of Mazarin, but Anne of Austria would not hear of the union ; the young lady was sent off to La Rochelle, and Louis was induced to marry Maria Theresa, Marriage of the daughter of Philip IV. Conde, by Mazarin's influence, was reconciled with the king ; Beaufort was made an admiral ; Conti had married one of the nieces of the cardinal, the duke de Mercceur, younger son of Vendome, married another, and a third, Olympia Mancini, married the prince of Savoy — Carignan, the comte de Soissons — and 55 . became the mother of Prince Eugene. Mazarin died on March 9, 1661, reconciled with his enemies, the pos- sessor of enormous wealth, and of all the prosperity which an 2o 578 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d, 1649 to ambitious man could possibly desire. We must now return to England, and bring the history of that country down to the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. ENGLAND, A.D. 1649-1660. Oliver Cromwell, one of the most remarkable of Englishmen, was born at Huntingdon on April 25, 1599. He was related to Thomas Cromwell, the Hammer of the Monks in liver .. the reign of Henry VIII., and it has been sur- mised that through one of his maternal ancestors, a Stewart, he was also a very distant cousin of Charles I. At the age of seventeen he became a fellow commoner of Sidney- Sussex College, Cambridge, a centre of Puritanism. He entered as a law student at Lincoln's Inn, and married, at the age of twenty-one, Elizabeth Bourchier, a cousin of the Hampdens. Eor twenty years after his marriage he lived as a Cambridge- shire country gentleman at Huntingdon, St. Ives, and Ely, where the house he occupied still exists unaltered. He was member for Cambridge in the Short and the Long Parliaments, and warmly supported the passing of the Grand Remonstrance. He took part in the civil war, and in 1643 formed the company of horse which was generally known as the Ironsides, raised by the Eastern Association, of which he was the soul — men of religion and strictness of life, animated by a democratic spirit, to oppose men of honour and courage. He fought with distinction and success at Winceby, Marston Moor, and Naseby, and conducted negotiations with Charles I. in 1647, but eventually brought about his execution in 1649. His character and career will always form the subject of dispute. He was certainly no fanatic, and exercised a moderating influence on the surging passions of his time, but his home government was not a success, and if it had been so the reaction which followed his death would have been less violent. He raised England to a very high position in Europe, and it has been said that he held the key of Europe in his girdle. Cromwell made peace with the Protestant states of Europe, but he did not succeed in uniting them into a league. He Cromwell's made peace with Holland, formed an alliance Foreign with Sweden, forced Denmark to open her waters Policy. to English ships, and obtained from Portugal freedom of trade in Portuguese colonies. He protected the Waldenses from the oppression of the duke of Savoy in the a.d. 1660] ENGLAND 579 valleys of the Maritime Alps, a service immortalised in the verse of Milton, and forced France to interfere on their behalf. He made war with Spain, refusing to admit her exclusive possession of the New World, thus anticipating the policy of William Pitt. Finding France tolerant and Spain persecuting, he made an alliance with France against Spain, and defeated her in the battle of the Dunes, dealing her a blow from which she never recovered. He gave great attention to the navy, which under Blake obtained for England the supremacy of the sea, though she lost it under Charles II. The first step after the death of Charles was to abolish the monarchy and the House of Lords. The Commons, reduced to a House averaging 56, and nicknamed the Rump, Royalism continued to sit, and appointed a council of state finally to carry on the government. Ireland and Scotland Crushed. still continued Royalist, but the Irish were defeated at the battle of Rathmines, Cromwell himself storming Droghecla and Wexford, and acting with great cruelty. In 1650 Montrose, who was a great Royalist, was defeated at Corbiesdale and executed by the Presbyterians, and the Royalist opposition was completely crushed by Cromwell's victory of Dunbar on September 3. Prince Charles, who had signed the Covenant in 1650, and was crowned at Scone in 1651, was defeated at Worcester on September 3, the anniversary of Dunbar, and the Royalists might then be regarded as entirely subdued both in England and in Scotland. But Parliament now passed the Navigation Act of 1651, with the object of en- , „ . • « Tlie Navi- couraging English shipping, which provided that g. a +i 0n A C 't no goods could be imported into England except in English ships or in ships belonging to the country in which the goods were produced, — and this was an alarming threat to the carrying trade of the Dutch, and naturally led to a war with Holland, the quarrel being intensified by the claim of England to search neutral ships, and ^ ^F w \ to be treated with special honour with regard to its flag. The naval commanders on either side were Blake and Tromp, and numerous engagements took place. In the year 1652 Ireland may be considered to have been finally settled by Cromwell. The Irish Catholics were deprived of a large portion of their lands, varying Settlement from one-third to two-thirds, many being banished to Connaught, and in the vacant territory a number of Crom- well's soldiers were settled. Cromwell, having subdued his 580 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1649 to enemies, had now to establish a government which might take the place of the monarchy which had been abolished, and in this he found great difficulty. The whole government of England was founded on kingship, and when this was taken away the corner-stone of order disappeared. Cromwell found the remains of the Long Parliament, called the Rump, im- possible for the purpose, and in 1653 turned it forcibly out of the Parliament house, telling his soldiers to " take away that bauble," meaning the Speaker's mace. He first nominated a Parliament himself, which is known by the title of the Little Parliament, or Barebones Parliament, from the name of one member, but, after a short time, finding it impossible to work with Cromwell, it resigned, placing its power in his hands. The Council of Officers then drew up a written The Instru- constitution, called the Instrument of Govern- ment of ment, which deserves attention as an attempt to Govern- codify the principles of the constitution, which had ment. never yet been reduced to writing. The head of the government was called Protector, and by his side there was placed a Council of State, which he was obliged to consult on all important occasions. A Parliament representing England, Scotland, and Ireland was to be held at least once in three years, and to sit for not less than five months unless it consented to adjourn or dissolve. It was to have control over legislation, and over extraordinary taxation, but the ordinary revenue was to be raised without it. The Ministry, or, as they might be called, the chief officers of state, were to be appointed by the p . . protector, but approved by Parliament The pro- tector was to have a fixed revenue, out of which the army, navy, and the ordinary expenses of government were to be paid. The Instrument thus established a kind of constitutional government, but many questions were left unsettled, and it was obvious that all powers not definitely defined, but left uncertain, would come into the hands of the protector. It lasted, however, for about four years. In the first year of the new government, peace was made with Holland. Scotland and England were united by ordinance, not by act of Parliament, and free trade was established between the two countries. The court of Chancery was also reformed by ordinance. The hi ^ 1S ^ Parliament met in 1654, and it soon quarrelled with its creator, as a considerable number of Republican members were returned. Sir Henry Yane, who was a Republican, questioned the legality of Cromwell's rule, a.d. 1660] ENGLAND 581 and Cromwell met his arguments by the well-known words, " Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry Vane, the Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane ! " The result was that a hundred Republicans were expelled from Parliament, and the house itself was dis- solved at the end of five lunar months, possibly earlier than was intended by the Instrument. Cromwell, being now free from the trammels of Parliament, conquered Jamaica from Spain, the only result being that the ravages of the buccaneers came to an end, and a Military proper government was established in those parts. Govern- At home he divided the country into eleven mili- ment. tary districts, placing a major-general over each. This arrange- ment was approved by Milton, who was Cromwell's secretary, and worked fairly well, but it was scarcely compatible with constitutional government. Cromwell showed his power on the Continent by protecting the Waldenses in Piedmont, and making a treaty with France which secured the exclusion of the Stuarts. However, the treaty with France led to war with Spain, and in 1656 a second Parliament was summoned. This had to undergo purification by the exclusion of many Republicans and Presbyterians, with whose opinions Cromwell did not agree. In the following year, an offensive and defensive alliance was formed with France against Spain, and on April 20 the Spanish fleet was destroyed by Blake in the harbour of Santa Cruz, the capital of Teneriffe. Four years' trial had shown that the constitution established by the Instrument was impossible. The simplest plan would have been to make Cromwell king, just as Napoleon Cromwell's was made emperor, but although this was urged Constitu- upon him he hesitated to take the step, but he tional accepted the amendments to the constitution Difficulties. suggested in what was called the Humble Petition and Advice. By this, Cromwell was allowed to name his successor, but he was forbidden to exclude anyone from Parliament who had been duly elected. There were to be two chambers, one heredi- tary, the other elective ; religious toleration was to be accorded to all except Papists, Prelatists, and Socinians. This form of government did not succeed any better than its predecessor. After discussion about the conflicting powers of the two houses and debates which raised the formidable question of Crom- well's authority, Parliament was dissolved by the protector on February 4, 1658, with the words, "God be the judge between you and me ! " 582 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1649 to The last year of Cromwell's life was gilded by the battle of the Dunes, in which the combined English and French gained a brilliant victory over Spain, the result of which, the Dunes as ^ ias Deen saic b was that England got possession of Dunkirk. But such honours could not revive the spirits of the wearied sovereign ; worn out with toil, disap- pointed at his failure to endow England with a strong govern- ment of liberal complexion, his life threatened with plots, so that he was never left unguarded and lost his power of sleep, harassed by Republicans on one side and Royalists on the other, amongst whom was his favourite daughter, Lady Cromwell Claypole, he died, like Napoleon, in a great storm, on September 3, 1658, the anniversary of Dunbar and Worcester, finding at last that rest which he so eagerly desired. His son Richard, the new protector, though a well meaning and virtuous man, was entirely unfit for a position of this kind. He summoned a Parliament, but from the old inter- constituencies, including the small boroughs, not from his father's reformed electorate. The burn- ing cpuestion of the relations between the civil and military power came immediately into prominence, and Richard was forced by the army to dissolve the Parliament. England was now without a constitutional government, and the officers found that they had no alternative but to recall the fhTllum Rum P, and on May 7, 1659, forty-three survivors of the Long Parliament met in the Parliament house, with Speaker Lenthall at their head. The executive power was placed in the hands of a " Committee of Security," consisting of eight generals and the three chief Republicans, Vane, Haselrig, and Scott. Besides this, a Council of State was formed of thirty-one members, sixteen from the army and fifteen from Parliament, amongst whom were Bradshawe and Whitelocke. They used a new Republican shield in place of that of the protector. Fleetwood was entrusted with the command of the army. Upon this, Richard retired into private life and died in 1674, Henry, Cromwell's second son, long surviving him. Even then the old strife continued, and the country was in a condition of anarchy, until a trustworthy general, who had won the reputation and position which he deserved, determined to restore the monarchy. George Monk, a country gentleman of Devonshire, had, under the orders of Cromwell, reduced a.d. 1660] ENGLAND 583 Scotland to order, and had governed it peaceably for eight years, holding himself aloof from the disputes by which England was distracted. His sympathies were with the Presbyterians and the Parliament, and he de- w en > tested military rule. At the beginning of 1660 he marched from Scotland to London, and, on January 11, was joined by Fairfax at York. Arriving in London, he declared in favour of a free Parliament, and summoned the surviving members of the Long Parliament, including the Presbyterians who had been expelled by Colonel Pride, in his famous Purge of 1648. Monk was now completely master of the situation. He took care to say nothing about the return of the king, which, although the city equally desired it, would probably have pro- duced a civil war. In March the Long Parliament, after an existence of nearly twenty years, dissolved itself, and there was now no doubt that the king would be recalled. Monk sent a letter to Charles, who was at Brussels, by a fellow- countyman, Sir John Grenville, to assure him of his devotion. Charles immediately proceeded to Holland, and issued from Breda a Declaration, promising an amnesty, toleration of religion, confirmation of confiscated property, and payment of arrears to the army. A Parliament irregularly elected, called a Convention Parliament, met on April 25. An invitation to return was sent to Charles, and on May 29, 1660, his thirtieth birthday, long observed as a church 5? , rn °* festival, and even now remembered as Oak Apple Day, Charles entered the capital amongst the triumphant acclamations of the people. He received in Westminster the oaths of allegiance and of supremacy in the church, and promised to respect the privileges of both Houses of Parlia- ment and to work for the happiness of his people. CHAPTER VI. LOUIS XIV., 1661-1681— AUSTRIA AND THE TURKS, 1664-1699 —LOUIS XIV., 1682-1697— ENGLAND, 1660-1685. Louis XIV., with St. Louis and Napoleon, one of the greatest Sovereigns that France ever possessed, began his independent Character reign after the death of Mazarin in 1661. He of Louis was a man of strong will, of distinguished ability, XIV. of rare dignity of character, and of indefatigable industry. The splendour of his court and his love of represen- tation have given a false impression of him. His idea was to consolidate the unity of France, and thus to make her the most powerful state in Europe, and this he could only do by personal government. He built the palace of Versailles as the seat of majesty, and attracted the provincial nobles to it, thus preventing provincial particularism, which might at any time have split France up into the component parts from which she had been laboriously formed, although he may at the same time have weakened her by destroying the force of the smaller political units of which she was composed. He befriended literature and art in all its branches. The splendour which attaches to the age of Louis XIV. is due more than anything else to the genius of the Roi Soleil, the Sun King. Great as he was in prosperity, he was greater in adversity, and nothing is nobler than his conduct in the troubles which beset him at the close of his reign in the disasters and disappointments of the war of the Spanish Succession. He never flinched under disaster ; he would have made peace if peace could have been obtained on honourable terms ; but he regarded honour as the first of virtues, and would do nothing to smirch it. He refused to turn his arms against his grandson, and his correspondence with him shows a delicacy which contrasts with the somewhat brutal assertion of control which is found in the correspondence of Napoleon with his brothers. He was an admirable diplomatist, and held the thread of all negotiations in his hands, while he made his will prevail not so much by self-assertion as by the a.d. 1661-1681] LOUIS XIV. 585 industry which had made him master of the controversies he dealt with, and the acuteness with which he divined the proper course of action. He ma) 7 occasionally have been guilty of duplicity and harshness in dealing with weak states, but the more deeply his reign is studied, the more his greatness will be appreciated. He is no more responsible for the vices of Louis XV. and the incapacity of Louis XVI. than Caesar and Augustus were responsible for the madness of Caligula or for the vices of Nero. It is to his credit that he discovered and employed Colbert, and that he put up with Louvois, whose talents as a military administrator were necessary to his success. Colbert did not belong to the aristocracy either of the sword or the cope, but was the son of a merchant and was recommended to Louis by Mazarin. He paid special attention to commerce and manufactures, in order to increase the revenues of the crown, but he neglected agriculture, which proved afterwards to be an error. He established the famous factories of porcelain at Sevres and of tapestry at Gobelins, which became the best in the world, and still exist, but he established them by a system of strict protection, attempting to exclude all foreign products which might compete with those of France. He also favoured a system of internal duties, so that his financial policy was opposed to that which was supported by political economists a hundred years later, whose motto was " laissez faire," " laissez passer," freedom both of production and of distribution, and who also believed that the land, which Colbert decidedly neglected, was the source of all wealth. He was under the dominion of what is called the mercantile system, which believed that the wealth of a country depended upon the amount of gold and silver which it possessed — a thing which is certainly false in our own day and under present circumstances. Like Napoleon at a later period, he made roads and canals, especially the canal of Languedoc, to unite the Mediterranean with the Atlantic ; he founded com- mercial companies ; he established colonies in the East and the West Indies and in North America ; and he improved the French navy until it was the best in Europe. Owing to the extravagant court supported by Louis XIV., it was impossible to reduce the taxation, but Colbert kept the Louvois and , . , , , , ,, ' . ., . f the Army, strictest control over the civil service, and put a stop to all dishonesty and illegal exactions. Louvois turned his attention to improvement of the artillery, to the clothing 586 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. i66i to and arming of the troops, and to military discipline. The army formed by him, which was always ready for action, was commanded by great generals — Turenne, who was specially admired by Napoleon, Concle, Oatinat, Luxembourg, Villars, and Vendome, while the authority of Vauban in matters of fortifica- tion continued supreme until the conditions of warfare were entirely altered in modern times. As already indicated, the high intelligence of the monarch aimed at excellence in every department, and he gave a powerful stimulus to all forms of intellectual activity. The age of Louis XIV. in France is worthy to stand by the side of the age of Pericles in Greece and of Augustus in Italy. He supplemented the French Academy, the council of the im- A ade^v* 3 mortal forty, who are still at the summit of intel- lectual distinction in all countries, by founding the Academies of Inscriptions and of Sciences. No other French monarch except Napoleon has shown so much interest in the affairs of the mind and in the men who illustrate intellectual and scientific progress. Nor did he confine himself to his own countrymen : he drew foreigners to his court by wise and magnanimous generosity. Whatever may have been the faults of the royal extravagance, his methods were certainly imitated throughout the civilised world. Every little prince had his Versailles, and it is unjust to condemn a system which was especially adapted to the age. One of the first acts of Louis after the assumption of inde- pendent power was to deprive the pope of Avignon, but only for a time, and to assert his diplomatic precedence over his father-in-law; Philip IV. of Spain, but he also desired to extend the frontiers of France by the acquisition of the Spanish Netherlands. At the time of his marriage he had finally renounced all right of succession to any portion of the Spanish dominions, but on the death of Philip IV. he asserted the principle of inheritance by "devolution," by which the heirs of a daughter by a first marriage took precedence of the off- spring of a second marriage, and in 1667 took De olut'o place the War of Devolution, which was really stimulated by the weakness and incapacity of Charles II. of Spain. It was little else than a war of plunder, like the Silesian war of Frederick the Great. Louis' generals, Turenne and Concle, conquered a large portion of Flanders and Hainault, and occupied Franche Comtek, but a Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden, formed by a.d. 1681] LOUIS XIV. 587 the statesmanlike genius of John de Witt, grand pensionary of Holland, obliged him to make the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1668, which deprived him of a large portion of his gains, but left him in possession of Lille, Charleroi, Oudenarde, and some other Belgian towns. Louis was not likely to forget the injury done to him by de Witt, and he made preparations for a war with Holland which began in 1672 and lasted till 1679, after it had Louismakes included nearly the whole of Europe in its War on embrace. He had broken up the Triple Alliance Holland, by procuring the neutrality of Sweden and England. He conquered Guelders, Utrecht, and Overyssel without resistance. The prince of Orange, statholder of Holland, grandson of Charles I., was a young man of genius, who saved his country by cutting the dykes and flooding it by the incursion of the sea, while the skill of Admiral de Ruyter also prevented the English from landing in Texel. Luxembourg undertook a bold march against Amsterdam over the frozen flood, but the success of his enterprise was prevented by a sudden thaw. The prince of Orange was now assisted by his uncle, the Elector of Brandenburg, generally known as the Great Elector, and by the Emperor Leopold I., Orange threaten- ing Conde on the French frontier, the imperial zr e Great troops holding their own against Turenne on the Rhine. Frederick William of Brandenburg was one of the first statesmen in Europe. He had shown his talent in bringing his country back to a state of prosperity after the disorder caused by the Thirty Years' War. He did this by an excellent system of police, and by a well ordered arrangement of finance. He also provided himself with a powerful standing army, always ready for action. By the treaty of Welau, concluded by Poland in 1657, he became sovereign duke of Preussen, a territory in the north-east, which has given its name to Prussia. On the death of the Emperor Ferdinand III. he competed with Louis XIV. for the possession of the imperial crown, and, not being able to gain it himself, supported the claims of Leopold I. against the king of France. But he was neither old enough nor strong enough to prevent Louis XIV. from forming the League of the Rhine, which, under colour of maintaining the conditions of the peace of Westphalia, was really used for the extension of the eastern frontier of France at the expense of Germany. But when Louis was able, by his huge resources, to conquer Maestricht and to lay waste the western 588 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1661-1681 frontier with the armies of Turenne, and the emperor could not act seriously on the Rhine, the elector was compelled in 1673 to make a separate peace with France at Vossem, and to promise to remain neutral for the future. The war continued : Louis fortified Nancy and occupied the imperial towns in Alsace. Turenne gained possession of Trier, The Cleve, and other places, and by order of Louvois Palatinate devastated the fruitful Palatinate with fire and Ravaged. sword so as to convert it into a desert. The Elector Palatine, seeing the ruining of his country from his castle at Heidelberg, challenged Turenne to single combat. But, stirred by the outrage, the emperor strengthened his Coalition army on the Rhine, commanded by Montecuculi, against the empire declared war against France, and France. even Spain took the side of the prince of Orange. Fortune now favoured the Dutch. Turenne was repulsed from Borne by Montecuculi, Conde was driven back from the frontiers of Holland, and England was compelled to make peace at West- minster by the energy of Ruyter and Tromp. Louis, supported only by Sweden and Savoy, was compelled to remain on the defensive, notwithstanding his conquest of Franche Comte. But disaster only stirred him to greater efforts. Collecting a larger army, he sent Turenne again across the Rhine, and the Palatinate was again devastated with barbaric cruelties. But the Great Elector was aroused to action by these enormities. Joining the imperial army, he forced Turenne back across the German river, so that Louis was compelled to urge the Swedes to advance from Pomerania and march into Brandenburg, so as to recall the elector to the defence of his own territories. This led to the world-famous battle of Fehrbellin, Feb beUin fought on June 18, 1675, just a hundred and forty years before the battle of Waterloo, in which the elector, with the help of Derflinger, completely defeated the Swedes and laid the foundations of the greatness of Prussia. Three weeks later, Turenne was killed by a chance shot at Sassbach, on July 7, 1675, and the French were compelled to recross the Rhine, avenging themselves by cruel devastations. William of Orange held his own with honour in the Nether- lands, but was worsted by Conde at Seneff in 1674. Ruyter was killed at Agosta in 1676, and the Spanish-Dutch fleet was burnt by French fireships in the harbour of Palermo. But, as England was preparing to exchange its neutral attitude into an offensive attitude, Louis thought it better to make peace, and a.d. 1664-1699] AUSTRIA AND THE TURKS 589 the treaty of Nymwegen was signed in 1678, by which Holland maintained her former position, but Spain lost Franche Comte and a number of barrier fortresses. The empire, which came into the arrangement in February Nvrnweeeii 1679, was obliged to surrender Freiburg and Hiiningen, the French retaining the right of keeping a garrison in Philippsburg. Brandenburg and Denmark had to continue the war against France and Sweden by themselves, and the elector refused to give up Pomerania, which he had conquered. But when he was defeated by the French at Minclen, suffered the invasion of his territories, and was deserted by the emperor, he was forced to conclude with Sweden the treaty of St. Germain- en-Laye in 1679, while Denmark made peace with France at Fontainebleau. The treaty of Nymwegen was a fresh starting- place for the ambition of Louis XIV. He established what were called " Chambers of reunion " in Metz, Breisach, Tournai, and Besancon, and claimed the possession of places which had been previously subject to the territories ceded to France by the treaty of Westphalia : so the empire lost not only the lands it then resigned, but everything which had before belonged to them, and Louis not only claimed them, but occupied them with his troops. In this manner he took possession not only of Lorraine, which was already in his power, but of the duchy of Luxemburg, the palatinate of Deux Ponts — called in German Zweibriicken — as well as Saarbruck, Veldenz, Spanheim, Mom- pelgard, and ten other imperial towns in Alsace, the despoiled princes making vain protestations. Worst of all, on September 30, 1681, he took treacherous posses- st 12U v>u° sion of Strasburg in a time of peace. He marched a number of French regiments up to its walls, and Louvois, at the head of 20,000 men, besides artillery, demanded its surrender. Members of the town council had previously been gained over by bribery, and the city which had been the principal bulwark against French aggression on the Rhine frontier was compelled to yield itself until it was recovered in the war of 1870. AUSTEIA AND THE TURKS A.D. 1664-1699. The emperor was prevented from resisting these violent pro- ceedings by the danger with which Vienna was threatened by the Turks. In 1683 the capital of Austria was besieged by an army of 280,000 Turks led by Kara Mustapha, who had marched through Hungary into Germany. The Turkish empire, which 59° A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1664-1699 had fixed its capital at Constantinople in 1453, was raised to great power by Suleiman II., who reigned from 1520 to 1566, whose empire extended from the Adriatic and Algiers to the other side of the Tigris, from the Carpathians, the Dniester, and the mouth of the Danube to southern Egypt and Arabia, and who had organised this motley mass of nationalities into a well-governed whole. After his death the power of the Turks declined, from the corruption of the seraglio life and the increasing influence of the Janissaries, a Christian bodyguard, who formed an independent body and dominated the government. Their sea power had been destroyed by Don John of Austria at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, and they had lost many fortresses in Hungary. It must be admitted with shame that Louis XIV. had en- couraged the attacks of the Turks against the house of Haps- Battle burg, but the defeat of the Turks by Montecuculi of St. at St. Gotthard on the Raab in 1664 was followed Gotthard. by a truce of twenty years. But when the Emperor Leopold I., under the influence of his minister Lobkowitz, endeavoured to destroy the ancient liberties of Hungary, un- . frocked 250 Protestant preachers, and sent them Hungary as s ^ aves to the Neapolitan galleys, Count Tbkoly raised the banner of insurrection, was supported by the French king, and, to defend himself against Austria, proceeded to place Hungary under the protection of the sultan, Mohammed IV., who marched upon Vienna and com- pelled the emperor to take refuge in Linz, and to make peace with France. Vienna appeared to be lost ; the inhabitants de- Siege and serted the houses ; and only 7000 citizens, assisted Relief of by 6000 mercenaries, remained to defend the Vienna. town. The garrison was commanded by Rudolf of Stahremberg, but he was unable to withstand the weight of the Moslem onslaught, when unexpectedly John Sobieski, the heroic king of Poland, came to the rescue, and, with the help of Max Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, and George III. of Saxony, set the bulwark of Christianity free from the assault of the unbelievers. In the following year, Kara Mustapha, as a punishment for his defeat, was put to death by the sultan. The war with the Turks continued for sixteen years longer, until it was put an end to for a time by the peace of Carlowitz „ , . , in 1699. During this war, Ofen, now called Turkish -r-* . . Reverses Buda, on the opposite side of the Danube to Pesth, which had been for 145 years in the pos- session of the Turks, was captured by the elector of Bavaria in a.d. 1682-1697] LOUIS XIV. 591 1686, and the battle of Mohacs, won by Charles of Lorraine in 1687, set the greater part of Hungary and Transylvania free from the Turkish yoke, although this was not regarded by the Hungarians as an unmixed benefit, because it led to a reign of terror against the Protestants, which culminated in the blood- stained tribunal of Eperies. Mohammed IV. was succeeded by Suleiman III., whose offers of peace were rejected. The peace of Carlowitz, of which we have already spoken, was eventually brought about by the glorious n e& ] Q °K victory of Prince Eugene of Savoy at Zenta, in 1697, and by it Transylvania and Slavonia came to Austria, and the Morea and Dalmatia to Venice, while Poland recovered the Ukraines and Podolia. LOUIS XIV. (continued), A.D. 1682-1697. Louis XIV., now at the height of his power, determined to establish a unity of creed in his dominions, and for this purpose persecuted not only the Protestants, T aiiic n«J but all who did not agree with his religious views. . , „, . In 1682, a national council was held, presided over by the eloquent preacher Bossuet, in which four articles were passed, which established the independence of the French church, but placed it entirely under the control of the sovereign. Pope Innocent XI. did his best to oppose this step, but he was bought off by the promise of Louis to put down the Jansenists and the Huguenots. The Jansenists owed their name and origin to Cornelius Jansen, ; , „ <• , 1 1 , t • tt Jansenists. who was professor of theology at Louvam. He defended the Augustinian doctrine of predestination against the semi-pelagianism of the French church. The Jansenists were given up by the pope to the vengeance of the Jesuits, although their pure and saintly life and their profound learning offered the best hope for the regeneration of the religion of the country. Their most distinguished teacher was Blaise Pascal, who occupieda foremost place as theologian, philosopher, and mathematician ; his Provincial ■ Fascal - Letters exhibit a model of grave and temperate theological controversy, while his Pensees are justly regarded as one of the foremost manuals of religious thought of any age or country. But the Jansenists were equally well known by the establishment of their school at Port Royal, a monastery not 592 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1682-1697 far from Paris, which, although it lasted but a few years and educated but a handful of pupils, remains as a high-water mark of intellectual and moral education. So long as ^ Louis was disputing with the pope, he favoured the Jansenists, but from the year 1660 he began to oppress them. The royal letter of 1673, declaring the crown to be the protector of all French churches, was resisted by the Jansenists, which led to their dissolution and the destruction of Port Royal. Louis was driven to the persecution of the Protestants by the influence of his confessor, Pere la Chaise, of Madame de Persecution Maintenon, with whom he had concluded a of the Pro- morganatic marriage, and of Louvois, who thought testants. it both a duty and a pleasure to put down the Huguenots. His persecutions gradually became more severe. Beo-innins; with the exile of their clerffv and the closing of their churches and schools, he proceeded to take away their children to be educated in the Catholic faith, and to deprive them of the right of possessing property, and of equal justice in the law courts, and ended by riding them down in the Cevennes by military raids called dragonnacles, and quartering soldiers upon them to force them to accept conversion. The Protestants sought safety in emigration, and Louis, being given to under- stand that his measures had been successful, and that only a Edict of ^ ew Protestants were left, in 1685 revoked the Nantes Edict of Nantes, by which Henry IV. had granted Revoked. freedom of religious worship, and drove 700,000 men out of the country, among them the most able and indus- trious which the kingdom possessed. What was a loss to France was a gain to other countries, but the persecution went on, and continued even to the early years of the next century, when the descendants of the Walclenses, under the name of Camisards, led by Cavalier, withstood the French monarchy, until its power to persecute waned with its decline. The ambitious self-assertion of Louis XIV. led to an alli- ance for its repression between Brandenburg, Sweden, and the Netherlands, and to the League of Augsburg, Th^d W formed for the defence of the empire between the emperor, Bavaria, and Spain, which was afterwards joined by Saxony and Savoy. This produced a third war, begun by Louvois, in which, without any formal declara- tion of war, the ecclesiastical principalities of Cologne and Trier were forcibly occupied, Franconia and Swabia invaded, and the unhappy Palatinate exposed to another devastation, a.d. 1660-881 ENGLAND 593 more severe than those which had preceded it, which has stamped those who conceived and executed it with undying infamy. Melac, who carried out this monstrous proceeding, destroyed twelve hundred towns and villages, amongst them Heidelberg, Mannheim, Worms, and Spires. Mainz was occu- pied by a French garrison. The war was marked by the victories of the French at Fleurus in 1690 and Steinkerken in 1691, and by the defeat of the French fleet by England at the battle of La Hogue. Louis had now not only to suffer the effects of exhaustion in his own country, but to contend against Spain in the Pyrenees and against Savoy in the Alps, and began to think about reducing the number of his enemies by the conclusion of a separate peace with each. Luxembourg defeated William III., who was accustomed to defeat, at Neerwinden in 1693, and Catinat routed the armies of the duke of Savoy in 1696, which led to the signing of a separate peace with him at Turin. At length the peace of Byswyk was signed in 1697, by which France t?v Ir retained Franche Comte, Alsace, and Strasburg, but surrendered its other conquests, giving Lorraine back to its duke, Deux Ponts to Sweden, Mompelgard to Wiu-temberg, Freiburg, Breisach, and Kehl to the empire, and which re- cognised William III. as the lawful king of England, thus deserting the cause of the Stuarts. A clause in the treaty of Byswyk gave great trouble afterwards, which provided that the Catholic religion should remain side by side with the Protestant in those places into which it had been fairly introduced by the French. This was found to be the case in 1492 places, the majority of which were in the Palatinate. The height of the power of Louis XIY. was marked by the treaty of Kymwegen : the treaty of Byswyk marks its decline. The resources of France could no longer suffice for the strain placed upon it. Louis lost his prestige, and found himself surrounded by a new society with new ideas and aspirations. But he could not bend his spirit to meet the new circumstances which had arisen, and his character showed itself more admirable in adversity than it had been in prosperity. ENGLAND, A.D. 1660-1688. We must now return to the affairs of England. Although the court of Charles II. was stained by vice and dissipation, it must not be supposed that he had no serious ends in govern- 2? 594 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1660 to ment. He determined to keep his throne at all hazards, and not to suffer the fate of his father. He also could not help being influenced by the current of the time, Charles II which set towards the establishment of a despotic monarchy. He desired to make England a Catholic country, and with this object he tried to win over the Non- conformists by the Declaration of Indulgence, but he also tried to make England the greatest commercial nation in the world, and therefore did his best to destroy her most powerful rival, the Dutch republic. Being, by birth and education, half a Frenchman, he naturally adhered closely to the French alliance, but in this he was forced to be subordinate to the powerful monarch who then controlled France, and there is little doubt that, but for the Revolution of 1688, England would have become a dependency of that country. The reign of Charles II. lasted for twenty -five years (1660- 1685), and may be divided into five sections. The first of these comprises the ministry of Clarendon (1660-1667), the second the Cabal ministry and the Catholic plot (1667-1673), the third the ministry of Danby (1673-1679) , the fourth the Exclusion Bill struggle (1679-1681), and the last, the Tory reaction and the dependence on France. During Clarendon's ministry, Charles married Catherine of Portugal, thus making a close alliance with a Catholic country and paving the way for the establishment of Catholicism ; he also made an alliance with France against Spain, assisting the downfall of Spain and the aggrandisement of France. Anglicanism was established in Thg England by a series of laws known as the Claren- Clarendon don Code, comprising the Corporation Act, compel- Code. ling a ll members of corporations to receive Holy Communion at least once a year, according to the rite of the church of England ; the Act of Uniformity, which made the use of the revised Prayer Book compulsory upon all clergymen, and compelled all clergymen, university teachers, schoolmasters, and tutors to take the oath prescribed by the Corporation Act ; the Conventicle Act, which forbade all meetings for worship excepting those of the established church ; and the Five Mile Act, which forbade all Nonconformist ministers to teach or to live within five miles of a corporate town unless they would make certain declarations. In 1665, Charles went to war with the Dutch, ungratefully, because they had at first supported him in his exile. The principal cause was rivalry in trade, but Holland was, at this ENGLAND 595 time, divided into two parties — the party of Orange, now represented by Charles the Second's nephew, William III., and the party of the rich merchants, headed by de Witt. It was always the policy of England to support the Orange party and of France to oppose it. The war was marked ^j. u c by the battle of Lowestoft on June 3, 1665, in which the Dutch, under Tromp, were defeated, the battle of the Downs, in which Euyter and Tromp fought without definite result against Monk, and a battle off the coast of Norfolk on August 4, in which Ruyter was defeated by Monk. In 1666, Louis XIV., in accordance with hereditary policy, assisted the Dutch and declared war against England. In these two years, 1665 to 1666, occurred the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, which will ever be remark- able in English history. Charles, in deep distress, made a secret treaty with Louis, in which Louis promised to desert his allies in return for the engagement that Charles would not interfere with the designs of Louis against the Spanish Nether- lands. England received a final blow by the Dutch sailing up the Medway and destroying the English shipping, mark- ing the lowest degradation of the reign. The war was ended by the peace of Breda, signed in July. It con- sisted of two parts. By a treaty with Holland, £reda° both parties kept their conquests, England re- taining New York and Holland Surinam : also the Navigation Act was relaxed, and Dutch vessels were allowed to carry Dutch, German, and Flemish goods into English ports. By a separate treaty England and France made a few territorial adjustments. The most important result of the peace was that it enabled Louis to make war upon Spain, and to do what he liked with the Spanish Netherlands. Clarendon was now driven from office, and exiled on the charge of malversation, but his real enemies were the king, who disliked his strictness in morals and religion, and the Nonconformists, who bitterly resented the Clarendon Code. The nation was also angry with him because of the loss of Dunkirk, and the insult inflicted in the Medway. He never returned, and died in exile at Rouen. The government of Clarendon was succeeded by that of the Cabal, a title taken from the initials of the five members who composed it, Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. It left a disastrous name in English history. It was not a cabinet, because it did not act together, and the king was accustomed to consult 596 A GENERAL HISTORY [a. d. i 660 to different members of it at different times. During the six years of its power, its most prominent actions were the Triple Alliance, the treaty of Dover, and the second Dutch war. The Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden was the work of Sir William Temple and de Witt. It was directed against the overweening power of France, and the result was the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, between France and Spain, by which Louis gained a strong northern frontier, at the expense of the Spanish Netherlands. In January 1669, Charles declared to Clifford and other leading Catholics that he was himself a Catholic, and discussed with them the best means of restoring England to that religion. A second treaty be- Treaty of tween Louis and Charles was signed at Dover on June 1, 1670, with the assistance of Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, the daughter of Charles I. It was ar- ranged that Charles was to desert the Triple Alliance and to assist Louis against the Dutch, receiving ■£ 150,000 at once and £225,000 a year so long as the war continued, and at the close of the war England was to acquire Walcheren, Sluys, and Cadsand. It was also promised that Charles should de- clare himself a Catholic as soon as circumstances should admit of it. War, however, was not declared against Holland till 1672, and then on a frivolous pretence. But, before the war began, a second Declaration of Indulgence was issued by the king, which reversed the policy of Clarendon and suspended laws against Roman Catholics and Nonconformists. Charles cared nothing about the Nonconformists, but he could not assist the Roman Catholics without helping them. In the second Dutch war, the Dutch defeated the DutchWar French ancl English fleets in Southwolcl Bay, but they were hampered by the French invasion of their country, which we have already narrated, and they cut their dykes to defend themselves. De Witt was murdered as being favourable to the French, and William of Orange was formally recognised as statholder. Parliament was en- tirely opposed to the new policy of the king. It forced him to recall the Declaration of Indulgence and to The Test p agg a rp es) . ^ c ^ wn i cn compelled all who held office under the crown to receive Holy Com- munion according to the Anglican rite, and to make a de- claration against tran substantiation. The result of this was that James, duke of York, the king's brother, had to resign his post of admiral and Clifford his post of treasurer. a.d. 1688] ENGLAND 597 In 1673 the earl of Danby was made treasurer in place of Clifford, and Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, who was known to be a staunch Protestant, succeeded the duke of York as high admiral. Charles succeeded in dis- j3 n . J. s missing Shaftesbury, who had supported the Test Act, and became henceforward a determined enemy of the Roman Catholic policy of the king. Another battle with the Dutch off the Texel was by no means favourable to the English, and in 1674 Parliament made an attack upon the remaining members of the Cabal, Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Arlington. The Dutch war now came to an end by the treaty of London, by which Holland agreed to recognise f/^d the supremacy of England upon the seas north of Cape Finisterre, paid 800,000 crowns, and gave to England her conquests outside Europe, while Charles promised not to assist the enemies of the Dutch. In the following year, 1675, Danby introduced into the upper house what is known as the Non- Resistance Test Bill, by which all members of either house of Parliament were to be obliged to take an oath to attempt no alteration either in church or state. The bill was meant to exclude Roman Catholics from the House of Lords and Presby- terians from the House of Commons, but it created a great out- burst of public feeling, and never reached the lower house. In this and in the four following years secret treaties were made between Charles and Louis XlY., which practically gave Louis control of the foreign policy of England in return for subsidies of which the king stood in need ; but in 1677 William of Orange married Mary, daughter of the duke of York, which was popular in England, and put an end to any feeling of hostility between England and Holland. In 1678 the peace of Nymwegen was signed, which forms the high-water mark of the power of the French king, but Louis, enraged with the marriage between William of Orange and Mary, revealed to the Commons the secret treaty countersigned by Danby, who was thereupon impeached. The third Parliament of Charles II. met in 1679. The im- peachment of Danby was continued, which fixed the doctrine of ministerial responsibility, and an Exclusion Bill was brought forward by the earl of Shaftesbury to prevent the -phe succession of the duke of York, who was a Roman Exclusion Catholic, to the throne. Parliament was pro- Bill, rogued, and then dissolved to prevent the passing of the Ex- clusion Bill, and a fourth Parliament was elected, but pro- rogued before it met. The year 1679 is, however, remarkable 598 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. i860 to for the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act, considered as the palladium of the constitution, by which arrested persons must be brought to speedy trial and not kept in prison by the crown in an arbitrary manner, and in 1680 the names of Whig and Tory came into existence for the first time. When the king would not allow his fourth Parliament to meet, Shaftesbury arranged for petitions to the king calling for its meeting, while his opponents addressed the sovereign, expressing their abhor- rence that the king should be forced to summon Parliament against his will. The two parties were called Petitioners and Abhorrers, but, these names being inconvenient, Tories ^ ^ ie Abhorrers were called Tories, a condensation of the word Abhorrers, taken from the appellation of the wild Irish, and the Petitioners were called Whigs, a corruption of Whigamore, a name given to the Scotch Cove- nanters. Parliament met, and the Exclusion Bill was passed in the Commons, but rejected in the upper house by the influence of Halifax. In 1681 the fifth Parliament met at Oxford. The Whigs were so alarmed at the violence of their opponents that they went to the house armed, and there seemed to be a danger of civil war. The Exclusion Bill was again introduced, but, before it could be passed, Parliament was dissolved. The last four years of Charles's reign formed a period of reaction. Shaftesbury, impeached for high treason, was Last Years acquitted, but had to retire to Holland, dying of Charles there in 1683. The country was, however, by no II- means at rest. In 1683, the Rye House Plot was formed for the murder of Charles II. and the duke of York on their return from Newmarket. The leaders of the Whigs were tried for their supposed share in this conspiracy, and Lord William Russell was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields on July 21, while Algernon Sidney suffered the same fate on December 8. But Parliament was never summoned. On Feb- ruary 16, 1685, Charles II. died at the age of fifty -five, sur- rounded by all his children except his favourite son, the duke of Monmouth. With characteristic geniality and indifference, he apologised for being so long in dying, and when the queen, who was too ill to attend, asked for his forgiveness, he replied, " Poor woman, she asks for my forgiveness ; I ask for hers with all my heart." He was not a great king or a good sovereign, but his picturesque and original character has secured him a soft place in the hearts of Englishmen. a.d. 1688] ENGLAND 599 The reign of James II. lasted for only three years, from 1685 to 1688. He began by levying taxes without the authority of Parliament. When Parliament met, it granted the king a revenue of =£1,900,000, but refused to repeal the Test Act. His accession was marked by the insurrections of Argyle in Scotland and Monmouth in the west of England. Both were crushed and punished by death. Monmouth was defeated at the battle of Sedgemoor, and James sternly refused to pardon his nephew, who crawled before him for pardon. The west was pacified by R ^'fy s the efforts of sanguinary soldiers, called " Kirke's Lambs," and by the " Bloody Assize," held there by Judge Jeffries. The power of James was rather strengthened than weakened by these futile efforts to overthrow it. But any advantage accruing to his religion was destroyed by Louis XIV.'s revoking the Edict of Nantes, which drove the Protes- tants out of France, and caused alarm throughout Protestant Europe. James, however, persisted in violating the Test Act by the appointment of Roman Catholics, and, when Halifax and Parliament protested, the one was dismissed from office and the other was prorogued. The judges now decided that the king had the power of dispensing with the laws, and, acting on this decision, James appointed an ecclesiastical com- mission with the object of Romanising the church and the universities. A camp was established at Hounslow to over- awe the city of London, and Massey, a Roman Catholic, was made dean of Christchurch, Oxford. In 1687, the king pro- mulgated a Declaration of Indulgence, suspending ^g j) e . all laws against both Roman Catholics and claration of Dissenters. He took the illegal step of nominat- Indulgence, ing a Roman Catholic as president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and expelled the fellows for refusing to elect his second nominee. Parliament was now dissolved. In 1688, a new edition of the Declaration of Indulgence, especially favourable to Dissenters, was ordered to be read in churches, but seven bishops petitioned against it, whose names should be held in honour. They were Bancroft of Canterbury, Ken of Bath JJ^oT* 11 and Wells, White of Peterborough, Lloyd of St. Asaph, Trelawney of Bristol, Lake of Chichester, and Turner of Ely. The bishops were tried and acquitted amidst national rejoicings. It became evident that further toleration of his rule was impossible, and an invitation was sent to the prince of Orange to assume the government, and was signed by a 6oo A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1660-1688 number of leading noblemen, including Devonshire, Shrewsbury, and Danby. William accepted it with little hesitation. On November 5, he landed at Torbay, and on December 23 James The f- e( l fi'om Whitehall, and after some difficulty Revolution reached the court of Louis XIV. It was hard of 1688. to legalise what had been done. A Convention Parliament was summoned, which declared that the throne was vacant for two reasons, — one that James had violated the original contract between king and people and the fundamental laws of the kingdom, — the other, that, by his flight from the kingdom, he had abdicated the crown. The crown was offered to William and Mary, the daughter of James, as joint sovereigns, with the condition that they accepted a document called the Declaration of Rights. This declaration of the " true, ancient, and indubitable rights of the people of this realm " was after- wards passed as a Bill of Rights in William's first Parliament. Thus fell James II., and with him the house of Stuart. He had acquired a reputation for courage and ability in his office as high admiral, but he was stern, unbend- of James 1 ]! * n §' anc ^ C1 ' ue ^- He came to the throne at the time of a Royalist reaction, and he could have kept it if he could have been wise. But he overrated, like Charles X. of France, the strength of this sentiment, and he underrated the devotion of English people to Protestantism and the law. Nor did he care to seek for popular support ; he was a thorough Stuart in his conception of the royal prerogative. He had done much for the army, as he had for the fleet, but he had offended it by the appointment of Roman Catholic officers and by bringing over Irish soldiers. So, when the church led the revolt against him, he could not depend on the army, and had to submit to the invader. Charles I. was the best of the Stuart kings, but, whatever may have been his personal merits, it is certain that the ideas of government which were ingrained in the minds of his race would have been impossible to reconcile with the liberties of England, and the character and lives of the later Stuarts give us great cause to be thankful that they did not remain longer on the throne. CHAPTER VII. THE WAR OF THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, A.D. 1688-1714— ENGLAND, A.D. 1689-1714. After the peace of Ryswyk, Louis XIV. was involved in new complications by the war of the Spanish Succession. Spain, with all her enormous possessions in the old and the new world, was to fall into the hands of a new dynasty by the extinction of the Hapsburg line in the person . st>ain of Charles II. He was weak in mind and body, and had no children, and the break up of the mighty monarchy, which could not long be delayed, caused great excitement throughout the world. Should it be partitioned — and, if so, in what manner ? — should it remain in its entirety, and, if so, to whose lot should it fall? The question of legal succession was very complicated. The persons mainly to be considered were three in number — Louis XIV., who had married Maria Theresa, the elder sister of Charles II., but at his marriage had renounced all claim to the Spanish inheritance ; the Emperor Leopold I., who had married Margaret Theresa, the younger sister of Charles II., but had made no such renunciation, and was, moreover, the son of another Spanish princess ; and Joseph Ferdinand, the son of Max Emanuel, elector of Bavaria, and grandson of Margaret Theresa and Leopold. Attempts were made to anticipate the danger, and a treaty of partition was made which selected Joseph, who did not be- 7* partition long to one of the great houses of Europe. How- ever, in 1699, the poor child died of smallpox at Brussels, probably the victim of injudicious medical treatment, and the confusion was worse confounded. William III. and Louis XIV. made a second partition treaty, by which the crown of Spain was to go to Leopold's son, the Archduke Charles, but France was to receive important Spanish possessions. q} ? IT Leopold, however, never recognised the treaty. The Spaniards, too, were naturally strongly opposed to partition, and Charles II. shared their views. He therefore made a will, 6oi 602 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1688 to leaving the whole of the Spanish monarchy to Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV., thinking that the French king would be more able to preserve the integrity of all the Spains than the emperor. Charles died on November 9, 1700, and Louis, well knowing that he would have to encounter a serious war, chose the post of honour, and determined to accept the inheritance. He sent the young man of eighteen across the pJ?5 BSi v n ° f Pyrenees, under the title of Philip V., with a French army to help him, and he was permitted by Max Emanuel, who was viceroy of the Netherlands, to occupy some barrier fortresses on the French frontier. It seemed at first as if this event would pass without notice, but William III. and Heinsius, grand pensionary of Holland, set themselves to stir up war against the sovereign jLiie trrana W O m they both detested, and succeeded in doing so, forming, with the assistance of Prussia and Hanover, the so-called Grand Alliance, which was afterwards joined by the empire, and by Portugal and Spain, which had in the beginning supported France. The war of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1701 to 1714, never need have taken place. It ended in the recognition of Philip V., after a large expenditure of blood and treasure, and the only results of it were the victories of Marlborough, and the addition of a name to the roll of distinguished Englishmen whose greatness was the cause of misery during his life, and has been disputed since his death. England would probably not have joined in the war had not Louis committed the chivalrous but unwise action of recognising the son of James II. as James III., king of England. War is almost universally in history the product of passion rather than of reason, and there are few wars which could not have been prevented, the war of the Spanish Succession being certainly not amongst them. The war began by Leopold's sending troops into Italy, and, the French having occupied the passes of the Alps, Prince Eugene Prince °f Savoy, one of the purest and most faultless Eugene heroes who appear in history, was sent to turn in Italy. them out. Crossing the mountains which lie to the east of the lake of Garda, making new roads across the Alps with incredible difficulty, he descended upon Verona, defeated Catinat at the battle of Carpi, and then beat Villeroi at Chiari, and took him prisoner at Cremona. But he was recalled to Vienna to make arrangements for prosecuting the war with vigour, and his conquests were recovered by Vendome. A a.d. 17141 WAR OF SPANISH SUCCESSION 603 French army marched into Belgium, and, William III. dying suddenly in 1702, Louis hoped that the war might come to an end ; but it was continued by his successor, Anne, who was assisted by the mighty duke of Marlborough, w^v* 0f IT T one of the greatest generals the world has ever seen, the most successful of diplomatists, and the most magnani- mous of men. In this miserable struggle, which never should have taken place, three characters shine with commanding lustre, Marlborough, Louis XIV., and Eugene of Savoy. Yillars now crossed the Rhine, and joined his forces with those of the elector of Bavaria, who now declared himself in favour of France. To check this combination, Marlborough marched from the Nether- lands, and Eugene from Italy, to meet at Heilbronn on the Neckar. Their object was to detach the elector from the French alliance, but this was prevented by his receiving reinforcements from France, which crossed the Rhine under Tallard. On August 13, 1704, was fought the battle of Blenheim, called in Germany Hb'chstadt, in which the French ^f^ ° f were entirely defeated. Marlborough displayed in this battle the special quality which distinguished him amongst all great generals, that of seeing with an eagle eye the crisis of the battle while it is still proceeding, and changing his plans to meet it. Observing that a gap was opening between the two bodies of the French, he gave up his plan of storming Blenheim, and drove a wedge between them, causing absolute destruction and taking Tallard prisoner, with the help of Eugene, who had been sent round to attack the French left flank. Numbers of French horsemen were drowned in the Danube, and Marlborough wrote to Queen Anne, " Mr. Tallard is in my coach." In the beginning of 1705, Joseph I. succeeded Leopold I. as emperor, and the Austrians occupied Bavaria. They were, however, hated by the inhabitants, and were attacked in the rear by the Hungarians under Rakocszy. The Archduke Charles, the other claimant to the throne of Spain, now landed in Portugal, supported by the English, and advanced into Spain. Gibraltar and Barcelona French were taken, the one by Rooke, the other by Reverses Peterborough. Catalonia, Navarre, Aragon, and ia Spain. Valencia declared for "Charles III.," so that Philip was forced to leave Madrid. Louis now made proposals for peace, which were refused, although Vendome had conquered nearly the whole of Savoy. Villeroi was therefore sent to the Netherlands, with orders to win a great battle, but to wait until he had 604 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1688 to received reinforcements from the Rhine. Too impatient to delay, he suffered a severe defeat in 1706 in the battle of Ramillies, where Marlborough exhibited a similar Ramillies g en ius to that which had won him the great victory of Blenheim. Seeing the weak point of the enemy's defence, he attacked it with an overwhelming force, mainly of Dutch cavalry, scattered the French in all directions, and broke them in their retreat by an onslaught from the high ground in the north, where he had skilfully placed a large body of his men. The result surpassed even Marlborough's expecta- tions. Brabant, Flanders, and a portion of Hainault declared for Charles III. In the same year Eugene, supported by the Prussians under Leopold of Dessau, won the great Turin ° victory of Turin, and drove the French out of Lombardy. This led to an armistice, but in the following year Naples was occupied by the Austrian Field- marshal Daun. Events now became a little more favourable to the French. Philip received reinforcements from his grandfather, which enabled him to win the battle of Almanza and Almanza ^° wres ^ Aragon and Valencia from his rival. Villars also invaded Swabia and Franconia, and was repulsed with difficulty ; while in Flanders an army com- manded by the duke of Burgundy recovered Ghent and Bruges. But the face of things was changed when Marlborough and Eugene defeated Burgundy and Vendome at Oudenarde Oudenarde, the result of which was not only the recapture of Ghent and Bruges, but the conquest of Lille, the fortifications of which were a masterpiece of Vauban's art and had been declared impregnable. The fall of Lille seemed to open the door to a march on T° U ms° GrS I >ai 'i s - Louis made serious efforts for peace, but the English government was so determined upon his abasement that they insisted upon the condition that he should turn his arms against his own grandson, which, with proper dignity and self-respect, he magnanimously refused to do. The war went on, and its continuance is laid without the slightest foundation to the ambition of Marl- Battle of borough. His noble nature would have made any sacrifices for peace, if the politicians had allowed it. Villars fought the battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest of the war, in which Marlborough and Eugene, with great diffi- culty, remained the conquerors. Louis was so humiliated that he a.d. 1714 WAR OF SPANISH SUCCESSION 605 offered to restore Strasburg to Germany and to pay as subsidy a million francs a month towards the war against his grandson. This, however, the allies refused to accept. Even worse disasters happened. Philip was beaten in Spain in the battle of Saragossa, Charles entered Madrid in triumph on September 23, 1710, and Louis began to fear the dismemberment of France. Louis was saved from destruction by the fall of Marlborough, caused by the unwise conduct of his wife, who was devoted to him and to her sovereign Anne, but could -pall of not control her violent temper, and by the Marl- intrigues of Harley and St. John, the worst borough, ministers • who ever managed the affairs of England. They detested Marlborough, from whom they had received great benefits. St. John did not shrink from falsehood when it served his purpose: Harley actually preferred falsehood to truth. Marlborough was deprived of his command, and, as Joseph I. had died of measles in April 1711, and his brother Charles (who had been driven from Madrid, defeated by Yendome in the battle of Villaviciosa in December 1710, and possessed little in Spain beyond the city of Barcelona and the fortress of Montjuich) was elected emperor Charles VI. in December 1711, England and Holland deter- Elected mined to put an end to the war, which now Emperor, had no object. It was worse to place the emperor on the throne of Spain, and revive the empire of Charles V., than to leave it, despoiled of Italy and the Netherlands, to a scion of France. So peace was signed at Utrecht on April 11, 1711. Philip V. was recognised as king of Spain and the Indies, on the condition that the two crowns were never united. But the close connection between France and Spain continued, with few interruptions, to be an important factor in European diplo- macy, and the conduct of Napoleon towards Spain, which has been so much abused, was only a continuation of this policy : Napoleon had been summoned by the will of the French people to the throne of the Bourbons ; and it was only natiuul that a scion of his family should replace upon the throne of Spain a member of a hostile family which popular indignation had driven from France. The treaty of Utrecht has been abused by English historians on the ground that its terms were humiliating to ■ j The Tresitv England. This charge cannot be substantiated, futrecht. but nothing could be more disgraceful to this country than the manner of its conclusion. It was negotiated 606 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1688-1714 secretly, chiefly with the assistance of Matthew Prior, by Hai'ley and St. John, without the knowledge of the Dutch, to whom they declared falsely that no negotiations were in progress. These two ministers knew that they had been guilty of treason, and their position depended entirely upon the friend- ship of Anne and the weakness of her character. If she died before peace was concluded, their fall was inevitable, and therefore Louis had them in his power. Louis was a consum- mate diplomatist, and as he knew that Anne was in miserable health, and that the English ministers were obliged to make peace to save their heads, he exacted terms which no honest or patriotic ministry would have accepted. Yet England obtained Gibraltar and Minorca, Newfoundland (without, how- ever, settling the question of the fisheries, which remained an open sore till our own day), Nova Scotia, also called Acadia, Hudson Bay, and the Assiento — i.e. the monopoly for thirty years, in the Spanish colonies, of the African slave-trade, which was not yet condemned by the conscience of Europe. Holland was allowed to garrison eight baiTier fortresses, a great humiliation for France. The duke of Savoy received Sicily with the title of king, and seven years afterwards exchanged it for Sardinia : he was also made heir to the crown of Spain, if the Bourbon dynasty came to an end, and his house has since, with its usual good fortune, acquired the more valuable crown of Italy. Prussia, surrendering the possession of Orange, acquired, besides some places in Guelders, the sovereignty of Neufchatel and Valengin, and the recognition of the royal title. The Protestant succession was secured to England, and, in consequence of this, after the death of Anne, which followed in the next year, the elector of Hanover, the great-grandson of James I., became king of England under the title of George I., and all attempts of the Stuarts to regain their rightful throne were successfully resisted. The new emperor, Charles VI., continued the war with France, but after being defeated at Denain, and having lost Landau and Freiburg, made, in 1714, the peace Radstadt °^ Ra-dstadt, by which he received the Spanish Netherlands, with the addition of Tournay, as well as Naples, Milan, Mantua, and Sardinia, the last to be exchanged a few years later for Sicily. The electors of Bavaria and Cologne were restored to their rank and their possessions. The peace was also extended to the empire, which was com- pelled to surrender Landau, but received Friburg, Old Breisach, a.d. 1689-1714] ENGLAND 607 and Kehl. Louis XIV. died in 1715, a year after the con- clusion of this peace, having reigned for seventy-two years. He had borne his adversities with singular dignity and sweetness, hardly tried as he was by the j. -^f v numerous deaths in his family, including that of his son the dauphin, and his grandson the duke of Burgundy, so that his crown came to his great-grandson, a child of five years old, who ascended the throne as Louis XV., and whose weak health made the prospect of a war of the French succession for many years a dominating factor in European politics. Louis' death was received with joy by an ungrateful country, and his corpse had to be carried to St. Denis by cross roads, and did not even then escape the jeers and insults of the crowd. ENGLAND, A.D. 1689-1714. In these pages we have already narrated a considerable portion of the reigns of William III. and Anne, but some gaps remain to be filled up. William was aCalvinistic Protestant, and his wife Mary was an Anglican, 1 iam so that neither was a Roman Catholic or inclined to the Roman Catholic religion. William's characteristic virtues were patience, courage, and magnanimity, but he was cold, reserved, and a Dutchman, and he never became popular in England, nor did he understand or love the English character. His reign of thirteen years was divided into two sections, the first of which, lasting eight years, was occupied by the war of the Grand Alliance against Louis XIY., closed by the peace of Ryswyk, and the next five years by the preparation for the war of the Spanish Succession. His first ministers were Danby, afterwards marquis of Carmarthen, who was president of the council ; Halifax, a " Trimmer," who sat on the fence in politics, keeper of the privy seal ; Nottingham, a Tory, who was secretary of state ; Shrewsbury, who was a Whig. Besides these must be reckoned Godolphin, who was a lord of the treasury. William was his own foreign minister, and was in intimate communica- tion with Heinsius, grand pensionary of Holland. The first act of William's reign was to settle the position of the crown on a new basis, so as to avoid the disputes which had occasioned troubles during the rule of the Constitu- Stuarts. The revenue was fixed at £1,200,000 tional a year, to be increased in time of war ; a part of Changes, this, called the Civil List, was set apart for the support of the 608 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1689 to royal household and the payment of civil officers and pensions. An Appropriation Act, passed every session, prevented public money from being used for any other purpose than that for which it was granted. All holders of offices in church and state were ordered to take an oath of allegiance to William and Mary ; those who refused, called 1ST on- Jurors, were chiefly clergymen, headed by Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. By the Bill of Rights, as we shall see presently, a standing army was declared illegal ; but a Mutiny Act passed every year, legalising courts martial, recognised and provided for the discipline of such a force. A Toleration Act relieved persons who had taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy from being fined for non-attendance at church, thus giving relief to Protestant Nonconformists but not to Roman Catholics. Besides this an act of Parliament was passed which turned into a statute the Declaration of Rights, accepted by William before he was allowed to receive the Crown, which is known as the Bill of Rights and is a corner-stone of the _. e .. 1 ° liberties of England. This important statute first recounted the illegal acts of James II. and asserted the vacancy of the throne owing to his abdication. It then declared the " true, ancient, and indubitable rights of the people of this realm." Certain things were declared illegal — the power of suspending laws without the consent of Parliament, the dispensing power as exercised by the two last kings, the court of Ecclesiastical Commission and other similar tribunals, the levying of money or the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace without the consent of Parliament. Besides this it was enacted that Protestant subjects might have arms, that elections of members of Parliament must be free, that ex- cessive fines and cruel punishment must not be imposed, that bail should be reasonable in amount, that jurors should be duly impanelled, that no estates could be forfeited except on the conviction of an offence, and that parliaments should be held frequently. Besides this, the settlement of the succession to the throne was determined, Papists being declared incapable of succeeding. A similar measure, entitled the Claim of Rights, was passed by the Scotch Parliament, and the Highlanders were disbanded after the death of their leader Dundee. James did not surrender his claim to Ireland, but landed at Kinsale, and held a Parliament in Dublin. He was, however, defeated at Newton Butler, and the siege of Londonderry, which he commenced, was raised by William's general, Kirke, a.d. 1714] ENGLAND 609 on July 1, 1689. Next year James was entirely defeated by William in person at the battle of the Boyne, and fled to France. In England Parliamentwas dissolved, and, a second being elected with a Tory majority, an Act of ?li B Grace was passed pardoning all political offenders. In 1691 the pacification of Ireland was completed, Ginkel, a Dutchman, afterwards earl of Athlone, being William's principal general, and those of James being St. Ruth, Tyrconnel, and Sarsfield. This settlement was effected by the capitulation of Limerick, by which all Irish officers and soldiers who wished to leave Ireland were to be taken to Treaty of France in English ships. Ten thousand accepted this offer, and formed an Irish brigade under the king of France. Certain concessions were made to Irish Catholics by William, but in 1692 severe laws were passed by the Irish Parliament against them, and thus the treaty of Limerick was violated. The reign of William was marked by domestic measures of great importance — the establishment of a National Debt in 1693, and of the Bank of England in 1694; the third Triennial Act in 1694, making three years the Domestic maximum period for the duration as well as the omission of Parliament, whereas the second, act, in 1664, had affected only omission ; and the abolition of the censorship of the press in 1695. His second Parliament was dissolved in the same year, and a third was elected, in which the Whigs had a majority. This Parliament reformed the law of treason, enacting that two witnesses were necessary for indictment on any charge of this nature. The Protestant Association was formed for the protection of William's life and the maintenance of the Pro- testant succession, a new coinage was issued under the direction of Sir Isaac Newton ; and a penal Act was passed excluding Roman Catholics from the Irish Parliament. Queen Mary had died in 1694, leaving William sole sovereign, and in 1697 four treaties were signed at Ryswyk, one between France and England, one between France and Holland, and two more between France and Spain and France and Germany respectively. The war of the Grand Alliance came to an end, having secured England from the danger of invasion, and established her as the chief bulwark against French aggression. The war of the Spanish Succession, which we have already related, followed, and the years between 1698 and 1702 were occupied in efforts to prevent its taking place, and in prepara- 2 Q 610 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1689 to tions for it, when it became inevitable. On October 11, 1698, the first partition treaty was signed between England, Holland, William and anc ^ Fiance, by which Spain, the Indies, and the the French Netherlands were to go to the electoral prince of War. Bavaria, Guipnzcoa and the two Sicilies to the dauphin, and Milan to the Archduke Charles. This treaty was signed by William without the knowledge of his ministers. In the same year a fourth Parliament met, in which the " country party " was formed to act in opposition to the crown. It voted for the reduction of the army, upon which William threatened to leave England. The chief object of his life was the restriction of the power of France, and he regarded the crown of England merely as a means to that end. In the following year his Dutch guards were disbanded. In January of this year the electoral prince died, and a second partition treaty was signed on March 25, 1700, by which Spain, the Indies, and the Netherlands went to Archduke Charles, and Milan was to be given to France, to be exchanged eventually for Lorraine. At the close of this year, Charles II. of Spain died, which led to the results previously narrated. In 1701 a fifth Parliament met, with a Tory majority — much to the disgust of William, who greatly preferred the Whigs. This Parliament passed the famous Act of Settle- The Act of me nt, which was partly a succession act — placing the duchess-electress Sophia of Hanover (daughter of the lovely queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth, sister of Charles I.) and her heirs, if Protestants, next after James II. 's daughter Anne in the succession to William, — and partly a vote of cen- sure on William himself in the form of clauses forbidding the Hanoverian sovereigns to act as he had done. Thus they were to join the church of England, to be guided by the whole privy council — not by a secret cabinet, an individual minister, or their own ideas — to receive the permission of Parliament before leaving the country or involving it in a war to protect their foreign possessions ; they were to give no offices, no places in council or Parliament, and no lands to foreigners, and to have none of their officials or pensioners sitting in the Commons ; while judges were to hold office " during good behaviour," not at the mere pleasure of the crown, and a royal pardon was to be no bar to an impeachment. Some of these clauses were later repealed, and others modified, but enough remained in force to restrict the power of the crown considerably. This Parliament also impeached the Whig leaders, Somers, Portland, Orford, a.d. 1714] ENGLAND 611 and Montague for the part which they had taken in the treaties of partition, and when a document called the Kentish Petition, in support of William's policy, was presented to Parliament, the five men who brought it were imprisoned by the Commons. The Grand Alliance was now formed, chiefly by the efforts of William and Heinsius, for the regaining of the barrier towns for Holland, and of Milan for Austria. England was reluctant to join, but was persuaded to do so when Louis, on the death of James, recognised the pretender as King James III. of England. Parliament was then dissolved, and the sixth Parliament was elected with a small Whig majority. This took the side of William, and passed an act ordering all official persons to renounce the Pretender. But in 1702, William III. died of an accident, and political questions entered on a new phase. Queen Anne, who succeeded, was a good woman and very popular, largely from her attachment to the Church of England. She was the last sovereign to preside habitually Q ueen Anne at meetings of the cabinet. Her husband was and her Prince George of Denmark, to whom she was Ministers, deeply attached, but he had no ability or distinction. Charles II. said of him, " I have tried him drunk ; I have tried him sober ; and, drunk or sober, there is nothing in him." Her principal ministers were Marlborough, Godolphin, Harley, and St. John — the first two Whigs, the last Tories. Marlborough was one of the greatest of Englishmen, although he has been much abused by historians. Whatever his conduct may have been under James or William, it had no faults under Anne. The most minute inquiry cannot discover in him during this period any failure in patriotism, dignity, or integrity. He was the sweetest and most forgiving of men, and a staunch friend. His life has never been adequately written. Godolphin was a firm friend and supporter of Marlborough. Harley was an unprincipled intriguer, with an absolute disregard for truth. He must have possessed ability to have gained the position he occupied, and his affability and easy temper procured him a large number of friends. St. John was a man of consummate ability, and of great brilliancy. He was an ardent Tory, but his want of principle and integrity has impaired the reputation which his other qualities would have secured for him. He was an admirable minister, and as an economist was in advance of his age. It is difficult to see how Anne was enabled to carry on the struggle against Louis XIV., which was natural 612 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1689 to in the case of William III. The probable explanation is that the war was at first religious, both Anne and Marlborough being staunch Protestants, and that it afterwards became commercial as questions of trade began to assume a greater importance. The reign of Anne was marked by great violence of party conflict. The Whigs were in favour of lgs an parliamentary government and the limitation of the prerogative of the crown ; they supported the war in the interests of religion and commerce, and ad- vocated toleration to all Protestant churches. They depended for support on the Nonconformists, the rich merchants, and the middle classes who were engaged in trade. The Tories defended the royal prerogative, detested Nonconformists, and were opposed to the war because it was supported .;- by the Whigs. They were a faint echo of the Cavaliers. They were charged with being Jacobites, and some of them undoubtedly held correspondence with the court of St. Germain, but they were staunchly attached to the English church, and would not have tolerated a Roman Catholic king. Their strength lay in the clergy and the landed gentry, as it always has done and does still at the present day. The first ministry of Anne was a combination of Whigs and Tories — Nottingham, a Tory, was secretary of state, Godolphin first lord of the treasury, and Marlborough commander-in- chief. On October 20, 1702, Anne's first Parliament met, being of a Whig character. In the following year, in order to ■Pk e induce Portugal to join the Grand Alliance, the Methuen Methuen treaty was signed, by which Portuguese Treaty. were admitted into England at a lower rate than French wines. In consequence of this, our ancestors deserted the drinking of claret for that of port, to the great injury of their digestions and the dissemination of gout. The portly, unwieldy figures of our eighteenth century ancestors are largely due to the Methuen treaty. At the same time, the extensive cultivation of vineyards and the admission on favour- able terms of English textiles ruined the agriculture and the manufactures of Portugal. At the end of this year, on November 26, England was devastated by a great storm, which, as sung by Dryden, still remains in the memory of men. Queen Anne's Bounty, which formed the first-fruits of benefices into a fund for the increasing of the incomes of the poorer clergy, dates from 1704. This was also the year of the capture of Gibraltar by Rooke, and the battle of Blenheim, a.d. 1714] ENGLAND 613 already mentioned. The Tory members of the cabinet resigned, and their places were taken by Harley and St. John. Anne's second Parliament met in 1705, still having a Whig majority. The year 1706 is memorable for the battles of Ramillies and Turin. Sunderland, a Whig and an adherent of Marlborough, became secretary of state, and negotiations were begun for establishing a union between England and Scot- The Union land, which was completed in 1707. By this with momentous step, Great Britain came into exist- Scotland, ence. The Scotch kept their own laws and their own presby- terian church. All commercial restrictions between the two countries were removed. There was to be one Parliament for the united kingdom, Scotland being represented by forty-five members of the lower house and sixteen peers, elected afresh for every new Parliament. In l708, Harley and St. John resigned and the ministry became wholly Whig. Marlborough won the battle of Oude- narde and captured Lille, while Stanhope captured Minorca, which became a very valuable possession of the British crown. Anne's third Parliament met, which was very Whig, and was not likely to accept the offers of peace made by Louis XIV. In 1710, there was a sudden change from Whig to Tory, caused by the intrigues of Harley and by the dread of an attack upon the English church. Probably the fear of Anne's death and the dread of the return of the Pretender had some effect. A fourth Parliament was elected of a strong Tory complexion. The next year witnessed a complete change of policy. The duchess of Marlborough was dismissed from her p a u f offices, secret negotiations were entered upon with the Marl- France, popular opinion began to turn in favour boroughs, of peace, and Marlborough was dismissed from his offices. At last, in 1713, in the disgraceful manner narrated in the last chapter, the peace of Utrecht was concluded. It consisted of six several treaties, and left matters much as they were before, except that France was greatly weakened, which would have occurred in any case owing to the failing health of the great monarch. In 1714, Anne's last Parliament met, which was Tory in character, and the queen herself died. But, before this happened, Harley, now earl of ccessl0n0 Oxford, was dismissed from his office, Shrewsbury, a man of high character, was made first lord of the treasury, and, by the death of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, her son, George, became heir-apparent to the throne of Great Britain. CHAPTER VIII. THE NOETHERN WAR, A.D. 1700-1721— ENGLAND, A.D. 1714-1740. Concurrently with the war of the Spanish Succession was begun the great Northern War between Russia and Sweden, to which we must now direct our attention. On the death The Sue- °f Gustavus Adolphus, Christina, his daughter, cessors of became queen, but eventually resigned the crown Gustavus to her nephew, Charles X. He is chiefly known Adolphus. ky his war with John II. (Casimir), king of Poland, whom he defeated at Warsaw in 1656, concluded by the peace of Roeskilde in 1658, after the famous march of Charles across the frozen Belt. His sudden death was followed in 1660 by the peace of Oliva, in which John Casimir of Poland, a scion of the house of Yasa, gave up all claims to the inheritance of Sweden, and surrendered Esthland and Livonia to that power. Before his death, Sweden was changed from an elective to an hereditary monarchy. His son, Charles XL, who reigned from 1660 to 1689, was a powerful and capable man, who greatly increased the prosperity and influence of his country. He, however, took the side of France in the contest with the Great Elector, and stormed the defences of Fehrbellin in 1675. He was succeeded by Charles XII., a man of genius, who, ascending the throne as a minor, found himself sur- rounded by enemies all eager to take advantage of his youth and inexperience. The most formidable of these enemies was Russia. The throne of Russia, after the extinction of the dynasty of Rurik in 1598, was occupied by the house of Romanov, the first of which was Michael III., son of the Romanovs Patriarch Philaret. He was succeeded by Alexis, who increased his territory at the expense of Poland, encouraged manufactures, mining, and commerce, published a code of laws, and endeavoured to bring his country into harmony with Western culture. His son, Feoclor, who 614 a.d. 1700-21] THE NORTHERN WAR 615 reigned from 1676 to 1682, destroyed the power of the aristocracy, taking away their privileges, and establishing a bureaucracy founded on merit. At his death, the possession of the crown fell to his two brothers, Ivan III., and. Peter, who exercised joint powers and sat upon a double throne, which is still to be seen. But Ivan was incompetent and nearly blind, and Peter was the great sovereign to whose genius and energy the existence of modern Russia is due. „ e er . e As they were both young, their sister Sophia acted as regent. Soon Peter became master of the situation, and Sophia was sent to a monastery. His reign lasted from 1689 to 1725. Educated by Lefort, a Swiss from Geneva, he early conceived an enthusiasm for European civilisation and for military enterprises, so that out of his young comrades was formed the Preobrashensky Regiment, the most efficient bulwark of the crown. He set to work to carry out his plans without losing a moment. He abolished the laws which hindered foreign travels, he placed his army on a European footing, he encouraged the advent of foreigners into the country, he remodelled the administra- tion, and, above all, he devoted himself to the development of sea power. He shaved off the beards of his subjects, and cut short their long gowns. He first turned his arms against Turkey, but, unfortunately, did not continue this line of advance. He conquered Asov in 1696, and secured its possession by the peace of Karlowitz in 1699. He then went abroad, lived for some time at Zaandam in Holland, occupied as a common workman ; visited England, where he was well received by William III., and studied the art of shipbuilding on the Thames. He was recalled by a rising of the Streltzi, a body of soldiers like the Janissaries, who, being formed into a community with wives and families, had acquired overweening power over the government. He subdued them in the most merciless manner, put an end to their existence, and created a new army controlled and drilled in the German fashion. He now fixed covetous eyes on the sea coast, and determined to establish a fleet in the Baltic, so he joined himself with Denmark and Poland to plunder the possessions of the boy Charles. In Poland, the family of the Jagellons, which had obtained possession of Masovia, Courland, Livonia, and Lithuania, came to an end in 1572. The monarchv then became „ , Poland, elective, but the constitution was, in effect, an oligarchical republic, like Venice, and was weakened by 616 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. noo to the endeavours of the nobles to limit the royal power on the one side and to depress the people on the other. The first elected king was the duke of Anjou, who afterwards became Henry III. of France. The Poles then elected Stephen Batori, prince of Transylvania, who was followed by three kings of the house of Vasa — Sigismund III. of Sweden, Vladislaus IY. and John II. (Casimir.) The election of Casimir TnVin Ca 'm'r brought about a war with Sweden, in which Poland lost to her Esthland and Livonia, pro- vinces which had been acquired by Sigismund III. Poland was also compelled to acknowledge the suzerainty of Prussia, which had assisted Sweden in the war. Casimir had also to surrender Smolensk and a part of the Ukraine to Russia, which led to his abdication, and he was succeeded by Michael — sprung from the ancient race of the Piasts, who had succeeded the Jagellons as kings of Poland — who reigned from 1669 to 1673, and then by the heroic John III. (Sobieski), (1674-1696) who had conquered the Turks at Choczim, and now wrested from them Podolia and Kameniec, and drove them back from the walls of Yienna. But, though successful abroad, he could not procure peace and order at home. The next king of Poland was Augustus II. of Saxony, called the Strong, because he could bend a horseshoe with his fingers. At the invitation of Peter, he joined Russia in the war against Charles XII., hoping to regain for Poland, Esthland and Livonia, as he had promised when he succeeded to the throne. The league was also joined by King Christian Y. of Denmark, because, in his quarrel with Duke Frederick IY. of Holstein- Gottorp, Charles XII. had taken the side of the duke, who was his brother-in-law. Christian also hoped to recover the territory which he had ceded to Sweden in the treaty of Copenhagen. Christian, indeed, died in 1699, but his policy was Triple continued by his son and successor, Frederic IY. Alliance In this manner, Charles XII., coming to the against throne at the age of eighteen, found himself Charles XII. pp 0sec i by three powerful enemies — Russia, Poland, and Denmark — each wishing to take advantage of the youth and weakness of the Swedish king, to recover territory which it had lost; and the Northern War began in 1700, just when the war of the Spanish Succession was on the point of breaking out in another part of Europe. The war began by the invasion of Livonia by Augustus, of Ingiia by Peter, and of Schleswig by the Danes. Charles a.d. 17211 THE NORTHERN WAR 617 was, however, no ordinary man, and by these unjust and cowardly attacks he was stimulated to exert his powers to the utmost. He had a strong will, an eager i^e though too adventurous spirit, a sound moral Northern nature, which made him detest the abandoned War. character of his opponent Augustus, the " physically strong," and a love of truth which filled him with indignation against the falseness of the age in which he lived. But in Peter he found an antagonist worthy of his steel. He made an alli- ance with the Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg, Holland, and England, and attacked his nearest enemy, the king of Denmark. Landing in Iceland and n \^^^%-rr 1 • ■ t 1 hit- Onarles All. obtaining speedy successes, he compelled mm in the peace of Traventhal to abandon his alliance with Russia, to give back everything which he had taken away from the duke of Holstein Gottorp, and to acknowledge his right to his possessions in Schleswig. He then turned against Russia. Peter was besieging the town of Narva. Charles won the battle of that name with eight thousand troops against a force five times its strength. Then he compelled Augustus to give up the investment of Riga. Crossing the river Duna, he conquered the Saxons, drove them out of Livonia and Courland, and then marched into Littau. Augustus sought for peace, but in vain. Charles XII. detested Augustus, and the energies of his life were wasted in his endeavours to crush him. He first tried to deprive him of the crown of Poland. He marched into that country and conquered Warsaw, and, after the battles of Klissow in 1702 and Pultusk in 1703, he became master of the whole of Poland, and in 1704 forced the Polish nobles to elect Stanislaus Leszczynski as a counter king. He then defeated the Saxons at Fraustadt, marched through Silesia and the Lausitz into Saxony, and took up his abode at Alt-Ranstadt, a town Charles near Leipzig, which no longer belongs to Saxony, at Alt- where the house in which he lived still remains Ranstadt. unaltered, and in 1706, by the peace of Alt-Ranstadt, compelled Augustus to give the crown of Poland to Stanislaus and to forsake the Russian alliance. It is remarkable that a king of Sweden should have taken up his abode for a whole year in the heart of Saxony and have neglected his own country, but Alt-Ranstadt was, during this period, the centre of European diplomacy, and Charles was visited there by Marlborough. Peter took advantage of this opportunity to conquer a large 618 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. ivoo to portion of the Baltic provinces, to found Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva in 1703, to build the fortress of Cronstadt in 1704, and to occupy Lithuania. This action Founded^ was c ^ sas t r ous for Sweden, and led to her fall, but it may be questioned whether it was for the good of Russia. Russia is the natural heir of the Byzantine empire, her projoer civil capital is Moscow, and her religious capital Kiev. It is right that she should possess Constantinople and an outlet on the Mediterranean by way of the Dardanelles. Peter could have gained all this with the approval of Europe, as Catherine II. could have clone at a later period, if he had not been torn asunder by his desire to humiliate Charles XII. and to reach the sea as soon as possible. St. Petersburg is an un- natural capital ; it is founded on piles and is sinking slowly into the sea ; it is unhealthy ; and it is in every increase of the Russian dominions farther away from the centre of gravity of the empire. After leaving Saxony, Charles crossed the Beresina, defeated the Russians at Cholovczin, and then crossed the Dnieper. He Charles was joined by Mazeppa, who, wishing to free the invades Ukraine from paying tribute to Russia, brought Russia. hi m 30,000 of his Cossacks and abundant supplies of food. At his impulse, he determined to march upon Moscow, and ordered his general, Lewenhaupt, who was stationed in Courland, to join him with 11,000 men, but he found himself involved in marshes and desert, and his troops perished from hunger and disease. Lewenhaupt joined him, having lost half his army and all his supplies on the march. Mazeppa was deserted by his own people, and reached the camp of Charles as a fugitive. At last, with difficulty, he reached the city of Pultava, where he found himself opposed by a Pultava Russian army of three times his strength. Charles had been wounded in the foot, and was carried through the ranks of his troops in a litter made of lance poles. He was completely defeated in 1709, and his army was scattered to the winds. Charles escaped with great difficulty to Bender in Bessarabia, where he was received with great honour by the pasha, and by command of the Sultan, Achmed III., was sup- jjjjj^? a plied with provisions and money, and allowed to establish a fortified camp, in which he lived. He was ashamed to return to his own country, and he employed a Pole, Count Poniatowski, to stir up the Sultan to a war with a.d. 1721] THE NORTHERN WAR 6rg Russia. Peter marched into Moldavia, but was surrounded by the Turks on the Pruth, and would have been lost if his wife Catherine had not procured his escape by bribing the Grand Vizier and surrendering Azov. When Charles protested against this, the Turks determined to get rid of him, and refused sup- plies. This made Charles still more obstinate. He procured money from France and other places, built himself a house, and seemed likely to remain in Bender for the rest of his life. He stimulated the Sultan to a fresh war against Russia, which was stopped by the intervention of England and Holland. During this time Sweden was neglected, and was becoming every day weaker. The true condition of affairs was at length realised by the Sultan. Augustus of Saxony had recovered the Polish crown ; Peter had extended his conquests over the Baltic provinces, including Finland ; Denmark had strengthened herself by the pos- session of Bremen and Yerden, and was assured of the possession of Schleswig and Holstein by a league of neutrality signed by Prussia, England, Holland, and France, called the Concert of the Hague. The Sultan now urged Charles to depart, and, when he refused, attacked his camp with an army of 12,000 men, whom Charles opposed with a handful of 700 Swedes. After a heroic resistance, he was taken prisoner, and carried off to a castle of the Sultan in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. This insane enterprise had lasted for five years, and during that time Sweden had been without a king. Nothing now remained to Charles but a return to his own Charles country. Disguised, on horseback, he rode with returns to terrific speed for fourteen days, and reached Sweden. Stralsund on November 22, 1714, where he found everything in confusion. Anne was dead, Louis XIV. was dying, and Charles and Peter occupied the stage of Europe. As soon as Charles arrived in Stralsund, he ordered the Prussians to evacuate Stettin, upon which Prussia, Hanover, and England declared war against him, and besieged him. When, after a short resistance, he found that the city was no longer defensible, he crossed over to Sweden in a small boat, and arrived there on December 24, 1715, after an absence of fifteen years. Stralsund fell soon after his departure, which speedily involved the loss of Wismar, so that Sweden had no more possessions left on German soil. Instead of going to Stockholm and summoning the chambers, he remained in the little town of Ystad, depending upon the advice of his untrustworthy minister, Baron Gorz. He now attempted the reduction of Norway, which 620 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 17001721 belonged to Denmark, and crossed the mountains with great difficulty on the way to Ohristiania, but he was compelled to return to Sweden. Gorz was attempting to make peace when Charles determined upon a second invasion of Norway, crossing the mountains again and attacking the small but well defended frontier fortress of Friedrichshall, which it was necessary to reduce before he could advance into the interior. On November 20, 17 18, at nine o'clock in the evening, he went to watch the fortress by torchlight, and, as he fh 1 ° was l eanni » on the parapet, he was killed by a ball from the fortress. It was long thought that he was the victim of treachery, but careful surgical observa- tions have proved that this was not the case. After the death of Charles, the Swedish nobles, to revenge themselves for his conduct, which had always been unpopular and was certainly disastrous to the country, arrested Gorz, and with a slight show of legality condemned and beheaded him. After neglecting the claims of Charles' nephew, the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, they placed on the throne his sister, Ulrica Eleanora, who was married to Frederick, crown prince Treaties of °f Hesse Cassel. By the treaties of Stockholm, Stockholm made in 1719 and 1720, with Denmark, Prussia, andNystadt. and Hanover, Sweden lost her possessions in Germany, and by the treaty of Nystadt in 1721 she surrendered to Russia the Baltic provinces of Livonia, Esthonia, and Ingria. Queen Ulrica made over the government of the country to her husband Frederick, who consented to a considerable limitation of the powers of the crown. Bremen and Verden were sold to Hanover — that is, to George I. of England — for a million thalers ; a large portion of Pomerania was purchased by Prussia for two million dollars ; and Sweden fell into such a condition of weakness that the country was distracted by the quarrels of two parties, the " Hats " and ithe " Caps," the first being devoted to the French and the second to ( the Russians, while the government oscillated in dependence upon one of these countries or the other as their influence alternately prevailed. Poland was even in a worse condition than Sweden. Stanislaus, having lost all his power after the death of Charles XII., retired to France but kept the title of king, with a gift of a million thalers from Augustus the Strong. The result of this was that Peter the Great was the most powerful sovereign in the north of Europe. He deprived the Parliament and the Synod of their power, and became the a.d. 1714-1740] ENGLAND 621 head of the Russian church, and in 1720 assumed the title of Emperor of all the Russias. He conquered a part of the Caucasus, and opened the way for a large ex- L as t Years tension of Russian territory towards the east. of Peter the A few years before his death, which occurred in Great. 1725, he got a law passed which gave the emperor the right of nominating his successor. His son Alexis, who was opposed to all his father's reforms, was under the influence of the clergy, and would probably, if s lessors he had succeeded to the throne, have upset every- thing which his father had done. He was arrested, and died in prison, certainly with his father's cognisance, possibly by his hand. Peter left the throne to the widow of Alexis, their son Peter being only a child. Catherine I. reigned from 1725 to 1727; Peter II. from 1727 to 1730, Menzikow being prime minister until he was deposed by the Dolgorukis and sent to Siberia. Peter II. was followed by the Empress Anna, the daughter of Ivan, Peter's elder brother. She was the widow of the duke of Courlancl, and reigned from 1730 to 1740, having for her prime minister Biren, who drove the Dolgorukis from power. After the death of Anna, the crown passed to Ivan VI., the son of her niece, Anne, duchess of Brunswick, who acted as regent. Ivan was deposed by Field-marshal Munich, and the government remained with Anne. Eventually, in 1741, Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of Peter the Great, got possession of the throne, with the help of her physician Lestocq, and held it till her death in 1762, Anne and her supporters being banished to Siberia. ENGLAND, A.D. 1714-1740. George I., elector of Hanover, was fifty-four years of age when he came to the throne of England, in 1714. He had already been elector of Hanover for sixteen years. He was a man of no distinction, although he eor S e possessed a certain stubborn courage in war. He had never learnt English, and his interests were centred in Hanover. As Chesterfield said of him, England was too large for him, and his narrow and punctilious mind could not rise to the dignity of governing a great kingdom. This was disastrous to our country, because she became involved in petty continental quarrels in which she had no interest. In 1682 he had married 622 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. nu to Sophia Dorothea of Zell, whom he divorced on a charge of infidelity, which had little foundation and which she strongly denied. She spent the last thirty-two years of her life in a solitary mansion on the moors of Liineburg, flitting like a ghost over the waste of heather, an object of compassion, but also of mysterious terror. He quarrelled with his son, George II., and he consoled himself for the absence of his wife with dull German mistresses. One consequence of the sovereign's ignor- ance of English was that he did not attend cabinet theCabinet councns - The result was to give the prime minister much more power, and to increase the importance of the cabinet. The cabinet is a curious institu- tion, which has grown up gradually and is unknown to the constitution. When the ministry resigns, the king invites a prominent politician to form a government. He in his turn fills up the various offices, and nominates some of their holders to form a cabinet, the number being at his own discretion. The cabinet meets irregularly, but the prime minister always presides. It forms what is called a probouleutic body — that is to say, it decides what measures shall be brought before Parliament and the form which they shall take. The proceed- ings are strictly private, and the order of business varies accord- ing to circumstances. The members are supposed to be loyal to each other, and to present a united front to the nation and to their adversaries. Historically speaking, the cabinet is a committee of the privy council, which now no longer deliberates, but only performs certain executive functions. The head of the first cabinet of George I. was Townshend, who was assisted by Stanhope and Halifax, and above all by Walpole, who was paymaster of the forces, but ?j? b 1 ert 1 not yet in the cabinet. Robert Walpole is the typical minister of George's reign. He had a large mind and an imposing presence : he possessed that sense of moderation which he knew to be especially necessary at a time when the strife between Stuarts and Hanoverians raged furiously, and foreign or civil war might have entirely destroyed the power of England. He kept the country and the govern- ment together, until England was ready for the rule of George III., who was a thorough Englishman, with neither the vices nor the virtues of the Stuarts. A general election, in 1715, returned a Whig Parliament ; St. John, now Viscount Boling- broke, threatened with impeachment, went abroad, and joined the Pretender ; Oxford was impeached and imprisoned ; Ormond fled a.d. 1740] ENGLAND 623 the country. To prevent disturbances, a Riot Act was passed, by which it was provided that any twelve persons assembling together for the pur-pose of disturbing the peace who did not disperse on the order of a magistrate should be guilty of felony. England found herself involved in difficulties with Sweden, in the interests of Hanover. As before mentioned, Bremen and Yerden, which in the absence of Charles XII. from his country had been taken by Frederick of Denmark, were now sold by him to Hanover, but Charles on his return was anxious to re- cover them, and an English fleet was sent to the Baltic to prevent this from taking place. The year 1715 is marked by a great rebellion in favour of the Pretender. The leaders of it were John Erskine, earl of Mar, who in consequence of his frequent change of opinion was called " Bobbing John," and the earl f{l^ n of Derwentwater. On September 6, Mar pro- claimed the Pretender as James VIII. of Scotland and James III. of England, at Braemar. The battles of Preston and Sheriff- muir were fought on the same day — one a defeat, the other- indecisive; the Pretender landed too late to help, and in 1716 the rebellion was suppressed. Indeed, it never had a chance of success ; France refused to assist, the English government suppressed any possible rising in the west, and the Highlanders were of no use against regular troops. The rebels were treated with general leniency ; only Derwentwater and Kenmure perished on the scaffold. Among the results of this rebellion were the Septennial Act, which, in the interests of security, prolonged the legal duration of the sitting and future Parliaments to seven years ; and the making of roads in the Highlands by Marshal Wade, in order to prevent another rising of the clans. In 1717 a triple alliance was concluded between England, France, and Holland, against the pretensions of Spain, and Alberoni, the powerful minister of that country, began to intrigue for the restoration of the Stuarts. As Townshend did not approve of this policy he was dismissed, Walpole resigned, and the government came into the hands of Stanhope and Sunderland. In 1718, the triple alliance became a quadruple alliance by the addition of the empire, a war broke out between Spain and Austria, and there was a formal declaration of war by England against Spain. However, in 1719, Alberoni fell from power, and in 1720 peace was made. In 1721, Walpole became first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer, and was assisted by Townshend 624 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1714 to and Carteret. The weakness of the crown favoured the rise of a really great minister such as Walpole undoubtedly was. A staunch friend of peace, and ahadmirable financier, Walpole s ^ ki s equable temper and diplomatic prowess he kept England out of foreign complications without injuring her prestige, and under his rule commercial progress made great advances. He removed restrictions on commerce, and laid the foundations of a valuable colonial trade. He also consolidated cabinet government, the beginnings of which have already been noticed. He demanded unity of action from his colleagues ; he governed in accordance with the will of the people as expressed in the House of Commons ; and, while allowing members of the cabinet considerable liberty in the expression of opinion, took pains to keep himself at its head. Unfortunately, he allowed a system of corruption to grow up which lasted till the advent to power of the younger Pitt in the year 1783. Members of Parliament who had little political principle were ready to sell their votes for money, and Walpole said of his chief opponents that every man had his price. In 1722 it was found that Bishop Atterbury had been plotting in favour of the Pretender ; he was impeached and banished, but at the same time a pardon was granted to the exiled Bolingbroke. In the interval between the death of Louis XIV., in 1715, and the accession of Frederick the Great in 1740, foreign England affairs were both complicated and obscure. It and Foreign has been said that the politics of Europe turned Affairs. n the fate of the boy king Louis XV., — on the questions, first, whether he would die, and secondly, whom he would marry. Philip V. of Spain was eager to undo the treaty of Utrecht ; to assert his own right of succession to the crown of France if Louis died ; in any case to strengthen the connec- tion between the two countries. But the most active intriguer in Europe was Philip's second wife, Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, and her chief aim was to secure for her sons appanages in her native Italy — a scheme only partly consonant with Spanish interests. After the fall of Alberoni, Philip renewed his re- nunciation of the French succession ; the Spanish Infanta went to France as the prospective bride of Louis ; and England and France prepared to support Spanish claims in Italy at the impending congress of Cambrai. But, when they failed to coerce the emperor in Spain's interest, Elizabeth resolved to win over Charles VI. by direct negotiations, and marry her sons to Austrian archduchesses. Charles offered only very one- a.d. 1740] ENGLAND 625 sided terms, but Spain was driven to accept them by Louis' sudden repudiation of the Infanta in 1725, followed by his marriage with Maria Leszczynska of Poland. His advisers, alarmed by an illness which might have - ar . n ^® ended fatally and left the succession open, had urged an immediate marriage, and the Infanta was still under seven. Yet her hasty return to Spain caused not unnatural chagrin, and led Elizabeth, in return for the vaguest promises, to grant trading privileges to Charles' pet Ostend Company, and to guarantee his " Pragmatic Sanction "■ — i.e. The a decree securing the Austrian dominions — failing Pragmatic male issue — to his eldest daughter, Maria Theresa. Sanction. The treaty of Hanover, formed in alarm by England, France, and Prussia, and joined presently by Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, forced Charles VI. to make larger promises, espe- cially as to help in recovering Gibraltar and Minorca. Yet, when in 1727 Gibraltar was attacked by Spain, he did not fulfil his engagements, and preliminaries of peace were soon signed. At this crisis, George I. died, and was succeeded by his son, George II., who, in 1705, had married Caroline of Anspach, a gifted woman, to whom he was sincerely attached, although she had prevented him from keeping mistresses at his court, the general practice of sovereigns in those days. George II. was a better king than his father. He was courageous, just, and truthful, was a good man of business, and was not averse to war. Walpole kept his place, and the system of cabinet government was continued. The condition of Europe did not improve, and its vicissitudes are difficult to follow until the arrival of greater men upon the scene of action. In 1729, a son and heir was born to Louis XV., and peace was made between England, France, and Spain by the treaty of Seville. By this, the appanage of " Baby Charles," the succession of Don Carlos to Parma, Piacenza, and Tuscany, was at last guaranteed. In 1731, the second treaty of Vienna was signed between England, Holland, Austria, and Spain, by which the succession to the Italian duchies and the arrangements of the Pragmatic Sanc- tion were confirmed. Two years later a family com- pact was signed between the two Bourbon king- compact doms of France and Spain, which was afterwards renewed and produced considerable results. In 1737, Queen Caroline died, an event which weakened the popularity of Walpole. Frederick, prince of Wales, a weak but amiable 2 R 626 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1714-1740 character, led the opposition against Walpole, and it was strengthened by the appearance of the great William Pitt, then merely a " terrible cornet of horse," the leader of the young Whigs, who were called " the boys," who were tired of Walpole's pacific policy and wished for more resolute action, especially against Spain. In consequence of ar wi this, in 1739, war was declared against Spain, generally known as the war of " Jenkins' Ear," because a sea captain of that name had his ear cut off. The real cause, however, was the claim of Spain to search English ships on the high seas, in order to discover whether the conditions imposed upon British trade by the treaty of Utrecht were properly observed. Spain claimed the entire possession of the new world, which England could not permit, and which Spain's power was not sufficient to enforce. This led to war in the present instance, and nearly to a war in the time of the French Revolution with regard to Nootka Sound. The war began with the capture of Portobello by Admiral Vernon. It was popular, and the opposition to Walpole was strengthened by the collusion of Pulteney and Carteret. But an important event occurred, which altered the course of events in Europe. In 1740, the year in which Anson started on his voyage round the world, and attacked Spanish ships, the Emperor Charles Death ^"^' c ^ ec b and, according to the provisions of of the the Pragmatic Sanction, was succeeded by his Emperor daughter Maria Theresa. In the same year, Charles. Frederick II. succeeded to the throne of Prussia, and, by claiming from Maria Theresa the province of Silesia, began the war of the Austrian Succession. From this time till his death, Frederick is the most prominent figure in Europe. CHAPTER IX. PRUSSIA, A.D. 1675-1786— RUSSIA, A.D. 1762-1776— AUSTRIA, A.D. 1765-1790— ENGLAND, A.D. 1740-1783. The real founder of the kingdom of Prussia was the Great Elector, Frederick William of Brandenburg, who by the treaty of Welau obtained sovereignty over Preussen, The an Eastern province on the Baltic, the capital Kingdom of which was Konigsberg, and, as ally of Holland of Prussia. against Louis XIV., won, in 1675, the battle of Fehrbellin, as has been previously narrated. He was a powerful supporter of Protestantism, a confession already adopted in 1613 by the Elector John Sigismund. The son of the Great Elector, Frederick III., a very splendid and extravagant gentleman, having promised to support the Emperor Leopold in the war of the Spanish Succession, was made king of Prussia, on January 18, 1701, just a hundred and seventy years before his successor, William, received the title of German Emperor at Versailles. His son and successor, Frederick William I., who reigned from 1713 to 1740, paid the debts of his extravagant father. He was of a rough nature, ^. e .^. enc ^ insensible to culture of all kinds, and spent his life in reforming the administration of his kingdom and getting together a powerful army, the kernel of which was formed by a collection of the tallest men in Europe, whom he gathered by every means in his power, fair and foul. At his death he left a treasure of nine million thalers, and an army of 83,000 men. He had many excellences as a sovereign. He did much to restore the prosperity of a country ruined by the Thirty Yeais' War. He rebuilt towns, filled deserts with inhabitants, and estab- lished schools and other benevolent institutions. In 1731, he received the Protestants driven out of their country by Firmian, archbishop of Salzburg. In the creation of his army, he was assisted by Leopold of Dessau, called the "old Dessauer," who did yeoman service at Blenheim and Turin. He increased his 627 628 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1740 to kingdom by the acquisition of Upper Guelders in the treaty of Utrecht, and of Stettin in the Northern War. The new kingdom wanted a man of genius to consolidate it, and this was found in Frederick II., rightly called Frederick the Great, who, besides his extraordinary intellec- *he Great ^ ua ^ uu ty, while in a second vote 361, including his cousin, the duke of Orleans, condemned him to immediate death, 72 to death with delay, 281 to life-long imprisonment. He was executed on January 21, 1793. His last words on the scaffold were " Frenchmen, I die innocent. That I declare before God. I forgive my enemies. May my blood never fall on France ! " The death of the king, which excited horror throughout Europe, was followed by a declaration of war against England, and by the fall of the Girondists, who fled for refuge to the a.d. 1795] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 655 south of France — Marat, one of their bitterest foes, being murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a deed which deprived their cause of all chance of success. The Convention drew up a democratic constitution ~~ °5- ^ full of excellent provisions, amongst them the referendum, but it never came into action, being prevented by the Reign of Terror, which lasted from August 10, 1793, to October 26, 1795. During this lawless time the country was governed by a Committee of Public Safety, of which Robespierre was considered to be the ruling spirit, and a Th « number of revolutionary committees, which at mittee of last reached the number of 20,000, were founded Public on its model throughout France. Under this Safety, regime, most of the Girondists perished on the scaffold, including Madame Roland, the wife of the minister, a woman of brilliant ability and noble qualities, while Roland, Petion, and others, put an end to their own lives. The queen, Marie Antoinette, was executed on October 16, 1793, Execution and was followed to the scaffold by the saint-like of the Princess Elizabeth, sister of Louis, and by Philip Queen. " Egalite," the duke of Orleans, who, at last, met the punishment of his crimes. The so-called Reign of Terror may have been the necessary result of the terror which the rulers of France inspired and the fear which they felt. They were really afraid of the vengeance of Europe, and desired to make peace, but no peace could be made until there was a stable government in Paris. Three authorities were at this time contending for mastery in the capital — the Convention, the Sections, and the Committee of Public Safety. Peace could not be made until these three heads had become one, and that head would conquer which had the most money to spend. Therefore the object of each was to fill its coffers, and this could only be done by executing the most wealthy citizens and confiscating their fortunes — a plan suggested by Sieyes, who had a stronger and a more statesman- like head than Robespierre. The power most fit for this pur- pose was the Committee of Public Safety, and over this Sieyes exercised control. It is possible, therefore, that Sieyes and not Robespierre should be considered as the real author of the Reign of Terror, although this view has not been generally held. The Convention now proceeded, mainly at the instigation of Hebert, to abolish Christianity, to deny the existence of God, and to establish the worship of the goddess of Reason, whom it 656 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1789 to induced a woman of pure character to represent. Robespierre was opposed to this, and attempted to introduce a belief in a Supreme Being, but the effort only made him Christianity ridiculous. Indeed, the prominent position which he assumed in the festival which was to celebrate the worship was the beginning of his fall. The Revolution began to consume its own authors ; Dan ton, the ablest and perhaps End of the the mos t responsible of the Terrorists, perished by Reign of the guillotine, as did the fascinating Camille Terror. Desnaoulins, and the infamous Hebert. Robes- pierre himself could not withstand the storm ; his old associates, Tallien, Freron, Fouche, and Barrere, rose against him ; and at last the Terror came to an end by the execution, on July 28, 1794, of himself and twenty of his associates. This took place, according to the revolutionary calendar, on Thermidor 10, so that the party who put an end to the Reign of Terror were called the Thermidorians ; assisted e ermi- ^ y the richer young men, called the jeimesse dore'e, they now attempted to restore the former state of things. The power of the Mountain, the extreme Radicals, fell, and the Jacobin club was closed. The prisons were emptied of their victims : freedom of religion was restored. A new constitution was drawn up by the versatile Sieyes, by which a Directory of five persons was placed at the head rr e . of the government, with a council of five hundred Directory. beneath them, and another council of " ancients " consisting of two hundred and fifty persons. There were also six ministers, each in charge of a department. The first five directors, who took up their abode in the Luxembourg, were Barras, Rewbell, La Reveillere-Lepeaux, Carnot, and Letourneur. Although peace was established in Paris, France was by no means at rest. Civil war, caused by the death of the king, War in La was ra gi n g hi La Vendee, a province where the Vendee and inhabitants, Royalist and religious, were led the South. by Cathelineau, Stofflet, Larochejaquelin, and Charette. Beginning in 1793, it was at length put down by Hoche, the Marcellus of the Revolution, in 1795. In this year the unfortunate Louis XVII. ended a life of torment by an in- human death, caused by the fact that Spain was demanding his release under threat of war, and it was thought better to get quit of him. Henceforth the legitimate king of France was the count of Provence, brother of Louis XVI., who took the title of Louis XVIII. The persecution of the Girondists had caused a.d.1795] THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 657 a civil war in the south where Bordeaux and Marseilles, Lyons and Toulon, set themselves against the Revolution. The rising was put down with the greatest cruelty. Lyons was nearly destroyed, and the noyades, or drownings, invented hy Carrier at Nantes, obtained an unenviable notoriety. We now reach the end of the Revolution with the appearance of the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. Toulon was in rebellion against the Directory, had been occupied a^nvrukm 6 by an English fleet, and was besieged by a Directoral army. Bonaparte, an officer of artillery, showed how the construction of a battery could compel the retreat of the British fleet. His plan was completely successful, and he was made a general at the age of twenty-three. He afterwards closed the Revolution more decisively by his "whiff of grape shot" on October 5, 1795. The new constitution proposed that the new chambers of the Directory should be chosen from the conventions by partial election in order to prevent a Royalist revolution. A number of the sections of Paris took the Royalist side, and marched against the p, evo i u ti n troops of the government, but by the masterly arrangements of young General Bonaparte, who had been entrusted with the command of Paris, they were dispersed by a few discharges of artillery, of which arm he was a master, and the Revolution was at an end. 2 T CHAPTER XL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, A.D. 1795-1799— ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, A.D. 1790-1799. Napoleon Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio in Corsica on August 15, 1769. He came of a noble family of Tuscan origin. At the age of eight he was sent to the military school at Brienne, under the charge of the Minims, and at fourteen to the military school at Paris. At both of these places he distinguished himself by his diligence and high character, and he had little sympathy with the frivolous and immoral aristocracy by which he was surrounded. Becoming sub-lieutenant at the age of seventeen, he went into garrison at Valence, and other towns on the Rhine, and devoted himself eagerly to the study of artillery, in which he became a master. He also prepared himself in other ways for the high destiny which awaited him. The prevailing laxness of discipline enabled him to spend much of his time in Corsica, where, with his elder brother Joseph, who had won for himself independently a prominent position in the island, he attached himself to the patriot Paoli, who had done much to secure the self-government of his native country. When Paoli ceased to follow the new development of the Revolution in France, Napoleon broke with him, and fought against him in the civil war which ensued. He was forced to take refuge with his family, whom he deeply loved, at Marseilles, and was employed by the Directory on different duties in the south of France. His services at Toulon and on Vendemiaire 19 in Paris have already been narrated. At the end of 1795, he was appointed to command the French army in Italy, which was in a condition of danger and distress. Before narrating his campaigns, we must give some account of the condition of Europe at this time when they commenced. On June 26, 1794, Jourdan defeated the Austrians in the battle of Fleurus, and compelled them to evacuate Belgium. Under Jourdan fought s6me of the most distinguished generals who afterwards served Napoleon, — Massena, Kleber, Lefebvre, 658 a.d. 1795-1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 659 Championnet, and Bernadotte. In October, Clairfait, who suc- ceeded the prince of Coburg, led his defeated troops across the Rhine. In the following year, Pichegru, sup- Conquest of ported by Moreau, Souham, Macdonald, and Belgium and Vandanime, marched over the frozen waters Holland, into Holland, which was feebly defended by the duke of York. The statholder — the prince of Orange, "William V. — resigned his position, and took refuge in England. The Batavian Republic was founded on the model of the French, and on May 16, 1795, peace was signed with France. The result of this was that Holland was regarded as a part of France, and was at war with England, a number of Dutch colonial possessions falling into English hands, including Malacca, Ceylon, Deme- rai'a, Surinam, and eventually the Cape of Good Hope, which was retained on behalf of the statholder. In 1795, by the diplomatic skill of Hardenberg, peace was made at Basel with Prussia and Spain, Prussia thus g ase i deserting the alliance with England. But Sardinia, under Victor Amadeus III., and Austria under Francis II., still maintained their control of Italy. In the autumn of 1795, the French troops in that country were in a sad condition, one part being commanded by Scherer in the eastern Riviera ; another under Kellermann in Savoy. They had neither food nor clothing. in Ital Bonaparte soon filled them with his own enthu- siasm. He said to them, " I will lead you into the most fruitful places in the world, — rich districts, large towns ; you shall find there honour, glory, and wealth." His plan was to force his army like a wedge between the Sardinians and Austrians, to drive back one to Turin and the other to Milan, and to make an honourable peace. The month of April 1796 is marked by the world-famous JJSSSSo* names of Montenotte, Millesimo, and Mondovi, and by the treaty of Cherasco. A peace was signed on May 15, surrendering Savoy and Nice to the French republic and making Piedmont itself almost a part of France and a point of departure for fresh victories. Napoleon addressed his troops in a tone of haughty stimulus. " They had," he said, " gained six victories in fourteen days, captured twenty-one standards, and fifty-five cannon, occupied several fortresses and the richest part of Piedmont, taken 15,000 prisoners, killed or wounded ten thousand of the enemy. They had been in want of everything, but had now everything by their exertions; they had 660 A GENERAL HISTOEY [a.d. 1795 to won battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, slept in the open air, without bread or brandy, — acts worthy of the sons of freedom. But much remained to be done — they must conquer Milan, avenge the murder of Basseville at Rome, set Italy free, and exalt the name of France." The glorious march continued ; Parma, Modena, and Tuscany submitted; the bridge over the Adda at Lodi was stormed on May 10 ; Milan was Lodi 6 ° entered in triumph on May 14. Brescia and Venice were occupied, but the strong fortress of Mantua remained to be conquered. Peace was made with Naples, but the struggle against the Austrian generals who descended from the Alps — Beaulieu, Wiirmser, Quosdanowitch, and Albinzi — continued for some time. In the meantime, Jourdan and Moreaii were fighting in Germany without much success, it being part of the plan that they should attack Vienna from the north of the Alps while Bonaparte advanced against it from the south. Bonaparte's victorious career halted, and he nearly lost his life, in the marshes of Areola. However, at Rivoli, after four days' fighting, on November 1796, he drove Davidovitch back into the Tyrol, and was able to lay the solid foundation of the Cisalpine Republic. The campaign continued Fall of during the winter in snow and ice. He received Mantua— a reinforcement of 8000 men under Joubert, and Treaty of on February 3, 1797, the fortress of Mantua Tolentino. surrendered, and the conquest of northern Italy was complete. A fortnight later, a treaty was signed with the Pope at Tolentino, in which Pius VI. surrendered Avignon and the Venaissin to France, together with Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, and, what Bonaparte regarded as of supreme importance, the harbour of Ancona, as a point of departure for new conquests in the East. All these victories had been gained in less than a year. Bonaparte was now in a position to march upon Vienna, and on April 7, 1797, reached Leoben, within striking distance of Vienna. Here preliminaries of peace were signed. atLeoben. 6 But Defore converting them into the peace of Campo Formio, Bonaparte suppressed the Vene- tian Republic. His conduct in the matter was not very noble, and was tainted with intrigue, but the once proud republic was in a condition of abasement without physical or moral strength. He picked a quarrel with it, which the Venetians tried to avoid, and at length persuaded the republic to decree its own dissolution. a.d. 1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 661 During this time he was living in a country house called Mombello, not far from Milan, united with his beloved Josephine, and surrounded by his mother, his sisters, and other members of his family. The peace of Campo Formio was signed on October 18, 1797. Its conclusion had been delayed by various circumstances. The Austrians hoped, by putting off its conclusion, The Peace to effect a change of government in France, but of Campo this was stopped by the events of Fructidor 18, Formio. which confirmed the power of the Directory and defeated the intrigues of the Royalists. The Directory desired to make the whole of the north of Italy republican, but Bonaparte was convinced that the Venetians were unfit for liberty, and that peace could not be made without the cession of Venetia to Austria. The negotiations were carried on partly at Udine, partly at Passeriano, a villa belonging to the doge of Venice, Manin. There is no such place as Campo Formio. A village named Campo Formido lies on the road between Udine and Passeriano ; but there is no evidence that the plenipotentiaries ever met there, and the peace was signed by Bonaparte at Passeriano. When he was anxious to get the business finished, and the Austrians made light of delay, he uttered the memorable exclamation, " I may lose a battle, but I will never lose a minute." By its provisions Austria resigned Belgium and Lombardy, and consented to the formation of a Cisalpine Re- public, west of the Adige, containing, with Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Modena, Massa, and Carrara ; together with the three legations of Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna, and the Valtellino with Bormio and Chiavenna, which had separated from the Grisons. Besides this, Corfu and the Ionian Islands went to France. Austria received the rest of Venetia from the Adige to the mouth of the Po, together with Istria, Dalmatia, and the islands in the Adriatic, the duke of Modena being compensated by the present of the Breisgau. The treaty with the empire was to be signed at Rastadt. Secret articles pro- vided that the emperor was to evacuate Mainz, Mannheim, Ehrenbreitstein, Philippsburg, Ulm, and the left bank of the Rhine, and the foundations were laid for the secularisation of the governments of the ecclesiastical principalities and for the absorption of the smaller governments of the two Hesses, Nassau, Wied, Salm, Lowenstein, and Ley en. This treaty was a great triumph for France : it created a vassal state in northern Italy, subject to French influence ; it weakened the power of 662 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d.1795to the empire, gave France the frontier of the Rhine, rescued the eastern Mediterranean from the power of England, and opened a prospect for further conquests in the East. Venice was destroyed, but her fall deserved little sym- Fate of pathy. She was corrupt in head and members, and she could not have perished except by her own fault. The curse of Marino Faliero, as expressed by Byron, had fallen upon her. Bonaparte, after a short stay at Rastadt, reached Paris on December 8, 1797. He was received there with the greatest exul- tation, the first entertainment being given to him by Talleyrand Bonaparte a ^ the foreign office, where he had a memorable Sails for interview with Madame de Stael. On May 4 Egypt. he left Paris, to complete the preparations for the expedition to Egypt which sailed from Toulon on May 19. He is not, therefore, responsible for the disgraceful proceedings in Switzerland which accompanied the formation of the Helvetian republic, and culminated in the " blood bath " of Stanz. The only compensation for these outrages was that the offspring of the murdered citizens fell under the care of Pestalozzi in a deserted monastery, and thus laid the foundation stone of modern education. It is probable that the Directory were anxious to get rid of Bonaparte, but it is certain that after his departure everything fell into confusion. England formed a second coalition with Austria, Russia, The Second ]sr a pi eS) an( j Turkey, which was afterwards joined by Sweden and Portugal, but not by Prussia under Frederick William III. The French accepted the challenge, and began the war in Italy. They drove Charles Emmanuel from Piedmont, wrested Tuscany and the neighbouring terri- tories from their princes, drove Ferdinand and his queen, Maria Caroline, from Naples, and founded the Parthenopean Republic in January 1799. At the same time, a French army crossed the Rhine into southern Germany, where it was opposed by the Austrian Archduke Charles, who defeated the French General Jourdan at Stockach and compelled him to recross the river. A battle was fought at Zurich, which drove Massena into the mountains of Switzerland. As the archduke's army came near to Rastadt, the congress suspended its sittings, and three of the French plenipotentiaries were murdered brutally by the Szekler Hussars. The Russian field-marshal, Suvorov, now appeared in Italy. He defeated Moreau at Cassano and entered Milan in triumph. Macdonald advanced from Rome a.d. 1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 663 to oppose him, but was worsted in a three days' battle on the Trebbia. Suvorov recovered Mantua and the rest of northern Italy, excepting Nice and Genoa, which was held by Moreau. The conquest was consum- Italy™ 7 "* mated by the battle of Novi, on August 15, 1799, in which Suvorov entirely defeated Joubert, who fell in the action. The result of this was that Ferdinand returned to Naples under a royalist reaction, and, assisted by Nelson, executed all those who were opposed to him, with great severity. Four thousand men and women of distinguished families perished on the scaffold. A Russian army under Korsakov now joined the Austrians in Switzerland, in order to assist Suvorov, who was advancing from Italy to cross Switzerland the Alps. But Korsakov was defeated by Massena in the second battle of Zurich and escaped with difficulty. At this time, Suvorov was marching over the St. Gotthard to join his fellow-countrymen, and forced the passage with great difficulty and serious fighting, especially at the Devil's Bridge. Finding himself confronted by the victorious Massena, he turned to the east, and, by one of the most difficult marches in the history of war, crossed the Panixer Pass, with enor- mous loss, into the Grisons, where he joined the Austrians. Meanwhile, a combined landing of English and Russians in Holland failed, through the incompetence of the duke of York, and the Emperor Paul suddenly left the coalition, in disgust at his allies. Bonaparte, reaching Malta on June 9, 1798, took possession of it, and settled its administration before June 18. He dis- embarked at Alexandria on July 1, fought the battle of the Pyramids three weeks later, and j^e Jvtvt 6 entered Cairo as a conqueror on July 24. He remained there for three months, but, on October 21, an insur- rection took place. This, however, was speedily put down, and he was able to remain quietly in the city till the end of the year, during which time he visited Suez and formed plans for the cutting of the canal which has since been executed. In February 1799 he began an expedition into Syria, captured El Arish ten days later, and Jaffa on March 7. On March 17 he arrived before Acre, which he besieged. On April 16 he fought the battle of Mount Tabor, and slept ^Jf^f at Nazareth. Meanwhile, the siege of Acre was continued, till, on May 20, Bonaparte was forced to confess himself defeated. The defence of this town was conducted 664 A GENERAL HISTORY [aj>. 1795 to by the English admiral, Sidney Smith, assisted by a French- man, Phelippeaux, who had been a comrade of Bonaparte at the military school. A fountain is shown in the middle of the town as the farthest point reached by the French in the assault. Napoleon always said that the siege of Acre was the turning point of his career ; if he had conquered that, he would have pursued a victorious course, and probably have established an empire in the East. The retreat lasted from May 21to June 14, when he reached Cairo, and remained there till the end of the month. The fleet with which Bonaparte had reached Egypt had been destroyed by Nelson at Aboukir in the first days of August 1798, when 5000 French 5* ® ° were killed and 3000 taken prisoners, the loss of the English, killed and wounded, being only 900. Brueys was killed, the admiral's ship the Orient was burned, and Yilleneuve escaped with difficulty with two line of battle ships and two frigates to Corfu. Thus, when Bonaparte reached Alexandria on July 23, 1799, he knew that it was impossible to convey his army back to France. However, on July 25, he won the brilliant victory of Aboukir, over a Turkish force vastly superior in numbers, which gave a parting glamour to his dis- astrous expedition and revived the spirit of his men. At Alexandria, he heard of the disasters which had befallen his country in his absence, it is said from a packet of French papers sent to him by Sidney Smith, and he determined to leave at once. On August 23, he embarked on board a French vessel, bearing the name of Muiron, a friend who had sacrificed his life for him at the battle of Areola, reaching Ajaccio on October 1, and Frejus on October 9. Bonaparte arrived at home in the Rue de la Victoire at six o'clock on the morning of October 16. He had many reasons for disapproving of the conduct of Josephine during onapar e ^jg absence from his Country, but he forgave her. During the remainder of the month, he saw his brother Lucien, paid an official visit to the Directory, dined with Gohier, one of the Directors, had his first interview with Moreau, and assisted at a sitting of the Institute, by whom a medal was especially struck, bearing his portrait. He also re- ceived a visit from Bernadotte, and stayed with his brother Joseph at Montefontaine. About October 29 a report spread that private meetings were being held at the house of Si^yes, lasting from ten at night till two in the morning, at which Talleyrand, Bonaparte, and Moreau and some others were present. a.d.1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 665 At this time, too, Bonaparte saw a great deal of Barras, and on November 1 held a long conference with Sieves at the house of Lucien. On November 6, after a conference with Sieves, he attended a banquet given to himself and Moreau by the members of the two councils at the church of St. Sulpice. He was so afraid of poison that he brought his own wine and food with him. The revolution for the overthrow of the Directory was at last prepared, and was fixed for Brumaire 18 (November 9). Sieyes persuaded the councils to transfer their sittings to St. Cloud, to avoid a Jacobin conspiracy Dir ec ° ory e which was supposed to be imminent. On Novem- ber 8, Bonaparte dined with Cambaceres at the Ministry of Justice, and the next morning received a decree of the Council of Ancients appointing him commander of the troops in Paris. He paid his respects to the Council and reviewed his troops at the Tuileries. En the evening, a council was held at the Tuileries, in which it was agreed that the Directors should resign and that three provisional Consuls should be appointed. On the morning of Brumaire 19, Bonaparte, having secured the safety of the capital and the persons of the Directors, rode down to St. Cloud to dissolve the two assemblies. The Ancients, who were inside the palace, presented no difficulty, but the Five Hundred, though presided over by Lucien Bona- parte, who was the soul of the conspiracy, gave more trouble. Bonaparte found himself more nervous and embarrassed in a scene of civil trouble than on the field of battle. When he urged the Assembly to dissolve in the interests of freedom and equality, he was interrupted by cries of " the Constitution ! " and found himself helpless. He was forced to imitate Cromwell, and to send Murat to drive out the deputies at the point of the bayonet. At last, a decree was passed by what remained of the two councils under the presidency of Lucien, appointing a provisional consulate consisting of Sieyes, Roger-Ducos, and Bonaparte, who was to be the executive officer, upon which he returned to Paris, and late at night addressed a proclamation to the French people. On the morning of November 1 1 (Brumaire 20), Bonaparte went to St. Cloud and met the rump of the two councils, assembled in ,the Orangery. Bonaparte At ten he paid a visit to the Luxembourg, which as First had been the palace of the Directory, and at Consul, midday the three Consuls met for the first time. These arrangements were merely provisional. The provisional Consuls 666 A GENERAL HISTORY [a . D . 1795 to held their last meeting in the evening of December 24, and, on Christmas Day 1799, a new government — Bonaparte as First Consul, assisted by Gambaceres and Lebrun — was solemnly installed in office by fifty commissioners of the assemblies, and a period of virtual royalty began again for France. What effects had the French Revolution on England? At first we were inclined to rejoice at the abasement of an hereditary England f° e > Du ^ consideration soon showed us that the and the consequences might be serious for ourselves. In Revolution. 1790, Burke published his Reflections, a reasoned attack upon the Revolution, a masterpiece of English literature. It was answered in the RigJds of Man by Thomas Paine. In May 1791, an open quarrel broke out between Burke and Fox, during the discussions over the Quebec Act, which constituted the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada, Fox supporting the principles of the Revolution and Burke denouncing them, a quarrel which was never healed. In the same year, Grenville, a cousin of Pitt, a hard-headed but somewhat cold and pedantic politician, became foreign secretary, and Dundas, Pitt's inti- mate friend, was placed at the home office. The Revolution began to show its effects. Riots took place in Birmingham on the announcement that the " Constitutional Party" intended to celebrate the taking of the Bastille, and the house of Dr. Priestley, the president of the society, was burned, with the approval of the municipal authorities. In Ireland, the Society of United Irishmen was formed amongst both Catholics and Protestants, for the removal of Catholic disabilities in the Irish Parliament, Wolfe Tone and Thomas Emmett being the leaders. On February 1, 1793, the French government de- clared war against England and Holland. This ofNva^ event had been preparing for some time. The king was strongly opposed to the Revolution, and the cabinet was divided. Pitt was passionately in favour of peace, and made great efforts to secure it, which Grenville was not prepared to support. The Committee of Public Safety and the Convention made matters very difficult. The decree for opening the Scheldt to commerce, although opposed to English interests, might have been got over, and the decree of November 19, offering assistance to all peoples who desired to recover their liberty, although announcing a revolutionary propaganda, was not so serious as it seemed. The French executive was also divided between war and peace, and perhaps a.d. 1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 667 if Maret had reached England in time, and could have conferred with Pitt, the war need never have taken place. But the execution of the king made peace impossible. Chauvelin, the French ambassador, was ordered to leave England, which was an insult to France that could not be overlooked, and at the beginning of the month war was declared, and Dumouriez was instructed to invade Holland. The war thus begun, which perhaps might have been prevented, lasted, with momentous consequences, and only one short intermission, till the victory of Waterloo in 1815. The first coalition which fought against France was com- posed of England, Spain, Sardinia, Portugal, Holland, Austria, and Prussia. Pitt, unlike his father, was a bad war minister, and, underrating the strength and «„„,•.,.•„„ • c -n • ii Coalition, enthusiasm or the Jcrench nation, thought that the war would be over in six months. In the first year, the Austrians were successful in the Netherlands, Toulon sur- rendered to Hood, the duke of York besieged Dunkirk ; but before the end of it fortune began to turn, and in 1794, after the French victory of Fleurus, the allies evacuated the Austrian Netherlands, though by the battle of the "Glorious First of June " a French fleet was entirely defeated in the English Channel by Howe. To carry on the v*°T e S war with greater energy, a new office of secretary of war was created, which was given to Dundas. English Radicals, such as Home Tooke and Thomas Hardy, were tried for high treason, but without much success. In 1795, foreign relations became more composed. Poland ceased to exist, being finally divided between Russia, Austria, and Prussia ; the French established the Batavian Republic, practically making Holland a part of France, the result of which was that England declared war upon Holland and captured her colonies ; while, by the peace of Basel, Prussia and Spain left the coalition and made peace with France. England, finding herself de- serted, was forced to make alliances with Austria and Russia ; but Russia did little, and the struggle against the Revolution was practically continued only by England and Austria. The years of 1796 and 1797 witnessed the victories of Bonaparte in Italy, and Sardinia was lost to the coalition. Pitt tried to make peace in March and October, 1796, but, in both cases, without success. The second of these two years is said to be the darkest time in English history. Plans were made by which the French and Spaniards were to invade 668 A GENERAL HISTORY [a .d. 1795 to England, while the Dutch would make a landing in Ireland, at that time seriously disaffected to the English government. Battle of The battle of Cape St. Vincent, won by Jervis Cape St. and Nelson, destroyed the French and Spanish Vincent. fleets and was a prelude to Trafalgar. At the same time, a French force effected a landing in Wales, but was compelled to surrender to Lord Cawdor. Commercial distress was so great that the Bank of England had to suspend cash payments, which were not resumed till 1819. There were two Naval mutinies in the English fleet, caused by the dis- Mutinies content of the sailors, one at Spithead and one at Battle of the 1ST ore. A third attempt at negotiations for Camper- peace by Pitt failed, but the battle of Camper- down, won by Duncan against the Dutch, pre- vented an invasion of England from that quarter. At the same time, however, Austria was detached from the coalition by the treaty of Campo Formio, and, Portugal having also made peace with France, England now stood alone. It is to her credit that she endeavoured to make peace, but it was no credit that she continued the war with stubborn obstinacy. In 1798, the year in which Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the engagement absurdly called the battle of the Nile, a rebellion which had long been preparing t, ? „J. 1S broke out in Ireland, relations between the two Rebellion. . , . '„ countries having gradually become worse since 1795. In that year the society of United Irishmen was reconstructed on republican lines. The Orange Society was founded by the Protestants, which led to a terrible persecu- tion of the Catholics in the north of Ireland. The Catholic " Defenders," who had at first only concerned themselves with agrarian grievances, joined the political society of the United Irishmen. In 1796 Wolfe Tone sought the assistance of the French Directory, but the French fleet did not get farther than Bantry Bay. The United Irishmen per- suaded the peasants that the Protestants were contemplating a universal murder of the Catholics, so that the country was in a condition of veiled rebellion; and when, in 1798, martial law was proclaimed, and English troops were quartered upon the Irish people, the rebellion broke out. The rebels were defeated at Vinegar Hill on June 21, and a French force which landed in their support at Killala was routed by Lake. In 1799, during the absence of Bonaparte in Egypt, England a.d. 1799] NAPOLEON BONAPARTE 669 succeeded in forming a second coalition against France, of which Austria and Russia were the most prominent members, and in India a danger was removed by the defeat and death of Tippoo Sahib, the ruler of J^*?™ 1 " 1 Mysore, who had been negotiating with France. The successes and disasters of Bonaparte in Egypt and Syria have been already narrated. At the close of the year he re- turned to his country after his repulse from Acre, and could say with truth to those who met him, " What have you clone with the France which I left so powerful?" By the events of Brumaire 18, he became the First Consul, and his first action was to endeavour to make peace. On Christmas Day, 1799, the very day on which he entered upon his new office, he wrote the following letter with his own hand to George III. : " Called by the wishes of the French nation to occupy the first magistracy of the republic, I think it proper on entering into office to make a direct communication of Bonaparte's it to your majesty. The war which has for Letter to eight years ravaged the four quarters of the George III. world, must it be eternal? — are there no means of coming to an understanding? How can the two most enlightened nations of Emope, powerful and strong beyond what their safety and independence require, sacrifice to ideas of vain greatness the benefits of commerce, internal prosperity, and the happiness of families 1 How is it that they do not feel that peace is of the first necessity as well as of the first glory ? " These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of your majesty, who reigns over a free nation, and with the sole view of rendering it happy. Your majesty will only see in this overture my sincere desire to contribute efficaciously for the second time to a general pacification, by a step speedy, entirely confidential, and disengaged from those forms which, — necessary, perhaps, to disguise the dependence of weak states — prove in those which are strong only the mutual desire of deceiving each other. France and England, by the abuse of their strength, may still, for a short time, to the misfortune of all nations, retard the period of their own exhaustion. But, I will venture to say, the fate of all civilised nations is attached to the termina- tion of a war which has involved the whole world." It is possible that Pitt would have accepted this offer, recog- nising in some measure that a new atithority had arisen in France ; but he was prevented by the pedantry of Grenville and the enthusiasm of Wyndham for the cause of the French 670 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1795-1799 emigi-ants. Therefore, in response to this appeal, which pro- ceeded from the heart and the head of the writer, a chilling official answer was sent from- the secretary of state, and the war begun in 1793 went on, notwithstanding strong opposition Bonaparte i n the English Parliament. A letter couched offers terms in similar terms was addressed by Bonaparte to Austria, to the Emperor Francis II., reminding him of the relations which had previously existed between them, offering to renew the peace of Campo Formio. But Austria partly rejected the offers of the First Consul because she had regained so much ground during the absence of Bonaparte in Egypt, but chiefly because England would not allow her to make peace. Bonaparte was driven to try other methods for effecting his object ; the cold and insulting replies of Grenville and Thugut increased his popularity in France ; and the country armed itself with enthusiasm to extort by force the settlement which it could not obtain by a generous offer of peace. CHAPTER XII. NAPOLEON, A.D. 1800-1805. The first duty of the new government was to organise itself as a working institution. The fantastic edifice of Sieves, in which the five million electors of France were to choose The New half a million communal notables, who were to Constitu- choose fifty thousand departmental notables, who tion. were to choose five thousand ultimate notables, a selection of whom were to govern the country, was unworkable and absurd. The double election of the president has failed in America : the triple election of officials could not succeed in France. Similarly there was to be a tribunate who discussed without voting, a legislative body who voted without discussion, and a senate who might annul any measure as guardians of the constitution. There was to be a Grand Elector, who possessed dignity without power, while the executive government was entrusted to a college of three consuls. Napoleon, with great skill, changed this arrangement into a workable machine. Sieyes had provided that all persons who, at the beginning of the Revolution, had belonged to any municipal or political assembly, or had held a public office, should be included in the list of notables in addition to those legally elected, which gave Bona- parte the opportunity of confiding the administration to men whom he could trust ; the power of the Senate was diminished, the Grand Elector became a shadow, the consuls were appointed for ten years, and the " First Consul " was placed officially at their head. In this manner, the First Consul was invested with the power which was absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of affairs. Happily, the Conseil d'Etat (the Council of State) could be extended so as to become a political body, competent to act, and yet of ofState 1 "^ popular complexion, and it was through this body that Bonaparte was able to effect the reconstruction of France. Both the consuls and the Conseil d'Etat met as a rule every day, — the consuls at noon, the Conseil d'Etat at two o'clock. 671 672 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. isoo to The rooms in which they met were close together, so that the First Consul could pass from one to the other, and the Council of State often sat till far into the night. The minutes of this council were burnt under the Commune, but we know that out of the hundred sittings devoted to the Code Napoleon The First ^he First Consul presided over fifty-seven. No Consul head of a government ever worked so hard as and his Napoleon. His week-ends were spent at Malmai- Ministers. S011j a coun try house in the neighbourhood of Paris, inseparably associated with the memories of Josephine and himself. The first officials with whom Napoleon worked on arriving at power remained with him till the end. Cam- baceres, although conceited and fond of representation, was an excellent jurist, Lebrun a faithful henchman, Gaudin an incomparable financier, Maret a wise and trusted secretary. To these were added Talleyrand as foreign minister, false but indispensable; Fouche, an accomplished rogue, set as minister of police to watch rogues ; Carnot, an honest man and an un- rivalled minister of war ; Lucien, true to his brother at the beginning and at the end of his career, but during a long period estranged from him in the assertion of his independence. Napoleon found it difficult to command an army without Berthier as head of the staff. With this machinery in his hands, Napoleon (as we shall now call him) had to construct a new France, for the Revolution had destroyed not only all institutions of govern- fO der 10n men ^> but a ^ material from which a government could be constructed. Paris and the provinces were in a condition of anarchy, torn asunder by Royalist Emigrants on one side and Jacobin Terrorists on the other. Paris had no police and no morality : the garden of the Palais Royale, in its filth and its obscenity, was a disgrace to a civilised country. Religion, the foundation of all morality, which had been trampled under foot, was deliberately and thankfully re- stored. The centralised system of administration which had been established by Richelieu and Louis XIV., and which was necessary for the unity of France but had been ruined by the anarchy of the Revolution, was reconstructed by Napoleon. It still remains the safeguard of France, the iron framework which keeps her discordant elements together, and without which she would cease to exist as a nation ; the division of the country into departments, arrondissements, cantons, and com- munes, with prefects, subprefects, and mayors at their head, is a.d. 1805] NAPOLEON 673 as necessary now as it was then ; the faculty of self-govern- ment is inbred in a nation's character, and cannot be imposed from without. The First Consul gave to France law, order, and religion ; he restored the finances, being one of the best financiers the world has ever seen. When Fox reached Paris after the peace of Amiens, he was astonished to find money much more plentiful in Paris than in London. The new Code, which all nations who have lived under it are reluctant to surrender, gave unity and equality of law to all classes. For the first time in the history of France, a career was open to talent, energy, and ambition, in which all might compete on equal terms. The Consuls were established at the Tuileries on February 19, 1800. Napoleon said to Bourienne : " "Well, here we are at the Tuileries ; we must endeavour to remain here." He stayed at Paris till May 6, presiding at the Council of State, spending Sundays at Malmaison, and holding a fortnightly review in the courtyard of the Carrousel. In order to coerce Austria into peace, a double campaign had been projected — an invasion of Germany by the Rhine army under Moreau, and a crushing of Austria in Italy by Napoleon himself. At the beginning of May, Moreau crossed the Rhine at Y3 Moreau Breisach, defeated the Austrian s at Engen, Stockach, and Mosskirch, and reached the Danube. Kray was so completely overmastered that 16,000 men could be detached by Moreau to strengthen the army in Italy. In the middle of June, the Austrians, by masterly manoeuvres, were driven from Ulm, and, on July 15, the armistice of Parsdorf placed the south of Germany in the hands of France. In the meantime, Napoleon reached Dijon, where his army had been secretly forming, in twenty-five hours from the capital, went to Geneva, where he saw Necker, had an interview with Carnot at Lausanne, and reached Martigny on May 17, where he heard of the capture of Aosta. Berthier having written to him that the little fortress of Bard at the foot of the Great Napoleon St. Bernard could not be taken, he determined crosses the to go there immediately, and passed the mountains Alps, on May 21. He left Martigny at 8, breakfasted at Liddes at 11, dined at the hospice of St. Bernard at 5, left at 6.30, and reached Etroubles at 9 p.m. ; and, forcing the defile of Bard, entered Milan on the evening of June 2. The immortal battle of Marengo was fought on June 14, and at half- past three he found himself beaten ; but at this moment Desaix arrived, 2 u 674 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. laoo to and urged that, although one battle was lost, there was time to win another. The victorious Austrians were attacked with Battles of vigour, and were completely defeated, Desaix Marengo perishing in the moment of victory. On De- and Hohen- cember 3, Moreau won the battle of Hohenlinden, linden. a victory as distinguished but not so well re- membered as that of Marengo, and the Austrians had to seek for peace. On Christmas Eve, 1800, as Napoleon was driving to the opera to hear the first performance of Haydn's Creation, a so-called infernal machine was exploded under ConTtnracv ^* s can 'i a g e anc ^ killed a large number of persons. We know now that this was part of a Royalist conspiracy against Napoleon's power and even life, which was encouraged and assisted by the English govern- ment — a conspiracy which had eventually to be put a stop to by the execution of the Due d'Enghien. For the moment, however, it enabled the First Consul to send into exile a number of Jacobins and Terrorists, who were equally dan- gerous to the peace of the country. But the best answer to these attacks was peace, and the treaty of Luneville be- tween France and Austria, preparations for which had been made by Napoleon and his brother Joseph even before the battle of Hohenlinden, was signed at Luneville on February 9, 1801. The treaty of LuneVille confirmed the arrangements made at Campo Formio and went further in some respects. Its general Treatv of effect was to give France the frontier of the Luneville. Rhine, together with Belgium, and the chief control over northern Italy. The German princes, chiefly ecclesiastical, who were dispossessed of their territories on the left bank of the Rhine were to be compensated else- where when territory had been found for them. By this treaty, France became the mistress of Europe by land, as England was at sea. The kingdom of Etruria was founded in central Italy ; Naples gave up her claim to Elba and the opposite coast of Italy ; Spain placed her fleet at the disposal of France ; Portugal submitted to France in the treaty of Badajoz. But things went hardly in Egypt, where Kl6ber was murdered at Cairo on the same day and at the same hour that Desaix fell at Marengo, and, in September 1801, the French garrison, 24,000 strong, was brought back to Europe in English ships. In Russia also things went badly for France. The emperor, Paul I., whose a.d. 1805] NAPOLEON 675 eccentricity almost reached the point of madness, was a de- voted admirer and friend of Napoleon, but partly by English intrigue, and certainly with the knowledge of his Death of the son and successor, Alexander, he was foully and Emperor cruelly murdered on the night of March 23, 1801, P aul L and Russia became the ally of England. Before this time, just after the battle of Marengo, England had endeavoured to con- solidate her strength by an Act of Union with Union of Ireland, which certainly protected that island England against foreign intrigues, but was of doubtful an( * Ireland. utility to either country, and was carried by a majority of one in the Irish Parliament, purchased by bribery and corruption. The union dated from January 1, 1801, and was marked by the addition of the Cross of St. Patrick to those of St. George and St. Andrew in the Union-Jack. The united kingdom was to have a single Parliament, in which Ireland was largely repre- sented. In 1800 England captured from France Malta, which France had promised to Russia. The Czar, mortally Second offended, established a second Armed Neutrality Armed with Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia, to withstand Neutrality, the British claims to search neutral vessels and check their trade with France. This and the treaty of Luneville were met by the unprovoked attack of Nelson upon Denmark, in which the capital was shelled and the Danish fleet destroyed, on April 2, 1801, in what is called the battle of Copenhagen, Conenhaffen an act of indefensible aggression. Some weeks earlier, Pitt ceased to be prime minister of England, and was succeeded by Addington, Pitt being, as Canning wittily observed, to Addington as London was to Paddington. The sole cause of his resignation was the refusal of the king to give the franchise to Catholics in Ireland, which Pitt had solemnly promised as a condition of the Union. One of the first occupations of the Addington ministry was to make peace with France. On the one hand, Abercromby gained the victory of Alexandria over the French in Egypt ; on the other, Nelson failed in destroy- The Peace ing the flotilla which Napoleon had collected at Boulogne for the invasion of England. Consequently, the pre- liminaries of peace were signed at Amiens, on October 1, 1801, and the definite peace on March 27, 1802. The conditions were that Great Britain should return to France, Spain, and Holland all the conquests which she had made, with the exception of Ceylon and Trinidad ; that the king should surrender the title 676 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. isoo to of king of France, which the kings of England had borne since 1340, and should remove the French lilies, which had ceased to be the emblem of France, from the royal arms ; and above all, that the island of Malta should be restored to the knights of St. John. On the other hand, France should evacuate Naples and the Papal States, should acknowledge the independence of the Ionian Islands, and should restore Egypt to the Porte. The peace was received with great rejoicings both in England and in France. It has been described as a hollow truce, a temporary suspension of the conflict, which both countries intended to resume as soon as possible, but there is no doubt that Napoleon was seriously anxious for peace — indeed it is probable that peace with England, the country which he most respected and admired, was one of the main objects of his career. Undoubtedly the result of the war was as much to the advantage of England as the preservation of peace was necessary to the prosperity of France. Napoleon would not have put an end to the peace of Amiens unless he had been forced to do so by the conduct of England. He used the period of peace to settle the relations France and between France and the rest of Europe. He the rest of drew the Batavian Republic closer to France, in- Europe. creasing its commerce and prosperity. As armed mediator he gave a good constitution to Switzerland, which revolutionary France had treated so badly and left in such dis- order. He began the great road over the Simplon, and, to secure its not being affected by the vicissitudes of the other cantons, gave a separate constitution to the valleys through which it passed. He changed the Cisalpine into an Italian Republic, taking a further step towards the unity of Italy, which he so fervently desired. And he put an end to the effete constitution of the German empire by destroying the independent sovereignty of a large number of German princes, and profoundly modifying the ecclesiastical government of the German states. If Germany, ten years later, could rise against Napoleon in the war of inde- pendence, she owed her power to do so to the fact that Napoleon had struck off her chains. It is true that Napoleon, by the splendour of his genius, became, to some extent, the arbiter of Europe, which needed a reconstruction of its worn-out polity, and a statesman who would indicate the lines on which it should be reconstructed, but he also restored religion to France, which he knew was necessary for her existence. On October 4, 1801, he signed the decree which gave back the churches to the church ; two days later, he received at the Tuileries Cardinal Caprara, a. to. 1805] NAPOLEON 677 the legate of the Holy See. On January 4, 1802, his brother Louis was married to Hortense Beauharnais, the daughter of Josephine, in the chapel of the Tuileries, by Cardinal Caprara, a preliminary to his own corona- * . ^.ij 18111 tion by the pope in the cathedral of Notre Dame. On January 8, in the Council of State, he recalled a large number of the emigres from exile. On January 26, he accepted the presi- dency of the Italian Republic, offered to him by the Italian government, which was afterwards objected to by England, as an act of usurpation, but which took place two months before the signature of the treaty of Amiens. April 1802 was a month full of glory for Napoleon. On the ninth, Cardinal Caprara was solemnly received by the government as legate a latere of the pope, and the archbishops and bishops who, by the Concordat, were to be at the head of the French church were nominated. On the 17th he ratified the treaties concluded at Amiens with England, Spain, and the Batavian Republic; and on the 18th, which, was Easter Sunday, the Concordat was solemnly pro- mulgated. A great religious service was held in Notre Dame, attended by the three Consuls, the new bishops took the oath of allegiance, and the day closed with a banquet at the Tuileries. What greater service could a sovereign render to his country than to restore to it the peace which nine years before had been broken by anarch} 7 , and the religion which for ten years had been trodden under foot? On May 4, the regeneration of France was properly marked by the institution of the Legion of Honour — a Garter, a Golden Fleece, founded on democratic principles. To make Napoleon Consul f tt e ^ lon for life, which was not effected till August 2, was a just but imperfect recognition of the benefits which he had conferred upon his country. During the peace a large number of Englishmen visited Paris, among them Charles James Fox, who went there to collect materials for his history of the later Stuarts. They were hospitably received by the First Consul, and were deeply im- pressed by the popularity of the government and the prosperity of the country. Lord Whitworth was sent to Paris as English ambassador, and was received at the Tuileries on December 3 — a most unfortunate choice, as he was a stiff necked and narrow- minded aristocrat and his wife was a duchess whom he thought too good for republican society. After a period of strained rela- tions, intensified, as usual, by the intemperance of the press on both sides of the channel, war was eventually declared on May 678 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. isoo to 18, 1803, thirteen months after the final conclusion of peace. The causes of this were the jealousy of Napoleon's power in Europe, which miffht easily have been foreseen when the ,. w peace was signed, and the refusal to surrender Malta, a breach of honourable engagements, which it was impossible that Napoleon could put up with. It is generally held that, in the war against Napoleon which con- tinued till 1815, England was supporting the cause of independ- ence and liberty in the world. It is probably more true that the name and authority of Napoleon stood in every part of Europe for progress and civilisation, which is shown by the degrading servitude of peoples which followed his fall, when the chief object of his enemies was to undo his work. Certain it is that the wars in which Napoleon engaged from the campaign of Austerlitz to that of Waterloo were not sought by him ; but were stimulated and supported by English subsidies, which exhausted our labouring classes and subjected our country to a debt of eight hundred millions. Whether the destruc- tion of Napoleon was worth the sacrifice, each one must decide for himself. Napoleon replied to the declaration of war by the arrest of all Englishmen travelling in France as a reprisal for the attack of the English on French shipping. On the breach of the peace which he had concluded, Addington retired from office, and Pitt resumed the premiership, with Harrowby as foreign secretary. At this time, the members of the Bourbon family to whom England was giving protection were the chief instigators of The Bour- the war against France. They were led by bons in the Comte d'Artois, the prince of Conde, and England. the duke of Bourbon, father and grandfather of the duke of Enghien. They received pensions from the English government, a generosity which was shared by a host of needy emigrants, bearing noble names, living in obscure lodgings, under the general superintendence of William Wyndham, and aided by the magnanimous friendship of Burke. They were in league with conspirators in France, who were doing their best to render Napoleon's government in France impossible, and to threaten not only his sovereignty, but his life. The leaders of this conspiracy, inspired partly by Cadoudal's m i s t a ken patriotism and partly by jealousy, were Georges Cadoudal, Pichegru, and, sad to say, Moreau, who was not strong enough to resist the influence to which he was exposed. The English government gave a.d. 1805] NAPOLEON 679 money for the support of Royalist armies in France, assisted descents upon the French coast, allowed their diplomatic agents on the frontiers of France to intrigue against the French government, discussed plans of conspiracy with Cadoudal, and permitted him without remonstrance to inform them of the plans which were being formed against the First Consul's life. Napoleon was obliged to protect himself with vigour against the enemies of France abroad and at home. It was necessary to put an end to the Bourbon conspiracies. Charles of Artois had not courage enough to lead the expedi- tion which he was asked to conduct, while Conde and Bourbon lived in luxury in English country houses, stirring up the danger which they did not share, escaping the punishment which they deserved, while they exposed others to it. Their son and grandson, the duke of Enghien, in spite of the warn- ings of his father and grandfather, lived at Ettenheim, a village near the French border, which had belonged to Cardinal de Rohan, archbishop of Strasburg, and recently to France, detained there by the charms of the Cardinal's niece, whom he loved passionately and had perhaps married. He was properly kept in ignorance of CadoudaFs conspiracy, but he had fought against his country as an emigre and was, therefore, subject to the penalty of death, and he was to lead an army in Alsace if a war broke out. Napoleon determined to arrest and shoot him, as he could not suffer a Bourbon prince to be living in those times so near to his dominions. The duke of Baden, to whose lot Ettenheim had recently fallen, was powerless to expel him, and Enghien disregarded every warning that he should leave, and neglected every opportunity for escape. On p a ^ e f the night of February 14, 1804, the question of the Con- the conspiracy was discussed in the council of spirators. ministers and, on the following day, by the Consuls and the council of state. On that day, Moreau was arrested. On March 9, Georges Cadoudal was captured in Paris, and, on the evening of the following day, instructions were issued to Berthier and Cau- laincourt for the arrest of Enghien. A small force Execution of French cavalry crossed the Rhine; Enghien of the Duke was seized and brought to Vincennes ; he was of Enghien. immediately tried, condemned, and shot, and was buried in the castle ditch. The duke of Baden thanked the First Consul for the act of justice, which he was not strong enough to execute himself, and from that time forth nothing more was heard of Bourbon conspiracies. Cadoudal was executed, A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. isoo to Pichegru hung himself in prison, and Moreau took refuge in America. It was obvious that, if France was to be well governed, a monarchy must be restored, and the crown was offered to Napoleon, as it was offered to Cromwell on a similar occasion for the same reasons. On May 18, the Emueror 1 Senate passed a vote which raised General Napoleon Bonaparte to rank of emperor, and afterwards went in a body to St. Cloud, to salute him under the title of Napoleon I. His first act was to create eighteen marshals, whose names have become famous in history, — Berthier, Murat, Jourdan, Massena, Augereau, Bernadotte, Soult, Moncey, Brune, Lannes, Mortier, Ney, Davout, Bessieres, Kellermann, Lefebvre, Perignon, and Serurier. On June 15, the new dignity was consecrated at Notre Dame, by a mass celebrated by the cardinal legate, and in the afternoon crosses were solemnly distributed to the members of the Legion of Honour, who took the oath of allegiance to their new sovereign. England still remained at war, although Napoleon renewed his offers of peace. It became necessary to alter the govern- The Empire men ^ or the states dependent on France, in ac- and the cordance with the alteration of the government of Dependent that country. Schimmelpennink as grand pen- States, sionary became head of the Batavian, and Eugene Beauharnais, as viceroy, head of the Italian Republic. Genoa and Piedmont were united with France. Elisa Bonaparte, wife of the commoner Bacciochi, became Duchess of Piombino and Lucca, to which Massa was afterwards added, which she governed with the enlightenment and skill which she after- wards displayed in Tuscany. Steps were taken to secure the fidelity of Naples, and the unfortunate Queen Caroline, who deserved a better fate, found herself hardly pressed between the upper and lower millstones of France on one side and England and Russia on the other. Wherever the government of Napoleon went, civilisation followed ; the Code Napoleon was received everywhere as a priceless boon, and a model adminis- tration was established, until it was ruined by the inappeasable enmity of England, who used her revenues, derived from the taxes of the people, to stir up interminable war. Napoleon, following the example of Marengo, set himself Boulogne & *° S a * n ^ force of arms what he could not gain by persuasion, and made vast preparations at Boulogne for the invasion of England. England answered by arming volunteers, and by building Martello towers along the a.d. 1805] NAPOLEON 681 coast, which still exist as a monument of expensive folly. It has been supposed that Napoleon was not serious in this project of invasion, and he could certainly never have carried it out. But it is equally certain that he really intended it and put all the power of his mind to the execution of it. He had no command of steam, which would be largely employed in any similar enterprise at the present day. England also proceeded to form a new coalition. Alexander I. was anxious to restore the Bourbon dynasty, and made offers to England, which, after some hesitation, were . „, , t • • Thfi Third accepted on April 11, 1805. The coalition was coalition joined by Sweden, and, unfortunately for herself, by Austria. Prussia, for the present, remained neutral, and it would have been better for her if she had preserved that atti- tude. For the invasion of England, Napoleon had formed a plan that Villeneuve, sailing from Toulon, should unite with the Dutch and Spanish fleets and entice Nelson to the West Indies, then, suddenly returning, should liberate Gantheaume, who was blockaded by Cornwallis in Brest, and, with him, occupy the English Channel. Hearing, in the middle of August 1805, that his plan had failed, and that Villeneuve, unable to liberate Gantheaume, had sailed to Cadiz, he first ^he English broke out into a fit of uncontrollable wrath, and, Invasion when he had recovered himself, dictated orders for abandoned, a campaign which was completely to destroy Austria and make peace in Vienna. He wrote to Talleyrand from Boulogne on August 23 : — " If the fleets do notcome, I shall march with 200,000 men into Germany, and not stop till I have reached Vienna, added Venice to my possessions, and driven the Bourbons from Naples. I shall not allow Austria and Russia to join forces, but defeat them before they can unite." This was carried out to the letter. On October 20, Mack capitulated at Ulm, and 24,000 Austrians, among whom were eighteen Trafalgar generals, laid down their arms at Napoleon's feet, as he stood before the Michaelsberg. England proudly avenged herself on the following day, by the immortal victory of Trafalgar, in which the genius of Nelson so completely destroyed the French and Spanish fleets that they have never since raised their heads, but have conceded to England the undis- puted mastery of the seas. On November 13 Austerlitz Napoleon became master of Vienna, and on December 2 won the battle of Austerlitz, in which the Russians and Austrians were completely defeated. 682 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. isoo to Before these events occurred, Napoleon had taken steps to establish his authority in Europe. On December 1, 1804, The the Senate declared the imperial dignity heredi- Imperial tary in the family of Napoleon, or in that of his Family. brothers Louis and Joseph, if Napoleon should die without issue. On the same evening, Napoleon and Josephine were married in a religious ceremony by Cardinal Fesch. On the following day, just a year before Austerlitz, the emperor and empress were solemnly crowned in Notre Dame by Pope Pius VI., who had come to Paris for that purpose. On March 24, 1805, Louis Napoleon, the son of Louis and Hortense, afterwards the Emperor Napoleon III., was baptized at St. Cloud by the pope, who left for Rome -a week later. In April Napoleon visited Italy with Josephine. They met the pope at Turin, visited the battlefield of Marengo, Napoleon an< l on May 2 he was crowned king of Italy, King of in the cathedral of Milan, by Cardinal Caprara, Italy. the legate of the Holy See. On June 24, he made Lucca, as we have said, into a principality for his sister Caroline. He reached Genoa on June 30, and slept in the bed of Charles V. He was back at Fontainebleau on July 11, having travelled incognito for eighty-five hours, arrived at St. Cloud on July 17, and at the beginning of August went to Boulogne, where he suffered the disappointment of which we have already spoken. The victory of Austerlitz was followed by the peace of Pressburg, by which Venice came to France, the Tyrol to Bavaria, the Breisgau to Baden, and Salzburg to Pressbure Austria. The condition of Prussia was humili- ating, but not more so than she deserved. In the autumn of 1805, Alexander had visited Berlin and had almost persuaded Frederick William to break with Napoleon and to join the coalition. Haugwitz was sent to Vienna to explain the attitude of Prussia to Napoleon, and to demand the evacuation of Hanover. Napoleon asked him to wait till he had finished the business in hand, and, when the battle of Aus- terlitz had been won and the peace of Pressburg signed, The King- Haugwitz found himself in a ridiculous posi- doms of tion. Prussia gave up Anspach, Neufchatel, and Holland Cleves in exchange for Hanover, the occupation of and Naples. w hich immediately involved her in a war with England. Napoleon then proceeded to drive out the Bour- bons from the kingdom of Naples, which he gave to his a.d. 1805] NAPOLEON 683 brother Joseph, making Holland into a kingdom for his younger brother Louis. If his brothers, thus placed, were not always faithful to him, they behaved, at any rate, better than Murat or Bernadotte. Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister Caroline, became Duke of Oleves and Berg, Pauline Borghese received Piombino and Guastalla, Bernadotte became Prince of Ponte Corvo, Talleyrand of Benevento, and Berthier of Neufchatel. No sovereign ever more generously rewarded those who assisted him in his work, although they were often ungrateful to him. The Confederation of the The Con- Rhine was founded, consisting of sixteen sove- federation reign German princes, amongst them Bavaria, of tne Rhine. Wiirtemberg, Baden, Darmstadt, and Nassau ; and on August 6, the Holy Roman Empire, which had existed for more than a thousand years, came to an end. Francis II. retained the title of Emperor of Austria, which he had held since 1804. The news of the victory of Austerlitz, and the shattering of the carefully laid plans by which the third coalition had been formed, killed Pitt. He was at Bath looking at a picture of Macklin, the actor, when he heard a courier gallop- ■ ', TT • 1 , 1 • ° • L Death of mg up the street. He said to his companion, pitt " Those are despatches for me," and went out to get them. In them he read of the disasters, became deadly pale, and nearly fainted. The deadly pallor, " the Austerlitz look," as it was called, never left his face till he died on January 23, 1806. CHAPTER XIII. NAPOLEON, A.D. 1806-1815. The death of Pitt was followed by the accession to office of the ministry called " All the Talents," consisting of Grenville as prime minister, Fox as foreign secretary, Erskine as lord chancellor, Wyndham, and others. Fox, who had Death of always opposed the war, endeavoured to make peace, but he died on September 23, and his place was taken by Howick. The treaty of Schb'nbrunn left Prussia in a discontented frame of mind. Her army, proud of the traditions of Frederick the Great, felt that they had been abased : her harbours were blockaded by England, with whom she was at war. Napoleon occupied the fortress of Wesel, and secretly offered Hanover, which had been the price of peace for Prussia, to England, to whom it had originally belonged. Frederick Prussia William also made proposals to the coalition declares formed of England, Russia, and Sweden, and on War. October 1, 1806, declared war against France. Napoleon lost no time in accepting the challenge. He was already at Mainz, which he left on the evening of the declara- tion, and, passing by Wiirzburg and Basel, reached the line of the Saale. The battle of Saalfeld was fought on October 10, in which the gallant Prince Louis Ferdinand was killed, and the Battles of double battles of Jena and Auerstadt followed on Jena and October 14 — Napoleon attacking the division of Auerstadt. Prince Hohenlohe, Davout the principal army under Duke Charles Ferdinand of Brunswick. The defeat was disastrous. The principal fortresses of Prussia, including Erfurt, Stettin, Magdeburg, Breslau, and Danzig, fell into the hands of the French, and Berlin was occupied by Davout. On October 24 the conqueror reached Potsdam, having passed through Weimar on October 16, where he had a conversation with Goethe. On October 26 he visited the tomb of Frederick the Great, took possession of his sword and of his Order of the Black Eagle, and sent them with the trophies of victory to be 684 a.d. 1806-1815] NAPOLEON 685 kept at the Invalides. He stayed at Berlin for nearly a month, reviewing troops and preparing for the continuance of the campaign. On Friday, November 21, he signed the famous Berlin Decree, declaring the whole of decree 1 ™ the British Isles in a state of blockade, for- bidding all intercourse with them, and ordering all English property found abroad to be confiscated. In answer to this, Orders in Council were issued in 1807 forbidding trade with France. It is difficult to say which of the belligerents suffered most from these measures, and to what extent, but it is certain that they did grave damage to the trade of the Americans. War had now to be continued against Russia, during a hard Russian winter. Warsaw was reached on December 20, 1806, and the indecisive battles of Pultusk and Golymir were fought six clays later. Napoleon beat the The Russian Russians at Allenstein on February 4, 1807, and pursued them with admirable skill. He came up with them at Eylau, four days later, when a battle was fought which is gener- ally regarded as the first of Napoleon's defeats, but was really indecisive. He certainly continued to occupy the field of battle, but was soon obliged to retreat. At the beginning of March he arrived at Osteroda and established himself in the chateau of Finkenstein, which had been built by the tutor of Frederick the Great. Here he remained till the end of May, — working hard, walking with his brother-in-law, Murat, riding furiously when the weather permitted, and holding reviews every day in the gardens. During this time he made peace with Persia, and received the ambassador of the Sultan. He did not finally leave Finkenstein for the field till June 6, and fought the battle of Friedland on June 14, when ^iSland the failure of Eylau was avenged. The battle was begun by Lannes at three in the morning, and was not over till eleven at night. Napoleon reached Tilsit on J tine 19. It has often been said that the peace of Tilsit was concluded on a raft in the middle of the river, but this, of course, is not the case. This very beautiful town ^i^t is situated on the river Memel, the frontier between Prussia and Russia. Negotiations for peace could only be carried on in neutral territory, and the only place fulfilling this condition was a pavilion of wood, constructed on one of the rafts which are so plentiful at this spot. Alex- ander and Napoleon met in this pavilion on June 25, and were there joined by the king of Prussia on the following clay. 686 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to They there divided the town into three parts, assigned respec- tively to the French and Russian emperors and the king, who occupied a very subordinate position. The monarchs stayed in the town for three weeks till the ratifications were exchanged on July 9, the two emperors being the greatest friends, dining together continually and walking arm-in-arm through the town. On Monday, July 6, the queen, Louise, who had a con- tempt for Napoleon, appeared in great state with a carriage and six. The following day she dined with Napoleon, and, on his offering her a rose, said that she would only receive it if he surrendered Magdeburg. Enraged at her rudeness, he threw it into the fire. It is probably not accurately known what were the conditions of Tilsit, because most of the arrangements were contained in Rearrange- secre t articles, and in conversations between the ment of two emperors. It was certainly disastrous to German Prussia. A kingdom of Westphalia was formed, States. f which Jerome Bonaparte was to be king, com- prising electoral Hesse, Brunswick, and part of Hanover; a duchy of Warsaw was created for the king of Saxony as an outpost against Russia and Austria ; Bayreuth was given to Bavaria and Prussian Friesland to Holland ; Dantzig was made a free state, but continued, together with Erfurt, to be subordinate to France. Prussia was compelled to join in the blockade against England, to reduce her army to 45,000 men, and to admit French garrisons into her fortresses, and she had to pay an indemnity of 150,000,000 thalers. In other documents it was agreed that Russia should have a free hand in Turkey, provided that Napoleon should be allowed to do what he pleased in Europe. Arrangements were also made with regard to Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Denmark, and even with regard to India. The two emperors certainly regarded the world as if it lay helpless before their feet, but what they settled had little practical effect, except to stir Prussia to revenge seven years later. Meanwhile in England the ministry English °^ " -^^ ^ ne Talents " disappeared in March Ministries 1807. It had attempted to assist Russia against and the Turkey by an expedition to the Dardanelles, War. which failed, while another expedition sent against Buenos Ayres was equally unsuccessful. It had passed an act abolishing the slave trade, but an attempt to grant relief to the Catholics led to its fall. In the ministry which succeeded it, Portland, a mere figure-head, took the first a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 687 place, assisted by Perceval as chancellor of the exchequer, Canning as foreign minister — one of the greatest men who ever held that office — Castlereagh as minister for war and the colonies, and Eldon as lord chancellor. One of its first acts was to bombard Copenhagen, and to seize the Seizure of Danish fleet — an unjust and violent action — on the Danish the supposition that it had been part of the policy Fleet. of Tilsit to treat Denmark in a similar manner. The result of this was to throw Denmark into the hands of France, and to extend the continental blockade to the whole of northern Europe. Doubtless some of the arrangements at Tilsit had reference to Portugal and Spain. Both countries have a large seaboard, and Napoleon was naturally anxious to close them to English commerce : also the condition kP a * n antl of Spain was such as to excite the serious appre- hension of the French. From the fact that a Bourbon held the throne of Spain, and the existence of the family compact, France had been to some extent answerable to Europe for the condition of that country, and Napoleon was not the man to neglect the duties which the Bourbons had always admitted. A treaty had been signed at Madrid on December 19, 1803, between the First Consul and the prince regent of Portugal, by which, by payment of a million francs a month, Portugal was allowed to remain neutral and her freedom of commerce with England was secured. The peace of Tilsit put an end to this, and, on October 21, a treaty was concluded at Treaty of Fontainebleau by arrangement with the Spanish Fontaine- queen's favourite Godoy — " the Prince of the bleau. Peace," — for the partitioning of Portugal into three states, all under Spanish control, of which Godoy was to have the south, with the title of Prince of the Algarves. The oversea possessions of Portugal were to be divided between France and Spain, and a combined force from the two countries was to march into Portugal under the command of Junot. Portugal On November 13, 1807, an announcementjappeared in the Moniteur, " The house of Braganza has ceased to reign," and a fortnight later the prince regent sailed for Brazil, taking his treasures with him, and about 15,000 of his adherents. The condition of the Spanish court at this time The was abject ; the queen was the tool of Godoy, and Spanish the king, Charles IV., was little better than a Court, cretin ; the crown prince, Ferdinand, was devoted to Bourbon interests, so that Godoy and the queen threw themselves into 688 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to the arms of Napoleon. The peace of Pressburg, which gave Naples to Joseph Bonaparte, roused for a moment a patriotic feeling in Spain, but it was soon quelled by the victory of Jena. The crown prince saw no escape, except to vie with Godoy for the support of the emperor, and the shameless queen replied by declaring him to be a bastard. On December 30, he was arrested and excluded from the succession on the charge of having conspired against the king's life. It was impossible that Napoleon could allow this state of things to continue. If bad government has ever justified the intervention of one state in the affairs of another in Siaani 10 — anc ^ ^i >stoi T ^ s ^ u ^ °f sucn cases — France was justified in her interference in the government of Spain. In December 1807, Dupont with 24,000 men occupied Valladolid, and on January 9, 1808, Moncey marched with an army of like strength into Castile. A large army of observation was collected at Bordeaux, and filled the passes of the Pyrenees. Prince Ferdinand sought with tears the forgiveness of his father, his mother, and Godoy, and asked to be allowed to marry a Bonaparte princess, an alliance which Charles IV. humbly solicited from the emperor. It was hardly likely that either Napoleon or his brother Lucien would consent to such a humiliation. Muratwas sent to Spain to command the French troops, but the Spanish people, always bitterly opposed to foreign rule, rose in rebellion at Aranjuez and threatened the lives of the royal family, upon which Charles IV. dismissed Godoy from all his offices, to the great delight of the people. On March 19, 1808, the weak king abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand, whom he had recently declared incapable of reigning, while his mother called him a bastard. In default of any one better, he was the idol of the people, and was received with acclamation, while Godoy was imprisoned in the castle of Villa Viciosa and his property confiscated. Napoleon naturally hesitated to accept this arrangement. Ferdinand made a triumphal entry into Madrid, but was received with coolness by Murat and Beauharnais. Ferdinand, in despair, sought Napoleon at Bayonne, where he arrived on April 20. But Napoleon saw the truth. He wrote to Talleyrand, " The prince of the Asturias is very stupid, very unprincipled, and a bitter enemy of France." The plot deepened, and the tragi-comedy became more confused. Godoy was released from prison, and reached Bayonne on April 26, and a few days later was followed by the king and queen. a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 689 Father and son met in Napoleon's presence ; the king over- whelmed the prince with the most violent abuse, and com- pelled him to resign the crown which he had re- Charles IV. ceived from his father's hands, so that he could do and his Son what he liked with it. At the beginning of May, at Bayonne. a popular rising took place in Madrid. When Napoleon heard of it, he told the king that this disorder must be put an end to. Another scene took place, in which father and mother rivalled each other in abusing their unhappy son. Napoleon was shocked at this exhibition of undignified behaviour. " What creatures they are ! " he said on retiring to Marrac. On May 6, Ferdinand resigned the crown to his father, and placed himself and his brother under his protection. In the meantime, Godoy gave Napoleon a document in which Charles IV. surrendered all his rights over the Spanish crown to the emperor of the French, as the only sovereign who could preserve order under present circumstances. The prince of the Asturias was sent with his two brothers to Talleyrand's country house at Valencay, where he employed himself in embroidering dresses for the Virgin. The king and queen went first to Compiegne, and then to Eome, where they both died at the beginning of 1819. They were allowed by the French government a pension of ten million francs. Joseph reluctantly gave up his kingdom of Naples, where he had shown himself an excellent sovereign, left Bayonne on July 9, was accompanied to the Bidassoa by Joseph, his elder brother, who took a most affectionate King of leave of him, placing on his breast the cross Spain, of the Legion of Honour, which he took from his own, and entered Madrid on July 20 among the acclamations of the people. He chose excellent ministers and founded an enlight- ened constitutional government, which was supported by the best elements in the nation, and would have regenerated the country, if that had been possible. But these efforts were shattered against the implacable enmity of England. The new sovereign found the peninsula in a condition of great disorder. Asturias had risen in May 1808 at the very time when its prince was sacrificing Resistance. its independence at Marrac. Insurrections broke out in other places, directed by committees and juntas, who were more or less respectable, but who depended on the assistance of fanatical priests and reckless bandits, who were guilty of every kind of cruelty and outrage. The English 2 x 690 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to press dignified these crimes by the name of patriotism. Spain has always been a country which it is difficult either to subdue or to combine, but this national trait has been to it a source of weakness rather than of strength. France's prestige suffered a severe humiliation in the capitulation of The Capitu- 20,000 of her soldiers under Dupont at Baylen lation of on July 22, 1808, the result of which was to Baylen. oblige Joseph to leave Madrid, and stimulate Florida Bianca, as president of the local Junta, to proclaim Ferdinand VII. from the balcony of the palace at Madrid. Arthur Wellesley, who had distinguished himself in India and afterwards bore the immortal name of Wellington, had landed in Mondego Bay in 1808, and had defeated Vimiero ^ e French at Yimiero on August 16. Junot's army would probably have suffered the fate of Dupont's at Baylen, had not Sir Henry Burrard, who superseded Wellesley, allowed it to depart in peace by the capitulation signed at Cintra, ten days later. Napoleon determined to restore his brother by his own authority. Seven army corps, commanded by Ney, Lannes, Soult, Yictor, Saint Cyr, Mortier, and Junot — in^ain 1 a ma g nificent arm y of 200,000 men— left Bayonne in November, and invaded Spain. Their oppon- ents — Oastafios, Blake, and the hero Sir John Moore— were powerless to withstand the onslaught of Napoleon, and the fiery charge of the pass of Somo Sierra by the Polish lancers is an emblem of the whole campaign. Napoleon and Joseph entered Madrid on December 9. On January 1, 1809, Napoleon, in pursuit of the English army, reached Astorga, where he heard that Austria was arming against him, and that Fouche and Talleyrand were intriguing in the interests of Murat and Caroline. He determined to return to France, and arrived at his capital in the morning of January 23, having ridden from Yalladolid to Burgos with a change of horses, in six hours. The command of the army in Spain was entrusted to Soult, but after the withdrawal of the master spirit energy languished, and Sir John Moore's army was able to embark at Oorunna, before Napoleon reached Paris. Saragossa, bravely defended by Palafox and the famous maid, was taken in February 1809 by Lannes, who sent Palafox as prisoner to Yincennes, and Soult, with ambitious hopes for his own advancement, estab- lished himself in Oporto at the end of March. In the meantime, Austria, inspired by England, was arming, a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 691 and on April 13, Napoleon, after three months of the life of a brilliant court at Paris, left to join his army in Germany. The first battle was fought at Eckmiihl nine days Austria later, and the important city of Regensburg was renews taken on April 23, Napoleon being wounded the War. in the foot as he was examining the fortifications. The march to Vienna continued. The battle of Ebelsberg was fought at the beginning of May, and Napoleon slept at Schonbrunn on May 10, after a marvellous campaign which even his enemies cannot refuse to admire. But, before he could be master of Austria, he had to defeat the Archduke Charles, who was estab- lished in the neighbourhood with 80,000 men. The effort was made in the battles of Aspern and Essling ; where, after two days' fighting, on May 21 and 22, his army had to retire into the island of Lobau. This is one of the most remarkable epochs of Napoleon's career. Sleeping at Schonbrunn, he spent ten days in this island preparing for the great victory which was to obliterate the memory of these defeats. After a month of further preparation, during which he suffered an irreparable loss by the death of Lannes, and was excommunicated by the pope, he established his headquarters at Lobau on July 1, and won the battle of Wagram on July 6. The treaty of Vienna, which put an end to the war, v ? ea ^ was signed on October 14, 1809. Austria gave up Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and the Innviertel to Bavaria ; Cracow and a part of Galicia were divided between Russia and the grand duke of Poland ; and a new province of Illyria was formed, to be controlled by Napoleon, out of Carinthia, Car- niola, and Dalmatia. Alexander tried in vain to mitigate the punishment of Austria, and the difference of opinion gave the first blow to the friendship between the two emperors, which had begun at Tilsit and been consolidated in the brilliant congress held at Erfurt in the autumn of 1808. The arrangements of the peace of Vienna were not generally accepted, and led to the popular risings in the Tyrol of which the hero was Andreas Hofer, who paid for his patriotism by his death at Mantua ; Schill also g °*f* and was shot at Wesel for his rising at Stralsund, and steps were attempted to murder Napoleon at Schonbrunn. Wellesley defeated Soult at Oporto and Victor at Talavera Talavera ; but, now created Viscount Wellington, and Torres he retired to Portugal and entrenched himself Vedras. in the lines of Torres Vedras. An expedition of the English to 692 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. 1806 to Walcheren, an island on the Scheldt, undertaken in July 1809, with brilliant hopes, ended in disastrous failure, through the ■pjjg incompetence of its leaders, Lord Chatham and Walcheren Sir Richard Strachan. If this army could have Expedition, landed at the mouth of the Weser and the Elbe, it might have gained over Prussia to the coalition and insured the victory of Austria. But the stars in their courses fought for Napoleon. The army was more than decimated by fever, and had to retire. The discussions on this result led to a duel between Castlereagh and Canning, in which Canning was wounded, and both had to retire from the cabinet. A new ministry was formed of which Perceval was the head, with Marquis Wellesley, the statesman, brother of Wellington, as foreign secretary, and Liverpool in charge of the colonies and the war. After the treaty of Vienna, Napoleon stood at the height of his power, but he had no heir, and without a successor of his own blood it was probable that his empire would break up at his death and the glory of France would disappear. He there- fore determined to divorce Josephine, and to take Divorce of another wife. This was the worst action of his life, and is inexcusable. It was due partly to his desire for a marriage which would bring him into the family of the sovereigns of Europe, a far more important matter in those days than it would be now. Also, divorce was then considered a slight affair, and could be effected by the common consent of husband and wife. In a family council, held at Paris on December 15, 1809, papers were signed by the emperor and empress, expressing their desire to separate, and Josephine retired for the remainder of her life to Malmaison with a sub- stantial income. It became necessary to contract a new alliance. Offers were made to Russia, which were defeated by the opposi- tion of the empress mother, and by the intrigues of Metternich the prize w T as given to Marie Louise of Austria, who reached Napoleon's Compiegne on March 27, 1810, and was solemnly Second married to Napoleon at Paris on April 2. It was Marriage. marked, as the union of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette had been, by a terrible calamity, the ball-room at the Austrian embassy catching fire and a princess perishing in the flames. On March 20, 181 1, a son was born, who received the title of King of Rome, his birth being celebrated by festivities from Danzig to Cadiz. After Napoleon's marriage ensued a time of peace, except for the war in the Spanish peninsula, conducted a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 693 by Wellington. He fought no battles himself between Wagram and Borodino, but took steps to confirm and consolidate his power. In April 1810, Louis abdicated the throne of Holland, and his country was incorporated with France ; while a grand duchy of Frankfort was created in the heart of Germany, which was intended for Eugene Beauharnais. But all these plans were ruined by the expedition to Russia, which Napoleon at a later period condemned as a serious error. The causes of it are still obscure, but it did not Napoleon entirely arise from the unrestrained ambition of and the emperor. Alexander not merely cooled to- Alexander. wards Napoleon, partly on account of his Polish policy, partly from the pressure of the continental blockade, but was also un- faithful to his friendship, and showed signs of joining the coali- tion of his enemies. Napoleon preferred to meet dangers rather than wait till they broke upon him, and made preparations for the invasion of Russia, which recalled the similar efforts made by the Persian empire for the subjugation of Greece. After a brilliant assembly at Dresden, Napoleon, having secured the assistance of Prussia and Austria, set out in the The middle of May with an army of half a million Invasion men, more than a thousand guns, and twenty of Russia, thousand baggage waggons, to cross the Memel. The left wino-, consisting mainly of Prussians, Bavarians, and Poles, destined for the conquest of Courland and Livonia, marched along the Baltic under the command of Macdonald. The right wing, con- sisting mainly of Austrians under Schwarzenberg, was opposed to the southern Russian army on the lower Bug. The central army, commanded by Napoleon himself, crossed the Memel in the middle of June. The Russians pursued a policy of retreat, and the first engagement took place at Smolensk on August 17. The great battle of Borodino, otherwise called La Moskowa, was fought on September 7, 1812, and the emperor entered the deserted city of Moscow on September 14. Napoleon supposed that the capture of the capital would put an end to the war, and that Alexander would sue for peace, but a totally different event occurred. Moscow, fired by incendiaries acting under the orders of Rostopchin, was entirely burnt to ashes, with the ex- ception of the Kremlin. This was a fatal blow The Retreat to Napoleon's hopes. He lingered on, always from hoping for overtures which never came, and did Moscow, not leave Moscow till October 19, when the autumn was well advanced. The retreat was full of horrors, which culminated 694 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to at the passage of the Beresina at the end of November. On December 3, knowing that his presence in Paris was absolutely necessary for the safety of his empire and of the retreating army, with' great courage, he left the army in the evening, reached Dresden on December 14, and the Tuileries on December 19, where he had to announce his defeat to his ministers, to the Council and the Senate. Out of 600,000 men, 182,000 horses, and 1372 cannon, with which he invaded Russia, only 68,000 men, 18,000 horses, and 120 guns returned. Disaster followed disaster. At the end of December, General Yorck deserted the French, and made a treaty of neutrality with the; Russians under Diebitsch, at Tauroggen, an act of doiibtful heroism. In January 1813, the Prussian king left Berlin for Breslau. A month later he issued an appeal to his people in the name of liberty, and at the end of February concluded an alliance with Alexander at Kalisch. The whole German nation rose, but they could not have RiSr| Jerman have done so if they had not learnt the lesson of independence from Napoleon himself, and if they had not been feci and clothed by English gold. Napoleon met the attack with efforts of superhuman energy. He collected a huge army, deficient only in cavalry, and reached Weimar on April 27. He fought the battle of Liitzen, a name immortalised by the death of Gustavus Adolphus, on May 2, liberated Saxony, and occupied Dresden. He hoped to get possession of Berlin, but it was occupied by Swedes, commanded by the ungrateful Bernadotte. Grossing the Elbe, he engaged in the important battle of Bautzen on May 2, and defeated Bliicher and the Prussians, but committed the fatal error of concluding an armistice, which was eventually prolonged till June 20. England spent much money freely in subsidising the Russians and the Prussians, and used all her efforts to secure the adhesion of the Austrians to the coalition, in which she eventually succeeded, notwithstanding the powerful arguments of Napoleon in his interview with Metternich at Dresden. For Austria this was a most disastrous step, and led eventually to her abasement and the elevation of Prussia to be head of the German empire. After the termination of the armistice, Napoleon found himself at Dresden opposed to a world in arms, the allies under Schwarzenberg numbering not less than 800,000 men. The Bohemian army under Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly, supported by Frederick William and Alexander, contained a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 695 250,000 men, the Swedes of the northern army numbered 80,000, Bliicher was at the head of the Silesian army of 100,000 strong. To these forces, Napoleon could oppose 515,000 men, 180,000 under himself at Dresden, 130,000 under Ney in Silesia, 72,000 under Oudinot ready to attack Berlin, and 37,000 under Davout in Hamburg, the rest occupying the fortresses on the Elbe and forming a reserve. On August 26, 1813, Napoleon won the brilliant victory of Dresden. During two days' fighting, the Russians and Prussians were driven back from the assault ; the Austrians were captured almost to a man n a , e by Murat ; and Moreau, who had just returned from America, was mortally wounded. The allies retreated to Bohemia and crossed the Erzgebirge, followed by Vandamme, St. Cyr, and Mortier. Napoleon rode as far as Pirna, and then returned, some say from illness, some because there was no further need of his presence, but in doing this he lost the chance of his life. Vandamme, crossing the mountains, was resisted by the allies at Kulm, and, receiving no help and being attacked in the rear by Kleist, who descended from Nollendorf, was defeated and taken prisoner. If Napoleon had been there, he could easily have captured the three allied sovereigns, who had mounted a hill to witness the battle. But he had determined not to pursue the enemy into Bohemia, as his mind was set on crushing Bernadotte and retaking Berlin. In this he made a fatal error, and Kulm was the beginning of the end. One Job's post after another reached him at Norden : Oudinot was * beaten at Grossbeeren, Ney at Dennewitz, Mac- donald by Bliicher on the Katzbach ; Schwartzenberg crossed the mountains into Saxony ; Bliicher crossed the Elbe to unite with the army of the north ; and Bavaria joined the coalition by the treaty of Ried. Napoleon spent four miserable days at the little castle of Diiben, considering whether he should withstand the allies on their inarch towards the Rhine, or by a bold stroke collect the troops who were garrisoning the fortresses of the Elbe and fall upon their rear. He decided upon the first course, and the battle of Leipzig was the result. The " Battle of the Nations," as it was called, which lasted from Thursday to Tuesday in the third week of October, is one of the greatest of modern times. It might be said paradoxically that there never was a battle of Leipzig, and that Napoleon 696 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to won it. On Thursday there was a brilliant cavalry skirmish, on Friday repose : on Saturday took place the battle of Wachau, in which Napoleon was completely successful, L a . ? nearly capturing the allied monarchs, who were watching the battle from their windsor chairs ; but the defeat of Marmont at Mockern by Bliicher and Bernadotte rendered the victory useless. Sunday, October 17, was a day of rest, on which Napoleon made propositions of peace through the Austrian general Merveldt. On Monday, October 18, he fought what is popularly called the battle of Leipzig, but he did so, without any hope of victory, to cover his retreat, and the defection of the Saxons during the struggle had no influence on the result. On Tuesday he fell back with slow and sullen dignity towards Erfurt, which he reached on October 23, sleeping in the same apartment which he had occupied in the days of his splendour. On the last day of the month he arrived at Frankfort, having thoroughly beaten the traitorous Bavarians at Hanau, when they endeavoured to intercept his march, and on November ] he was at Saint Cloud. The results of the battle of Leipzig were the entire destruc- tion of the Napoleonic policy in Germany, the liberation of the light bank of the Rhine, the dissolution of the Confederation of the Rhine, the recovery of Holland by Biilow, the restoration of German princes to their dominions, and the loss of the Elbe fortresses. The allies had to consider whether they should rest content with their exploits, or should cross the Rhine into France. They offered terms of peace to Napoleon, which it was impossible that he should accept — indeed, they were never intended to be accepted. Napoleon could not with any honour leave France smaller than he had received it. Wellington had taken advantage of the disasters of Napoleon to regain Spain. On March 6, 1811, Graham won the battle of Barossa ; Wellington defeated Massena at Wellington Fuentes d'Onoro on "May 5, and took Almeida ; on May 16, Beresford defeated Soult at Albuera. On January 19, 1812, Wellington stormed and captured the frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, and on April 6 that of Badajoz. On May 11, Perceval was assassinated, and a new ministry was formed with Liverpool as first lord of the treasury and Castlereagh as foreign secretary, Palmerston being secretary at war — the worst ministry that ever governed England excepting that of ITaiiey and St. John in the reign of Anne. It lasted, however, till 1827. On a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 697 July 22, 1812, Wellington defeated Marmont at Salamanca, also called Arapiles, and entered Madrid, but was afterwards obliged to retire into Portugal. The disasters of the Russian compaien called into existence the fourth „ e ° ur ,.,. . r & m . . Coalition, coalition, in which Lngland was joined by Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Sweden. King Joseph was entirely defeated by Wellington in the battle of Vittoria, on June 21, 1813, and Soult in the battle of the Pyrenees in July. When the invasion of France had been decided upon, Schwarzenberg, in command of the chief army, passed the frontiers at Basel, while Bliicher, on New Year's night, 1814, crossed the Rhine at Caub. Alex- ^^^ ° f ander was rather a hindrance to the allies, because he was not so bitter against Napoleon as Bliicher and the Austrians, nor was he so well disposed to the Bourbons — he rather favoured Bernadotte. Also, owing to the influence of his old tutor Laharpe, he was anxious to spare Switzerland the inconveniences of war. Napoleon's campaign of 1814 was almost hopeless from the beginning, but none is so favourable to his fame. He had with very inferior forces to make head against two or three armies advancing from different sides, and he not infrequently beat them. He knew that a decisive victory might at any time destroy the coalition and bring about a trustworthy peace. The indecisive battle of Brienne, on January 9, was followed by the victory of Schwarzenberg and Bliicher at La Rothiere on February 1. But Bliicher was worsted at Ohampaubert, Montmirail, Chateau Thierry, and Vauchamps ; and would have been entirely crushed if it had not been for the cowardly treachery of Colonel Moreau at Soissons. Schwar- zenberg lost at Montereau, but won at Bar-sur-Aube. Then followed the union of Bliicher with Biilow, and the disasters of Napoleon at Craonne and at Laon. Napoleon, tired of these marches and counter-marches, resolved to place his whole army between the allies and the frontier and to cut off their communications. But his plans were discovered, a march on Paris was determined upon, Marmont and ^ne Allies Mortier were defeated at La Fere Champenoise, enter and by Marmont's shameful capitulation the Paris, allies were allowed to occupy Paris. Napoleon, hearing of this disaster, hastened along the post road till he reached the post house at Juvisy, and then, seeing that all was lost, retired to Fontainebleau. On March 31, the allies entered Paris in triumph. The allied sovereigns declared that Napoleon had 698 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806 to ceased to reign, that the Bourbons were restored, and that, until Louis XVIII. arrived to take up his sceptre, a provisional government should be formed with Talleyrand at its head. Napoleon wished to continue the ^struggle, but Abdicates ^ e was °PP 0Se d by his marshals, and, after a week's struggle, he resigned, for himself and his family, the thrones of • France and Italy. The treaty of Fontainebleau, to which England was not a party, although the English government was acquainted with its contents, made Napoleon emperor of Elba on the condition that he should take no political part in the affairs of France, and promised him a sufficient subsidy for himself and his family, not a penny of which was ever paid. On April 20, he took solemn farewell of his generals in the courtyard of the palace, and embarking on an English ship, the Undaunted, Captain Usher, reached Porta Ferraio, the capital of Elba, on the evening of Tuesday, May 3, 1814. The sojourn of Napoleon at Elba lasted from May 4, 1814, till February 26, 1815. During this time, he was engaged in developing with feverish activity the resources Elb^L° e ° n a °^ ^ ie ^ s ^ anc b which he has made immortal. He enjoyed the society of his mother and of his devoted sister Pauline, but with revolting cruelty he was deprived of that of his wife and child. Indeed, during his absence, Marie Louise had been deliberately corrupted by Neipperg, whom she afterwards married, by the orders of Metternich, and probably with the connivance of her father. He was not a prisoner, as is generally supposed : this was, indeed, emphatically asserted by Castlereagh in Parliament, but his landing in France was undoubtedly a breach of the treaty of Fontainebleau, which had, however, already been broken by the allies. It would have been better if he could have delayed his departure till the Congress of Vienna had broken up, but it was impossible to do so, as he had no money, and steps were being taken to remove him to some safer place of residence — the Canaries or St. Helena. He left the island on board the Inconstant, a frigate of his own, and reached Golfe Juan on Monday, March 1, 1815, with about a thousand men and no horses. Napoleon's march from Cannes to the Tuileries has no parallel in history. As he passed, he was saluted with equal enthusiasm by the army and the people. He forbade his troops to fire a shot. Reaching La Mure on March 7, he a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 699 found himself opposed by a battalion of the line and a com- pany of engineers, who were ordered by their commanding officer to fire. He commanded his soldiers to place their muskets under their left arms, and ad- , e _J :e1 ' urns vanced towards the enemy, saying who he was, and telling them to shoot if they wished to kill their emperor. After a moment's hesitation, they placed their shakos on their bayonets, acclaimed him as emperor, and marched with him to Grenoble. At Lyons, which he reached on March 15, he was joined by Ney, who had left Paris with a promise that he would bring the invader back in a cage. On March 20, he spent two hours at Fontainebleau, full of memories of his abdication, and at Juvisy, where he had learnt just a year before that Paris had been surrendered by Marmont, he heard that Louis XVIII. had left the Tuileries, and in the early evening his carriage rolled into the courtyard of the Oaroussel, and he was borne up the stairs into his palace, which he found decorated for his reception, and full of the same brilliant court which had thronged it in the days of his splendour. In no more emphatic manner could the people of France have expressed their intention to be ruled by him and by no one else. The reign called the Hundred Days, which was really less, was a period of very hard work and terrible anxiety. Napoleon showed every desire for peace, and approached the f^Q powers of Europe with that object, but his Hundred ambassadors were not received and his letters Days, were returned unopened. The allies, who had not left Vienna, signed a paper declaring him a public enemy, and exposing him to the vengeance of united Europe, a discreditable document, which Wellington should never have authorised, for England had always held that France had a right to choose her own sovereign. Armies collected for the invasion of France, which had done no wrong, as the Bourbons had voluntarily renounced the crown which they were incapable of wearing with efficiency or honour. The campaign of Waterloo has no justification. It was condemned on principles of liberty and self-government by a powerful minority in both Houses of Parliament, but the policy of Liverpool and Castlereagh prevailed, and a large number of the troops who fought against Napoleon at Waterloo were fed and clothed by the produce of English taxation. Napoleon, having collected an army by incredible exertions, went out to meet his foes. On June 1, he distributed eagles to 700 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. isog to his army in the Champs de Mai. On June 7, he opened the Chambers which had been summoned in virtue of the constitu- tion drawn up for him by Benjamin Constant, and called La Benjamine, a step which it would have been wiser to defer till the conclusion of the war. On Sunday, June 11, he heard his last mass at the Tuileries, and gave his last audiences, leaving next day to join the army at Avesnes. It has been said that Napoleon, in the campaign of Waterloo, did not exhibit his usual energy of mind and body ; but there is The no foundation for this opinion. No plans were Waterloo ever more skilfully made, or carried out with Campaign. more secrecy and despatch. Wellington was en- tirely taken by surprise, expecting an attack from another quarter, and probably Bliicher also. But Napoleon fought under great difficulties. His troops had lost their instinct for war and habit of instant obedience. Soult was a poor substitute for Berthier as chief of the staff. And Murat, in disgrace at Mar- seilles, had not been allowed to command the cavalry ; his presence might have changed the fortune of the war. Debouch- ing from Charleroi on June 15, Napoleon defeated Blucher at Ligny on the following clay, while Ney attacked Quatre Bras, which he failed to occupy, in a battle which would have been more decisive if the corps of d'Erlon had not manoeuvred idly between the two armies. On June 17, Napoleon approached the ground which both Wellington and himself had chosen for the scene of the decisive struggle, and slept that evening at the farm of Le Caillou. But he spent most of the night in visiting his out- posts, and conferring with Ney. At ten, he held his last review on the plateau of La Belle Alliance, and the battle began shortly after midday. There was no manoeuvring. Napoleon exerted all his powers to drive the English from the ridge, which Wellington held with incredible firmness and tenacity. As Wellington said, when asked to give an account of the battle, " We pounded and they pounded, and we pounded hardest." Napoleon was so confident of victory that he had detached a large body of troops under Grouchy, partly to keep back the Prussians, which he failed to do, and partly to secure the ruin of the English army when its lines had been forced. In the afternoon, the Prussians made its appearance on the French light, and in the evening, as the emperor was arranging the Old Guard for a last attack, Wellington gave the order, " The whole line will now advance," and the defeat of the French was com- plete. Waterloo is certainly one of the decisive battles of the a.d. 1815] NAPOLEON 701 world, and victory was undoubtedly due to the unrivalled courage and determination of the British soldiers, and to the iron tenacity of Wellington. But Wellington said himself that it was a very close run thing, the most close run thing he ever saw, and that the battle would probably not have been won if he had not been there. For Napoleon, the defeat was a crush- ing blow, and to the day of his death he never could understand why he had been beaten. Whatever we may think of the justice of the war, all the praise which has. been given either to the general or to the soldiers who won the battle is less than they deserve. Napoleon reached the Elysee on the morning of June 21. He was deserted by the Chambers, was unable to rouse France to resist the enemy, and, on the following day, abdicated in favour of his son. He went to Rochefort, hoping to find ships which would take him to America ; but, this hope having failed, he opened negotiations on July 10 for seeking a refuge in England. It is probable that he thought that he would be received in England as a guest, but it is certain that the English government had no other view than that of capturing him as a prisoner, of which they were eagerly desirous. The Bellerophon took him to Plymouth and Torbay, where he was received by the acclamations of an enthusiastic crowd. But Liverpool, being prevented by the magnanimity of Wellington from delivering him as a prisoner to Louis XVIIL, on the condi- tion that he should be shot as a rebel, determined to send him to St. Helena — a breach of the law of nations, and a blot upon the fair name of England. Admiral Keith, who was under personal obligations to Napoleon, had to make the announce- ment to him, and Napoleon answered that he would prefer death. Napoleon landed at St. Helena on October 18, 1815, and lived till May 5, 1821- — years of dolorous and despairing mono- tony which led eventually to his death. He was deprived of the exercise which was necessary st^JleiLr to his health : he was refused the companionship not only of his wife and child, but of his mother, whom he loved with passionate devotion, and who had never left him. If the British government did nothing to kill him, it certainly did nothing to keep him alive. At the very time when he was too weak to crawl out of his bath without assistance, Bathurst wrote to Hudson Lowe to redouble his vigilance. After weeks of intense suffering and hard work, 702 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1806-1815 he passed away on the evening of the fifth of May, in the midst of a great storm. An officer announced the news to George IV. in the words, " Sir, your greatest enemy is dead." The king said, "Good God, when did she die?" thinking that it was his wife. Liverpool, in sending him to St. Helena, said that he would soon be forgotten ; but now, nearly a hundred years after Waterloo, his career is still the subject of minute investigation, and the more it is examined, the more the hero of it is admired. CHAPTER XIV. REACTION IN EUROPE, A.D. 1815-1830— ENGLAND, A.D. 1815-1837— EUROPE, A.D. 1830-1848. The second peace of Paris, signed on November 20, 1815, was very different from the first, and France was severely punished for having, even for a short time, submitted to the government of Napoleon. The . p ar ig Ce country was seriously reduced in extent, and condemned to pay 790,000,000 francs towards the expenses of the war, to receive a federal army of 150,000 men in seventeen frontier fortresses, to accept the restoration of the Bourbons, and to banish the Bonaparte family from France, under penalty of death. The sentence of banishment also fell upon the civil and military officials who had supported the emperor during the Hundred Days, as well as all the regicides, who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., including Fouche, Carnot, and Sieyes — a startling exhibition of severity and ingratitude. The Congress of Vienna at length concluded its sittings Results — its decisions being founded on the principles of f the legitimacy, which were put forward by Talleyrand, Congress with the object of rewarding Napoleon's enemies °* Vienna, and punishing his friends. Its leaders supposed that by ignoring everything that had been done in the last twenty- five years they continued the course of peaceful progress which had been interrupted by the Revolution and the Empire. Fortunately, few of its arrangements have lasted till our own time. Austria was increased by Illyria, Dalmatia, Lombardy, Venice, the Tyrol, Salzburg, and other districts ; Prussia re- ceived large accessions of territory ; Weimar, Oldenburg, and the two Mecklenburgs were made grand duchies ; Frankfort, Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck became free towns ; a German Confederation was formed, which afterwards became a laughing- stock ; Russia was aggrandised by the addition of a kingdom of Poland ; Belgium was joined to Holland, and Norway to Sweden ; Marie Louise received the duchy of Parma, as a 703 704 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1815 to reward for deserting her husband ; Sardinia recovered Savoy and received Genoa, to the disgust of English liberals, who wished to turn it into a republic ; Naples went back to the Bourbons, and Murat was shot in an attempt to recover his crown ; England was presented with Malta, Heligoland, and the Cape, together with the protectorate of the Ionian Islands, and, of course, regained Hanover. It is hardly worth while to describe the elaborate constitution of the German federa- tion which induced so many changes and proved so unsatis- factory. The rulers of Austria, Prussia, and Russia formed between themselves a Holy Alliance, with which Alliance^ England and the pope would have nothing to do. It proposed to found an international state system based upon the principles of Christian law, but became an instrument for the suppression of all liberal opinions ; for, though it was founded with idealistic enthusiasm by Alexander, it was directed by the narrow-minded and heartless Metternich. The object of Napoleon was to found a democratic empire, an idea which is expressed upon his coins, on which we Reaction ^ n ^ " Napoleon Empereur " on one side and and Revolu- " Republique Francaise" on the other. By the tion- system which was established at his fall the aspirations of democracy were crushed. Castlereagh told the English Parliament that the aspirations of Italy for unity must give way to the general welfare, and Metternich said that his master the emperor wished to extinguish the spark of Italian unity and the idea of a constitution, and that for that reason he had broken up the Italian army and abolished all institutions which could pave the way for a great Italian kingdom. He desired to destroy the spirit of Jacobinism, and to secure the repose of the peninsula. But the poet tells us that the flag of freedom, though torn, was yet flying, driven as a thunder-cloiid against the wind ; and between 1815 and 1848 three waves of revolution passed over Europe, each more violent than its pre- decessor. The first, in 1820, affected mainly the southern nations, — Spain, Portugal, and Italy, — although it had some influence upon both France and England ; the second, in 1830, although it failed of immediate results in Italy, produced a change of government in France and the separation of Belgium from Holland, and was among the causes which enabled the Reform Bill to be passed in England ; while the third, in 1848, the most violent of the three, established a republic in France, and shook almost every throne in Europe except our own. a.d. 1830] REACTION IN EUROPE 705 The congress held at Aachen in 1818 had the object of establishing the Holy Alliance and of crushing the spirit of liberty in Germany, which, having first been The roused by the Napoleonic conquest, had after- Congress wards destroyed the man who gave it life ! o f Aachen. France could not be said to be at peace under the government of Louis XVIII., who wished above everything else to retain the throne of France until he died, and was dis- „ tracted by the ultra Royalists, Napoleonists, and Republicans, with whom he endeavoured to temporise. On February 15, 1820, the duke of Berry was murdered by Louvel, which allowed the reactionary party under the Comte d'Artois to dismiss Decazes and to establish Villele in his place, so that the spirit of liberty was subdued in France for ten years. It was otherwise in Spain, Portugal, and Naples. Ferdinand VII., on returning to Spain, abolished p? 3 ^ *i the constitution, which he had solemnly promised to observe, and revived absolutism, together with the Inquisition and the Jesuits. An army which had been formed for the pur- pose of reducing to obedience the rebellious colonies in South America was vised by the liberal leaders, Riego and Quiroga, to compel the king to re-establish the constitution and to summon the Cortes. In Portugal a military insurrection in Oporto compelled John VI. to return from Brazil to the mother country, and to take the oath to a constitution, and when, during his absence, Brazil demanded similar liberties, which were refused, it declared itself independent and gave the government to John's eldest son, Pedro, with the title of emperor. In Naples, the Carbonari, or " charcoal-burners," the revolu- tionary society of which Byron had been a " member, stimulated by the events in the Spanish peninsula, raised their banner, with the cry, " God, the king, and the con- stitution," and, led by Pepe and Carascosa, forced King Ferdinand to swear to a constitution. Without the slightest intention of keeping it, he raised his eyes to the crucifix and added to the prescribed oath the solemn words, " Omnipotent God, Whose eyes read the hearts of men and the future, if I take this oath in bad faith, or if I violate it, in that moment let the lightnings of Thy vengeance fall upon my head ! " A similar rising took place in Piedmont, where the hopes of the insurgents were fixed upon Charles Albert, head of the younger line of Carignan, and where Victor Emmanuel was compelled to accept the Spanish constitution of 1812, a very worthless form of monarchy. The 2 Y 706 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1815 to temporal powers of Europe summoned a congress, which met first at Troppau and then at Laibach, and lastly at Verona Congress of m 1822. That of Laibach sent an Austrian army Troppau- into Sardinia and Naples to restore order, and that Laibach. f Verona despatched a French force into Italy under the duke of Angouleme, to destroy the constitution established by Quiroga and Mina, and, after the taking of Cadiz, to bring back the old order of things. Dom Pedro II. received the crown of Brazil by the abdication of his father in 1829, but had to fight for the throne of Portugal with his fanatical brother, Dom Miguel, until he obtained it for his daughter, Maria da Gloria, and accepted the constitution of 1821. In Russia, Alexander I. abolished serfdom in the Baltic provinces and granted a constitution to his Baltic provinces ; „ . but on his death in 1825 his brother Nicholas succeeded, after a revolutionary attempt to place his brother Constantine on the throne, and established a form of absolute monarchy. He, however, governed well, and, in a war with Persia, conquered Eriwan and Tauris, and established freedom of navigation in the Caspian Sea. The six years from 1821 to 1827 witnessed the great R G lutii work- of the emancipation of Greece from the tyranny of Turkey ; the throne was given to Prince Otto of Bavaria. The movement began in the Danubian princi- palities under Alexander Ypsilanti, but was put down by the Turks because the Russians would give no assistance. At the same time, a rising took place in the Morea, which was supported by Demetrius Ypsilanti, Mavrocordato, Kolokotrones, Odysseus, and others, and by the capture of Tripolitza enabled a national congress to be held at Epidaurus in 1822, which led to the drawing up of a free constitution. The Hellenic cause excited great enthusiasm in many parts of Europe, and money was sent to support it. Byron, the poet, welcomed it with ardour, and gave his fortune and life for it, dying of fever at Missolonghi in 1824. Sultan Mahmoud II. entrusted the sup- pression of the rebellion to the viceroy of Egypt, who sent his son Ibrahim for the purpose. Landing in the Morea in 1825, Ibrahim captured Missolonghi, and used such cruelty in suppressing the insurrection that, under the guidance of Canning, England, Russia, and Prance were compelled to interfere. -This led to the battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827, in which the Turkish fleet was entirely destroyed. In 1828, Ibrahim was compelled to return to Egypt, and, in the a.d. 1830] REACTION IN EUROPE 7°7 conference of London, Greece was declared an independent kingdom, with a frontier extending from the gnlf of Arta to that of Yolo. That it did not receive a large ex- i^e tension, together with the island of Crete, was due Kingdom to the narrow-minded obstinacy of Wellington, of Greece, who, detesting all rebels, had become prime minister in 1828, Canning having died on August 8, 1827, and Coderich, under whose ministry Navarino was fought, having held only a transient authority. At this time also, a war broke out between Russia and Sultan Mahmoud II. of Turkey, a powerful sovereign, who had murdered the Janissaries and taken steps to place his army on a European footing and to reform his empire. This was marked by the conquest of Braila and Varna in Europe, and by that of Erzeroum in Asia, and was concluded by the treaty of Adrianople in 1829, which placed Turkey in the power of Russia. The Danubian principalities Adrianaole of Moldavia and Wallachia obtained a position which paved the way for their independence at a later date, and the passage of merchant ships through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles was secured for the commerce of Europe. Not long afterwards, the Porte was further weakened by the action of Mahomet Ali, who had made himself sovereign of Egypt by the destruction of the Mamelukes in 1811. His son, Ibrahim, became master of Syria after the battle of Konieh, and threatened Constantinople, but ^f^ the powers of Europe intervened. In 1833, the Sultan gave him possession of Syria, which he was compelled to surrender in 1840 by the action of France, England, and Austria, although it would have been a benefit to civilisation if he had retained it. By the hattisherif , or decree, of February 13, 1841, Egypt was placed under a viceroy, called the Khedive, who acknowledged the suzerainty of the Porte, but held heredi- tary and almost independent authority. We now come to the French Revolution of Italy 1830. The wise and temperate Louis XVIII. was succeeded in 1824 by his fanatical brother Charles X., a bigot and an _ i • Charles X autocrat, who had learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the overthrow of that ancien regime from which he sprang. He led a Royalist reaction, — establishing a censorship of the press, dissolving the National Guard, and recalling the Jesuits, — and he made a fatal error by entrusting the govern- ment to Polignac, who was even more bigoted than himself. 708 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1815-1830 The conqxiest of Algiers in 1830, the first notable success which France had gained since the wars of Napoleon, could not save his government from defeat. The crisis came from the issue of the ordinances for the suppression of the press, the dissolu- tion of the Chamber, and the alteration of the franchise, which he refused to recall. The aged Lafayette revived the National Tbg Guard, and three days' fighting from July 27 to Revolution 29 made Charles resign his crown to the duke of 1830. of Bordeaux, son of the duke of Berry. He abdicated on August 2, 1830, went to England for a time, and died at Gorz in 1836. After his departure, a provisional government was formed, consisting of Lafitte, Casimir Perier, Odilon Barrot, and others, and eventually Louis Philippe, son of the duke of Orleans who had been guillotined in the Revolu- tion, was made " King of the French." Thus the direct Bourbon line was replaced by a cadet branch descended from a brother of Louis XIV. The success of the revolution in France produced a revolu- tion in Belgium with the object of establishing an independent ■jijjg kingdom and putting an end to the union with Kingdom of Holland, which never ought to have been made. Belgium. A conference was held in London to prevent French intervention, and a neutral kingdom of Belgium was formed, of which Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the widowed consort of Princess Charlotte, was made king. William of Holland resisted till in 1832 the French captured the citadel of Antwerp, and even then he delayed for six years his recognition of the new kingdom, A rising also took place in Poland ^ Warsaw in November 1830, which drove out the viceroy, General Grand Duke Constantine ; the leaders declared Poland an independent state, supported by France. A provisional government was at first established under Czartoryski, but Chlopicki was soon made dictator, with com- mand of the Polish army. He summoned a Diet, which placed Radziwill at the head of the government, and threatened to dethrone the house of Romanow. But the assistance expected from France did not arrive, and the fatal battle of Ostrolenka put an end to the aspirations of Poland. Many thousands of Poles were sent to Siberia, and in 1832 Poland was incorporated in the Russian empire with certain conditions of self-govern- ment, and Paskiewich was made viceroy. Italy was also affected by the movement of unrest. A rising took place at Modena in February 1830, and Ciro Menotti fell a.p. 1815-18371 ENGLAND 7°9 a victim to the treachery of the duke, who sent a message to the neighbouring town of Reggio : " A terrible conspiracy has broken out ; the conspirators are in my hands ; send me the hangman ! " ENGLAND, A.D. 1815-1837. In England we find the same tendency towards democratic advance, but what other nations acquired by revolution we reached by peaceful reform. Like the rest of Europe, England suffered from the reaction follow- England "* ing Napoleon's fall, and the five years after 1815 are an epoch of darkness and misery. Great distress was caused by the passing of a corn law in 1815, which forbade the impor- tation of foreign corn, if the price of corn was under eighty shillings a quarter, and the following year Cobbett came forward as a potent agitator, urging radical opinions in his paper called the Political Register, which had an enormous sale. Popular discontent was shown in 1816 by riots in Spa Fields ; by the throwing of stones at the Regent when he went to open Parlia- ment, and next year by the march from Manchester to London of the Blanketeers, a number of working men and women, each carrying a blanket ; and by a riot in Derbyshire in June. The government met these movements by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, and by issuing a circular to the lords- lieutenant of counties, urging that persons who published seditious libels should be arrested. However, in 1818, the Habeas Corpus Act was restored, and it has never since been suspended in England. In 1819 matters became worse by the dis- turbance at Manchester, sometimes called in derision the Peter- loo Massacre, as being the Waterloo of the Tories. A meeting in favour of reform, held in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, was attacked by the Yeomanry with the purpose of arresting one of the speakers, one man being killed and some forty injured. In consequence of this, six repressive acts were passed which have remained notorious in English r~f history, for the following purposes — to prevent delay in the administration of justice in case of misdemeanour ; to check military training and the use of arms ; to punish blasphemous and seditious libels — the movement in favour of independent religious thought being considered as dangerous as political propaganda and to be closely connected with it ; to authorise the seizure of arms ; to check the publication of pamphlets ; and to prevent seditious meetings. Lord John 710 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1815 to Russell attempted to remedy the real cause of the discontent by a motion for parliamentary reform, but it was rejected, to be brought forward with greater success at a more favourable time. Those who were opposed to repressive measures and were in favour of reform now began to bear the name of Radi- cals, as desiring changes in the government both i; *T. . in root and branch. In 1820 George III. came to the conclusion of his long reign, having for many years past been blind and insane, and his place was taken by George IV., probably the worst monarch who ever occupied the throne. In this year, when European sovereigns were meeting at Troppau, the discontent in England was shown by a conspiracy The Cato ^o murder the ministers, called the Cato Street Street Conspiracy, because the conspirators used to meet Conspiracy. i n a loft in Cato Street. Their den was stormed by the police, some were killed, and the leader — Thistlewood — was executed. Matters were made worse by the attempted divorce of the queen, who was detested by her husband, George IV. A " bill of pains and penalties " was introduced into the Upper House with the purpose of dissolving her marriage, but as it passed through its various stages the majorities in its favour dwindled, and it was eventually given up amid popular rejoicings. In 1821 a Catholic Relief Bill, introduced to remove another grievance by the repeal of unjust laws against Catholics, was rejected, and in the following session a second motion of Russell's in favour of reform met with a similar fate. In this year, however, Castlereagh, the strongest supporter of Met- ternich's policy, died by his own hand, and the prospects of liberalism brightened. In 1822, which was the year of the Congress of Verona, Canning returned to power as foreign secretary. To some degree, he was a liberal in foreign politics, and a bitter enemy of the Holy Alliance. He prevented England from joining in the intervention in Spain which was undertaken by France. In 1824, he recognised the independence of certain South American colonies, who had revolted against Spain, and, as he said, " called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old." In 1827, Liverpool was obliged to resign his office from ill health, and Canning, after vain opposition from the king, took his place, but he could not carry his colleagues with him in the liberalism of his foreign policy and his support of Catholic Emancipation and some relaxation of the Corn Laws a.d. 1837] ENGLAND 711 in favour of Free Trade. Therefore seven of the ministers re- fused to take office under him, but he was supported by Lynd- hurst as lord chancellor, by Palmerston, Goderich, .Harrowby,and others. Unfortunately he died after Ministerial only a few months in office, on August 8. His place was at first taken by Goderich, but he was not up to the work, and, in 1828, the duke of Wellington became premier, with Robert Peel as home secretary and leader of the House of Commons, Lyndhurst, Huskisson, and Palmerston remain- ing in office. By the wise statesmanship of Peel, the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed, and the Catholic Catholic Emancipation Act was passed in 1829. It ad- Emancipa- mitted Catholics to Parliament and to all civil and tion. political offices with the exception of regent, lord chancellor, and lord-lieutenant of Ireland. An agitation began for the repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland, but in 1830 George IV. died, and was succeeded by his brother, the duke of Clarence, as William IV. The year 1830 witnessed a liberal ministry in England, pledged to the cause of Parliamentary Reform. The Cabinet was a remarkable one, Lord Grey being prime minister, Althorp chancellor of the exchequer r!?. r . ** re y s and leader of the Commons, Melbourne home secretary, Palmerston foreign secretary, and Lord Brougham lord chancellor. Russell was also a minister, but did not belong to the cabinet. The first two years of the ministry were spent in passing a measure of parliamentary reform. The first Reform Bill was brought in by Russell, and passed the House of Commons by a majority of one. This was not enough, so Parliament was dissolved and a larger liberal majority returned. In October a second Reform Bill was passed by the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords ; and in December a third Reform Bill was ™* ^[is* read for the first time and passed the Commons on March 23, 1832. It was well known that the bill would be rejected by the Lords, and the only way to prevent this was to create a sufficient number of peers to pass it. This the king refused to do, and the ministers resigned. After an attempt to form a ministry under Wellington, Grey returned to office, and at last the Lords were persuaded to bow to the will of the country. Under this act, 56 boroughs were disfranchised altogether, 30 more returned one member instead of two, 43 new boroughs were created, half of which returned one member 712 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1815-1837 and the rest two members each. The county members were increased from 94 to 159, votes were given in towns to all holders of premises of the value of <£10 a year, and the county franchise was largely extended. It was undoubtedly a revolu- tion, as it gave power to the middle classes and took it away from the peers. The reform of the constitution led to the passing of a number of measures of a liberal character, which it had been impossible to get through the Tory house. The next two years Legislation saw ^ ie taking of oaths rendered optional by the passing of an Affirmation Act, — the number of Irish bishoprics reduced, — slavery abolished in the colonies from August 1, 1834, a compensation of twenty millions being given to the slave- owners, — the work of women and children in factories restricted by a Factory Act, — a grant given to popular edu- cation, — the treatment of the indigent poor improved by the abolition of the Settlement Acts and the restriction of out- door relief, — and a movement started for the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The ministry resigned in 1834, being divided in opinion as to a Coercion Act for Ireland. Mel- bourne became prime minister, but he was dismissed by the king and was succeeded by Sir Robert Peel, the duke of Wellington being foreign minister and the youthful Gladstone under-secretary for the colonies. Parliament was now dis- solved, but Peel, not securing a majority in the Commons, was compelled to retire, his place being taken by Melbourne, who was supported by Russell and Palmerston. This second ministry of Melbourne reformed the municipalities as Parliament had been reformed three years before. All boroughs were to be The governed by town councils, elected by all who Municipal paid the poor and borough rates, and who had re- Reform Act. sided in the borough for three years. Also the debates of the House of Commons were made more popular by the publication of the division lists, issued under the authority of the house. These measures mark the first two years of Melbourne's ministry. In the third year, 1837, William IV. died, and was succeeded by his niece, Queen Victoria, whose long reign formed one of the most brilliant periods in English history. EUROPE, A.D. 1830-1848. Meanwhile Italy dragged out a troubled existence under Austrian misrule, until the election to the papal chair, in June a.d. 1830-1848] EUROPE 713 1848, of Cardinal Mastai Ferretti, henceforth called Pius IX., a vigorous, upright man, with a zeal for liberal reform. Austria, alarmed at this, used every means to interfere with his policy, and at last took possession of Ferrara in the Papal States, which led to risings in many parts of Italy. On March 23, Charles Albert, king of Sardinia, issued a pro- clamation in favour of Italian unity ; and marched into Lombardy to assist in the expulsion of the Austrians, who, Charles however, gradually overcame all opposition and Albert and forced an armistice upon him. France and Eng- Italian land made some attempt at mediation, but on Unity. March 20, 1849, Charles Albert terminated the armistice as the only means of saving his kingdom. By the 24th, however, the war was at an end, and Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Victor Emmanuel, who purchased peace by the pay- ment of 75,000,000 lire. Meanwhile, Radetsky, the Austrian general, was blockading Venice, which in August 1849 sur- rendered, the whole of northern Italy falling into the hands of the emperor. In the Papal States, Pius IX. had done his best for the political regeneration of Italy, but was met by demands for a constitution, which he strove to quell by the appointment as prime minister of Rossi, a staunch » e e U hi> &n opponent of democracy. Rossi, however, was assassinated on November 15, 1848, and eight days later the pope fled from Rome and took up his abode at Gaeta. On February 9, 1849, a National Assembly declared the pope's power at an end, and proclaimed once more a Roman republic. Pius waited in vain for his people to reinstate him in his temporal authority, and was at length compelled to call in the assistance of the Roman Catholic powers of Europe. A French army under Oudinot was sent to Italy, to crush the Roman republic, and, after a siege, Rome surrendered on June 30, 1849. Pius IX. returned to the capital a changed man, no longer zealous for reform, but intent upon the preservation of his sovereignty. We must now pass to Switzerland, where, in January 1834, certain cantons drew up a document called the " Articles of Baden," with the object of defending the state against the encroachments of the church. The ill of^Baden 0168 feeling engendered by this led to a civil war, which, though apparently of religious origin, was really the result of the revolutionary wave then passing over Europe. On 714 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1830 to December 11, 1845, the seven Catholic cantons banded themselves into a league known as the Sonderbund, with Siegwan-Miiller at its head. Europe in the main took the side of the league as an outwork against revolution, but, war becoming inevi- table, in October 1847, General Dufour took the « j b d fi^d against the Sonderbund, and, in twenty- five days, crushed its resistance. These events made a change in the Swiss constitution imperative. In a federal constitution, the main point is to determine which New Swiss powers are to be given to the central authority, Constitu- and which are to be left to the separate states. The tion. federal government now received control of the army ; equality before the law, freedom of the press, and reli- gious liberty were recognised as the fundamental principles of a democratic constitution. The legislature consisted of two houses — the Senate, to which each canton sent two members, and the Lower House, consisting of members elected in propor- tion to the population of the cantons. The executive was a council of seven, one of whom was chosen president for a period of three years. The constitution has continued un- changed, but for revisions in 1867 and 1874, to the present day, and is the model of a democratic government, the most success- ful the world has seen. In France Louis Philippe had been selected to fill the throne, by the intrumentality of Lafayette, who, doubting the capacity of France to support a republic, preferred PhT S to §* ve ^ er a " throne surrounded by republican institutions." For a time, Louis, with the help of an immense revenue, which he used freely for the purposes of political corruption, consolidated his government and obtained a reputation for firmness and political wisdom. But amid all this, the lower classes, disappointed as to the results of the Revolution of July, grew more and more dissatisfied, and this discontent led eventually to the Revolution of 1848, and the establishment of the Second Republic. The immediate cause Thg of the outbreak was an attempt on the part of the Revolution government to put a stop to the political reform of 1848. banquets which were becoming common in the country. On February 22, 1848, a large concourse of people met for the purpose of attending one of these banquets, but was dispersed without loss of life. In the evening, however, disturbances took place, and, on the following day, skirmishes occurred, and the colonel of the National Guard was sent to a.d. 1848] EUROPE 715 inform the king of their desire for reform. Louis Philippe acceded immediately to their requests, dismissed Guizot, and entrusted the formation of the new ministry to Mole. The disturbances, however, continued, and in the evening the mobs were fired upon. Then their desire for revenge was aroused, and the cry, " Down with Louis Philippe ! Down with the Bourbons ! " was heard in the streets. Mole being unable to form a ministry, the task was entrusted to Thiers, who issued a proclamation ordering the troops to retire to their quarters. This was a virtual surrender, and the mob took advantage of it to march to the palace and demand the abdication of the king. During the day, Louis signed an abdication in favour of his son, the Count of Paris, and, with the queen, fled first to Saint Cloud, and thence to England, the palace, meanwhile, being sacked by the populace. As soon as the abdication had been signed, the Chamber of Deputies assembled, and a provisional government was formed and adopted by the Parisians, the French Republic being proclaimed throughout the king- RercuMic 11 clom. The leading member of the government was Lamartine, who succeeded in calming the passions of the people and re-establishing tranquillity by vigorous repressive measures. On the 26th, the public departments resumed their duties, and the people of France, with extraordinary unanimity, accepted the republic. The Revolution of February was accomplished by the union of the Moderates and the Republicans ; but, as soon as their object was obtained, dissen- sions broke out anew between them, and the Republicans, unwil- ling that the Moderates should have control of the provisional government, determined upon their overthrow. As yet, however, the power was in the hands of the Moderates, who could rely upon the support of the National Guard, and in the ballot in May for an exacutive committee for the government not one of the ultra-Republicans secured a place. On May 15, the populace, led by Barbes, gained a temporary command of the National Assembly, but was dispersed by the National Guard, the provisional government being reinstated. In view of the possibility of another demonstration, the command of the troops in Paris was given to the minister of war, General Cavaignac. In June, the government deter- mined to send out of Paris 12,000 workmen, who were unpro- fitably employed in the government workshops, in order to lighten the burden upon the treasury. This was the signal 716 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1830 to for fresh disturbances, which began on June 22. On the 24th, Cavaignac declared Paris in a state of siege, and] the fighting continued till the 26th, victory remaining with the government. The success of General Cavaignac led to his appointment to the control of the executive of the nation, a power which he used with moderation. The leaders of the insurrection fled the country, and those who were captured were treated with mildness. The Assembly meanwhile proceeded with the forma- tion of the constitution, which was accepted on November 4, 1848. The Republican form of government was adopted, with a president at its head, to be elected every four years. Its principles were liberty, equality, and fraternity ; its bases, family, labour, property, and order. The Revolution in France led to risings in the German states, where the various rulers were petitioned for a larger Germany share in legislation and similar privileges, the and king of Prussia placing himself at the head of Austria the reform movement. In Austria, also, dis- in 1848. turbances took place, which brought about the fall of Metternich, one of the worst ministers who ever had a share in the government of Europe. During April and May 1848, Vienna was in the hands of the mob, and the emperor took refuge at Innsbruck. Returning in August, he was unable to regain the command of the city. Meanwhile, the Slavs had demanded a constitution from the emperor. This being refused, a congress was held in Prague, where, the people becoming excited by the presence of troops in the city, a rising occurred, which ended in the breaking up of the Slavic congress, after great slaughter. A second revolution took place in Vienna, where the people rose to protest against the sending of troops against the Hungarians, who were striving to preserve their integrity against Austrian encroachments. The insurgents triumphed, and the emperor fled to Olmiitz. He was able, however, to concentrate an overwhelming force before Vienna, and the rebellion was crushed with great severity. The Hungarians had, meanwhile, advanced into Austrian territory, but, in view of the repression of the revolt in Vienna, were com- pelled to recross the frontiers. These events were favourable to peace in Germany, where the king of Prussia, calling in the army to his aid, dissolved the Assembly which he had summoned to construct a constitution, ignored his promises, and pursued his way as before, carrying with him the other German sovereigns. The absorption of Schleswig-Holstein by Denmark, which occurred a.d 1848] EUROPE 717 simultaneously, was a fruitful cause of future trouble, and ended finally in the establishment of the German empire. The only effect which these revolutionary movements in the rest of Europe had upon England was shown in the publica- tion of the People's Charter. Regarded from a i^e modern point of view, this charter is not very People's formidable. The points demanded were six — Charter. Universal suffrage, vote by ballot, annual parliaments, aboli- tion of property qualification for members, payment of members, and division of the country into equal electoral districts. Riots took place in various parts of the country, the worst being at Newport, where the mob was fired upon by the troops, but no great excitement was caused by the movement, and it gradually died out, leaving England practically unaffected by the revolutionary fever which was ravaging the rest of Europe. CHAPTER XV. THE SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE, A.D. 1851-52— THE HUNGARIAN REBELLION, A.D. 1848-49— THE CRIMEAN WAR, 1852-56— THE INDIAN MUTINY, 1857-58— ITALY, 1849-59. After the acceptance of the republican settlement in France in 1848, it became necessary, in accordance with the constitution, to Louis elect a president to hold the chief power for four Napoleon years. There were six candidates for the office — President. Lamartine, Ledru Rollin, Raspail, Ohangarnier, Cavaignac, and Louis Napoleon, the son of Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother. It soon became evident, however, that the choice would lie between Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon, the chief claim of the latter being his relationship to the great emperor. The result of the election was a surprise, three quar- ter's of the votes polled throughout the country being for Louis Napoleon. He was inaugurated president on December 20, 1848, swearing to " remain faithfnl to the democratic constitution." Born in 1808, he had been always regarded as the repre- sentative of the Napoleon dynasty, and had made two attempts to stir np a revolution against Louis Philippe. After his second attempt, he was captured and imprisoned for five years, making his escape in 1846. After the Revolution of 1848, he was elected to the Assembly, and later, as has been seen, to the supreme magistracy. His first action was to make a declara- tion asserting that the principles of his government were T , strictly democratic and republican. The Assembly Assembly wa s composed of various more or less conflicting and the parties — the Legitimists, who supported the Bour- President. bons ; the Orleanists, in favour of the descendants of Louis Philippe ; the Bonapartists, who were anxious for the re-establishment of the empire in the person of Napoleon ; and the Republicans. From the first, the Assembly and the President were in opposition, the one intriguing against the head of the republic, the other furthering his ambitious designs by every means in his power. The policy pursued was strictly conservative : education was placed in the hands of the clergy, the liberty of the 7i8 a. d. 1851-1852] SECOND FRENCH EMPIRE 719 press was restricted, and an army was sent to crush the newly created republic of Rome. The constitution had provided for its revision by the votes of three- fourths of the Assembly, and declared the President ineligible for re-election. In 1851, however, a motion for its revision was easily defeated, and the Assembly, fearing that the President would seek re-election in violation of the constitution, proposed a bill for his impeachment if he made any such attempt. Matters were coming to a crisis, and anarchy seemed probable, when Louis Napoleon, by a coup d'etat, crushing the consti- tution and the opposition of the Assembly, ob- tainecl the imperial power at which he aimed. On ,,,, . p December 1, a ball was given by the President, at which all the fashion and beauty of Paris were present, but on the following morning the city was found to be full of troops, and all the surrounding country occupied by them, while a presidential decree, which was found posted on every wall, announced the dissolution of the Assembly, the restora- tion of universal suffrage, and the establishment of martial law in the city. The chiefs of the Assembly had been seized and thrown into prison, and no one was left with sufficient authority to take the lead of the people. The coup d'etat was successful, and Louis Napoleon was dictator of France. Three hundred members of the Assembly, unable to enter their hall, met in another part of the city, and declared the President guilty of treason ; but before they could disperse they were surrounded by troops and escorted to prison. All newspapers except the government organs were suppressed, and notices of an election to decide whether to grant Louis Napoleon power for ten years, with the authority to reform the constitution, were issued, fixing the voting to take place between the 14th and 22nd of December. On the 4th, an insurrection occurred, but was ruthlessly suppressed, about 1000 of the people being killed in Paris alone. Within three days, order was restored throughout the country. The army voted first, and decided almost unanimously in favour of Louis Napoleon, and this example was followed by the nation, which thereby showed its desire for the restoration of the empire. On January 1 , ", Second 1852, the result of the election was celebrated in Paris, and on the 14th the new constitution was decreed. It entrusted the government to Louis Napoleon for ten years, made him commander-in-chief of both army and navy, and 720 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1848 to gave him power over peace and war, as well as the control of legislation. He lacked only the name of emperor, and this he assumed, quietly and without protest, within a year of his re-election. The foundation of the empire, which was recognised and welcomed by all the European nations with the exception of Russia, seemed to promise a general peace ; but, in reality, it brought to a crisis the various points of discord which were hover- ing over Europe, and led, indirectly, to the war in the Crimea. THE HUNGARIAN REBELLION, A.D. 1848-49. But it is necessary, first, to describe the Hungarian rebellion, which ended so disastrously for that country, placing it more firmly than ever under the sway of Austria, Revo ution f rom w hich it has never been able to free itself. The immediate cause of the second revolution in Vienna had been the order to some Austrian troops to march against the Croats, who had revolted from Hungary. This war soon became one between Hungary and Austria. Hungary had, up to now, enjoyed a certain measure of independence, although her affairs were managed by a bureau in Vienna, and, after the first Revolution in 1848, when the emperor had conceded to the people of his hereditary states the rights demanded by them, a deputation of the Hungarians had waited upon him, asking for their kingdom similar liberties. The emperor gave his assent on April 11, and the news was received with great joy by the Hungarian nation. But, the people being unused to such liberty, the government was not allowed to exercise its functions, and a state of anarchy ensued. Worse than all, opposition to Hungary appeared within her own pro- vinces, and was secretly encouraged by Austria. Hungarians rj^-g pp OS jfcion at length showing itself in open revolt, war between Hungary and her vassals became inevitable, and the actual beginning of the struggle was the bombardment by Hungarian troops, on June 12, 1848, of Carlowitz, the centre of the Serbs of Slavonia. The discontented Slavs rose in support of their compatriots, and finally Austria, throwing off the mask, declared her in- tention to revoke the concessions recently granted, and so aid the insurgents openly. The Hungarian Diet, by strenuous efforts, raised the army to 200,000 men, who, stirred by the eloquence of Kossuth, succeeded in repulsing Jellachich, the Ban or governor of Croatia, who had advanced against Pesth, the capital of the a.d. 1849] THE HUNGARIAN REBELLION 721 kingdom. Meanwhile, the Emperor Ferdinand had abdicated in favour of his nephew, Francis Joseph. Not having taken the oath in the Hungarian capital to preserve the constitution, Francis Joseph was declared by the Diet to be incapable of ruling Hungary, but this decision was not accepted by the nation, which was averse to a conflict. The Austrian Parlia- ment, however, desiring to recall the concessions which had been granted by the emperor, resolved upon the unconditional surrender of the Hungarians. The prospect of war aroused the nation to rally round the patriot Kossuth, but, when every possible effort had been made, the Hungarian army, which took the field in December 1848, amounted to only 65,000 men. Windischgratz, the Austrian general, invaded Hungary from nine points, and, meeting with little resistance from Gorgey, the commander of the Hungarian forces, entered Pesth on January 6, 1849. The Hungarian govern- Vagary ment retired to Debreczen, while the army slowly concentrated in the valley of the Theiss. After various mis- fortunes, Bern, who commanded the Hungarians and their allies in Transylvania, was able to defeat the Austrians, who had received aid from Russia, entered Cronstadt without opposition, and, in a few weeks, was in command of the whole of Transyl- vania. In the meantime, in the valley of the Theiss, important events had been taking place, which at last resulted in the Austrians being driven for the time out of Hungary ; and had Gorgey, who had produced this result, been active in following up his advantage, he might have gained possession of Vienna itself. He lingered, however, and so allowed the Austrians to provide for its defence. On April 15, 1849, the independence of Hungary was declared, and the government was placed in the hands of Louis Kossuth, who had little less than regal powers. Preparations for the renewed invasion of Hungary were rapidly carried on, and by June 400,000 men, of whom 160,000 were Russians, were assembled on the Hungarian interven- frontiers, under Haynau. To meet this force, tion of the Hungarians had raised 140,000 men, who Russia, were distributed throughout the country. The plans of the Austrians and Eussians were entirely successful, and Haynau's severity earned him the title of " Hungary's Hangman." The struggle continued with varying fortune, until, at length, Kossuth, considering Gorgey the only man capable of saving Hungary, conferred upon him dictatorial powers, which, three days later, he betrayed, surrendering to the Russian general Rxidiger 2 z 722 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1852 to on August 13. This was the end of the war in Hungary. Kossuth fled to Turkey, and later to America, where he was kindly received, and his noble efforts on behalf of his country properly appreciated. The officers and soldiers of the Hungarian army were treated with revolting cruelty, and the country, which had preserved its national existence for a thousand years, was finally merged into the Austrian empire, more by the treachery of its own sons than by the forces brought against it. THE EASTEEN QUESTION AND THE CRIMEAN WAR, A.D. 1852-56. While these events had been happening in Hungary, Louis Napoleon had been consolidating his power. After the security Aims of °f n ^ s own position, the object nearest to his heart Louis was the liberation of Italy from the Austrian Napoleon. government. He was of Italian origin ; in his youth he had been a member of the Carbonari ; and he longed to see the rule of the double-eagle removed from the country with which he had so many ties. In order to do this, it was necessary that he should preclude the possibility of Austria's receiving assistance from Russia, and it therefore became imperative to cripple Russia before any decisive action could be taken. In furtherance of this project, he did his best to stir up war with that country, and the struggle in the Crimea must therefore be laid at the door of Napoleon, the British having little or no interest in it. The excuse for a quarrel, which he needed, was found in the revival of the Eastern question concerning the maintenance of the Turkish power. This was due to the dissensions between the Latin and The Holy Greek Christians for the control of the Holy Places of Places in Palestine. The cause of the Greeks Palestine. having been espoused by the Tsar, Napoleon naturally came forward as the champion of the Latins, glad of so good an opportunity of bringing about a quarrel with Russia. The Sultan tried in vain to satisfy the rival claimants, where- upon the Tsar proposed to Great Britain that the Turkish provinces in Europe should be made independent under Russian influence, and Great Britain should occupy Crete and Egypt. This she refused to do, whereupon the Tsar prepared for war, having been denied the protectorate of the Greek Christians in Turkey. That country applied to the western powers for help. Great Britain and France sent a joint fleet to the Dardanelles, a.d.1856] EASTERN QUESTION: CRIMEAN WAR 723 while the Tsar, to enforce his demand, occupied the Danubian principalities. As a last resort before war, the great powers held a congress at Vienna, and proposals for peace were sent to the contending parties. These were accepted by Russia, and would have been accepted also by the Turks but for the advice of the English ambassador, Sir Stratford Canning. War was, therefore, declared between Russia and Turkey, and, upon the destruction of the Turkish fleet, in November 1853, Great Britain came to the assistance of the Porte, an alliance with France to support her in the enterprise being signed in March 1854. In April 1854, about 20,000 English troops under Lord Raglan, together with 40,000 French under St. Arnaud, landed at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles, and marched to i^e Varna, where plans for the campaign were con- Crimean certed. It was decided to attack Sebastopol, and War - for this purpose a move was made to the Crimea. The whole army consisted of about 57,000 men, of whom 7000 were Turks. The advance began on September 19, and, on the 20th, a battle was fought in the valley of the Alma. The Russians, about 40,000 strong, held the heights beyond the river. The British advanced up the river, led by the Guards and the Highlanders, and the Russians began to give way, but the pursuit was not followed up, as Canrobert, in command of the French, refused to allow his men to march without their knapsacks. In the battle the British lost 2000, the French a much smaller number, while the Russian losses amounted to nearly 6000 men. Had the allies advanced at once, as the British generals desired, they might have entered Sebastopol without opposition, but they wasted two days on the battle-field, and when the advance recommenced the harbour had been blockaded by Menshikov, and his communications with Russia had been secured. It was determined, therefore, to march round Sebastopol, and attack it on its southern side. On the 26th, Balaclava, with its harbour, was captured, but was found to be of less importance than had been expected. When the army arrived before Sebastopol and had taken up its position, it was decided to bombard the city, and the army had therefore to wait, before commencing operations, until October 17, in order that the siege train might be got into position. The fire opened on October 17, but as the days went on little impression was made, the Russians repairing at night the damage which had been done during the day. By the end of October, Menshikov, 724 A GENERAL HISTORY [a .u. 1852-56 the Russian commander, had been reinforced until his army numbered 130,000 men, and he determined to attempt the recovery of Balaclava, which, since its capture, had been put in a better position for defence by the allies. On October 25, the Russians began to bombard the position. Canrobert Hill, which was held by the Turks, was stormed, and there was a danger of the shipping in the harbour falling into the hands of the enemy, but this was prevented by the 93rd Regiment, under Sir Colin Campbell. At this juncture occurred the famous charges of the Heavy and Light Brigades, the former, by a brilliant move, breaking up a huge body of Russian cavalry, the latter, through a terrible mistake on the part of Lord Lucan, failing to effect anything, and being cut to pieces in the effort. The French well described the charge in the phrase, " C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre ! " Matters dragged on without any decisive blow being struck on either side until November 5, when was fought the battle of Inkerman, which had for its object the expul- Battle of g - on Q £ ^ e a ni es f rom the Crimea. Menshikov aimed chiefly at Mount Inkerman, on the British right. The battle was without decisive results, though the Russians lost 12,000 to the 3,000 of the allies, but it had the effect of convincing Menshikov of the impossibility of driving the allies from the plateau. During the winter, which had now begun, the troops suffered terribly, and by the end of November, it is stated, the British alone had 8000 men in hospital, into which a better system had been introduced by Florence Nightingale, the apostle of modern scientific nursing. Fall of the ^ n England public opinion was aroused against Aberdeen the Aberdeen ministry, who were held responsible Ministry. for the war, and, in January 1855, the ministry having been defeated, the formation of a new government was entrusted to Lord Palmerston. On March 2 occurred the death of the Emperor Nicholas, who died of a broken heart, brought about, finally, by the defeat of the Russians by the Turks at Eupatoria. The allied generals held the opinion that Sebastopol could only be captured by the fall of the Malakov Tower, but they were unable to effect this. On April 9, a second great bom- bardment began, in which the Russian defences suffered severely, but the result was disappointing, and the assault fixed for the 28th was not made. In view of the fact that the war seemed likely to be dragged out indefinitely, a conference was a.d. 1857-58] THE INDIAN MUTINY 725 held at Vienna, in which Austria showed herself favourable to Russia, and in the negotiation which followed no conclusion was reached, on account of the unwillingness of Austria to take decided action. In a council held at Windsor, between the Queen and the Emperor of the French, who paid a visit to England at this time, it was decided that the army of the allies should be divided into two sections, one for the siege, and the other for operations. The British, 25,000 strong, formed the nucleus of the army of operations. The allied generals determined to prepare the way for a general attack by a third bombardment, which began on June 6. By the 9th, the Green Hill was in the hands of the allies, though it was obtained only with considerable loss. A fourth bombardment took place on June 17, the Russian batteries being silenced by evening, but the attacks which followed on the 18th failed disastrously. Ten days later Lord Raglan died of dysentery. It was now determined by the Russians to make a general attack to attempt to drive the allies from their position, but this was a complete failure, and the Russians were compelled to retire within their defences again. It was thought by the allies that the time had now come for the storming of Sebastopol, which was fixed for September 8. The attack itself was not successful, except in the case of the taking of the Malakov ; but it was considered expedient to evacuate the town, great booty falling into the hands of the gJ °7 . allies. The war was not yet at an end, but nothing of importance remained to do, the allies being content to hold Sebastopol, and the Russians being too much weakened to accomplish anything. By the end of 1855 hostilities were practically at an end, and on February 21, 1856, the peace congress met for the first time at Paris, the actual treaty being signed on March 30. Its most important result was the neutralisation of the Black Sea. THE INDIAN MUTINY, A.D. 1857-58. But, although all parties needed peace to recover from the exhaustion caused by the war, England, at any rate, was not left long at rest. In India the native troops had been be- coming more and more restless for some time past, stirred up by fanatical native priests, who preached the expulsion of the whites from the country and the re-establishment of native rule. The immediate cause of the outbreak was the violation of religious 726 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.»: 1849 to prejudices by the introduction of railways and the alleged use of cow's fat to grease cartridges. On May 10, 1857, a mutiny broke out among the Sepoys at Meerut ; other risings immediately followed at Delhi, Lucknow, Oawnpore, and Allahabad ; and the movement spread throughout the country. Dreadful atrocities took place. At Oawnpore, after a brave resistance, the garrison, marching out to embark in boats to carry them to safety, under the promise of a safe conduct, were fired upon, nearly all the men being killed, while the women and children were butchered in cold blood, later, and their bodies thrown into a well. Delhi fell into the hands of the mutineers, and a descendant of the Mogul dynasty was declared emperor. But the city was recap- tured on September 20, while Lucknow, which was closely besieged, was relieved by Havelock, after Sir Henry Lawrence had been killed, and finally rescued by Outram and Colin Campbell in March 1858. This was practically the end of the Indian mutiny. It owed its suppression to the prompt aid sent by Sir J. Lawrence to the Punjab, and the loyalty of the native princes as a whole, the majority of them being un- influenced by the movements towards revolution. As a result of it, in June of this year, an Act was passed to change the government of India. The powers and territories of the East End of the India Company were transferred to the crown ; East India a secretary of state for India was appointed ; and Company. a governor-general, with the title of viceroy, was sent out to represent the crown in India. Ever since, India has enjoyed complete tranquillity, and at the present day the Indian empire is attached to us by bonds stronger than ever. LOUIS NAPOLEON AND ITALY, A.D. 1849 TO A.D. 1859. In order to understand the events which now took place in Italy, it is necessary for us to go back to the time when Charles Albert resigned his crown, after the defeat of Novara, to his son, Victor Emmanuel, then twenty-nine years old. On March 29, 1849, Victor Emmanuel swore fidelity to the constitution in the presence of the Chambers, but it did not seem as if he would be popular, for the armistice was generally distasteful. When a new house was elected, however, the treaty ? ,lse of wa s ratified by a large majority. At this time Cavour, who had always been regarded as an aristocrat, came forward in support of the liberal cause, and won great popularity, becoming minister of agriculture and marine, a.d. 1859] LOUIS NAPOLEON AND ITALY 727 on the death of Santa Rosa, in 1850. In 1852, thinking that the government should assume a more definitely liberal character, he formed a coalition with Ratazzi, the leader of the left centre, and on November 4, upon the resignation of cl'Azeglio, who had offended the pope by the introduction of a bill authorising civil marriage, he became prime minister, at the head of what is known as the " Great Ministry." By allying Sardinia with France and England in the Crimean War, Cavour raised his country in the eyes of Europe, and set it as a brilliant contrast to the feeble waverings of Austria, securing it a place among the powers, while by his wisdom in the congress at Paris he brought the Italian question before the world, for which he received the thanks and gratitude of the country. After the attempt by Orsini on the life of Napoleon III., Cavour, by the diplomatic skill which he displayed, cemented the friendship which the emperor had for Sardinia, Alliance of and brought about an alliance between the two France and powers for the abolition of Austrian rule in Sardinia. Italy, which Napoleon now felt strong enough to undertake, having made it impossible for Russia to render aid to the Austrians. It remained only to find a pretext for the war with Austria, and Cavour used every means in his power to bring it about. Garibaldi was called in, and it was arranged that a revolution should take place in the spring of 1859, in central Italy, to force the Austrians to make war. In France the prospect of a war did not meet with favour, but the emperor, attached as he was to Italy, was anxious to accomplish it. However, when a congress was suggested, Napoleon gave it his support ; but Cavour, who saw the likelihood of all his work being undone, was saved by the refusal of Austria to adhere to the plan of mediation. As a matter of fact, war had been decided upon at Vienna, as the only means available to crush the revolutionary spirit in Italy, once and for all. On April 10, an ultimatum was sent to Italy to disarm, and, on the 26th, the French ambassador at Vienna informed the prime minister, Buol, that any violation of the Sardinian frontier would be accepted as a declaration of war. On the 29th the Austrians crossed the frontier 200,000 strong, with the object of crushing the Sardinians before the French could arrive, but the French had already crossed the frontiers of Savoy with 130,000 men, f U -war a while 8700 men landed at Genoa, and 4000 went to aid the Piedmontese in the mountains. By May 14 the 728 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d.1849to French and Sardinians had joined forces, making a total of 260,000 men, a number considerably superior to that of the Austrians. At this point, the Austrians made a grave strategical mistake by staying where they were, and confining themselves to a defensive policy, instead of attacking the com- bined army without loss of time. While the allies had full knowledge of the position of their opponents, the Austrians, in order to discover the movements of the enemy, sent Stadion to reconnoitre at the head of 18,000 men. This led, on May 30, to the battle of Montebello, the first encounter between the two armies, in which the allies were entirely successful, the Austrians being driven out of Genestrello, which they had occupied, and being forced to retreat to Oasteggio, with a loss of 1293, while the French losses num- bered 723. Napoleon's plan now was to attack the Austrian right wing, and advance upon Milan, the movement being masked by the Sardinians, who succeeded in capturing Palestro, which the Austrians were unable to regain. Both sides were aware that Palestro was the key of the position, as it com- manded the passage of the Serio, but all attempts to re- capture it proved to be in vain. In the meantime Garibaldi, who had been made a general, placed his headquarters at Varese, the Austrians being in full retreat, with their line stretching from Varese to Piacenza, and their troops in very bad condition. The battle of Magenta, a village on the road between Novara and Milan, about four miles from the Ticino, was fought on June 4. Between the town and the river lies a Masrenta canal, which is crossed by six bridges, all of which were strongly defended by the Austrians. Neither of the rival armies was at anything like its full strength, but the forces opposed to each other were practi- cally equal. From 10.30 a.m., when the first shots were fired, until 2 p.m. neither side gained any material advantage, but by 3.30 p.m. the position of affairs was decidedly favourable to the French. Still they were hard pressed, until, by the arrival of Macmahon, at five in the afternoon, the whole army was enabled to advance upon Magenta itself. Here fierce fighting took place, the village being strongly held ; but by 9 p.m. the whole field of battle was in the possession of the French. The allies lost 4500 men, the Austrians 10,000, of whom 5000 were prisoners, and next morning Giulay gave the order to retreat, the emperor and Victor Emmanuel on a.d.1859] LOUIS NAPOLEON AND ITALY 729 the following day entering Milan, where they were received with delirious joy. The Austrians now retired to the Quadrilateral — i.e. the district between the Adige, the Mincio, the mountains, and the sea — without serious opposition, the French reaching the Adda a few hours too late. No further engage- ments took place until the 24th, when the victory gr? • of Solferino put an end to the war. The battle was fought in a space twenty miles long and twelve broad, bounded to the north by the Lago di Garda, to the south by the Oglio, to the west by the Chiese, and to the east by the Mincio, and containing some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe. The allied army consisted of five French army corps, and five divisions of Sardinian troops, a total of about 160,000 men, the Austrian forces, under the command of Francis Joseph, being about equal in number. On the morning of the 23rd, the headquarters of the emperor of Austria were at Villa- franca, his plan being to advance upon the allies, take them by surprise, and drive them towards the Alps, leaving the decisive battle to be fought on the following day. The Austrians therefore crossed the Mincio, intending to advance to the Chiese on the next morning. Before they could do this, the allies had crossed the Chiese, intending to force the passage of the Mincio. It thus happened that the two armies came into collision unex- pectedly, and the problem was to convert a line of march into a line of battle with the least possible delay. The Austrian army at first attempted to carry out its original plan of turning the French right and driving it towards the Alps, the allies, how- ever, concentrating towards the centre of the Austrian line, and attacking Solferino and San Casciano. The French suc- ceeded in piercing the Austrian centre, the corps which had been sent to attack the French in flank being defeated. The only success gained by the Austrians was on the right, where they were able to hold the Sardinians in check, and this did not suffice to redeem the disasters elsewhere. The capture of Cavriano, the last village remaining in the hands of the Austrians, put an end to the battle, and the defeated army retreated beyond the Mincio. In the battle, the losses of the Austrians amounted to 21,500 men, those of the allies to 18,500. On July 6, negotiations for peace were opened between Napoleon and Francis Joseph, and on the 8th an armistice was arranged at Villafranca, which was to last until August 15. Next day, the emperors met at Villafranca, and the terms of a 730 A GENERAL HISTORY [a .n. 1849-1859 peace were discussed, which was finally concluded when Victor Emmanuel had given his consent, which it was practically im- possible for him to refuse. Lombardy was ceded eace o ^ Q g arc ji n i a . an Italian confederation was to be formed, with the pope at its head, and was to include Yenetia ; the Papal States were to be reformed ; Tuscany and Modena were to return to their dukes ; Parma was sur- rendered for a time, but was afterwards retained. Cavour was heartbroken, yet could do nothing but resign. After all, it was probably best that the war should be brought to an end at once. The peace of Villafranca freed Italy from the influence of France, both in fact and in the eyes of the other countries of Europe, and prepared the world for the final freedom achieved in 1870, when the Italian nation came into being, its nationality based upon principles which are likely to secure the permanence of Italian unity. CHAPTER XVI. THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, A.D. 1861-1865. The Civil War in America owed its origin to the question of slavery, the North being opposed to the keeping of slaves, the South in favour of it. In 1815, the states of f^e the Union were equally divided between slavery Question of and "free soil," eleven being for slavery and Slavery, eleven against it. The feeling between the two parties became more and -more intense. In Boston, a paper called the Liberator was established, and, in 1832, the " New England Anti-Slavery Society " was founded. The dissensions came to a head on the question of admitting Texas, a slave-holding state, which had previously formed part of Mexico, to the Union. In 1850, feeling had risen so high that there was a danger of the breaking up of the Union, and every effort was used to effect a compro- mise. Gold had been discovered in California, and, when the question arose of the admission of that state to the Union, feeling ran high as to whether it should be slave or free, and a difficulty was also experienced in the question of the Mormon state of Utah. A compromise suggested by Senator Clay pro- vided that California should be free, Utah and New Mexico slave-holding, and this was adopted. To the South, however, the possession of slaves seemed a necessity, as it was impossible for her to hold her position by any other means, and even now she found herself slipping behind the North in the race for pre- eminence. In the North, on the other hand, the " free soil " feeling took a stronger and stronger hold upon the people, and, while only a small number of persons desired to abolish slavery in the districts in which it already existed, there was a general determination that it should not be allowed in any new addi- tions to the Union. In every extension this question had to be fought, and there could be no agreement while land remained to be occupied. A serious conflict ensued upon the creation of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which were opened 731 732 A GENERAL HISTORY [a. d. 1861 to conditionally to slavery by the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, in 1854. In 1856 the Republican party was formed, which was of a decidedly anti-slavery complexion, but for a time was unable to effect anything, though public opinion was turned in its favour when the Democrats, who were headed by James Buchanan, the President, threw the new territories open unconditionally to slavery. In Illinois, Lincoln, an ardent opponent of slavery, was standing against Douglas, the father of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, for election to the Senate, and stated the issue with unflinching firmness. He said, " I believe the government cannot endure half slave and half free. ... It must have all one thing or all the other." Douglas won, but Lincoln stood before the public as the champion of anti-slavery. Still Buchanan continued the struggle, and advocated the acquisition of Cuba, which would mean a large extension of John slave territory. On October 16, 1859, John Brown's Brown made a raid upon Harper's Ferry, in Raid. Virginia, for the purpose of liberating the slaves, and, though he was hanged and nothing came of the enterprise, he kindled a flame which spread through the whole country and ended in the abolition of slavery. In these circumstances, while public opinion was in a ferment, came the presidential election for 1860. The Democrats were divided among them- selves, while the Republicans voted in a body for Abraham Lincoln Lincoln, who was elected by 180 votes. The elected South felt this defeat to be irreparable, and President. determined to sever its connection with the North. South Carolina was the first to secede, and it was followed by Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, President Buchanan making no attempt to prevent the secession. Arsenals, forts, and custom-houses belonging to the Federal central government were seized, S°mte and, when Major Anderson took possession of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour, the batteries of the " Confederates " opened fire upon it, thus taking the initiative and firing the first shot of the civil war. Lincoln, although elected in November 1860, did not take up his presidential duties till March 4, 1861 ; and during this time Buchanan was responsible for the government. He denied the right of the South to secede, but, by his weakness, offended both sides equally. Meantime, the South formed a government, under the name of the Confederate States of a.d. 1865] THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 733 America, and, on March 11, Jefferson Davis was chosen President, with his capital at Richmond. Lincoln, upon his election, made an appeal to the South not to Th e bring about a war, and declared the acts of Southern the secession government to be null and void ; Confederacy, but after the attack on Fort Sumter, although no one was killed, civil war became inevitable. On April 15, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling out 75,000 of the militia, to which Davis replied by offering to issue letters of marque against Federal commerce, but the President immediately published a counter ^ r rea ° proclamation declaring that, as the Confederates were rebels, privateers would be treated as pirates. Several times as many volunteers as had been called for by Lincoln were immediately placed at his disposal, and great preparations for active service took place. The first blood was shed at Baltimore, where a Massachusetts regiment came into contact with a Confederate mob, three of the militiamen being killed ; while on May 24 four regiments of Federals crossed the Potomac, and seized the Arlington Heights. The President now summoned 42,000 volunteers for three years, and took upon himself to raise ten new regular regiments, in which he was supported by Congress, whereupon he asked for 400,000 men, and 400,000,000 dollars, receiving, without demur, even more than he had asked. It was now determined to make an advance upon Richmond. The Confederate army under Beauregard, 22,000 strong, had occupied Manassas Junction, and MacDowell was sent to attack it with 30,000 men. The Confederates held the south side of the Bull Run stream, to the east of the junction. The battle of Bull Run took place on July 21, a Sunday, but skirmishes had taken place since Jt.,, 5M? the 18th, when the armies came into touch. MacDowell determined to attack on the left wing, so as to secure the railway, and thus be able to prevent Johnston, who had 9000 men in the Shenandoah valley, from effecting a junction with Beauregard. The Federal army advanced in three divisions, but some of the troops were unable to cross the river, so that the force was split up and fought in detachments. Confederate reinforcements, 5000 strong, arrived upon the field, and turned the Federal right, upon which the whole army turned and fled for Washington, the defeat becoming a rout. The losses of the Federals were 1900, those of the Confederates 1500. Sherman, 734 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. i86i to who commanded a brigade in the Federal army, said, " It was one of the best planned battles in the war, but one of the worst fought." The defeat of Bull Run was a bitter disappointment to the North, but had the effect of deepening its determination to fight to the end. General McClellan was now mmh summoned to Washington, and formed what was known as " the Army of the Potomac," out of the three years' volunteers. He had gained great renown by a brilliant success in western Virginia, where he had captured 1000 men and seven guns, with hardly any loss to his own troops. He was made the popular hero, but successes served only to make him over confident. He allowed opportunity after opportunity to pass by, and when at last he made a move to cross the Potomac, it ended in the complete and discreditable defeat of a reconnoitring force, in October 1861, at Ball's Bluff. In consequence of this blunder, a joint war committee of the two Houses was formed, which did much good by its criticism in inspiring the generals to their utmost efforts. Ou the outbreak of the war, Great Britain took up a strictly neutral position, but the popular feeling was in favour of the Attitude of Confederates, as the blockade of the southern Great ports deprived Lancashire of cotton. The North Britain. was annoyed at this attitude, and, at the end of 1861, a British royal mail steamer, the Trent, was stopped by a United States warship, and two Southerners, who were aboard her, were arrested. A war seemed likely, but was averted by the good sense of the Prince Consort. Meanwhile, the North exerted all its powers to capture Richmond, which was recog- nised as the principal objective, while a determined struggle also raged along the Mississippi, upon which were situated the great commercial cities of St. Louis, which belonged to the Federals, and New Orleans, which belonged to the Confederates. Thus the war, after 1861, was devoted to three objects — to main- tain the blockade, to capture Richmond, and to gain possession of the line of the Mississippi. In February 1862, Ulysses S. Grant, a subordinate Northern general, captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, involving the sur- Grant al render of 1 4,000 men, and forcing the Confederates to evacuate Columbus. In March, the famous battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac took place, putting an end to the destruction of Federal shipping by the last named a.d.1865] THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 735 vessel. Two clays later, Lincoln relieved McClellan of bis command, and gave Grant charge of the campaign against Richmond. Grant, moving against Corinth, on the Tennessee, with 40,000 men, was attacked by Johnston, with an equal force, and was driven back two miles, one of his divisions being captured, but, on the other hand, Johnston himself being killed. Next day, Grant, having been reinforced by Buell from Nash- ville, renewed the attack. Beauregard, who had taken Johnston's place, determined to hold Shiloh church, but he was forced to withdraw, leaving his dead on the field. The battle of Shiloh was really the turning point of ghiioh ° the war, for it opened to the Federals the way to the sea, and made it possible for them to march to the rear of the Confederates and cut off supplies from Richmond. On April 28, 1862, Admiral Farragut, with a comparatively small loss, took New Orleans, thus making it practically impossible for France, who had long been wavering, to recognise the Confederates. On March 13, 1862, it had been determined to seize Rich- mond, and, for this purpose, 121,500 men were concentrated at Monroe under the command of McClellan. If McClellan he had advanced upon Richmond as soon as he before arrived, on April 2, he might have captured it Richmond, without difficulty ; but instead he laid siege to Yorktown, which Joseph Johnston evacuated, leaving McClellan under the im- pression that he was still there, and being thus able to collect more troops and put Richmond in a position of defence. The Confederates now went into camp three miles from Richmond, and McClellan placed his forces, 127,000 strong, along the left bank of the Chickahominy. Johnston, who had 62,000 men, fought a battle at Fair Oaks, but without decisive result, and, being seriously wounded, was replaced by Robert E. Lee, in June 1862. As soon as he had assumed command, Lee, in a seven days' battle from June 25 to July 1, succeeded in driving McClellan from Richmond ; but his plan to capture the Federal base failed — Jackson, for once in his life, coming late. Next clay, however, followed the battle of Gaines Mills or Chickahominy, in which the Federals lost heavily and had to retreat to Malvern Hill, where McClellan made his last stand. Malvern Hill, on the side of the James River, is a broad plateau, on which the Federal army was arranged in a semicircle, with the right wing thrown back upon the river, the whole strongly defended by artillery. The battle was fought with little regard for concentration on the Confederate side, but McClellan was 736 A GENERAL HISTORY [a. d. 1861 to forced to retreat to the river. The losses during the three battles were 15,000 on the Federal and 19,000 on the Confede- rate side. Lincoln now called for 300,000 volunteers, and made Halleck commander-in-chief. For the next four months numerous en- gagements took place, one side attempting to reach Richmond, the other Washington, but nothing was effected, though, on several occasions, greater energy on the Federal side would have achieved the defeat of the South. McClellan was superseded by Burnside, as he seemed unlikely to achieve anything. On August 30, the second battle of Bull Run was fought, between Lee on the Confederate and Pope on the Federal side. Before the battle Jackson was able to reinforce Lee with 18,000 men, and the result was the defeat, with heavy loss, of Pope, who had to retire to the Fairfax Court House, and later to the defences round Washington, where his forces were merged into the army of the Potomac. Lee now crossed the Potomac into Maryland, where he hoped to defeat McClellan and dictate peace in Independence Hall. The battle of Antietam was fought on September 17, 1862. Lee, with 40,000 men, occupied a strong position between Antietam and the Potomac. The battle, in which Burnside first captured a Confederate battery and then was forced to evacuate it, was indecisive, but it put an end to all idea of invading Maryland or Pennsylvania. Lee withdrew to Winchester, and McClellan took up his position on the Potomac ; but as he effected nothing decisive, even after he had been personally urged to do uenera go ^ v ^e President, he was, as we have seen, relieved of his command, and Burnside put in his place. Burnside aimed straight at Richmond, after orga- nising his army into three divisions under Sumner, Hooker, and Franklin ; but Lee, with a line 5^ miles long, occupied the heights to the south of Fredericksburg. On December 13, Burnside attacked the Confederate army on the heights, but his attack was a complete failure, the Federals losing 12,353 men, under the murderous fire of the Confederates, who picked them off as fast as they could load, while Lee's losses amounted to only 4201. Lincoln, disgusted at the obvious incapacity of his general, ordered Burnside to make no further move without his knowledge; but in spite of this, on January 21, 1863, he started his army on what is known as the " Mud March," because it was stopped by a rainstorm, which probably saved it from still more disastrous losses. Burnside, in desperation, a.d.1865] THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 737 sent in his resignation, which Lincoln accepted, appointing Hooker in his place. Hooker, however, was no better than his predecessor. By April 30, 1863, he had collected four corps at Chancellorsville, eleven miles from Fredericksburg, where Lee was entrenched. Lee, however brought up his troops, and, attacking Hooker, completely defeated him in a four days' battle, in which the great General " Stonewall " Jackson was killed. Public opinion in the South now began to demand that Lee should invade the North, more especially as it was hoped that a brilliant victory would gain recognition for the Confederates from Great Britain and France. In the beginning of June, therefore, Lee began his northward march, and invaded Pennsylvania. Hooker thought this a good opportunity to attack Richmond, but was advised not to do so by Lincoln, whose advice he accepted, but, being unable to agree with his officers, asked to be relieved of his command, Meade being appointed in his stead. Lee continued to advance, and a battle took place at Gettysburg on July 3. The Federals were posted on the Cemetery Ridge, the Confederates on the Seminary Ridge. Gettysburg The battle began at 1 p.m. with a cannonade. Following this, Lee moved forward 15,000 of his best troops at the charge, but they were decimated by artillery fire, and forced to retreat. Next day, the Confederates retired, having been entirely defeated, and having lost 36,000 men to the 23,000 of the Federals. On the day of Lee's retreat, July 4, Vicksburg surrendered. It had been attacked by Grant and Sherman at the end of 1862, and the siege had continued ever since. On April 30, 1863, Grant, with 33,000 men, crossed the Mississippi, and, defeating the Confederates at f Grant* 5 Raymond and Jackson, moved upon Vicksburg. At Champion's Hill, he entirely defeated the Southerners, who shut themselves up in the town, which he immediately invested. On May 22, Grant ordered an assault, but was repulsed with heavy loss, and therefore settled down to a regular siege. Food in the town became scarce, and after forty-seven days' siege, when a grand assault was imminent, Pemberton surrendered unconditionally with his army of 31,600 men. With the capture of Vicksburg, the Mississippi was opened to the Federals, and the Confederate forces were cut completely in two. The chief interest of the war now centres in another part of the country, and it is to this that we must next turn our 3 a 738 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1861 to attention. In Tennessee, Rosecrans, opposed by Bi^agg, the Confederate general, was striving to gain possession of Chatta- ■p he nooga, which is situated not far from the borders Struggle for of Alabama and Georgia. He succeeded in cap- Chatta- turing the town, and set out in pursuit of Bragg, nooga. who was in retreat. He came up with him on the bank of Chickamauga Creek, where, on September 19 and 20, 1863, one of the bloodiest battles of the war was fought. Bragg had 71,500 men and Rosecrans 51,000. Bragg took the offensive, and made a feint upon the Federals' right, hoping to be able to crush their left and seize the roads leading to the town of Chattanooga. On the 19th, at 10 a.m., the battle was begun, but when operations were suspended in the evening the situations remained unchanged, the projected attack on the left having failed. The next day Bragg tried to carry out his previous plan, but was unable to make any impression on the Federal line. By a mistake, however, a gap of two brigades was made in Rosecrans' line, and the Confederates poured through it, breaking the Federal right and part of the centre. Rosecrans retired, believing the day to be lost ; but Thomas, having been sent to the extreme left, took up a strong position, and held it against every attack, retiring at night and taking up his position in the defences of Chattanooga, which had not been destroyed by Bragg when he evacuated it. Here, however, he was in turn besieged, and famine seemed unavoidable, when Grant, having been placed in command, established a better system of supply, and, with reinforcements under Hooker and Sherman, forced the Confederates to act on the defensive. The battle of Chattanooga, one of the most important in the war, took place on November 24-25, 1863. Grant had Battle of about 100,000 men, under Thomas, Hooker, and Chatta- Sherman. Thomas held the town of Chattanooga ; nooga. Hooker Lookout Valley, to the south of the town ; and Sherman the hills on the other side of the Ten- nessee. On the 24th, Hooker climbed Lookout Mountain, three miles from the town, and captured it. Sherman had at- tempted to take the Confederates in flank, by the capture of Missionary Ridge, but was able to accomplish little. On the 28th, Thomas, ordered to advance along the base of Missionary Ridge, captured the ridge itself, 1 and the batteries which crowned it, and then, descending later into Chickamauga Valley, captured another ridge, and put Bragg to flight. The loss of the Confederates was 6687 and 6000 prisoners, while a. d. 1865] THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 739 that of the Federals was only 5824. In February, when Grant was placed at the head of all the Federal forces, the war took on a new complexion. He was in command of Grant made four armies, and he took up his own headquarters Commander - with the army of the Potomac, intending Butler in-Chief, to advance to Petersburg, to cut off communications between Richmond and the south ; Sherman to oppose Johnston in Georgia ; Banks to capture Mobile and to close its harbour. The principal conflicts now took place in what is known as the Wilderness, south of the Rapidan. On May 4, 1864, Grant crossed the Rapidan with 122,146 men, and, on the following- day was attacked by Lee. Nothing was effected, but during the night trenches were dug by the Federals, and the fight was resumed next day, 15,000 falling on either side, but no definite results being achieved. On May 7, Grant moved forward to Spottsylvania, but after six days' fighting had not succeeded in striking a crushing blow at Lee's army. On May 8, Grant had sent Sheridan to ride round to the rear of the Confederates and do as much damage as possible. This he accomplished with great success, even penetrating the de- fence of Richmond and recapturing 400 Federal prisoners. Grant now sent Hancock to Richmond, hoping that Lee would attack him with his whole army, and allow the Federals to meet him undefended by earthworks. Lee, however, having the ad- vantage of a shorter line, was able to save his capital, where- upon he took up his position between Little River and Hanover Junction. In this position he was attacked by Burnside, who, however, could do nothing. The two armies came into con- tact again at Cold Harbour, not more than ten miles from Richmond. At 4.30 in the morning of June 3, the Federal attack was delivered, but, under the raking fire of the Con- federate batteries, which had been constructed with considerable skill, 400 veterans lay dead in less than a single hour, while the losses of the Confederates were very slight. Grant, seeing that the Confederates were unwilling to take any risks, but were determined to act purely on the defensive, decided to cross the James River and attack Richmond from the south. This he accomplished with masterly skill, during the week following the attack on Cold Harbour. He left that place on June 12, crossed the Chickahominy by a pontoon bridge, and reached the James on June 14. He threw a bridge across this river, and by the seventeenth his whole army was on the south of the stream, and in junction with Butler, bringing up 740 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d.1861to the combined forces to 150,000 men. Seeing that he had been thus out-generalled, Lee retired with his 70,000 men into the defences of Richmond. Part of Grant's plan had been that Sherman should move south from Chattanooga and capture Atlanta, and, accordingly, Sherman's on May 5, Sherman set out with 100,000 men March to and 254 guns, and followed the railway line Atlanta. to Atlanta. He was opposed by Johnston with 43,150 men, and a series of fights took place on the way, but by the end of May, with the loss of 10,000 men on each side, Sherman was well on the way to Atlanta. For the greater part of June, the two armies lay opposite each other at Pine Mountain, but, on June 27, Sherman made a vigorous attempt to capture Johnston's position in the battle of Kenesaw, but he was repulsed with considerable loss. He therefore determined to recross the railway, and move to the south, by which means, on September 2, 1864, he became master of Atlanta, Hood, who had superseded Johnston, being unable to resist him. At this time the presidential elections took place, Lincoln, who was opposed by McClellan, being re-elected by a large majority. He remarked with regard to his candidature that " it was best not to swop horses when crossing a stream." By the end of October, Sherman had determined upon marching through Sherman Georgia to Savannah, upon the sea-coast, the Captures capture of which city eventually put an end Savannah. to the war. On November 2, 1865, he left Atlanta with 55,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 68 guns, and a large number of ambulances and waggons. The distance to be covered was about 300 miles : the army was divided into two wings, marching along parallel routes, but always in touch with each other. Nothing was heard of it for six weeks, but then the news of the capture of Savannah reached Washington. The army, in its march, occupied a space forty to sixty miles wide, the wealthier inhabitants making their escape, the negroes following the troops. There was very little fighting, except within a few miles of Savannah and in the city itself. On December 21, Savannah was occupied, and Sherman wrote to tell the President of his success. He said, " I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns, and plenty of ammunition : also, about 25,000 bales of cotton." During the whole march, which was a triumph of good generalship, Sherman lost only 764 men, whereas the capture of the city was an inestimable benefit to the Federal a.d.1865] THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 741 side, being, in reality, the beginning of the end. But there was still work to be done before peace could be brought about. On February 1, 1865, he began to march northwards, through Columbia, a work of greater difficulty than his previous exploit. Columbia was captured on February 17, and, on the following day, Charleston was evacuated by the enemy. From Columbia, which he left on February 20, Sherman marched to Fayetteville, reaching it on March 11. He then fought a victorious battle, which gained him the possession of Goldsboro, on the road to Petersburg and Richmond. At the end of February, Sheridan moved up the valley of the Shenandoah, with 10,000 cavalry, defeated Early, and joined Grant on the James River. At the begin- , ning of April, he won the battle of Five Forks, March^ S while Grant broke through the Confederate lines. Sheridan moved up to Grant's support on the left, and Peters- burg, only 23 miles from Richmond, was completely surrounded. Lee, thereupon, telegraphed to his government that Richmond must be evacuated, which was accordingly done, the capital being taken possession of by a detachment of the Federal army. On April 9, 1865, the end came, Grant and Lee, at the Appomattox Court House, arranging the ^LeT ^ surrender of the army of Virginia. The terms allowed the troops to lay down their arms, and return to their homes without hindrance. Johnston, in North Carolina, sur- rendered to Sherman on the same terms, and by the end of May all the Confederate armies had followed these examples. To crown all, on May 10, Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, was taken prisoner. This was the end of the war, but, before peace had been concluded, the man who had done more by his cool judgment and unflinching courage to gain the victory for the North, the President, Abraham Lincoln, was murdered at Washington. On April T . urd ? r ot a i -tti/t -r ■ i T-i 11 Lincoln. 4, he was present, with Mrs. Lincoln, at r ord s Theatre, and, while sitting in his box, was treacherously shot by a young actor, named Booth, a violent secessionist. Thus died one of the greatest and most typical men the United States has ever yet produced ; but he had clone his work, and died for the cause for which so many of his fellow-countrymen had given their lives during the last four years — the cause of the emancipation of the slaves, which, it must be remembered, whatever other points of conflict were found as the war went on, was the fundamental cause of the struggle. CHAPTER XVII. PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA, A.D. 1858-1S66. THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR, A.D. 1870-71. On October 7, 1858, Prince William of Prussia became regent on behalf of King Frederick William IV., whose bad health prevented him from exercising his kingly functions, and took Prince Anton of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as his prime minister. As soon as he had definitely taken up the reins of government, proposals were made to Prussia by Austria to take a share in the war in Italy ; but Prussia was unwilling to mix herself up in a quarrel whose only object was the confirmation of Austrian power, and the offer was therefore refused. The object nearest to the heart of the regent was the reconstruction of the Prussian army, and this he carried out thoroughly, with the assistance of Von Roon, the new war William II. minister. On New Year's Day, 1861, the regent and became king of Prussia, and hoped to get a Bismarck. military majority in the Landstag, but the new election gave a larger majority than ever to the progressive party. Determined, however, to hold to his policy, he made Bismarck-Schbnhausen, an ardent upholder of it, prime minister. Bismarck's dearest wish was to substitute Prussia for Austria as the head of Germany, and all his actions were directed towards this result. Seeing that he would meet with s;reat opposition from the Parliament, he governed for a time almost without its assistance, knowing that he was safe in the support of the army. At the beginning of 1863, Bismarck joined Russia in the suppression of a revolt in Poland, a step which, though it aroused considerable feeling throughout Europe, showed Prussia to be ready to act for herself in a case which she saw to be of importance. In July 1863, the emperor convened a congress at Frankfort to discuss a federation scheme which should place the central authority in the hands of Austria, but, upon Prussia's refusing to attend the congress, the scheme fell to pieces. At this 742 a. d. 1858-66] PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 743 moment, the Schleswig-Holstein question, which had been disturbing Europe for some time, entered into a new phase. On March 30, 1863, a new constitution was The , proclaimed in Denmark, by which Schleswig Schleswig- became a Danish province, Holstein still re Holstein taming to some extent her independent position. Question. Upon this, Austria, unwilling to let pass a question which was of vital importance to the smaller states, proposed that the Confederation should demand the withdrawal of the new con- stitution, upon pain of " federal execution." Bismarck had no reason to desire the establishment of a separate sovereignty of the two duchies under the duke of Augustenburg, as had been proposed by Austria. He wished to see them under a German confederacy, of which Prussia should be the head, and this he eventually achieved, though only at the cost of a war with Denmark. Denmark herself refused every kind of com- promise ; but, at this juncture, King Frederick VII. died, and the whole question at once assumed a wholly different aspect. Prussia and Austria were bound by the protocol of 1852 to acknowledge King Christian IX. of Denmark as duke of Schleswig-Holstein, but the new constitution had violated this protocol by incorporating the duchies in the Danish kingdom. Holstein was therefore occupied in December by Saxon and Hanoverian troops, and was evacuated by the Danes without a blow, but the Danes were prepared to defend Schleswig with all their forces. The federal Diet therefore refused to acknow- ledge the right of King Christian to the duchies, and demanded the immediate acceptance of Duke Frederick, thus breaking with the provisions of the London protocol. This action exactly suited Bismarck, who could now act as one of the great European powers who had signed the protocol. Austria adopted a similar policy, and threatened _ to occupy Schleswig with 60,000 men unless ^. the constitution were repealed. This being refused, war was at once declared, and Schleswig was attacked by a joint force of Prussians and Austrians, 57,000 strong, under the command of Wrangel. Bismarck, in his own country, had to pursue an isolated policy, but, when supplies for the war were refused, he threatened resignation, and the king was forced to agree to the foreign policy which he wished to carry out. To the Austrians and Prussians the Danes opposed an army of 55,000, under de Meza. The duchy of Schleswig was protected by the Dannewerk (an ancient earthwork guarded 744 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1858 to by morasses), which was regarded as impregnable ; but, by the freezing of the morasses, the allies were able to attack it directly, and the position was evacuated. On March 6, Jutland was invaded, and, on April 18, Diippel was stormed with great loss to the Danes, of whom 3600 were made prisoners. This victory aroused great enthusiasm in Berlin, the king himself going to Schleswig to review the conquering army on April 21. Great Britain, averse to the Prussian annexation of the duchies, summoned a conference in London, but it separated without result, the powers deciding to leave Denmark to her fate. As soon as the conference had broken up, hostilities were resumed, and Prince Frederick Charles attacked and captured the island of Alsen, which forced the Danes to sue for peace. Terms of peace were eventually signed at Vienna on October 30, 1864, Schleswig-Holstein being freed from Danish rule, and being placed under the joint administration of Prussia and Austria ; and it was owing to the divergence between the policies of the two countries, which immediately became apparent, that the Austro-Prussian war took place. Meanwhile, in Rome, a treaty had been signed on September 15, 1864, which provided that the French, who formed the garrison of the city, should evacuate it within two years, on condition that Florence instead of Turin should be made the capital of Italy. This ca vised discontent in Turin, but was, nevertheless, carried out, the government being transferred to Florence. The situation between Austria and Prussia still continued to be strained, Austria vacillating between Bis- marck's policy and that of the Germanic Confederation, which still clung to Augustenburg. The differences became more and The Con- more acute, until, by the Convention of Gastein in vention of August 1865, it was agreed that Austria should Gastein. \) e responsible for Holstein, and Prussia for Schleswig. In France this arrangement was regarded with suspicion, but Bismarck was able to reassure Napoleon, pointing out that a strong Prussia would be an assistance to France, whereas a weak Prussia would always be seeking allies against a hostile France. At this moment, the world was astonished by a proposal made by Austria to La Marmora, the prime minister of Italy, for the cession of Venetia. This offer Marmora refused : Venetia was only to be gained by fighting for it. Austria was, however, disposed to treat Italy with con- sideration, when, suddenly, Prussia acknowledged Victor Em- manuel as king of Italy, thus ruining all chance of continued good feeling between Austria and Italy. a.d. 1866] PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 745 Meanwhile, affairs in Schleswig and Holstein became worse and worse. Friction arose between the Prussian and Austrian representatives in the duchies, and, at last, on January 26, 1866, Bismarck wrote to Vienna to complain of the aggressive policy of Austria, and received a reply denying the right of Prussia to interfere in the affairs of Holstein. It was evident that the alliance between Prussia and Austria was at an end. It was now necessary for Prussia to gain over France and Italy to her side, and in April an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded with the latter. Austria was seriously alarmed at this, and began to mass troops on the frontier, being unable to gain any satisfactory answer to her questions from Bis- marck. It became necessary for Bismarck to bring about war with Austria within three months, the alliance with Italy having only been made for that period. He first attempted to secure his end by a proposal to reconstruct the Confedera- tion, but this proved a failure, and, although it had the effect of making Austria mobilise her troops, which was replied to by the mobilisation of the Italian army, Prussia was held back by the unwillingness of the king to go to war. On May 21, Bismarck made a final proposal for peace with Austria. The duchies should be united under the government of Prince Albert of Prussia, and Prussia and Austria should undertake the reform of the Con- ?_.' federation. Mensdorff, however, wrote, on May 28, that he was sorry that the strained relations between the two countries did not permit of intercourse on friendly terms. Napoleon now issued invitations to attend a congress, which was declined by Austria, who summoned the Diet to settle the difficulties in Germany. This was practically a declaration of war, as it was certain that the Diet would give its verdict against Prussia. On June 14, the resolution of the Diet was taken, and decided against Prussia, upon which the Prussian ambassadors were recalled and war began. The forces, as regards numbers, were fairly equally matched, the Prussians having 263,000 men, the Austrians 261,000, but in quality the Prussians were infinitely superior. The Prussians lost no time before beginning operations. Within three days, Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse were in their hands, and 75,000 troops had been rendered useless to the Confederation. In Italy, the outbreak of the war was the occasion of great joy, over 240,000 men were immediately mobilised, and it was thought that the Hungarians might also be roused against their Austrian 746 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1858 to neighbours, it being proposed to send Garibaldi into Hungary for the purpose, with 35,000 volunteers. At length, a declara- tion of war was sent to the Archduke Albert, and three days later, La Marmora made an attack on the Quadrilateral. In the battle fought at Custozza, La Marmora had 140,000 men, Archduke Albert only 82,000. But La Marmora was com- pletely defeated, not more than half of his troops ever coming into action at all. On June 18, the Prussians entered Dresden, the Saxon armies retreating into Bohemia, in order to join the Austrians. The Prussian troops were well received, and treated the inhabitants with great kindness, even assisting the peasants to carry in the hay harvest. The occupation of Saxony rendered the invasion of Bohemia easy. It was undertaken by two armies, one under the crown prince, the other under Prince Frederick Charles, and by the last day of June, after a series of conflicts, the two armies were able to open communication with each other, the Austrian general, Benedek, being forced to retreat to Koniggratz, from whence he telegraphed to the emperor begging him to make peace. To this, the emperor replied that it was impossible to make peace, and implied that he wished a decisive battle to take place. Accordingly, on June 3, Benedek fought the battle Battle of °f Koniggratz. This, at first favourable to the Konig- Austrians, was decided in favour of the Prussians gratz. by thg timely arrival of the crown prince, Benedek retreating to Koniggratz with the fragments of his army. The way now lay open to Vienna, and Benedek said that he had lost everything except the life which he desired to lose. The effect of this victory in France was immense, and the French were alarmed to see that a great power had suddenly sprung into existence by their side, a power whose intentions they were at a loss to determine. Meanwhile Prussia was gaining victories in other parts of Germany. In the first days of July battles were fought at Dermbach, Hammelburg, and Kissingen, all favourable to the Prussians, while, on July 16, Frankfort was occupied, Prince Alexander retiring to the Odenwald. The main army, after resting for a few days after the battle of Koniggratz, advanced to Prague, which it occupied without resistance. The Austrians still held the railway between Olmiitz and Vienna, but, before Benedek could convey his army to Vienna for the defence of the city, these communications had been destroyed, and, on July 18, 1866, King William encamped within sight of Vienna. a.d. 1866] PRUSSIA AND AUSTRIA 747 A last struggle took place on July 22, and Pressburg, the key of the passage between Austria and Hungary, was on the point of being captured, when it was reported to the Prussians by an Austrian messenger that a truce had been agreed upon. Austria was anxious for peace, as she could expect no assistance from France, and the peace of Prague was there- fore concluded as soon as possible, the result of Prague* which was the exclusion of Austria from the Bund, the annexation by Prussia of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse, and Nassau, and the payment by the Austrians of an indemnity of 20,000,000 thalers. The war between Italy and Austria continued until the signature of the peace of Prague, but, though, in a sea battle at Lissa, the Austrians gained a victory, an armistice was signed on July 25, by which Italy was recognised as a kingdom by Austria, and Venetia was ceded to her. The French garrison departed from Rome before the end of the year, but when Garibaldi made a raid on the Papal States he was completely defeated at Mentana and taken prisoner. The close of the Austro-Prussian war left the Emperor Napoleon in a worse condition than ever, but it was his policy in Mexico which gradually brought about his downfall. Napoleon wished to establish the Arch- ^Meifcl? 1 duke Maximilian of Austria on the throne of Mexico, and therefore, in the early part of 1862, he sent a French force to that country, with the object of deposing Juarez, the President, and placing Maximilian on the throne. This was effected, and, on April 14, 1864, Maximilian set out for Mexico, France guaranteeing to see him firmly established on his new throne. This was done, but the French acted in a disgraceful manner to the new emperor, and, owing to the insistence on the part of the United States on the withdrawal of French troops from Mexico, Maximilian was betrayed to his enemies, the revolutionaries, and, after making the best defence possible at Queretaro, he was captured by Juarez, and executed. The whole business was an ineffaceable stain on the honour of France and the Emperor Napoleon, and undoubtedly hastened the fall of the empire. In 1867 was held the Paris Exhibition, a glorious prelude to the tragedy which was so soon to be played. From this time on matters in France went from bad to worse, and the emperor could not disguise from him- self the fact that his ascendancy must soon come to an end. 748 A GENERAL HISTORY [ad. isto to On December 11, 1866, the French garrison left Rome, and the revolutionaries in Italy sought for a leader to help them to Rome and realise their dream of having Rome as the capital the French of Italy. This leader was found in Giuseppe Garrison. Garibaldi, who immediately stirred up feeling against the pope. But the French determined that, if any move were taken against papal territory, they would send an army to the support of the Holy Father. An attempt having been made to enter Rome by the Tiber, a French expedition was immediately sent to the Eternal City, the Italians, alarmed at the return of the French, immediately placing an army in papal territory, so that there were now four armies in the pope's dominions — the French, the papal troops, the Italians, and the Garibalclians. A battle took place at Monte Rotondo, in which Garibaldi was defeated and taken prisoner, as has been already related. At the beginning of 1868 the emperor was extremely anxious concerning the designs of Prussia, the more so that all hope of an alliance with Italy was at an end, and France would have to stand alone in any contest. THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR, A.D. 1870-71. Meanwhile Bismarck, desiring above everything to make war upon France, and feeling confident that the Prussian army was quite capable of overwhelming that of France, was anxious not to allow any chance of a quarrel to slip through his hands. The actual cause of the war was the revolution in Spain. Queen Isabella was expelled from her country by the Spaniards, and it became necessary to find a new king, supposing that a monarchy were decided upon. One candidate for the throne was Leopold of Hohenzollern, to whose candidature Bismarck was very favourable. France, however, was determined that Leopold should not receive the Spanish throne, as this would greatly strengthen the Prussian position in Europe, and when he had agreed to put himself forward as a definite candidate, Gramont, the French foreign minister, sent an imperious message to Berlin. War now began to be seriously thought of in France, and at a council at St. Cloud, held on July 6, Lebceuf, the war minister, promised 250,000 men within four days. Benedetti was sent to Prussia to see King William and ask him to order Prince Leopold to withdraw his candidature, but, not receiving an immediate answer, was informed by Gramont that he could not wait for it longer than the following a.d. 1871] FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 749 day. On July 12, the candidature was withdrawn, but France was not satisfied. She had not humiliated Prussia as she desired, and Benedetti was therefore ordered to demand from the king a guarantee that he would never support such a candidature. This was naturally refused, but matters might have closed smoothly had not Bismarck delibe- rately stirred up strife between the two countries. P? lic y of He altered portions of a despatch which he had received from the king, and made it appear that negotia- tions had been broken off. In the two capitals the publi- cation of this despatch raised passions to fever heat. In Berlin it was believed that Benedetti had insulted the king, in Paris that the king had insulted Benedetti. Even now, how- ever, peace might have been preserved, but, in reality, both nations were straining for war, and the final touch which in- clined the balance to the side of war was given by the empress, who insisted that peace was incompatible with the honour of France. France declared war on July 19, and the rival armies immediately began their mobilisation. It now became apparent how greatly France had overrated her preparedness for war, whereas the Prussian army was ab- solutely ready for action, in every detail, and was prepared to march at almost a moment's notice. b e H ns ar At the end of July, the French main army, 200,000 strong, was placed in the neighbourhood of Metz, and was joined by the emperor, the prince imperial, and Leboeuf. In the direction of Alsace lay the southern army under Macmahon, while at Chalons lay a third, composed of re- servists and gardes mobiles, who were, however, by no means fit for a campaign. The German army was also divided into three main divisions, or sections — the right wing, under Stein- metz, 61,000 strong — the left wing divided into two divisions, one, 206,000 strong, under Prince Frederick Charles, the other, 180,000 strong, under the crown prince — while the centre was under the command of the king, with Moltke as chief of staff. The whole German forces were reckoned at about 984,500 men, the French at 798,000, but the numbers actually in the field were considerably less than these estimates. The first action took place at Saavbriicken, where the French drove the Prussians back, and succeeded in occupying some Prussian territory. This attack was answered by the crown prince in the battle of Weissenberg, on the Lauter, whence the French, under Douay, who was mortally wounded in the battle, 750 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. mo to were driven with considerable loss, 700 being made prisoners. Macmahon, seeing a general attack by the Germans to be imminent, took up a strong position on the left German bank of the Sauer, with his centre holding ViCu0ri6s. . ^ Worth, placing his headquarters at Froeschweiler. Here he was attacked by the crown prince with 90,000 men, as against his own 40,000. Worth was captured, and the French army took to flight, leaving France open to the Germans. On July 6, the army of Lorraine was also defeated. Frossard estab- lished his headquarters at Forbach, his army stretching from Stieringen to Spicheren. The battle began at eleven in the morning, and by evening the French, overwhelmed by the continual reinforcements of the Prussians, were compelled to retreat, losing 4000 men in the struggle. By the 7th, news of the defeats reached Paris, and a demand for the deposition of the emperor was heard, coupled with a determination to put Paris in a condition of defence. Napoleon surrendered the military command to Bazaine. It was now de- termined to withdraw the whole army behind the Meuse, and the retreat was begun on August 14. They were followed by Bazaine * ne Prussians, and at Borny, in the neighbour- shut up in hood of Metz, Bazaine, wishing to free himself Metz. from the rear attacks made by the Germans, fought the battle of that name, which produced no decisive result, the Prussian losses being rather larger than those of the French. On August 16, the French were surprised at Vionville, but a furious resistance was made. On the arrival of the crown prince, however, Bazaine retired to the neighbour- hood of Metz, which was immediately invested by an army of 175,000 men, under Prince Frederick Charles. It was Bazaine's intention to retreat to Verdun, but, by wasting seven clays, he gave the Prussians time to cut off his retreat, so that he had to remain in his original position, with his headquarters at Plappeville. In the operations occasioned by this, an action was fought at St. Privat, in which the Prussians were success- ful, the French being gradually forced back upon Metz. In the meantime, matters going so hardly for the French, they began to look round for an ally, but they had previously The Capitu- alienated all those who could have been likely lation of to help them, and, after the events of August Sedan. it was hopeless to expect assistance. Macmahon set out from Reims with 130,000 men, to try to effect a junction with Bazaine, but this he was unable to do, the Prussians under a.d. 1871] FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 751 Moltke closing in upon him on every side. On August 30 was fought the battle of Beaumont, where all the French baggage and a large number of prisoners fell into the hands of the enemy, the French camp being finally pitched at Sedan. At Sedan, on September 1, was fought the bloodiest, and, to the Frenfch, the most disastrous battle of the war. Early in the day Macmahon was wounded, and the command was taken by Wimpffen. But Moltke had laid his plans too carefully for any escape for the French to be possible, and, in the evening the emperor, who was present at the battle, surrendered to the king of Prussia, all the army being made prisoners, to the number of 104,000. In Paris, the news of the surrender caused a revolution, which was probably engineered by the advanced liberals, under Blanqui. On the proposal of Thiers, a " govern- £ n ^ f ^e ment of the national defence" was formed, of Second which Trochu, whom Napoleon had made com- Empire, mander of Paris, was the head. The empress, seeing that all was lost, fled to England, and it was determined to defend Paris against the Prussians, who were already almost at its gates. By September 19, the investment of the city was complete, 250,000 men being employed. Paris was extremely strongly defended, but the Prussians had no desire to storm the capital, knowing that the 2,000,000 people who were shut up in it could not long be supplied with food, and that the city must then fall. The lines of investment were therefore made quite impenetrable, and the Parisians were left to " stew in their own juice," as Bismarck said. Meanwhile, Strassburg had been captured by the Prussians, and Toul, in Lorraine, fell on September 23, after a terrible bombardment. A natural result of the fall of the empire was the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome, and the establishment of it as the capital of Italy. On August 29, a declaration was made that the capital would be The Italians transferred to Rome before the end of September. Victor Emmanuel proposed that the pope should be left in charge of the Leonine city — that is to say, the part of the city across the Tiber — but this the pope refused, and the division between church and state still continues. On September 11, the Italian troops entered the papal territory, and Viterbo was occupied without opposition. The city of Rome was garrisoned by 9000 men, but the extent of wall to be defended was too great for an adequate provision to be made at all points against 752 A GENERAL HISTORY La.d. 1870 to attack. The storm began on September 20, and after three hours' fighting the Italians had penetrated the walls, and Rome was in their hands. A plebiscite taken on October 2 decided, by 136,681 votes to 1507, for the annexation of the papal territory, an event which, in the general turmoil of European affairs, passed almost without notice. On October 5, King William moved his headquarters to Versailles, while St. Cloud and Malmaison were destroyed, at least partially, by the French themselves. biege ot Sorties from Paris were of frequent occurrence, but little was gained by them. Bazaine, who might, even now, have changed the fortunes of the war, if he had continued to hold out in Metz, capitulated at the end of October, his whole army — 160,000 strong — becoming prisoners of war. During the remainder of 1870, numerous engagements took place around Paris ; indeed it may be said that the northern half of France was one large battlefield, the gardes mobiles and free corps, who had been joined by Garibaldi and his sons, giving great trouble to the Prussians. But the general result was that town after town fell, and the position of Paris became more and more hopeless, although numerous attempts were made to relieve it. In the city itself, Trochu did his best to second these attempts by repeated sorties, but all was in vain. On December 26, St. Stephen's Day, the bombardment of Paris, which had been long deferred, was begun, and con- tinued until January 19, when Trochu made one last effort and marched with his whole force of 100,000 men in the direction of St. Cloud. After an obstinate fight, he was driven back upon Paris, with a loss of 7000 men. An armistice was eventu- ally signed on January 28, to last until February 19. Before this the peoples of Germany had offered the crown of the German empire to King William, in view of the brilliant success of his arms in the war. On December Em?re rma11 18 ' 1870 ' a de P utation waited upon the king asking him to accept the new dignity, and he personally acceded to it, the new state of things being arranged to come into existence on January 1 of the following year. William was crowned emperor at Versailles, on January 18, 1871, the 117th anniversary of the foundation of the Prussian kingdom under Frederick I. In Paris, preparations were being made for a capitulation, which was carried out without difficulty, but the republicans refused to accept the situation, and fighting broke out again, Bourbaki being directed to invade Alsace. a.d. 1871] FRANCO-GERMAN WAR 753 He was, however, surrounded by Werder, and his army, to avoid a capitulation, crossed the frontier into Switzerland, thus putting out of action the last of the four armies of France which had tried in vain to thW oppose the superior discipline of the Prussians. So ended one of the most remarkable wars in history, in which larger masses of troops were employed than in any previous conflict. The losses of the Germans amounted to 118,000 men ; those of the French are too numerous to calculate ; while, whereas only 10,000 Germans were captured, at least, 400,000 Frenchmen fell into the hands of tbe Prussians. When Paris had been occupied by the Prussians, a new National Assembly was elected, which met at Bordeaux, con- sisting; of 750 deputies, of whom the maiority were republicans, while Paris itself elected many » w" revolutionaries. Thiers was placed at the head of the executive, and on March 1 peace was ratified by the Assembly, by 546 votes to 107, Napoleon III. being formally deposed. On the same day, the German troops marched through the streets of Paris, a severe blow to French amoitr propre. The Parisians refused to acknowledge the Bordeaux Assembly, saying that the terms of peace to which it had agreed were disgraceful. On March 15, the National Guards established themselves at- the Hotel de Ville, hoisted the red flag, and formed the central committee of the Commune, the Paris president of which, Edward Moreau, was a com- and the mission agent. Arrangements were made for the Commune. elections, and several battalions of the National Guard were assembled in the Place Yendome. On March 21, fighting took place between the troops of the Commune and the supporters of the National Assembly, which did not weaken the power of the committee. The elections were held on March 26, and the Commune was proclaimed, but the new committee was made up of men of very various opinions, few of whom were in agreement with each other. However excellent were the intentions of the Commune, it was made up of elements too contradictory to be able to effect anything, and Paris was continually harassed by the soldiers of the Assembly which was sitting at Versailles. It was finally decided by Thiers to besiege Paris Second a second time, and this was undertaken, with the Siege of help of the troops who had returned from captivity Paris, in Germany, under Macmahon. As he gradually conquered quarter after quarter of the city, the Commune was driven to 3 B 754 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1871 terrible lengths in its determination to leave nothing but a ruin to fall into the hands of the enemy. The hostages were murdered — Darboy, archbishop of Paris, being murdered at the altar — public buildings were destroyed ; but MacMahon at length became master of the city. The supporters of the Commune were treated with ruthless severity : 17,000 were executed, and the Socialists were entirely stamped out. New elections were held on May 1, and the moderate Republicans obtained a victory. Thiers, against whom there was no real opposition, as he held the predominant place in the country, was elected President of the French Republic, with the power of appointing and dis- missing ministers. It was provided, however, that he as well as his ministers should be responsible to the Assembly. This meant the formation of a moderate republic, opposed equally to monarchy and to socialism, and it was on these principles that the final and definite constitution was formed in 1875. During The Treaty the height of these disturbances the peace of of Frank- Frankfort was signed on May 10, by Bismarck on f° rt - the one side and by Jules Favre and Pouyer- Quertier on the other. The arrangements concerning the indemnity of five milliards and the tracing of the frontier between Belfort and Thionville received the approval of the German Emperor and of the French Assembly. The closing of the war was received with great joy by the Germans, the foundation of the Empire being regarded as a kind of religious duty imposed upon them by Gocl, .which had been safely and honourably discharged. The first German Reichstag or Parliament met on March 21, 1871, in Berlin, and had to consider the question of the govern- ment of Alsace and Lorraine. A sum of 12,000,000 marks was voted as a present to the generals and statesmen who had contributed to the success of their country in the war, and a similar sum was granted to the various governments as assistance towards the support of the reservists and others who were liable to military service. To sum up the results of the Franco-Prussian war, which was so full of consequences to either country : To the Germans it meant the creation of the Empire and the unity of the country under Prussia ; to the French it meant the establishment of the Third Republic and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, together with the disappearance of the Bonaparte name from the annals of France ; while in Italy, through the enforced withdrawal of French support from the Papal States, it meant the overthrow of the temporal power of the pope, and the establishment of the Italian capital at Rome. CHAPTER XVIII. TURKEY AND EGYPT, A.D. 1875-1898— THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, A.D. 1895-1902. England had witnessed the aggrandisement of Prussia and the fall of France, if not with indifference, at least with outward calm. She had desired to interfere in defence of Gladstone Denmark, but was convinced by reflection how and unwise such a course would be. The struggle Disraeli, between Prussia and Austria was one in which she could well remain neutral, there being no reason why she should favour one party rather than the other ; and in the mighty struggle between France and Germany, although there were reasons which impelled her to action on both sides, an attitude of strict neutrality was a prudent if hardly a dignified course. Consequently when peace came, although Gladstone's ministry had covered itself with credit in respect of liberal progress at home and of temperate abstention from complications which might be dangerous abroad, and had set an example of high- minded love of peace in the settlement of the Alabama dispute with America, yet when a new Parliament had to be elected in 1874, the dissatisfaction with Gladstone's pacific policy was shown by a triumphant victory for the Conservative party at the polls. Contrary to his own expectations and to those of Europe generally, Disraeli found himself called to power without a policy and without a cry, except a mandate to reverse the conduct of his predecessor. The new prime minister therefore determined that the voice of England should be heard in foreign politics, and a dispute was raging at the moment between Russia and The Con- Turkey, which gave him an opportunity of carrying dition of this into effect. The condition of Turkey at this Turkey, time was one of great disorder, several of the smaller states included in her dominions being anxious for separation. It was impossible for her to carry out reforms in these subject provinces, however anxious she might be to do so, and she had 755 756 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1875 to recourse to those methods of violent repression which have always been her resource, but which in more civilised times can no longer be treated with the toleration which they once received. After the treaty of Frankfort, the relations between the Christians and their Mohammedan masters became less endurable, and, the condition of finance in Turkey being that of a national bankruptcy, the Turkish tax farmers in the provinces resorted to the most cruel methods to extract money to pay The Revolt themselves and the troops. In July 1875, an in Herze- armed insurrection caused by these abuses broke govina. ou t first in Herzegovina and then in Bosnia. Women, children, and old men took refuge in Austria and Montenegro, while the men and youths began a regular warfare against the Turkish troops. The rising rapidly gained strength, and the insurgents took up strong positions in the passes and the ravines. Russia now came forward as the protector of the Slavs. Prussia and Austria were not unwilling to support her in this action, but England refused to take their side. Russia Matters became worse by Bulgaria's ioinine the Intervenes. . , . . . , n . J & J & . . insurrection and its being put down by atrocities which horrified the public opinion of Europe. Thousands of Christian men, women, and children were murdered, mutilated, or violated. The news came before Parliament, investigation proving the truth to be worse instead of better, and it was now seen that the policy of Disraeli, shortly to become Lord Beaconsfield, was entirely different from that of Gladstone, as he treated the matter with cynical .indifference. Gladstone published a pamphlet on the " Bulgarian Atrocities," demand- ing the entire withdrawal, " bag and baggage," of the Turks from their European provinces. Beaconsfield at the Guildhall, on November 9, seemed to threaten war against Russia. A conference was held at Constantinople, which produced no effect, and the emperor of Russia determined to proceed with his work alone, and in April 1877 declared a war which he hoped might be the harbinger of a new day for the Slavic race. After a severe struggle, the war was decided in favour of the Russians by the fall of Plevna. The victorious army descended The Treaty the valley of the Maritza, and, on the last day of San of January 1878, an armistice was signed at San Stefano. Stefano which led to the treaty of that name, the wisest measure ever proposed for the pacification of the Balkan Peninsula. It created a new Bulgaria, with a seaport ; Servia, a.d. 1898] TURKEY AND EGYPT 757 Montenegro, and Roumania were acknowledged as independent, Bosnia and Herzegovina being made self-governing provinces, Russia receiving an indemnity of twelve millions. This excellent arrangement was received in England with a shout of indignation, which was ignorant and irrational ; war nearly broke out, but it was agreed that the treaty should be laid before a congress to be summoned at Berlin. There it was settled that Bulgaria should be divided into two parts, one of . Berlhf which, called Eastern Roumelia, was to remain under the control of the Sultan ; Bosnia and Herzegovina became practically the property of Austria ; and Servia was made inde- pendent, as well as Montenegro. Beaconsfield and Salisbury returned to London, saying that they had brought back " peace with honour." But the treaty of Berlin meant neither : it secured neither the peace of the Balkan peninsula nor the proper treatment of the Christians whom it left to the Turks. It has since been violated by almost every power which signed it. Two wars have followed it, which it should have prevented. Its history gives rise to a train of melancholy reflections. The imperial policy thus inaugurated was carried out in other parts of the world. Attempts were made to found what is called a scientific frontier in India, by taking in the The N.W. Hindu Koosh and its spurs, with such outposts as Frontier of might be necessary to secure the passes. This India. policy was opposed by all those who were best acquainted with India. A similar policy was pursued against the Zulus in South Africa. This war, in which the French prince imperial met his death, ended with the defeat and captivity of Cete- wayo, but brought no honour to the English arms. The war in Afghanistan was as disastrous as these enterprises have gene- rally been, as a country which is easily overrun is difficult to leave. It was illustrated by the brilliant march of Roberts to Kandahar, by which that important city was saved, but the " forward policy " had to be given up, Kandahar being evacuated in 1881. Since then, by the wisdom of five succeeding viceroys — Ripon, Dufferin, Lansdowne, Elgin, and Ourzon — the mis- takes of Beaconsfield have been remedied, and for many years there have been no serioua wars upon the Indian frontier. But waters once stirred into commotion are with difficulty quieted, and in Egypt Gladstone inherited the results of a policy which he had not created, and founded on principles of which he disapproved. 758 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1875 to The condition of Egypt was one of great difficulty. It had been proposed at the Congress of Berlin that it should be The Con- occupied by England, but the liberals were dition of reluctant to do this, partly from unwillingness to Egypt. increase the national responsibilities, partly from regard to France, so that the management of the country was left under the joint control of England and France. The French republic was not strong enough to carry these arrangements out, and a movement for independence took place in Egypt, — Arabi, an Egyptian colonel, determining to secure theA m- ^ ie se ^"g overnmen 't °f hi ,s country. This might have been reasonable had he been able to achieve his end, and had it been certain that his enterprise would not end in anarchy. On June 11, 1882, a riot took place in Alexandria, during which the English, Greek, and French consuls were attacked and about 200 people were killed. It was certain that Arabi could not control this revolt, and the powers had to interfere. France refused to act, and the work was left to the English. Alexandria was bombarded by the English fleet, a military expedition under Wolseley was sent from England, Battle of the battle of Tel-el-Kebir was fought, and Cairo Tel-el- was captured. England ought to have undertaken Kebir. the duty of controlling Egypt, but Gladstone and Granville were afraid of the responsibility, and our position remained most unsatisfactory and ill-defined. What was to be done with the Soudan and other provinces, which were now being attacked by a religious fanatic, the Mahdi ? The Gladstone resolved to evacuate them, but it was Mahdist necessary to withdraw the Egyptian garrisons Outbreak. from the places attacked, especially Khartoum. Charles Gordon, who had gained a great name in China, was sent to effect this, being told that he could receive no further support from England. This, however, was impossible, and public opinion demanded that he should be reinforced or at least protected from personal violence. Much time was lost in deciding by which route Khartoum should be approached, but eventually, when the steamers sent down by Gordon at Gordon to meet the relieving force returned to Khartoum, it was found that it was too late — that Khartoum had been taken by the Mahdi, and Gordon killed. The news reached England on February 5, and caused an outbreak of universal indignation. The queen blamed her ministers in an open telegram : a vote of censure was moved a.d. 1898] TURKEY AND EGYPT 759 in both Houses, and lost in the Commons by only fourteen votes. No adequate defence could be made, and the Soudan had to be given up. All the circumstances connected with the loss of Khartoum were most discreditable, and the death of Gordon remains an indelible stain on the liberal government of 1880. Meanwhile, difficulties were caused by new activity on the part of the Irish Nationalists, by dynamite outrages in various parts of London, and, above all, by the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phoenix Park on the day on which he was admitted as Irish secretary. The prestige of the government had been also weakened by giving independence to the Boers in the Transvaal, just after they had inflicted a serious defeat on the English at Majuba Hill — a wise measure which was sure to be misconstrued. In 1884, by the extension of the county franchise, the number of voters was increased from three millions to five. But the strength of the govern- ment was gradually exhaxxsted, and, in 1885, being beaten by twelve votes on a trifling question, it resigned. The consequent elections produced a majority for the liberals, and Gladstone determined to settle the Irish question by intro- ducing a measure of Home Rule, establishing a Gladstone subordinate government in Dublin, under the and Home control of the Imperial Parliament. Many lead- Rule, ing liberals now refused to follow Gladstone, and the bill was defeated by thirty votes. Gladstone resigned, and was succeeded by Salisbury. It was now determined to enforce upon Ireland a period of resolute government, the carrying out of which was entrusted to Arthur Balfour, who became Irish secretary. In spite of his severity, his honesty and straight-forwardness made him respected and even beloved by those who were most opposed to him. The Parliament of 1886 came to a natural end in 1892, and the general election made Gladstone prime minister for the fourth time, eager to carry Home Rule but without a majority sufficient to pass any important measure without the help of the Irish. A Home Rule Bill was carried in the Commons in 1893 by 43 votes, but defeated in the Lords by 457 to 41, the largest division ever taken in the House. The result of this was that Gladstone's last cabinet council was held on March 1, 1894, and his last speech in the Commons, delivered the same afternoon, was a vigorous attack upon the House of Lords. Lord Rosebery succeeded by the queen's wish to the post of prime minister, but resigned in 1895, the government having been defeated by a majority of 7 on a paltry question. 760 a GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1875-1898 Egypt became civilised under British rule. The land was both irrigated and drained. In ten years, the cotton and sugar crops Egypt under were trebled, and the country was covered by a British network of railways and agricultural roads. In Rule. 1898, a dam was established at Assuan. The native soldiers were well fed and clothed, and trained to be- come efficient instruments of war. The army was strengthened by the enrolment of black volunteers from the Soudan. This progress created a desire to recover the Soudan, which had been abandoned, and this was stimulated by the danger of the Italians, losing Kassala, which they had occupied at our suggestion, and, to some extent, for our convenience. It was therefore determined to save Kassala by a diversion in the direction of Dongola. There were also other rivals for the possession of the territory which we desired. The French were advancing Reconquest from the south-west, the Belgians from the south. of the So the government determined to advance to Soudan. Akasha to avert the danger which threatened Italy, Egypt, and Great Britain. This was opposed by the liberals in the House of Commons and elsewhere. Kitchener, starting on March 21, 1896, completely defeated the Dervishes at Firket, and cleared forty miles of the Nile valley. The Dervishes received a second severe blow on April 8, 1898, in what is known as the battle of the Atbara. Mahmoud was taken prisoner, and Kitchener made a triumphal entry into Berber. Omdurman, lying opposite Khartoum, could not be taken until the Nile had risen sufficiently to make an attack possible. However, at last, the battle was won, and the victori- ous army was able to take possession of Khartoum. The prisoners found there were released — one of them, a German, having been kept in chains for eleven years — and large stores of ammunition were found in the arsenal. The Mahdi's tomb was destroyed as an act of necessary vengeance, and a memorial service was held in the remains of Gordon's palace at Khartoum. The taking of Khartoum was followed by an incident which nearly caused a war between England and France. Lieutenant The Marchand had occupied Fashoda and hoisted the Fashoda French flag. Kitchener hastened to the spot, Incident. told Marchand that his position was impossible, landed some troops, and hoisted the Egyptian flag 500 yards from the French flag, after which he returned to Cairo. For twenty- four hours war between the two countries seemed probable, the French holding that Fashoda had been abandoned, and might a.d. 1895-1902] SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 761 be claimed by either France or Belgium, while the British asserted that the whole valley of the Nile belonged to Egypt. But by the end of the year peaceful counsels prevailed. By an agreement signed in January 1899, Great Britain obtained sovereign rights in the Soudan, in conjunction with the Khedive, based upon the right of conquest, thus avoiding mistakes which had produced such disastrous results in Egypt. Consequently, the Soudan has advanced greatly in prosperity, the population has increased, and Port Soudan on the Red Sea has become a serviceable harbour. The White Nile has been rendered navigable by the removal of 400 miles of sudd, conglomerated water weed ; and a centre of enlightenment for the Soudan has been provided by establishing the Gordon University at Khartoum. THE SOUTH AFKICAN WAR, A.D. 1895-1902. The last years of Queen Victoria's reign were saddened by troubles in the Transvaal, the economical condition of which had been entirely altered by the discovery of gold mines. The revenue of the Transvaal, which was z, . =£177,876 in 1885, had increased to £4,480,217 in lransvaaL 1897. Crowds of all nations flocked to this new source of wealth, the foreign settlers — Dutch, German, French, and English — being known as Uitlanders. Differences naturally arose. The Boers were wedded to a country life : the new settlers lived in towns for the purpose of making money. The Boers regarded the natives as little better than wild animals, whereas the English endeavoured to convert and teach them. But the chief cause of difference was undoubtedly the gold mines, which had made the Transvaal so unexpectedly valuable. The Uitlanders put forward grievances which had little foundation, and were greatly exaggerated by the English press, though the condition of the Transvaal was certainly peculiar, as the number of foreign settlers was nearly double that of the Boers, and they paid nmeteen-twentieths of the taxes. These smouldering embers burst into a blaze when Jameson made a raid into the Transvaal on December 29, 1895, with the view of joining the Uitlanders in Johannesburg, who, it is said, were ready to rise. The insane Jamesons enterprise collapsed entirely ; the raiders sur- rendered, and might justifiably have been shot, but Kruger mag- nanimously surrendered them to the English government. This 762 A GENERAL HISTORY u.d. 1S95 to raid convinced Kruger, president of the Transvaal, that it was necessary to arm if he wished to preserve the independence of his country. A fort was built, and arms were imported by way of DelagoaBay. There was no organised conspiracy against British rule, but the idea of a Dutch South Africa came again into prominence. In February 1897, Sir Alfred Milner was sent out as Governor to examine the situation, and, unfortunately, came to the con- The South elusion that war was inevitable, believing that African it would be short and decisive, but that any War - attempt at conciliation would be a mistake. A conference held at Bloemfontein came to nothing. The Boers issued an ultimatum which expired on October 11, 1899, and the British Parliament, meeting a few days later, voted £10,000,000 for the conduct of the war. The public opinion of Europe was strongly opposed to our action. England had hitherto posed as the supporter of liberty and the defender of the weak. Germany took full advantage of the opportunity. Though preserving a neutrality which the Boers always hoped would not continue, she set herself to extend her commerce and increase her fleet. The Boers invading Natal, the English retired on Ladysmith, where eventually 12,000 British troops were shut up. It was recognised that the week between December 10 and December 17, 1899, was the blackest known in that generation, and the most disastrous of the century to British arms. In seven days the British had lost, in three separate actions, 3000 men and 12 guns, causing their enemies to triumph and themselves to despair. England now realised the importance of the enterprise she had rashly undertaken, and sent her best general, Lord Roberts, to take command, with Kitchener as chief of the staff. After long struggles, the enormous forces at the disposal of Roberts began to produce an effect ; Johannesburg was occupied on May 31, and Pretoria on June 5. The war became a guerilla conflict, in which De Wet played a conspicuous part. Farmhouses were destroyed, with everything that they contained, and the women and children were collected together in concen- tration camps, where they suffered great hardships. Long lines of blockhouses were erected, never more than a thousand paces' from each other, joined together with barbed wire, and so placed that they were visible to each other. Present opinion is that the burning of the farmhouses tended rather to prolong than to shorten the war, as it created great resentment among a.d. 1902] SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 763 the famishing Boers. Fortunately, orders given to destroy many more farmhouses in Cape Colony were disregarded. De Wet has expressed the opinion that the blockhouses prolonged the war for three months, by enabling the elusive Boers to escape their pursuers, and it is certain that they did not repay the cost of building them. At the end of January 1902, a drive was formed with the object of forcing De Wet against one of the two lines of blockhouses, but it was entirely unsuccessful. By this time King Edward had succeeded Queen Victoria, and it was obvious that a coronation could not be held during the continuance of the war, as nations opposed to us would take the opportunity of offering insults. It was therefore suggested that some informal overtures towards .peace should be made. Kruger was now in Europe, so that his place was taken by Schalkburger,. vice-president of the Transvaal, while Stein represented the Orange Free State. A meeting was held at Klerkdorp, on April 9, 1902, Louis Botha and De Wet also being present. They declared that unconditional surrender was impossible, but that terms for peace might be put forward. The final treaty was signed at Vereeniging, the The Treaty- negotiations continuing from May 18 to May 29, of Vereeni- and, the treaty being signed at Kitchener's house gi n g- in Pretoria on May 31, the war came to an end, having cost this country =£270,000,000. A constitution for South Africa was ratified by act of Parliament in September 1909. By this instrument, a governor-general is appointed by the crown, and there is a Parliament of two houses, the members of which must be British subjects of European descent. Lord Gladstone, the son of the great minister whose life occupied so many pages of English history, was appropriately appointed to be first governor-general. A war between China and Japan, of which we are not able to give a detailed account, was closed by the treaty of Shimon- oseki, signed in the spring of 1895. The success of Japan in this war was entirelv unexpected t: ise by those who knew the belligerent countries best, but it led to a still more unexpected result — a war between Japan and Russia. This was declared on February 5, 1904. A small Asiatic power, only a short time ago a stranger to European affairs, challenged a colossus, of whose The Russo- encroachments all the world was afraid, who had Japanese her feet in the east and west, and seemed to War - bestride the habitable globe. Japan, however, had well calculated 764 A GENERAL HISTORY [a.d. 1895 to the task which lay before her, and deserved the success which she achieved. We must content ourselves with a short account of this momentous struggle, which has produced important results and may produce more. The first object of the Japanese was to capture Port Arthur, which was effected on January 1, 1905. After this the interest of the war centred round Mukden. The Japanese had five armies, numbering altogether about 300,000 men, concentrated within striking distance of the enemy. Mukden was defended by Kuropatkin, who was finally obliged to execute a disorderly retreat. A notable incident in the war was the entire failure of the Russian fleet, especially that part of it commanded by Rozhdesht- vensky, whose operations began by firing at English trawlers on the Dogger Bank, imagining that some of them were Japanese. He stopped a long time at Madagascar to train his crews, and got his squadron together in the China Sea on May 9. He had eight battleships, twelve cruisers, nine destroyers, and a number of auxiliary ships, but he was entirely defeated by Admiral Togo in the battle of Tushima. In less than three-quarters of an hour from the beginning of the engagement, the battle- ships of the two main Russian columns were out of action, and the admiral himself was severely wounded. On the following day, the Russian fleet was annihilated, and only four ships out of the whole armada reached Vladivostok. Peace was made by the mediation of Rooseveldt, president of the United States, and the treaty of Portsmouth gave to Japan most of the objects for which she had begun the war. The victory of Japan was a great surprise to the world, but also a great lesson. She owed her success to the patriotic devotion with which states- men, diplomats, soldiers, and sailors had worked harmoniously together to achieve a common result, whereas the Russians had been inspired by no enthusiasm, nor did their leaders possess unity, either of purpose or action. By the system of Bushido the Japanese were trained to prefer the interest of the state to that of the individual, and to consider death preferable to dishonour. We must hurry to the end of our period. Mr. Gladstone died on May 19, 1898, and was buried on May 28 in West- minster Abbey. A more impressive sight was never seen in a church which has witnessed so many solemn spectacles. Both Houses of Parliament marched in procession from Westminster Hall to the Abbey, and the majestic appearance of the Speaker a.d. 1902] DEATH OF EDWARD VII 765 at the head of the Commons will never be forgotten. Gladstone's death was followed by Sir William Har court's resignation of the leadership of the liberal party in the House of Commons. He was succeeded by Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, whose abilities were only surpassed by his modesty. He died in 1908. He was not actually buried in Westminster Abbey, but the memorial service held there in his honour was as impressive as any funeral. Queen Victoria died on Friday, January 22, 1901, being eighty-one years of age, and having reigned for sixty-three years seven months and two days. Her death produced an inde- scribable effect all over the world, especially perhaps in India, where she was regarded not only as a sovereign, but almost as an object of worship. No one who witnessed it will ever forget the passage of the queen's coffin across London, from Padding- ton to Victoria, attended by her son and grandson, the new King and the German Emperor. King Edward was now advanced in years, and nearly forty years had passed since his father's death, but during that time he had been, by a fault of judgment on his mother's part, carefully excluded from every share r V 1 ^ , VTT in the government. At the coronation, Lord Salis- bury could not be present as prime minister, and his place was taken by his nephew, Arthur Balfour. Indeed, the death of Lord Salisbury on August 22, 1903, shows that his resignation could not have been much longer delayed. King Edward is generally known as the " Peace Maker," because he followed a policy of coming to a friendly understanding with other nations between whom disputes were pending which might, under certain circum- stances, bring about a war. The consequence was that during his reign personal dislike of Great Britain gradually faded away. It was interesting to see him, when visiting a foreign bath, welcomed with enthusiasm by Russians, French, Austrians, and, above all, Germans, those thronging to do him honour who had been most embittered against England and against him personally during the Boer War. Asquith now became prime minister, and Lloyd-George chancellor of the exchequer. The step of making the veto of the House of Lords suspensive instead of absolute, which had been passionately urged by Gladstone and Rosebery, and had been promised by Campbell- Bannerman, was being brought to a practical settlement by the king and the prime minister when, at the very moment of this crisis, King Edward died, after a short illness, on Friday, May 6, 1910. -INDEX OF PERSONS Aaron, 51 Abbasids, the, 280, 281 Abbio, 287 Abdallah, 281 — father of Mohammed, 274 Abdel Mumin, 402 Abderahman, of Cordova, 28! v 400 — of Seville, 304 Abdvd Malek, 279 Abercromby, General, 675 Aberdeen, earl of, 724 Abeshu, 30 Abgarus of Edessa, 230 Abijah, king of Judah, 58 Ablizzi, the, 488 Abraham, 50 Abu Bekr, 275-277 Abu Djal, 275 Abulkasern, 33 Abu Taleb, 275 Acca Laurentia, 132 Accursi, Francesco, 429 Achmed III., sultan, 618, 619 Achtoi, 12 Adalbero, bishop of Augsburg, 299 — archbishop of Reims, 335 Adalbert, king of Italy, 327 Adalbert, St., of Prague, 338, 339 Adalgis, 285, 286 Addington, Henry (Viscount Sidmouth), 675, 678 Adela of Blois, 408 Adelheid, wife of Louis the Stammerer, 297 — wife of Otto I., 327, 329, 333, 335, 336 Adhemar of Puy, 346 Adherbal, 187, 188 Adimari, the, 488 Adolf of Nassau, emperor, 445 Adorno family, 487 Aegidius of Soissons, 261 Aelfred the Great, 305-308 — [the Atheling], 313 Aelfrida, mother of Aethelred II., 310 Aemilianus, Roman emperor, 233 Aeschines, 126, 128 Aeschylus, 70, 95, 97 Aethelbald, king of Wessex, 306 Aethelbert, king of Kent, 271 — king of Wessex, 306 Aethelgiva, wife of Edwy, 309 Aethelred I., king of Wessex, 306 — II., the Unready, 310-313, 397 Aethelstan, king of England, 301, 308, 309 — king of Kent, 305 Aethelwold, nephew of Aelfred the Great, 308 Aethelwulf, king of Wessex, 305, 306 Aetius, 252-255 Afranius, L., 200 Agathocles, king of Sicily, 157 — son of Lysimachus, 176 Agesilaus II., king of Sparta, 109, 110, 112, 115-117, 119, 120 Agilulf, king of Lombards, 263 Agis IV., king of Sparta, 176 Agnes of Meran, 439 — of Poitou, wife of Henry III., emperor, 341 — daughter of Ottokar of Bohemia, 446 Agricola, Gn. Julius, 223 — Johann, 523 Agrippa, M. Vipsanius, 212, 215, 227 — (Posturnus), 215 Agrippina I., wife of Germanicus, 215, 218, 219 — II., wife of Claudius, 220, 221 Ahab, king of Israel, 58-61 Ahaz, king of Judah, 64 Ahaziah, king of Israel, 61 — king of Judah, 61, 62 Ahenobarbus, Gn. Domitius, 221 — L. Domitius, 200 Ahijah, 56 Aiguillon, Armand, duke of, 649 d'Ailly, Francois, 476 Aistulf, king of the Lombards, 273 Aladdin, sultan of Iconium, 494 Alan of Brittany, 298 Alaric, king of the Visigoths, 249-251 Alba, Fernando, third duke of, 522, 536, 537, 541, 542 Albergati, Niccolo, 480 Alberic I., patrician of Pome, 302 — II., 302, 327, 330 — of RomaTio, 377, 385 Alberoni, Cardinal, 623 Albert I., emperor, 444-446, 448, 492 — II., emperor (V. of Austria), 481 — count of Hapsburg, 375 — II., duke of Austria, 450, 471 — III., duke of Austria, 471 — archduke of Austria, 746 — cardinal archduke, 538 — the Bear, 347, 348, 359 — of Brandenburg, 516 — of Saxe-Coburg-Gotlia, prince consort, 734 — of Saxony (duke of Meissen), 508, 509 — Jeanne de, queen ofNavarre, 540, 542 767 768 A GENERAL HISTORY Albinus, Clodius, 229 Albinzi, General, 660 Albizzi family, 500 Alboin, king of the Lombards, 263 Albomoz, Cardinal, 483. 484 Alcibiades, 106-108 Alcmaeonid family, 84, 85 Alcuin, 286, 290 Aleander, Cardinal, 518 Alembert, J. B. le R. de, 628 Alexander of Macedon, I., 121 — — II., 118, 122 — — the Great, 122, 124, 165-175 — son of Alexander the Great, 174, 175 — of Pherae, 118, 119, 125 — (pope) III., 356, 357, 365, 402 — — IV., 384, 386, 427 — — V., 474, 476, 484 — — VI, 510, 513 — czar of Russia, 675, 681, 682, 685. 686, 691, 693, 694, 697, 706 — bishop of Lincoln, 409 — Nevski, 493 Alexis III., emperor, 363 — IV., emperor, 363 — czar of Russia, 614 — son of Peter the Great, 621 Alexius Comnenus, emperor, 317, 346 Alfonso, king of Aragon, I., 402 — — — V., 467 — king of Castile, VI., 400, 401 — — — VII., 402 — — — X., 388, 389, 392, 443 — — — XL, 404 — IV., king of Portugal, 467 Ali, son of Abu Taleb, 275-278 Al Kamil, 370-372 Allemand, Louis de, bishop of Aries, 480 Allen, Cardinal, 553 Almanzor, caliph, 402 - — James, 402 Almoravids, the, 401, 402 Almuazzam, 369 Alpais, 299 Alphonse of Poitou, 440 Althorp, viscount, 711 Alva, duke of. See Alba Alyattes, king of Lydia, 80 Amadeus, duke of Savoy. See Savoy Amalasunta, 257-259 Amanrich, 246, 248 Amasis, 44, 80 Amaziah, king of Judah, 63 Ambrose, St., 248, 249 Amenemhet, king of Egypt: I., 12, 13; III., 13-15; IV., 15 Amenophis III., king of Egypt, 39 — IV., king of Egypt, 39, 40 Amos, 62, 63 Amru, 277, 278 Amulius, king of Alba, 132 Amyntas I., king of Macedon, 76, 121 — III., king of Macedon, 112, 122 — son of Perdiccas, 122 Anacletus II., anti-pope, 318 Anacreon, 82 Analav, Danish king at York, 309 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, 97, 105 Anaximander, 82 d'Ancre, Marshal, 573 Ancus Martius, 132, 133 Anderson (Eoger), Major, 732 Andocides, 110 Andrew II., king of Hungary, 367, 491 — III., king of Hungary, 445, 492 — of Hungary, husband of Joanna I., 482, 484 Androcleides, 113 Andronicus, emperor, II., 494 ; III., 494 ; IV., 495, 496 Angouleme, Louis Antoine, due de, 706 Angus, Archibald Douglas, earl of, 548 Anhalt, Bernhard of, 359 — Prince Christian I. of, 559 Anjou, Francis, duke of, 537, 538, 543 Ann, wife of Henry of Carinthia, 446 Anna, czarina of Russia, 621 — wife of Rudolf of Hapsburg, 444 — of Savoy, wife of Andronicus III., 495 Anne, queen of England, 565, 603, 605-607. 610-613, 619 — of Austria, wife of Louis XIII., 573-577 — of Bohemia, wife of Richard II., 456 — Boleyn, wife of Henry VIIL, 528-530. 532 — of Brittany, 465, 507, 510 — of Brunswick, regent of Russia, 621 — of Cleves, wife of Henry VIIL, 530 Anno. See Hanno Anselm, St., 405, 407 Ansgard, wife of Louis the Stammerer, 296 Anson, George, first viscount, 626 Antalcidas, 110 ; peace of, 110-11 Antef, 12 Anthemius, 253 Antigonus, 174, 175 — Doson, 177 — Gonotas, 176 Antinous, 227 Antiochus I. (Soter), king of Syria, 178 — II. (Theos), king of Syria, 178 — III. (the Great), king of Syria, 178, 182, 183 — IV (Epiphanes), king of Syria, 184 — Hierax, 178 Antipater, 127, 166, 174, 175 Antoin of Bourbon, king of Navarre, 539- 541 Antonia of Bourbon-Vendome, 539 Antoninus Pius, Roman emperor, 225, 227, 228, 234 Antoninus, G. (Hybrida), 196 — Lucius, 212 — Marcus, Triumvir, 199, 202, 210-213 Apokaukos, 495 Aprakin. See Apraxin Apraxin, Stephen, 638 Apries (Hophra), king of Egypt, 44, 67, 68 Aquaviva, Cardinal, 434 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 392 Arabi, Ahmad, Pasha, 758 Aratus of Sicyon, 176, 177 Arbogast, 248 Arcadius, emperor, 249, 252, 253 Archelaos, of Macedon, 122 Archelaus, general of Mithradates, 192 Archias of Thebes, 113, 114 Archidamus II., king of Sparta, 106 INDEX OF PERSONS 769 Archidamus III., king of Sparta, 124 Archimedes, 162 Ardscher. See Artaxerxes Aretino, L. Bruni, 476 Argyle, ninth earl of, 599 Argyros, 316 Ariarathes of Cappadocia, 179 Aribo, archbishop of Mainz, 341 Aricliis of Beneventum, 287 Ariobarzanes, Persian general, 169 Ariovistus, German chief, 199 Aristides " the Just " 88, 92, 94, 95 Aristogiton, Pisastratid, 82, 83, 169 Aristogoras of Miletus, 75, 84, 85 Arius, heretic, 246, 249 Arkwright, Richard, 645 Arlington, earl of, 595, 597 Arminius, German chief, 214, 218 Arnold of Brescia, 351-353 Arnold, archbishop of Cologne, 350 Arnulf, emperor, 297, 300, 305, 307 — bishop of Metz, 283, 287 Arpad, king of Hungary, 300 Arrian, 227 Artabanos, 100 Artaphernes, brother of Darius Hystaspea, 84 — nephew of Darius Hystaspes, 86 Artavasdes, king of Armenia, 212 Artaxerxes I., king of Persia, 74, 96, 100, 102, 103, 108, 109, 111, 119, 120 — III., king of Persia, 172 — (Ardscher), founder of the Sassinidae, 232 Artemidorus, 202 Arteveld, James von, 435 Arthur of Brittany, 415, 417, 419 Arthur Tudor, son of Henry VII., 528 Artrad of Thuringia, 287 Arundel, Archbishop, 457, 460 — earl of, 456, 457 Aryandes, 75 Asa, king of Judah, 57, 58 Asinibaldi, Theobald, 388 Aspasia, 105 Asquith, H. H., 765 Assur Nazir Habul, 46, 47 Astyages, 69, 75, 80 Asurbanipal, 49 Ataulf, king of the Visigoths, 251 Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths, 258 Athaliah, queen of Judah, 59 Athanaric the Goth, 248 Athanasius, St., 246 Athenais. See Eudoxia Atossa, 71, 76 Atoti, 5 Attalus I., king of Pergamum, 179 — III., king of Pergamum, 185 Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, 624 Attila, king of the Huns, 254, 255 Augereau, Marshal, 680 Augustenburg, Frederick, duke of, 743, 744 Augustine, St., of Canterbury, 271 — St., of Hippo, 252 Augustus (Octavian), emperor, 202, 204-217 Augustus II. (the Strong), king of Poland, 616, 617, 619, 620, 630 Aurelian, emperor, 233, 234 Aurungzebe, 636 Ausonius, 246 Austria, duke of. See Albert, Charles Frederic, Otto Autharis, king of the Lombards, 263 Avitus, emperor, 255 Ayesha, wife of Mohammed, 276, 278 d'Azeglio, Marquis, 727 Azzo of Este, 377, 378 Babington, Anthony, 552 Bacchylides, 97 Bacciochi, Felix, 680 Bacon, Francis, 466 Baden (Charles F. T.), duke of, 679 ■ — (Louis), margrave of, 373 Baesha, 57, 58 Bajezid I., sultan, 495, 496 Baldwin I., king of Jerusalem, 345-7 — II., king of Jerusalem, 347 — Latin emperor, 362-3 — See Flanders, Baldwin, count of Balfour, A. J., 759, 765 Ballard, John, 552 Balliol, Edward, 434, 435 — John, king of Scotland, 430 Banks, N. P., 739 Barbara of Cilly, wife of Sigismund, 475, 476, 480 Barbarossa, Hairaddin, 520 Barbaroux, C. J. M., 652 Barbes, Armand, 715 Barclay de Tolly, Prince, 694 Bardi, the, 398 Barebones, Praise-God, 580 Barnave, Antoine, P. J. M., 652 Barras, Paul, F. J. N. de, 656 Barrere, Bertrand, 656 Barrot, C. H. Odilon, 708 Barrow, Henry, 535 Basina, 261 Basinus, king of the Thuringians, 261 Basset, Sir Philip, 425 Basseville, N. J. H. de, 660 Bassianus. See Elagabalus Bathurst, third earl, 701 Bavaria, dukes of — Arnulf, 322 Henry I., 321, 323, 327, 328 — II., the Quarrelsome, 332, 335 — the Proud, 347 — the Lion, 348, 352, 353, 358, 359, 362 — (Wittelsbach), 389 — Louis, 373, 390, 443 Otto, I. 359 — II., (the Illustrious), 373, 374, 377 — electors of : — — Charles Albert. See Charles VII., emperor — — Charles Theodore, 633 — — Maximilian I., 557, 561 — — — II., (Emanuel), 590, 601-3, 606 — — — III. (Joseph), 629, 633 — Joseph, electoral prince of, 601, 610 Bayard, Chevalier, 519 Bazaine, Marshal, 750, 752 Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, earl of, 755-7 Beatrice of Falkenstein, wife of Richard of Cornwall, 389 3c 770 A GENERAL HISTORY Beatrice, of Provence, wife of Charles of Anjou, 386, 388 — Turin, wife of Henry IV., emperor, 342 — wife of Otto IV., 363 — daughter of Manfred, 390 — — Henry VII., emperor, 447, 448 Beaufort, Francois, duke of, 576 — Henry, Cardinal, 460 — Margaret, 464 Beauharnais, Eugene, 680, 688, 693 — See Hortense and Josephine Beaulieu, Baron P. J. de, 660 Beauregard, P. G. Toutart, 733, 735 Becket, Thomas a, 410-14 Bedford, John, duke of : First, 461, 462 ; fourth, 638 Bela III., king of Hungary, 491 — IV., king of Hungary, 378, 491, 492 — brother-in-law of Ottokar, 389 Belesme, Bobert of, 406 Belisarius, 259, 260 Bella, Giano della, 487 Belshazzer (Nabonetus), 76 Bern, Joseph, 721 Benedek, F.-M. Ludwig von, 746 Benedetti, Count Vincent, 748, 749 Benedict (pope) : V. (anti-pope), 330 ; VII., 333, 334 ; VIII., 315, 341 ; XI., 441 ; XIII. (anti-pope), 475-7 ; (pope), 459 — of Nursia, St., 271 Benhadad, 57, 58, 60, 61 Berengar of Friuli, emperor, 298, 299 — Ivrea, 327-30 Berengaria, wife of Richard I., 417 Beresford, Viscount, 696 Bernadotte, Marshal (Charles XIV., king of Sweden), 659, 664, 680, 683, 694, 697 Bernard, St., 348 — archbishop of Sahagun, 401 Bernhard, king of Italy, 293 — son of Charles the Fat, 297, 299 ■ — of Barcelona, 294 — Cardinal, 483 Bernward, bishop of Hildesheim, 336, 339 Berry, C. F. d'Artois, due de, 705, 708 Bertha, queen of Kent, 271 • — of Burgundy, 327 — of Savoy, wife of Henry IV., emperor, 485 — wife of Pepin the Short, 284 Berthier, Marshal, 672, 673, 679, 680, 683, 700 Berthold, archbishop of Mainz, 512 — (V.) of Zahringen, 472 Bertrand de Born, 418 Bessarion, Cardinal, 497 Bessieres, Marshal, 680 Bessos, 169, 170 Bestia, L. Calpurnius, 188 Bethlen Gabor, 558-60 Beza, Theodore, 525, 540, 541 Bias of Priene, 80 Bibulus, L. Calpurnius, 141 Bigod, Hugh, 408, 414 — Boger II., earl of Norfolk, 431 Billaud-Varennes, J. N., 653 Binnirar II., king of Assyria, 47 Biren, J. E., regent of Russia, 621 Bismarck-Schonhausen, Otto, Prince von, 742-5, 748,'.749, 751, 754 Bjorn, king of Sweden, 303 — Ironside, 303, 304 Blake, Joachim, Spanish general, 690 — Bobert, admiral, 579, 581 Blanche of Artois, 432 — Bourbon, wife of Pedro the Cruel, 451, 467 — Castile, mother of Louis IX., 395, 419, 422 — Valois, wife of Charles IV., emperor, 4G9 Bleda, king of the Huns, 251 Blucher, Field-Marshal, 694-7, 700 Boccanera, Simon, doge of Venice, 486 Bocchus, 189 Boemund of Antioch, 317, 346, 347 Boethius, 257 Bokchoris, 43 Boleslav I., of Bohemia, 326 — II., of Bohemia, 326, 339 — duke of Poland, 340 Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount, 605, 606, 611, 613, 622, 624 Bomilcar, 161 Bonaparte : Caroline, 682, 683, 690 ; Elisa, 680 ; Jerome, 686 ; Joseph, 658, 664, 674, 682, 683, 688-90, 697; Louis, 677, 682, 683, 693 ; Lucien, 664, 665, 672 ; Na- poleon (see Napoleon) ; Pauline, 683, 698 Boniface, Count, 252 — St., 272, 273, 283 — Pope : VI., 300, 333 ; VII., 333 ; VIII., 394, 395, 430, 431, 441, 445 : IX., 475, 476. 484 — of Savoy, 425 Bonner, bishop of London, 533 Booth, J. W., 741 Bordeaux, H. C. P., due de, 708 Borromeo, St. Charles, 534, 535 Boso, king of Provence, 296, 297 Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, 591 Botha, Louis, 763 Bothwell, James, fourth earl of, 548, 549 Boucicault, Marshal, 452, 487 Bouillon, Henri, due de, 574 Bourbaki, C. L>. S., general, 752, 753 Bourbon, Charles, duke of (Constable), 519, 520 — Louis Henry II., duke of, 678, 679 — family, 539 Bourchier, Elizabeth, wife of Oliver Crom- well, 578 Bourrienne. L. A. F. de, 673 Brabant, duke of. 366 Braddock, Edward, 637 Bradshawe, John, 582 Bragg, Braxton, 738 Branealeone, degli Andalo, 384 Brandenburg, Albert of. See Albert ■ — electors of : Frederic I. (VI. of Nuremburg), 474 Frederic William (the Great Elector), 587- 589, 627 Joachim II., 522 John Sigismund, 626 Louis, margrave of, 450, 470 Brasidas, 106 Breakspear, Nicholas. See Hadrian IV. Breaute\ Fulk de, 424 Brettone, 483 INDEX OF PERSONS 771 Briant, Alexander, 551 Brienne, Walter of, duke of Athens, 488. — See John of Brienne Brigit, St., 475 Brissot de Warville, J. P., 652, 654 Britannicus, son of Claudius, 220, 221 Brito, Richard, 412 Brogni, J. A., 476 Brougham and Vaux, Lord, 711 Brown, John, 732 Browne, Count M. U. von, 630 Bruce, Edward, 433 — Robert, the claimant, 430 — See David and Robert, kings of Scotland Brueys, Admiral, 664 Briinl, Count, 630 Brune, Marshal, 680 Brunhilde, 264 Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, 321, 329 — of Carinthia, See Gregory V. Brunswick, dukes of — Charles William Ferdinand, 630, 631, 654, 684 Christian, 560 Otto, 482, 484 — of Limeburg, 375 Brutus, Decimus Junius Albinus, 210 — L. Junius, 134 — M. Junius, 202, 211 Bryant (Briant), Alexander, 551 Buchanan, James, American president, 732 Buckingham, dukes of : George Villiers (I.), 566-8; (II.) 595, 597; Henry Stafford, 463, 464 Buell, Don Carlos, 735 Billow, Friedrich Wilhelm, 696, 697 Buol, Count K. F. von, 727 Buontelmonte, the, 488 Burchhard of Swabia, 328 Burgundy, dukes of — Charles the Bold, 505-7, 510 John the Fearless, 459, 460 Louis, 604, 607 Philip de Rouvres, 452 — the Bold, 452, 453, 505 — the Good, 505 Rudolf. See Rudolf of Burgundy Burke, Edmund, 639, 642-4, 666, 678 Burleigh. William Cecil, Lord, 546, 551-3 Burnell, Robert, 429 Burnside, A. E., 736 Burrard, Sir Henry, 690 Burrus, Afranius, 221 Bute, John Stuart, third earl of, 637, 638 Butler, Colonel Walter, 563 — William Orlando, 739 Byng, Admiral, 637 Byron, Lord, 706 Cabeirichos, 114 Cabrera, Bernardo de, 467 Cade, Jack, 462 Cadoudal, Georges, 678, 679 Caepio, Gn. Servilius, 190 — Q. Servilius, 185 Caesar, G. Julius, 141, 148, 194, 196-204, 208, 210. 216, 217 — L. Julius, 191 Cajetan, Cardinal, 518 Callias, 103 ; peace of, 103-4 Callicratides, 107 Calonne, C. A. de, 648 Calpurnia, v, ife of Caesar, 202 Calvin, John, 516, 517, 525, 526 Cambaceres, J. J. R. de, 665, 666, 672 Cambridge, Edmund of. See York — Richard, earl of, 460, 461 Cambyses, 45, 69, 71, 73, 74, 76, 80, 82 Camillus, M. Furius, 149, 150 Campbell, Sir Colin, 724, 726 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 765 Campeggio, Cardinal, 528 Campion, Edmund, 551, 552 Canning, George, 675, 687, 692, 706, 707, 719, 711 — Sir Stratford, 723 Canrobert, Marshal, 723 Canute, king of England, 311-3, 341 Caorsini, the, 397 Capranica, Domenico, 480 Caprara, Cardinal, 676, 677, 682 Caraealla, emperor, 230 Carascosa, Michele, 705 Carbos, Cn. Papirius, 189 — G. Papirius, 191 Carinus, M. Aurelius, 234 Carloman, son of Pepin the Short, 273, 283, 284 — See Karlmann Carlstadt, Andrew Bodenstein of, 518 Carmagnole, Francesco de, 479, 485, 490 Carmarthen, Marquis of (fifth Duke of Leeds) 645, 646 Carnot, L. N. M., 656, 672, 673, 703 Carobert, king of Hungary, 445, 448, 482, 492 Caroline, wife of George II., 625 — wife of George IV., 702, 710 Carrara, Francis of, 473 Carrier, J. B., 657 Carteret. See Granville Cartwright, Edmund, 645 — Thomas, 550 Carus, Roman emperor, 234 Casca, P. Servilius, 202 Casimir III., king of Poland, 493 Cassander, 175 Cassiodorus, 256 Cassius (Longinus), C, 199, 202, 211 Castafios, F. X. de, 690 Castlereagh, Viscount (marquis of London- derry), 687, 692, 696, 698, 699, 704, 710 Castriota, George (Skanderbeg), 497, 498 Castro, Liez de, 467 Castruccio Castracani, 449 Cathelineau, Jacques, 656 Catherine of Castile, mother of John II., 367 — queen of England, wife of Henry V., 460 — — — wife of Henry VIII. (C. of Aragon), 466, 516, 527-9, 532 ; C. Howard, 530 ; C. Parr, 530 — — — C. of Braganza, wife of Charles II. — Morosini, queen of Hungary, 492 — of Russia, wife of Peter the Great, 619 — ■ I., czarina, 621 — H., czarina, 618, 631-4 — daughter of Charles IV, emperor, 470 772 A GENERAL HISTORY Catherine of Siena, St., 484 Catiline, L. Sergius, 196, 197 Catinat, Marshal, 586, 593, 602 Cato, M. Porcius (Censor), 182, 185 — — (Uticensis), 197, 200 Catualda, 218 Catulus, C. Lutatius. 158 — Q. Lutatius, 190 Caulaincourt, A. A. L. de, 679 Cavaignac, Louis Eugene, 715, 716, 718 Cavaleanti, the, 488 Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 759 Cavour, Carnillo, Count di, 726, 727, 730 Cawdor, first baron, 668 Cscil. See Burleigh and Salisbury Cellini, Benevenuto, 521 Cerchii, the, 487 Cervantes, 480 Cesarini, Cardinal, 480 Cetewayo, Zulu king, 757 Cethegus, C. Cornelius, 196 Chabrias, 110, 115, 123 Chalais, Comte de, 574 Championnet, J. E., 659 Changarnier, N. A. T., 718 Chares, 125 Charetts, P. A., 656 Charles : Emperors— I. (the Great), 264, 273, 274, 283-93, 304, 321, 338-40 II. (the Bald), 294, 296, 305, 306 III. (the Fat), 295, 297, 298, 305 IV., 450, 469-72, 474 V., 466, 499, 503, 512, 515, 516, 518-25, 527, 528, 532, 535 VI. (III. of Spain), 603-606, 610, 625, 626 VII. (Albert), 628, 629 Kings of England — I., 565-72, 574, 576, 578, 587, 600 II., 579, 583, 593-8, 611 Kings of Prance — (the Simple), 297, 299, 301, 308, 309 IV., 433, 441, 442, 449 V., 452, 453, 471, 484 VI., 459, 461, 485, 496 VII., 462 VIII., 465, 499-507, 510, 511 IX., 540 X., 600, 647, 678, 679, 705, 707, 708 King of Lothringia, 293 Kings of Navarre — II. (the Bad), 451-3, 467 III., 467 Kings of Sicily and Naples — I. (Charles of Anjou), 373, 384, 386-8, 390-5, 428, 440, 492 II., 393-5 Kings of Spain — I. {see V., emperor) II., 586, 601 III. (Don Carlos), 624, 625, 630 IV., 687-9 Kings of Sweden — X., 614 XL, 614 XII., 614-20, 623 XIV. See Bernadotte — 60n of Charles the Great, 292 Charles, archduke of Austria, 662, 691 — of Blois, 436 — of Calabria, 448, 488 — of Durazzo (I.), 482, 484 ; (II.) 484 — d'Espagne, 451 — of France, duke of Berri, Normandy, or Guienne, 506 — of Valois, 394, 395, 435, 442 — Albert, king of Sardinia, 705, 713 — Emmanuel (IV.), king of Sardinia, 662 — Louis, elector palatine, 564, 588 — Martel, mayor of the palace, 272, 287 — — of Naples, 445, 492 — — — son of Joanna I., 482 Charlotte, Princess, 708 Charon of Thebes, 113, 114 Chasse, General, 708 Chatham, John Pitt, second earl, 692 — William Pitt, first earl, 624, 625, 62S 630, 631, 635-40, 642, 644 Chatillon family, 539 Chauvelin, Marquis de, 667 Chefru, 7, 8 Ghent, 5 Cheops, 7, 10, 13 Chesterfield, fourth earl of, 621 Chian, 16 Childebert, king of the Franks (I. and II.), 264 Childeric, father of Clovis, 261 — II., 272 Chilperic I., king of the Franks, 264 Chlodio, 261 Chlodomer, king of the Franks, 264 Chlodwig. See Clovis Chlopicki, Joseph, 708 Chlothar, king of the Franks (I. and II.), 264 Chosroes I., king of Persia, 259 — II., 274 Christian III., king of Denmark 516 — rV., 560, 561 — V., 616 — IX., 743 Christina, queen of Sweden, 562, 614 Chrysoloras, Manuel, 476 Cibo, Franceschetto, 502 Cicero, M. Tullius, 196-7, 200, 203, 210, 211 Cid, the, 401 Cimber, L. Tillius, 202 Cimon, son of Miltiades, 94-9, 102, 103 Cinna, L. Cornelius, 192, 196 Cinq Mars, Marquis of, 574 Civilis, Claudius, 222 Clairfait, 659 Clarence, George, duke of, 463, 464 — Lionel, 457 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, earl of, 594, 595 Claudius Appius (Caecus), 153 — — (Caudex), 158 — — (Pulcher), 187 — I., Roman emperor, 208, 219-21 — II., Roman emperor, 233 Claypole, Lady, 582 Clearchus, 109 Cleisthenes, 82-4 Clement (pope) III., 364 ; IV., 373, 379, 387, 389-92, 427 ; V., 441, 449 ; VI., 450, 482, 483 ; VII. (anti-pope), 454, 469, 470, 475 ; VII. (pope), 503. 519, 520 INDEX OF PERSONS 773 Clement, James, 544 Clementina, daughter of Rudolf I., emperor, 444 Clementine, wife of Louis X., 442 Cleombrotus, regent of Sparta, 90, 92 — I., king of Spaita, 115, 116 Cleomenes II., king of Sparta, 177 Cleon, 106 Cleopatra, 168, 200, 211-3 Clerfay, Comte de. See Clairfait Clermont-Tonnerre, Count, 649 Clifford, Lord, 433 — of Chudleigh, first lord, 595-7 Clitus, 106, 170 Clive, Robert, Lord, 636, 637 Clodius (P.), Pulcher, 197-9 Clothikle, wife of Clovis, 262 Clovis, king of the Franks, 261-3, 265, 279 Cnut. See Canute Cobbett, William, 709 Coburg (Saxe-Coburg Saalfeld), Prince Fred- eric Josias of, 659 Coelestine III. (pope), 364 — V. (pope), 394 Coke, Sir Edward, 567 Colbert, J. B., 585 Coligny, Gaspard de, Admiral, 539, 541, 542 Colonna, family the, 394 — John, Cardinal, 378 — Stephen, 483 Columba, St., 271 Commines, Philip de, 505 Commodus, Roman emperor, 228, 229 Comyn, John, the Red, 431, 432 Concini. See. d'Ancre, Marshal Conde, Prince of, Henry II., 573, 575 — — Joseph Louis, 678, 679 — — Louis I., 539-41 — — — II. (le Grand Cond<5), 576, 577, 586-8 Condorcet, Marquis de, 652 Conon, 107, 109, 110 Conrad I., emperor, 301, 319 — II., emperor, 312, 341 — III., emperor, 347, 348 — IV., emperor, 370, 374, 375, 379, 380, 382, 383 — son of Frederick of Antioch, 390 — of Burgundy, 327 — (the Red) of Lorraine, 324, 328, 329 — Shortpole, Count, 323 Conradin, 383-6, 390-3 Constance of Aragon, wife of Frederick II., emperor, 365, 367, 491 — of Castile, wife of John of Gaunt, 456, 467 — of Sicily, wife of Henry VI., emperor, 318, 360, 362, 364, 365 — — daughter of Manfred, 386, 393 Constans, emperor, son of Constantine the Great, 244 Constant, Benjamin, 700 Constantia, daughter of Constantine, 244 Constantine, emperor — — I. (the Great), 234, 236-43, 344 — II., 244 — ■ V. (Copronymus), 281 — VI. (Porphyrogenitus), 281, 282 — XII. Palaeologus), 498 Constantine, usurper in Britain, 250 — grand duke of Russia, brother of Nicholas I., 706 — — — — son of Nicholas I., 708 Constantius I., Chloras, Caesar, 235 — II., emperor, 244 — III., emperor, 251, 252 Conti, Armand, Prince of, 576, 577 Conway, General, 639 Cook, Captain, 640 Cope, Sir John, 636 Corday, Charlotte, 655 Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, 186 Cornwallis, Charles, first marquis, 641 — Sir William, admiral, 681 Cotta, M. Aurelius, 195 Coverdale, Miles, 529 Cranmer, Thomas, 528, 533 Crassus, M. Licinius (Dives), 194, 196-9, 204 Craterus, 166, 172-5 Crescentius I., 333, 334 — II. (John), 336, 337 Crispus, son of Constantine, 242 Critias, 108 Critolaus, 183 Croesus, king of Lydia, 75, 80, 126 Crompton, Samuel, 645 Cromwell, Henry, 582 — Oliver, 570, 571, 577,-82 — Richard, 582 — Thomas, 529, 530, 578 Cumberland, William Augustus, duke of, 636 Cunigunda, wife of Henry II., emperor, 341 Curatii, the, 133 Curie, Hippolitus, 552 Curzon, George, Viscount, 757 Cusanus, Cardinal, 480 , Cyaxares, 69, 75 Cypselus, 133 Cyrus the Great, 68-71, 73-5, 80 — the Younger, 108, 109 Czartoryski, Prince Adam George, 708 Dachytxides, 109 Dagobert, king of the Franks, 264 Damasus, pope, 246 Damoclides, 113 Damonides, 98 Danby, Sir Thomas Osborne, earl of (mar- quis of Carmarthen, duke of Leeds), 594, 597, 607 Dandolo, Henry, doge of Venice, 362, 363, 489 Dante, 487, 503 Danton, G. J., 652-4, 656 Darboy, Archbishop, 754 Darius I. (Hystaspes), king of Persia, 70, 71, 73-6, 82, 84 — son of Xerxes, 100 — III., Codomannus, 166-9 Darnley, Henry, Lord, 548 Datis, 86, 87 Dattus, 315 Daun, Field-Marshal, 604, 630, 631 David, king of Israel, 54 — I., king of Scotland, 408, 409 — (Bruce), king of Scotland, 435, 436 — earl of Huntingdon, 430 774 A GENERAL HISTORY Davidovitch, Paul von, 660 Davidson (Davison), William, 553 Davis, Jefferson, Confederate president, 733, 741 Davout, Marshal, 680, 684, 695 Deborah, prophetess, 53 Decazes, Elie, due, 705 Decius, Roman emperor, 233 Deinon, 116 Deioces, 69, 75 Demaratus, of Corinth, 133 — king of Sparta, 88 Demetrius (Poliorcetes), king of Macedon, 175, 176 — II., king of Macedon, 177 — son of Philip III. (V.) of Macedon, 183 — Phalereus, 175 De Meza, C. J., 743 Demophron, 114 Demosthenes, Athenian general. 106, 107 — orator, 123, 126-9, 165, 175 Dermot, king of Leinster, 413 Derwentwater, James, third earl of, 623 Desaix, L. G. A., 673, 674 Desideria, wife of Charlemagne, 284 Desiderius, king of the Lombards, 284 Desmond, fifteenth earl of, 551 Desmoulins, Benet-Camille, 649. 652, 656 Dessau (Anhalt-), Leopold of, 604, 627 — Moritz of, 628 Devonshire, first duke of, 600 — fourth duke of, 637 De Wet, General, 762, 763 Diadumenianus, emperor, 231 Diaphantos, 120 Diebitsch, Comte de, 694, Diniz, king of Portugal, 467 Diocletian, emperor, 228, 234-41 Dionysius of Syracuse I., 157 — — II., 118, 157 Dispenser, Hugh, 433 Disraeli. See Beaconsfield Dolgoruki family, 621 Domitian, emperor, 207-10, 219, 221, 223-5 Donati family, the, 487, 488 — Corso, 487, 488 Doria family, the, 486 — Andrew, 520 Dorset, Henry Grey, marquis of, 532 — Frances, marchioness of, 532 Douay, Abel, 749 Douglas, Archibald, fourth earl of, 459 — James, 433 — Regent, 434 — S. A., 732 — Williain, 431 — — of Liddesdale 434 Drake, Sir Francis, 553-5 Drogo of Haute ville, 316 Drusus, M. Livms, consul, 187 — — — Tribune, 191 — Nero Claudius, 214, 215 — ■ son of Germanicus, 218, 219 Dubourg, Anne, 539 Duclos, Roger, 665 Dudley, Edmund, 466 — Lord Guilford, 532 Dufferin and Ava, marquess of, 757 Dufour, General, 714 Duilius, Gaius, 158 Dumouriez, C. F., 653, 667 Duncan I., king of Scotland, 314 Duncan, A. (earl of Camperdown), 668 Dundas, Henry (viscount Melville), 666, 667 Dundee, John Graham, Viscount, 608 Dungi, 24 Dunstan, St., 309, 310, 312 Dupleix. Joseph, 636 Dupont, Comte Pierre, 688, 690 Duquesne, Marquis, 636 Duroc, G. C. M., 687 EAJiNATUM, 21 Eberhard, duke of Franconia, 319, 322, 323 — bishop of Constance, 390 Eck, John, 518 Eckhard, margrave of Meissen, 337, 340 — III., margrave of Meissen, 341 — of Thuringia, 334, 335 Edgar, king of England, 309, 310 — Aetheling, 406 Edgitha, wife of Edward the Confessor, 313 Edgiva, wife of Charles the Simple, 301, 308 Edico II., 298 Edith, wife of Otto I., 308, 331 Edmund (I.), king of England, 309 — Ironside, 311, 312, 406 — (St.), king of East Anglia, 306, 312 Edred, king of England, 309 Edric (Streona). of Mercia, 311 Edward the Elder, king of Wessex, 307, 308 — — Confessor, king of England, 313-5, 406 — king of England : I., 394, 397, 427-32, 441, 442 ; II., 431-3, 442 ; III., 433-8, 450, 451, 471 ; IV., 463, 464, 506, 507 ; V., 463, 464 ; VI., 529-32 ; VII., 763, 765 — the Black Prince, 436-8, 452, 453 Edwy, king of England, 309 — son of Ethelred II., 312 Egbert, king of Wessex, 305 Egeria, 132 Egerton, Sir Thos. (Lord Ellesmere), 556 Eginhard, 290, 291 Egmont, Lamoral, count of, 535, 536 Egremont, second earl of, 637, 638 Ehud, 53 Eigil, 308 Elagabalus, 231, 232, 234 Elah, king of Israel, 58 Eldon, first earl of, 687 Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II., 409, 410, 414, 415, 417-9 — daughter of Henry II., 410 — of Provence, wife of Henry III., 425, 427, 428 — sister of Henry III., 425 — mother of Ferdinand I. of Aragon, 467 — Guzman, mother of Pedro the Cruel, 467 Eleanore, daughter of Charles II. of Naples, 395 Elgin, ninth earl of, 757. Eli, 53 Eliakim. See Jehoiakim Elijah, 59-61 Eliot. Sir John, 567, 568 Elishah, 61, 62 INDEX OF PERSONS 775 Elizabeth, wife of Albert I., emperor, 446 — — Conrad IV., emperor, 383, 385 — — Charles IV., emperor, 484 — daughter of Charles IV., emperor, 471 — wife of Wenzel II. of Bohemia, 446 — (Stuart), queen of Bohemia, 559 — (Tudor), queen of England, 530, 532, 541, 542, 545-56 — (Woodville), queen of England, wife of Edward IV., 463 — (of York), queen of England, wife of Henry VII., 464, 466, 507 — sister of Edward IV., 464 — of France, Princess, 655 — czarina of Russia, 621, 630, 631 — queen of Spain, wife of Philip V., 624, 625 — landgravine of Thuringia, 369 Emma of Normandy, queen of England, 310-3 Emmeran, of Poitou, 271, 272 Emmerich, king of Hungary, 491 Emmet, Thomas, 666 Empson, Sir Richard, 466 Engelburga, wife of Boso, 296 d'Enghien, Due, 674, 678, 679 Enzio, son of Frederick II., 376-8, 381, 382 — son of Manfred, 390 Epaminondas, 113-20 Ephialtes, 98, 99 Epictetus, 227 Eric, king of Northumbria, 312 ■ — king of Norway, 399 — king of Sweden, 303 — the Victorious, 303 Erlach, Rudolf of, 472 Erskine, Thomas, Lord, 684 Ertughrul, 494 Esarhaddon III., 48, 49 Espe, Walter, 409 Essex, Robert Devereux, second earl of. 555 d'Estreys, Gabrielle, 544 Eudamidas, 112, 113 Eudoxia (Athenais), wife of Theodosius II., 253 ■ — daughter of Theodosius II., 252, 255 Eugenie, Empress, 751 Eugenius, (pope) : III., 351 ; IV., 479-81, 497, 500 Eumenes of Pergamum, 175, 178, 179, 183, 184 Euric, king of the Visigoths, 255, 279 Eurybiades, 89 Eurydice, 118, 122 Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, 242 Eustace, count of Boulogne, 408 — brother of Godfrey of Lorraine, 345 — son of Stephen, 410 — the Monk, 424 Eutharic, 258 Eutropius, historian, 246 — chamberlain to Arcadius, 249 Eyck, John van, 555 Ezekiel, 67 Ezra, 68 Ezzelino da Romano, 374, 375, 377, 378, 383, 385, 386 Fabids Miximus, Qo. (Rullus), 154 — — — (Cunctator), 160-2 Fabricius (Bohemian regent), 558 Faggiuola, TJ. della, 447 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 571, 583 Faliero, Marino, doge of Venice, 489, 662 Faramund, 261 Farel, William, 525 Farragut, B. G., 735 Fatima, 277, 278 Favre, Jules, 754 Felix V., anti-pope, 481 Felton, John, 550 Feodor, czar of Russia, 614, 615 Ferdinand I., emperor, 512, 515, 522-5 — II., emperor, 557-64 — III., emperor, 561, 564, 587 — emperor of Austria, 716, 720, 721 — king of Aragon : I., 467 ; II. (V. of Spain) — king of Castile, III., 403 — king of Naples and Sicily, I. (IV.), 662, 663, 705 — king of Spain : V., 466, 510 ; VII., 687-90, 705 Fernando, king of Portugal, 468 Ferrand of Portugal. See Flanders Ferrers, Alice, 438 Fesch, Cardinal, 682 Ffoliot, Gilbert, 414 Ficino, Marsilio, 501 Fieschi family, the, 486 — William, cardinal, 384 Fimbria, C. F., 192 Finch, Sir John, 568 Firmian, Leopold, archbishop of Salzburg, 627 Fisher, John, bishop of Rochester, 529 Fitzgerald, James Fitzmaurice, 551 — Maurice, 413 Fitzgilbert, Robert. See Strongbow Fitzmaurice (Fitzgerald), James. See Fitz- gerald Fitzpeter, Geoffrey, 421 Fitzstephen, Robert, 412 Fitzurse, Richard, 412 Flaccus, L. Valerius, 192 Flambard, Ralph, 405, 406 Flamininus, T. Quinctius, 181-3 Flaminius, C, 160 Flanders, Counts of — Baldwin FV., 340 ; Baldwin V., 315 — (Latin emperor), 362, 363 Ferrand of Portugal, 366, 421 Philip of Alsace, 357 Florida Blanca, count of, 690 Formosus, pope, 300 Fortebraccio, Niccolo, 479 Foscau, Francesco, doge of Venice, 490 Fouche, Joseph, 656, 672, 690, 703 Fox, Charles James, 642-4, 666, 673, 677, 684 Francis I. (of Lorraine), emperor, 629, 633 — II. (I. of Austria), emperor, 653, 659, 670, 683 — Joseph, emperor of Austria, 721, 729, 742, 746 — I., king of France, 515-20, 527, 528, 539. 540 776 A GENERAL HISTORY Francis II., king of France, 539, 540, 545 Francis de Sales, St., 535 Frangipani, the, 369, 377, 382, 384 — John, 391, 394 Franklin, Benjamin, 642 — W. B., 736 Fredegunde, 264 Frederick, emperor (Holy Roman), I. (Bar- barossa), 318, 348-60, 409 ; II., 364-82, 384, 398, 420, 425, 472, 485, 487, 491 ; III., 481, 504-6, 509, 510 — III., German emperor, 746, 749, 750 — IV., king of Denmark, 616, 617, 623 — VII., king of Denmark, 743 — I., king of Prussia, 617, 627 — II. (the Great), king of Prussia, 586, 624, 626, 628-34, 684, 685 — (of Aragon), king of Sicily, 394, 395, 447, 448 — king of Sweden, 620 — elector of Palatine : III., 526 ; IV., 557 ; V., 558-60, 566 — of Antioch, duke, 390 — of Austria (Bamberg), 373, 374, 377 — — (titular), 390-2, 394 — — (Hapsburg), the Fair, 445, 446, 448, 449 — — — (of the Tyrol), 476-8 — son of Frederick Barbarossa, 360 — — Henry (VII.), 383 — — Manfred, 390 — — William of Holland, 383 — archbishop of Mainz, 323, 328 — prince of Wales, 625 — William, king of Prussia, I., 627, 628 ; II. 646; III., 662, 682, 684-6, 696: IV., 716, 742 Fregoso family, the, 487 Freron, L. S., 656 Frescobaldi, the, 398, 488 Fridigern, 248 Fronto, 227 Frundsberg, Georg von, 519 Fugger family, the, 508, 509, 512 Fulco, archbishop of Rheims, 298, 299 Fulk (V.) of Anjou, king of Jerusalem, 407 — of Neuilly, 362 Fulvia, wife of Mark Antony, 212 Fulvius, M., Nobilior, 183 Gad, 56 Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, 252, 254, 255, 259 Gaius (Caligula), emperor, 218-20 — son of Agrippa, 215, 216 Galba,, emperor, 219, 221, 222 Galerius, emperor, 235 Gallas, Count Matthias, 563 Gallienus, emperor, 233 Gallus, emperor, 233 — Cestius, 222 — St., 271 Gantheaume, Count H. J. A., 681 Gardiner, Stephen, bishop of Winchester, 530, 532 Garibald, king of the Bavarians, 263 Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 727, 728, 746-8, 752 Gaston of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII., 574, 575 Gauda, 189 Gaudin, M. M. C, 672 Gaveston, Piers, 432, 433 Gebhard of Lorraine, 300 Geilo, 285, 286 Geisa II., king of Hungary, 490 — III., king of Hungary, 491 Gelimer, king of the Vandals, 259 Gelon of Syracuse, 88, 157 Genghis Khan, 395, 494, 496 Geoffrey (Plantagenet), of Anjou, 407, 408, 410 — of Brittany, 414, 415, 417, 419 — archbishop of York, 416, 417 George, king of England — I., 606, 613, 620-2, 625 II.. 622, 625, 631, 635, 637 III., 622, 631, 634, 637, 641-3, 651, 666, 669, 675, 710 IV., 702, 709-11 — of Denmark, Prince, 611 — Podiebrad, king of Bohemia, 504 — David Lloyd, 765 Gerard, Balthasar, 538 — Marshal, 708 Gerbert. See Sylvester II. Germanicus, 217, 218 Gero, 325 Gerson, Jean, 475-7 Gertrude of Meran, 491 Geta, brother of Caracalla, 230 Gideon, 53 Gifford, Gilbert, 552 Gimilsin, 24 Ginkel, earl of Athlone, 609 Gisela, daughter of Charles the Simple, 306 Giselbert, duke of Lorraine, 320, 322, 323 Giulay, General, 728 Glabrio, M. Acilius, 182 Gladstone, W. E., 712, 755-9, 765 — Viscount, 763 Glaucia, C. Servilms, 190 Glendower, Owen 458, 459 Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, earl of, 427, 428 Godegisel, king of Burgundy, 262 Godemar, king of Burgundy, 262 Goderich, Viscount, 707, 711 Godfrey de Bouillon, 345, 346 Godolphin, first earl of, 607, 611, 612 Godoy, prince of the peace, 687-9 Godwin, earl of Wessex, 313, 314 Goethe, J. W. von, 684 Gohier, L. J., 664 Gordian, emperor, 232 Gordios, 166 Gordon, General, 758-60 Gorgey, 721 Gorgias, 105 Gorgidas, 114, 115 Gorm the Old, king of Denmark, 303, 321 Gorz, Baron, 619, 620 Gottfried the Viking, 297 Goudimel, 525 Gracchus, G. Senrpronius, 187, 190 — Tiberius Sempronius : I., 161 ; II., 185 ; III., 186, 187 Grafton, second duke of, 639, 640 Graham, Sir Gerald, 696 Gramont, Due de. 749 INDEX OF PERSONS m Grant, Ulysses S., 734, 735, 737-41 Granvella, Cardinal, 535 — Sieur de, 516, 535 Granville, John Carteret, Earl, 626, 635, 636, 638 — ■ G. G. Leveson-Gower, second earl, 758 Grasse, Comte de, 642 Gratian, emperor, 246-8 Grattan, Henry, 642 Greenwood, John, 555 Gregoire, Bishop, 649 Gregory (pope) : I., 271 ; II., 273 ; III., 273 ; V., 336, 337 ; VII., 317, 342, 344, 345, 364, 376, 490, 503 ; IX., 368-72, 374, 376-8, 425 ; X., 392, 428 ; XI., 471, 475, 484 ; XII., 475, 476, 484 ; XIII., 550 Grenville, George, 637-9 — Sir John, 583 — Sir Richard, 555 — Lord, 638, 666, 669, 670, 684 Grey, Lady Jane, 532 — John de, bishop of Norwich, 420 — Sir Richard, 463 — Sir Thomas, 460 — second earl, 684, 711 — de Ruthyn, Lord, 458 Griffith, king of North Wales, 313 Grimaldi, the, 486 Grindal, Archbishop, 550 Grosstete, Bishop, 425, 426 Grouchy, Marshal, 700 Gualo, Cardinal, 423, 424 Guesclin, Constable du, 437, 452, 453, 467 Guido of Biandrate, 353 — Spoleto, emperor, 298 — Tuscany, 302 Guise family, the, 539, 540 — Charles, cardinal of Lorraine, 539-41, 543, 550 — Francis, duke of, 539, 541 — Henry, duke of, 541, 543 — Mary of, 533, 539, 546 — Ren6 II., duke of Lorraine, 539 Guizot, F.-P.-G., 715 Gundebald, king of Burgundy, 262 Gundikar, king of Burgundy, 254 Gunhild, 311 — daughter of Canute, 312 Giinther of Schwarzenburg, 469 Gustavus I. (Vasa), king of Sweden, 516 — (Adolphus) II., 561-3, 614 — III., 646 Guthrum (Aethelstan), Danish king, 306, 307 Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, 360, 361 Gudea, 20 Gylippus, 107 Hadrian, emperor, 205, 225-8 — pope : I., 282, 293 ; III., 297 ; IV., 351, 352, 355, 410 ; VI., 519 Hadwisa of Gloucester, wife of John of Eng- land, 419 Haeston, 308 Hagenbach, Peter von, 506 Halfdan the Black, 303 Halifax, first marquis, 598, 599, 607 — first earl, 622 — second earl, 638 — — — See Montagu Hallam, Robert, bishop of Salisbury, 476 Halleck, H. W., 736 Hamilcar, son of Mago, 92 — Barca, 158, 159 Hamilton, first duke of, 571 Hammurabi, 25, 28-30, 51 Hampden, John, 569, 570 Hamza, 275 Hancock, W. S., 739 Hannibal, 159-63, 181 Hannibalianus, 244 Hanno (Anno), of Cologne, 341 Harcourt, Sir W. V., 765 Hardenberg, Prince of, 659 Hardicanute, king of England, 313 Hardy, Thomas, 667 Hargreaves, James, 640, 645 Harmodius, 82, 83, 169 Harold I., king of England, 313 — II., king of England, 313-5 — Danish king, 305 — Bluetooth, king of Denmark, 303, 309, 326, 335 — Hardrada, king of Norway, 314 — Harfager, king of Norway, 303 — Hilderand, 303 — son of Sven Forkbeard, 311 Harpalus, 172 Harrington, first earl of, 636 Harris, Sir James (first earl of Malmesbury), 646 Harrowby, first earl of, 678, 711 Hartmann, son .of Rudolf I., emperor, 444 Hasdrubal, son of Giskon, 163 — son-in-law of Hamilcar, 159 — brother of Hannibal, 159, 162 — brother of Massinissa, 184 Haselrig, Sir Arthur, 570, 582 Hasting, 304 Hastings, John (Scottish claimant), 430 — Lord, 463 Hatheburg, 322 Hatto of Mainz, 299, 300 Haugwitz, Count von, 682 Havelock, Sir Henry, 726 Hawkins, John, 554 Hawley, Henry, 636 Haynau, Baron J. J. von, 721 Hazael, 47 Hebert, J. R., 653, 655, 656 Hecataeus, 82 Hedwig, daughter of Louts the Great, 493 — of Swabia, 332 Hegelochus, 168 Heinsius, Anton, 602, 607, 611 Helena, mother of Constantine, 235, 344 — daughter of Constantine, 246 — wife of Manfred, 390, 391 Helmichis, 263 Hengist, 253 Henrietta, duchess of Orleans, 596 — Maria, wife of Charles I., 566, 574 Henry I. (the Fowler), 319-22 — Emperor : II., 340, 341 ; III., 316, 341 ; IV., 341, 342, 345, 485 ; V., 342, 347 VI., 318, 360, 362, 364, 446-9, 486 — (VII.), son of Frederick II., 366, 373-5, 383 — son of Manfred, 390 77 8 A GENERAL HISTORY Henry, son of Albert I., 449 — Raspe, anti-king, 380 — of Carinthia, 440, 470 — the Palsgrave, 363 — the Lion, See Bavaria — king of Castille : II. (of Trastamare), 437, 452, 453, 467 ; III., 467 ; IV., 467 — king of England ; I., 405-8. 421 ; II., 359, 397, 409-16 ; III., 368, 375, 383, 385, 423-8, 440,; IV., 456-60 ; V., 459-61 ; VI., 461-3, 485 ; VII., 464-6 ; VIII., 466, 515, 516, 519, 526-30, 546 — son of Henry II., 412, 414, 415 — of Almaine, 427 — bishop of Winchester, 408-10 — son of David of Scotland, 409 — king of France : II., 520, 523. 539 ; III., 538, 541-4, 566 ; IV.. 538-45, 592 — the Navigator, Prince, 468 Hephaestus, 165, 172, 173 Heraclitus, 82 Heraclius I., emperor, 275, 277, 281 — (eunuch), 255 Hereford, Humphrey Bohun, third earl of, 431 — — — fourth earl of, 433 Herihor, 42 Hermann the Billing, 324 — archbishop of Cologne, 299 — duke of Swabia, 322, 340 — of Salza, 374, 376 Hermanrich. See Amanrich Herod Agrippa, 220 Herodes Atticus, 227 Herodian, historian Herodotus, 27, 38, 40, 42, 44, 70, 73 Hezekiah, king of Judah, 43, 48, 65, 66 Hiempsal, 187, 188 Hiero II., king of Syracuse, 157, 158, 161 Hildebald, bishop of Worms, 337 Hildebrand. See Gregory VII. Ilildegarde, wife of Charlemagne, 293 Hilderic, king of the Vandals, 259 Hilperic, king of Burgundy, 262 Hincmar of Reims, 296, 297 Hipparchus, son of Charmos, 87 — ■ — Pisistratus, 82 Hippias, 81, 82, 84 Hippocrates, 122 Hipponax, 82 Hiram, king of Tyre, 55, 56 Hirtius, A., 210 Hisham III., 400 Histiaeus, 75, 85 Hoche, Lazare, 660 Hofer, Andreas, 691 Hohenlohe, Frederick Louis, Prince von, 684 Hohenzollern (-Sigmaringen) — Anton, prince of, 742 Leopold, prince of, 748 — See Brandenburg Hoiko of Saxony, 336 Holies, Denzil (Lord), 570 Holstein Gottorp, duke of — Charles Frederick, 620 Frederick IV., 616, 617 Honorius, emperor, 249-52 — son of Constantius, 251, 252 III., pope, 367, 368, 424, 425 Honorius IV., pope, 394 Hood, Viscount, 667 — J. B., 740 Hooker, Joseph, 736-8 Hooper, John, bishop of Gloucester, 533 Hoorn, Count, 535, 536 Hophra. See Apries Hopton, Sir Ralph, 57o Horatii, the, 133 Horsa, 253 Hortense (Beauharnais), wife of Louis Bona- parte, 677, 682 Horus, 2-6, 9 Hosea, king of Israel, 48, 65 — prophet, 63, 64 Howard of Effingham, Charles, Lord, 554 — Richard, first earl, 667 — William, fifth viscount, 641 Howick. See Grey Hubert de Burgh, 419, 423-5 — Walter, 418, 419 Hugh the Great, duke of France, 301 — count of La Marche, 425 — (de Puiset), bishop of Durham, 417 Hugo, king of Italy, 302, 326, 327 — son of Waldrada, 297 Humbert. See Savoy Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, 461 of Hauteville, 316 Huni, 7 Hmmeric, 259 Hunyadi, John, 497, 498, 504 Huskisson, William, 711 Huss, John, 476-8, 518 Hussein, 278 Hiitten, Ulrich von, 518 Hyksos, the, 15, 16, 30, 39, 50, 51 Hyrcanus (Maccabaeus), 195 Hystaspes, 76 Ibisin, 24, 28 Ibnabed, 368 Ibrahim Pasha, 706, 707 Ida, wife of Lindolf, 327 Inarus, 101, 102 Ingeborg, wife of Philip Augustus, 439 Ingvar, 306, 307 Injaldrada, 303 Innocent (pope) : II., 318, 348 ; III., 362-7, 374, 403, 419-23, 439, 503 ; IV., 379, 380, 382-4, 425 ; VI., 469-71, 483 ; VII., 475, 484 ; VIII., 502 ; XL, 591 Iolaides, 120 Iolanthe, wife of Andrew II., 491 — wife of Frederick II., emperor, 367, 369, 370 Iphicrates, 110, 115, 123 Irene, empress, 281, 282 Isa, son of Bajezid I., 496 Isaac Angelus, emperor, 360, 363 Isabella (the Catholic), queen of Castile, 404, 466, 467, 510 — II., queen of Spain, 748 — "Archduke," 538 — of Angouleme, wife of John of England, 419 — of England, wife of Frederic II., 375, 379, 383, 425 INDEX OF PERSONS 779 Isabella of France, wife of Edward II., 431, 433, 434 — — wife of Richard II., 456, 459 — of Portugal, wife of Charles V., 528 Isaiah, 63-5 Isidore, St., 403 Ismenias, 113 Isocrates, 113 Ithin, 28 Ivan III., czar of Russia, 615 — VI., czar of Russia, 621 — brother of Peter II., 621 — Kalita, 303 — the Wild, 493 Jackson, " Stonewall," 735-7 Jacob, 50 Jacquetta of Luxembourg, 463 Jagello, king of Poland, 493 Jagellons, the, 615, 616 James I. (VI.), king of England, 549, 553, 655-7, 606 — II., 596-600, 602, 608-10 — (III.), the Old Pretender, 602, 611, 623 ■ — I., king of Scotland, 459 — IV., 466 — (of Aragon), king of Sicily, 394 — of Majorca, 482 Jameson, Sir Starr, 761 Jane (Seymour), queen of England, 529, 530 — Grey, Lady. See Grey Jansen, Cornelius, and the Jansenists,591,592 Jarislav of Russia, 493 Jason of Pherae, 115, 117, 125 Jechoniach. See Jehoiachin Jeffries, Judge, 599 Jehoash, king of Israel, 62 Jehoiachin, king of Judah, 67 Jehoiakim, king of Judah, 67 Jehoidah, 62, 63 Jehoram, king of Israel, 61 — — Judah, 59, 61 Jehosaphat, king of Judah, 58, 59, 61 Jehu, king of Israel, 47, 61, 62 Jellachich, ban of Croatia, 720 Jenkins, Captain, 626 Jeremiah, 67, 68 Jeroboam, I., king of Israel, 56, 57, 59 — II., king of Israel, 62 Jerome of Prague, 476, 477 Jervis, John (earl of St. Vincent), 668 Jezdegerd III., shah, 277 Jezebel, 58-62 Joan of Arc, 462 Joanna of Castile, 466, 511, 527 — daughter of Charles V. of France, 451 — daughter of Louis X., 442 — I., queen of Naples, 482-4 — II., queen of Naples, 484, 485 Joash, king of Israel, 62, 63 Johanna, wife of the Black Prince, 437 — — of David Bruce, 434 — — Philip IV. of France, 440 — — William the Good, of Sicily, 410 John (pope) : I., 257 ; VIII., 295-7 ; X., 302 ; XL, 302 ; XII., 329, 330 ; XIII., 330, 333 ; XrV, 334 ; XV., 336 ; XVI. anti-pope), see John of Calabria ; XXL, 392 ; XXII., 449, 450 ; XXIII., 476, 477 John V. (Palaeologus), emperor, 495, 496 — [VI.], colleague of Manuel II., 495, 496 — VII. (or VI.), colleague of Manuel II., 481, 497 — king of Aragon, I. and II., 467 — king of Bohemia, 448, 450, 451, 469 — king of Castile, I. and II., 467 — king of England, 366, 369, 415, 417-24, 439 — (II.), king of France, 436, 437, 451, 452, 505 — of Brienne, king of Jerusalem, 367, 368, 371 — II. (Casimir), king of Poland, 614, 616 — III. (Sobieski), king of Poland, 590, 616 — L, king of Portugal, 468 — VI., king of Portugal, 687, 705, 706 — of Austria, Don, 538, 590 — of Calabria, anti-pope, 336, 337 — of God, 534 — of Gorz, 471 — of Hapsburg, 446 — archbishop of Mainz, 474 — of Pomuk, 473 — of Procida, 393 — Henry of Moravia, 450, 471, 474 Johnston, Joseph, 733, 735, 739-41 Joseph (the patriarch), 50 — I., emperor, 603, 607 — II., emperor, 633, 634 — patriarch of Constantinople, 481 Josephine Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon I., 661, 664, 672, 677, 682, 692 Joshua, 52 Josiah, king of Judah, 44, 66, 67 Jost, margrave of Moravia, 474 Jotham, 63, 64 Joubert, B.-C, 660, 663 Jourdan, Marshal, 658, 660, 662, 680 Jovian, emperor, 245 Juarez, Mexican president, 747 Juba, king of Numidia, 201 Judith, wife of Aethelwulf, 306 — — — Louis the Pious, 293, 294 — mother of Barbarossa, 349 Jugurtha, 187-9 Julia, daughter of Agrippa, 215 — — — Augustus, 215 — — — Caesar, 197, 199 — Domna, 230, 231 — Maesa, 231 Julian, emperor, 244, 245 — Cardinal, 480, 497 Julianus, Didius, 229, 230 Julius (pope) : II., 503, 513 ; III., 523 — Nepos, emperor, 255, 256 Junot, Andoche, 687, 690 Justin (emperor) : I., 257, 258 ; II., 263, 274 Justina, wife of Valentinian I., 247, 248 Justinian the Great, 240, 253, 257-60, 262, 263 274 Jusuf ,' the Cid, 402 Juvenal, 219 Kaditah, wife of Mohammed, 275, 276 Kalid, 277 Kallimachus, 86 Kantakuzenos, John, 495 780 A GENERAL HISTORY Kara Mustapha, 589, 590 Karlmann, son of Charles Martel, 272, 273 — — Louis the German, 295-8 — — the Stammerer, 297 — See also Carloman Katharine, wife of Charles of Calabria, 448 — See Catherine Katte, Lieutenant, 628 Kaunitz, Prince von, 630, 633 Keith, Sir R. M., 646 — Viscount, 701 Kellermann, Marshal, 659, 680 Ken, Bishop, 599 Kenmure, sixth viscount, 623 Kephisodorus, 120 Kersobleptes, 127 Ket, Robert, 531 Kildare, eighth earl of, 466 Kilian, bishop of Wiirzburg, 271 Kirke, Colonel, 408 Kitchener, Viscount, 760, 762 763 Kleber, J. B., 658, 674 Kleist, E. F., Count, 695 Kleph, king of the Lombards, 263 Knox, John, 546, 547 Kolman, king of Hungary, 490 Kolokotrones, Theodoras, 706 Korsakov, Alexander, 663 Korybut, 478 Kossuth, Louis, 720-2 Kray, Baron von, 673 Kruger, Paul, 761-3 Kunemund, king of the Gepidae, 263 Kuropatkin, A. N., 764 La Chaise, Pere, 592 Ladislaus, St., king of Hungary. 490 — III., king of Hungary, 491 ' — IV., king of Hungary, 389, 491 49'? — V. (Postumus), 504 — VII., 509 — I., king of Naples, 476 — II., king of Naples, 484, 499 Laevinus, M. Valerius, 162 — See Lavinius Lafayette, Marquis de, 649, 650, 652, 708, Lafitte, Jacques, 708 La Harpe, F. C. de, 697 Lainez, lago, 534, 540 Lake, bishop of Chichester, 599 — first viscount, 668 Lally-Tollendal, Marquis de, 649 Lamachus, 107 La Marmora, A. P., 744, 746 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 715, 718 Lamballe, Princesse de, 647 Lancaster, Edmund Crouchback, earl of 383-5, 426, 430, 432 — John of Gaunt, duke of, 437 453-7 461,464,467,468 ' — Thomas, earl of, 432, 433 — James, 555 Lancia, Galvano, 391 Lando, Michele, 488 Lanfranc, Archbishop, 405 Langton, Stephen, 420, '421, 424 Lannes, Marshal, 680, 685, 690, 691 La B.enaudie, Seigneur de, 539, 540 Larevelliere-Lepeaux, L. M. de 656 Larochefoucauld, Due de. 649 Larochejaquelin, Marquis de, 656 Lasos, 82 Latimer, Bishop, 533 — Lord, 438 Latour-Maubourg, Marquis de 649 Laud, William, 567-71 Lauderdale, first duke of, 595, 597 Lawrence, Sir Henry, 726 — Sir John, 726 Lautrec, Vicomte de, 520 Lavinius (Laevinus), M. Valerius 155 Lazarus of Servia, 495 Leboeuf, marshal, 748, 749 Lebrun, C.-P., 666, 672 Lecoq, Robert, 451, 452 Ledru-Rollin, A. -A., 718 Lee, Robert E., 735-7, 739-41 Lefebvre, Marshal, 658, 660 Lefort, Francois, 615 Leicester, Robert Dudley, earl of, 538 553 Lenthall, William, 582 Lentulus, P. Cornelius, 196 Leo (pope) : I. (the Great), 225 ; III 290 293; IV., 305; VIII., 330; IX.."' 316 X., 303, 513, 517 ~8i em ?v°m : ^, 237 : , IIL (the Isa ™an), 281 , IV. (the Chazar), 281 Leonidas the Macedonian, 165 — king of Sparta, 90 Leonnatus, 174, 175 Leontiades, 113, 114 Leontinus, 253 Leopold (emperor) : I., 587, 590, 592 601 627 ; II., 634, 652, 653 — I., king of the Belgians, 708 of Austria, half-brother of Conrad III 347 — (VI.), captor of Richard I., 418 — — VII., 367 — — son of Albert I., 445, 448-9 Leotychides, 95 Leovigild, king of the Visigoths 279 Lepidus, M. Aemilius, 211, 212 Lestocq, Armand, 621 Letourneur, C. L. F. H, 656 Lewenhaupt, Adam, 618 L'Hopital, Michel de, 541 Libanius, 245 Licinius, emperor, 236 — Calvus, C. (Stolo), 139 — — P., 146 Lincoln, Abraham, American president 73° 733, 735-7, 740, 741 Lincoln, Hugh, earl of, 430 — Mrs., 741 Liudolf, son of Otto I., 324 327-9 Liutbold, Bishop, 299 Liutgard, daughter of Otto 1 , 324 329 Liverpool, second earl of, 692, 696, 699 710 Livia Drusilla, wife of Augustus, 215 216 Livius (historian), 135 — Marcus (priest;, 154 — — Salinator, 162 Lloyd, bishop of St. Asaph, 599 Lobkowitz, Prince von, 590 Lollius, M., 216 Longchamp, William of, 417, 418 INDEX OF PERSONS 781 Longueville, Anne, duchess of, 576 — Henry II., duke of, 576 Longus, Tiberius Sempronius, 160 Lorraine, Charles, duke of, 591 — Francis, duke of. See Francis, emperor Lothar I., emperor, 293-5, 330 — II., emperor, 318, 347 — II., of Lotharingia, 295 — IV., of France, 333, 335 — of Italy, 327 Louis I., the Pious, emperor, 286, 292-5 — II., emperor, 295 — the Bavarian, emperor, 435, 448-50, 469, 470, 472 — of Anjou : I., 484 ; II., 484 ; III., 484, 485 (king of Naples) — king of France : II. (the Stammerer), 296, 297 ; III., 297 ; IV., (d'Outremer), 301, 308, 323, 333 ; VI., 407 ; VII., 348, 409, 412, 414, 415, 439 ; VIIL, 368, 419, 422-4, 439 ; IX., 371, 383, 386, 387, 395, 426, 440, 544 ; X., 441, 442 ; XL, 506, 507 ; XII., 532 ; XIIL, 567, 573-5 ; XIV., 441, 575-7, 584-93, 595-7, 599-607, 610, 611, 613, 619, 624, 627, 647, 651, 672 ; XV., 441, 585, 607, 624, 625, 647 ; XVI., 585, 647-50, 652-6, 692, 703 ; XVIL, 653, 656 ; XVIIL, 647, 656, 698, 699, 701, 705, 707 — king of the East Franks — the German, 293, 297 the Younger, 295-7 the Child, 300 — the Great, king of Hungary, 483, 484, 492, 493 — the Dauphin (son of Louis XIV.), 610 — son of Boso, 298 — duke of Orleans, 459 — of Taranto, 482 — of Valois, 485 — Ferdinand, prince of Prussia, 684 — Philippe, king of the French, 649, 708, 714-6 Louisa Maria, wife of Charles IV. of Spain, 687-9 Louise, queen of Prussia, 686 Louvel, L. P., 705 Louvois, Marquis de, 585, 588, 589, 592 Lowe, Sir Hudson, 701 Loyola, Ignatius, 533, 534 Lucan, third earl of, 724 Lucius, Caesar, son of Agrippa, 215, 216 Lucullus, L. Licinius, 195 Lugulzagglsi, 21 Lullus of Mainz, 273 Luther, Martin, 516-8, 520, 521, 527 Luxembourg, Marshal, 586, 587, 593 Luynes, Constable, 573, 574 Lycophron of Pherae, 125 Lyndhurst, first baron, 711 Lyons, Richard, 438 Lysander, 107-9 Lysias, 113 Macbeth, king of Scotland, 314 Maccabees, the, 179, 180, 184, 185 McClellan, G. B., 734-6, 740 Macdonald, due de Tarente, 659, 662, 693, 695 MacDowell, Irvin, 733 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 501, 502 Mack, Baron Charles, 681 Macklin, Charles, 683 Macmahon, Marshal, 728, 749-51, 753, 754 Macrinus, emperor, 231 Maecenas, C. Cilnias, 215 Mago, brother of Hannibal, 159, 162, 163 Mahmoud, 760 — II., sultan, 706, 707 Mahomet Ali, of the Carnatic, 636 — (Khedive), 706, 707 Maillard, Stanislas, 653 Maillart, Jean, 452 Maine, Charles, count of, 484 Maintenon, Madame de, 592 Majorian, emperor, 255 Makkab, Judas. See Maccabees — Mattathias. See Maccabees Malcolm III., king of Scotland, 406 Mamaea, Julia, 231, 232 Manasseh, 66 — archbishop of Milan, 328 Mancini, Maria, 577 — Olympia, 577 Mandane, 75 Manetho, 11, 12, 15, 41 Manfred, son of Frederic II., 381-8, 393, 487 Manin, Daniel, doge of Venice, 661 Mansfeldt, Count Ernst of, 558, 559, 566 Manuel (emperor) : I. (Comnenus), 318 — — II. (Palaeologus), 458, 495-7 Mar, twenty-second (or sixth) earl of, 623 Marat, J. P., 652-4 Marbod, 218 Marceau, F. S. de G., 658 Marcel, Stephen, 451, 452 Marcella, niece of Augustus, 215 Marcellus, M. Claudius, consul, 159, 161, 162 — — nephew of Augustus, 215 Marchand, J. B., 760 Marcia, mistress of Commodus, 229 Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 225, 228 Mardonius, 85-7, 92, 93 Maret, H. B., 672 Margaret of Anjou, wife of Henry VI., 461-3, 485, 507 — Austria, wife of Henry (VII.), 375 — — ■ ■ — • daughter of Maximilian, 507 — Burgundy, wife of Louis X., 442 — France, wife of Edward I., 431 — — daughter of Louis VII., 412 — Navarre, sister of Francis I., 548 — the Maid of Norway, 430 — of Scotland, wife of Malcolm III., 406 — (Tudor), wife of James IV., 466, 548, 565 — of Valois, wife of Henry IV., 542, 544 — wife of Alberic of Romano, 385 — Maultasch, 450, 470, 471 — Theresa, wife of Leopold I., 601 Maria of Durazzo, 482 — sister of Ladislaus IV., 492 — wife of Sigismund, 492 — Caroline, queen of Naples, 662, 680 — da Gloria, queen of Portugal, 706 — Theresa, wife of Louis XIV., 577, 601 — — empress, 625, 626, 628, 630, 632, 633, 647 782 A GENERAL HISTORY Marie Antoinette, queen of France, 647, 648, 653, 655, 692 Marie Leszczynska, queen of France, 624-5 Marie Louise, wife of Napoleon I., 692, 698, 703 Marinus, pope, 297 Marius, Gaius, 188-92 Marlborough, first duke of, 602-5, 611-3, 617 — Sarah, duchess of, 605, 613 Marmont, Marshal, 696, 697, 699 Marozia, 302, 326, 330 Marshall, Gilbert, fourth earl of Pembroke, 425 ■ — Richard, third earl of Pembroke, 425 — William, first ear! of Pembroke, 424, 425 Martianus, 231 Martin, St., 288 Martin, king of Aragon, 467 — (pope) : IV., 392, 393 ; V., 478, 479 Martinitz, Jaroslav von, 558 Martyr, Peter, 540 Mary, duchess of Burgundy, 466 — Stuart, queen of Scots, 533, 539, 540, 545—553 — (I.) Tudor, queen of England, 528, 530, 532, 533, 545 — (Tudor), queen of France and duchess of Suffolk, 530, 532 — II., queen of England, 597, 600, 607-9 Massena, Marshal, 658, 662, 663, 680, 696 Massey, John, dean of Christ Church, 599 Massinissa, 163, 164, 184, 187 Massiva, 188 Mataniah. See Zedekiah Mathilda, wife of Henry the Fowler, 322 — empress, wife of Henry V., 407-9 — queen of England, wife of William I., 315 — — — Henry I, 406, 407 — wife of Henry the Lion, 410 — daughter of Otto I., 338 — of Tuscany, countess, 365, 376 Matthias, emperor, 557, 558 ■ — (Corvinus), king of Hungary, 504, 509 — of Austria, archduke, 537, 538 Mauleon, Savary de, 423 Maurice, emperor, 274 — of Nassau, 538 — of Saxony. See Saxony Mausolus of Caria, 123 Mavrocordato, Alessandro, 706 Maxentius, emperor, 235, 236 Maximian, emperor, 235 Maximilian I, emperor, 466, 506-13, 515, 518, 528 — II., emperor, 525, 537, 557 — (of Austria), emperor of Mexico, 747 Maximin I., emperor, 232 — II., emperor, 236 Maximus, Magnus Clemens, 248 Mayenne, Charles, duke of, 544 Mazarin, Cardinal, 575-7, 584, 585 Mazeppa, Ivan, 618 Meade, G. G., 737 Medici family, the, 488-500, 508, 509 — Bianca, 502 — Catherine, 520, 540-3, 550 — Cosimo, 488-501 Medici, Giovanni, 488, 499 — — See Leo X. — Giuliano (son of Lorenzo), 503 — (son of Pietro), 501, 502 — Lorenzo, son of Giovanni, 488-500 — — the Magnificent, 501-3 — Maddelena, 502 — Mary, wife of Henry IV, 544, 573, 574 — Pietro, son of Cosimo, 501 — — — - Lorenzo, 503 — Salvestro, 488 Medina Sidonia, seventh duke of, 538, 554 Medios, 109 Megabazus, 75, 76 Megacles, 87 Megobyzus, 102 Meinhard of Gorz, 390 — III., 470, 471 Melak 593 Melanc.hthon, Philip, 518, 520, 523, 526 Melanthus, 84 Melbourne, second viscount, 711, 712 Mellon, 113, 114 Melus, 315 Memmius, Gaius, 188, 190 Memnon. See Amenophis III. — the Bhodian, 166 Menahem, king of Israel, 48, 63, 64 Mendoza, Bernardino de, 551 Meneptah, 41 Menes, 1, 4-6 Menestheus, 95 Menotti, Ciro, 708 Menshikov, A. D., 621 — Prince A. S., 723, 724 Mentuhotep, 12 Menzikov. See. Menshikov Merveldt, Count von, 696 Merwig, 261 Messalina, wife of Claudius, 228 Metellus (Caecilius), L., 158 — — Q., Creticus, 194 — — — Macedonicus, 183 — — — Numidicus, 188 Metternich, Prince of, 692, 694, 698, 704, 710, 716 Mettius Fufetius, 133 Michael, king of Poland, 616 — III. (Romanoff ), czar of Russia, 614 Micipsa, 187 Miguel, Dom, claimant to Portugal, 706 Milner, Sir Alfred (viscount), 762 Milo, 79 — T. Annius Papianus, 198, 199 Miltiades, 76, 82, 85-87 Miltitz, Karl von, 518 Milton, John, 579, 581 Mina, F. E. y, 706 Minucius Eufus, 161 Mirabeau, Count, 648-51 Mirandola, Pico della, 503 Mithradates, king of Pergamum, 200 — VI., king of Pontus, 179, 191, 192, 194, 195 Moawija, 278, 279 Modena, Francis IV., duke of, 708, 709 Mohammed, 274-8 — I., sultan 496, 497 — II., sultan, 497. 498 INDEX OF PERSONS 783 Mohammed IV., sultan, 590, 591 — of Seville. 401 — Ibn Al Hamah, 404 Molay, Jacques de, 441 Mole, Matthieu, 576 — Count L. M. de, 715 Moltke, Count Hehnuth K. B. vou, 749, 751 Momylus. See Romulus Augustulus Moncey, Marshal, 680, 688 Monk, George (duke of Albemarle) 582, 583, 595 Monmouth, James Scott, duke of, 598, 599 Montagu, Charles, earl of Halifax, 611 Montague, bishop of Chichester, 567 Montcalm, Marquis de, 641 Montecuculi, Count Raymond of, 588, 590 Montesecco, G. B. da, 502 Montferrat, counts and marquises of — Boniface, 362, 363 — 377 Giovanni IV., 485 William, 350 — (2), 377 Montfort, Simon de, earl of Leicester, 425, 427, 428 Montmorency, Arme de (Constable), 521, 540, 541 — Count, 649 Montpellier, Count William of, 402 Montrose, first marquis of, 570 Moore, Sir John, 690 Moray, James Stuart, second earl of, 549 More, Sir Thomas, 528, 529 Moreau, Edward, 753 — Jean Victor, 659, 660, 662-5, 673, 678-80, 695 — Colonel, 697 Moreale, Fra, 471, 483 Moreville, Hugh of, 412 Mortier, Marshal, 680, 690, 695, 697 Mortimer, earls of March — Roger, first earl, 433, 434 — fourth earl, 456 Edmund, fifth earl, 457-60 Morton, Cardinal, 464, 465 Moses, 51. 52 Mountjoy, eighth baron, 555 Mowbray, Thos. (Earl Marshall), earl of Not- tingham, and duke of Norfolk, 456, 457 — — (Earl Marshall), son of the preced- ing, 459 Muled Abul Hassan, 404 Mummius, L., Achaicus, 183 Munich (Munnich), B. C. von, 621 Murad I., sultan, 495 — II., sultan, 497 Murat, Joachim, king of Naples, 665, 680, 683, 685, 688, 690, 695, 700, 704 Murena, L. Licinius, 192 Murta, Giovanni di, doge of Genoa, 486 Mus, P. Decius, 154 Musa, 279, 280 — son of Bajezid I., 496 Musikanos, 171 Mycerinus, 7, 8 Nabis, 182 Nabonetus. See Belshazzer Nabupolasser, 75 Nadab, 57 Nahor, Bernardo, 501 Napoleon I., emperor, 605, 631, 657-704 — II., king of Rome, 692, 698, 701 — III., emperor, 682, 718, 719, 722, 725, 727-9, 744, 745, 747, 749-51, 753 — Eugene (Prince Imperial), 749, 757 Naramsin, 23 Narcissus, 229 Narses, 259, 260 Nathan, 56 Nau, Claude, 552 Nausicles, 126 Navarre. See Albret, Antoine, Henry IV., Margaret Nearchus, 172 Neboned, 80 Nebuchadnezzar, 17, 44, 67, 79, 173 Necho, 43, 44 Necker, Jacques, 648, 649, 673 Nehemiah, 68, 72 Neipperg, Count A. A. von, 698 Nektanabis 120 Nelson, Horatio (Viscount), 663, 664, 668 675, 681 Neri, St. Philip, 534 Nerli, The, 488 Nero, C. Claudius, 162 — Tiberius Claudius, 215 — son of Germanicus, 218, 219 — emperor, 219, 221, 222 Nerva, emperor, 225 Newcastle, William Cavendish, earl and duke of, 570 — Thos. Pelham-Holles, duke of, 635-7 Ney, Marshal, 680, 690, 695, 699, 700 Nicholas (pope) : II., 317 ; III., 392 ; IV., 394 ; V. (anti-pope), 449, 450 ; (pope), 481 — I., czar of Russia, 706, 722, 724 — of Pistna, 478 Nicias, 106, 107 ; peace of, 106 Nicomedes of Bithynia, 178, 195 Niger, C. Pescennius, 229 Nightingale, Florence, 724 Nogaret, William of, 441 Norfolk, Thos. Howard, third duke of, 530 — — — fourth duke of, 549, 551 — See Bigod and Mowbray Normandy, Dukes of — Richard : I., 310 ; II., 310, 311 ; III., 314 Robert : I. (the Devil), 314 ; II. (Curt- hose), 345, 405, 406 Rollo, 301 Norris, Sir John, 555 North, Lord (second earl of Guildford), 640-3 Northumberland, Henry Percy, first earl of, 458 459 — John Dudley, duke of, 531, 532 — Thomas Percy, seventh earl of, 549, 551 Nottingham, Daniel Finch, earl of, 607, 612 — See Norfolk Numa Pompilius, 132 Numator, 132 Numerianus, 234 Nushirvan, shah, 274 7 8 4 A GENERAL HISTORY Obadiah, 59 Octavia, wife of Mark Antony, 212 Ootavianus. See Augustus Octavius, Gn., 191 — M., 187 Odo of Paris, king of France, 298, 299, 301 — archbishop of Canterbury, 309, 310 Odoacer, 255, 256 Odysseus, 706 Olaf Tryggveson, king of Norway, 310 — St., king of Norway, 312 Oldcastle, Sir John, 460 Olden-Barneveld, J. von, 538 Olympia, wife of Philip of Macedon, 124 Omar, 275-8 Ommaijads, the, 278-81, 401 Omri, 58 Onomarchos, 125 Ophnius, L„ 187 Orchan, 494, 495 Orestes, patrician, 255, 256 Orford, Edward Russell, earl of, 611 — See Sir Robert Walpole Orleans, Philip (Egalite), duke of, 649, 650, 654, 655, 708 — dukes of. See Gaston and Loms Ormond, seond duke of, 622 Ornano, Marshal, 574 Orsini, Clarice, 501 — Felice, 727 — the, 307 Osburga, mother of Aelfred, 307 Osman, 494 Ota, 300 Otlrman, 275, 276, 278 Othniel, 53 Otho, emperor, 219, 222 Otto I., emperor, 308, 322-31, 335 — II., emperor, 329, 331-4 — III., 334-40, 503 — IV., emperor, 362-4, 366, 418, 420, 421 Otto I., king of the Hellenes, 706 — of Austria, son of Albert I., emperor, 450 — Carinthia, 336, 337 — son of Liudolf of Swabia, 332 — of Lomello, count, 339 Ottokar I., king of Bohemia, 363 — II., king of Bohemia, 389, 443, 444, 491 — See Odoacer Oudinot, Marshal, 695, 713 Outram, Sir James, 726 Oxenstierna, Axel, 562, 563 Oxford, Robert Harley, earl of, 605, 606, 611, 613, 622 Oxyartes, 170 Paine, Thomas, 666 Palaeologus, Admiral, 318 Palafox, Joseph, 690 Palavicini, 386 Pallig, Jarl, 311 Palmerston, third viscount, 696, 711, 712, 724 Pandolfo the Ironhead, 333 Pandulf of Anagni, 371 — legate in England, 421, 424 Pansa, C. Vibius, 210 Paoli, Pasquale de', 658 Papinian, 231 Papirius Cursor, L., 153 Pappenheim, Count G. F. zu, 562 Paris, Louis P. A., comte de, 715 Parker, Matthew, 546, 550 Parma, Alexander Farnese, duke of, 537, 538, 544, 554 — Margaret, duchess of, 535, 536 Parmenio, 127, 166, 167, 170 Parry, William, 551 Parsons, Robert, 551, 553 Parysatis, 172 Pascal, Blaise, 591 Paschal I., pope, 293 Paskewich, Marshal, 708 Patrick, St., 271 Paul III. (pope), 521, 522, 529, 534 — IV., 534, 445, 548 — I., czar of Russia, 663, 674, 675 Paulet, Sir Amyas, 552 Paulus, L. Aemilius, 161 — — — Macedonicus, 183, 186 — Diaconus, 286, 290 — Julius, 231 Pausanias of Sparta, 93-6, 98 — king of Sparta, 107 Pazzi, the, 502 — Francesco de, 502 Pedro. See Peter Peel, Sir Robert, 711, 712 Pekah, king of Israel, 48, 64, 65 Pekahaiah, king of Israel, 64 Pelham, Henry, 635, 636 Pelopidas, 113, 114. 116-9 Pemberton, J. C, 737 Penn, William, 640 Penry, John, 555 Pepe, Guglielmo, 705 Pepi I., 10, 11 — II., 10, 11 Pepin (of Heristal), 272 — (of Landen), 271, 272 — le Bref, 272, 273, 283, 285, 287 — son of Charlemagne, 286, 289, 29^, 293 — grandson of Charlemagne, 293, 294 Perceval, Spencer, 686, 692, 696 Percy, Henry. See Northumberland — Hotspur, 458, 459 — Thomas. See Worcester Perdiccas, king of Macedon : I., 121 ; II., 121 ; III., 118, 122 — Alexander's general, 166, 174 Pericles, 98, 99, 102-6 ; peace of, 104 Perier, Casimir, 708 Perignon, Marshal, 680 Perpenna, M., Vento, 194 Perseus, king of Macedon, 183 Pertinax, emperor, 229 Peruzzi, the, 500 Pestalozzi, J. H., 662 Peter (Pedro, tal- king of Aragon : 365 ; 386, 393, 394 ; IV., 466, 467 the Cruel, king of Castile, 437, 451, 456, 467 I., king of Hungary, 490 king of Portugal : I., 467, 468,; II., 705, 706 INDEX OF PERSONS 785 Peter Pedro, &c.)— czar of Russia : I. (the Great), 615-21, 633 ; II., 621 ; III., 630-2 son of Frederick of Sicily, 447 the Hermit, 345 of Pisa, 290 Ruffo, 383 of Riraulx, 425 doge of Venice, 299 delle Vigne, 368, 372, 375, 381, 384 Peterborough, third earl of, 603 Petion, Jerome, 653, 655 Petrarch, 482 Petreius, Marcus, 196, 200 Petronius, Maximus, emperor, 255 Pflug, Julius, 523 Pharnabazus, 108-10 Pharnaces, 195, 200 Phaylos, 126 Pheidias, 97, 105 Phelippeaux, A. le P. de, 664 Philaret, patriarch, 614 Philip of Arabia, emperor, 232, 233 — I. (of Austria), king of Castile, 466, 511, 512, 515 — king of France : II. (Augustus), 360, 366, 368, 415, 417-22, 439, 442 ; III., 435, 440, 442, 443 ; IV. (le Bel), 394, 430, 431, 435, 440-2, 445 ; V., 441, 442 ; VI., 435, 436, 442, 450, 451 — king of Macedon : 118, 122-9 : III., 161, 162, 165, 177, 181, 182 ; V.. 183 — king of Spain : II., 524, 532, 533, 535-7, 543-5, 550, 553 ; III., 573 ; IV., 577, 586, 601 ; V., 601-5, 628 — archbishop of Cologne, 357 — of Hesse, 519, 521, 522, 524 — of Swabia, German king, 362-4, 366 Philipoemen, 177, 181, 182 Philippa, daughter of Lionel of Clarence, 475 Philippus, 113, 114 Philiskos of Abydos, 118 Philocrates, 127, 128 Philomelos, 124, 125 Philotas, 160, 170 Phocas, emperor, 274 Phocion, 115, 123, 126 Phoebidas, 113, 115 Phraates, king of the Medes, 69, 75 — king of Parthia, 216 Phrynicus, 95, 97 Phyllidas, 113, 114 Pianchi, 43 Piasts, the, 492, 493, 616 Piccolomini, Prince, 563 Pichegru, Charles, 659, 678, 680 Pindar, 97, 166 Pinotem I., 42 Pioccinino, Niccolo, 479 Pisistratus, 81, 82 Plso, Cn. Calpurnius, 218 Pitt, William. See Chatham — — the Younger, 638, 643-6, 666-9, 675, 678, 682-4 Pitti, Lucca, 501 Pius (pope) : II., 482, 503, 504 ; IV., 534 ; V., 546, 549-51 ; VI., 660, 682 ; IX., 713 Placidia, 251, 252 Plancina, 218 Plato, 108 Plautus, 186 Plotina, empress, 226 Plutarch, 227 Pole, John de la, earl of Lincoln, 464 — Michael de la, 456 — William de la, earl of Suffolk, 461 — Cardinal, 532, 533 Polignac, Prince de, 707 Poliziano, A. A., 503 Poltrot, Jean de, 541 Polybius, 184, 186 Polycrates of Samos, 45, 81, 82 Polygnotus, 97, 105 Polysperchon, 175 Pomerania, Bogislav of, 562 Pompadour, Marquise de, 638 Pompeius, Gn. (the Great), 168, 193-200 — — (the Younger), 201 — Sextus, 201, 211, 212 Poniatowski, Count, 618 Pontius, Gaius, 152 Pope, General, 736 Poppo, count of Thuringia, 300 Portland, first earl of, 610 — third duke of, 643, 686 Porus, 170, 171 Potemkin, Prince G. A., 633 Pouyer-Quertier, A. T., 754 Pride, Colonel Thomas, 572, 583 Priestley, Joseph, 666 Prior, Matthew, 605 Probus, emperor, 234 Procopius, 246 Prokop the Great, 478 Protagoras, 105 Prusias, king of Bithynia, 182 Prussia, Prince Albert of, 745 — Prince Frederick Charles of, 744, 746, 749, 750 — Prince Henry of, 646 Psammetichus, king of Egypt : I., 43, 44 ; II., 44 ; III., 45 Psusennes, 42 Ptolemaos, 122 Ptolemy, king of Egypt : I. (Soter), 174-7 ; II. (Philadelphus), 176, 178, 179 ; III. (Euergetes), 178 ; XIII. (Philopater), 200 — Keraunos, 176 Pulcheria, empress, 253 Pulteney, William (earl of Bath), 626 Pursin, I., 24 — II., 25 Pym, John, 569, 570. Pyrrhus king of Epirus, 154, 155, 157 Quiroga, Antonio, 705, 706 Quosdanowitch, P. V. yon, 660 Rabshekeh, 66 ' Radetsky, Count Joseph, 713 Radziwill, Prince Michael, 708 Raglan, Lord, 723, 725 Ragnar Lodbrok, 303, 304, 306, 307 Raimond of Toulouse, 346 — — 421 — Berengar of Catalonia, 402 — — of Provence, 425 Rainald, count of Boulogne, 366, 421 3d 786 A GENERAL HISTORY Rainald of Spoleto, 371 Rakocszy, Francis, II., 603 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 553 Rauises, king of Egypt : EL, 40, 41, 51 ; III., 42 ; IV -XII., 42 Eanulf of Aquitaine, 298 — of Aversa, 316 Raphael, S., 507 Raspail, F. V., 718 Eavaillac, Francois, 545 Raymond, George, 555 — See Raimond Re, 9 Rea Silva, 132 Recarred, king of the Visigoths, 279 Reginald, sub-prior of Christ Church, 420 Regulus, M. Atilius, 158 Rehoboam, king of Judah, 57, 58 Remigius, bishop of Reims, 262 Remus, 132 Renard, Simon, 532 Rene 1 (the Good), of Anjou, 485 — II., of Lorraine, 506, 507 Requesens, Don Luis de, 537 Retz, Cardinal de, 567, 577 Rewbell, J. F., 656 Rezin, 48, 64 Rhadagais, 250 Riario, Cardinal Piero, 502 Rich, Edmund, 425 Richard of Cornwall, king of the Romans, 378, 383, 385, 388, 389, 425-7, 443 — king' of England : I., 360, 361, 366, 397, 414, 415, 417-419, 439 ; II., 438, 454-7 ; III., 463, 464 Richelieu, Cardinal, 560, 573-5, 672 Richildis, wife of Charles the Bald, 295, 296 Ricimer, 255 Ridley, Nicholas, bishop of London, 533 Riego, Rafael del, 705 Rienzi, Cola di, 469, 482, 483 Rimsin, 28, 29 Ripon, first marquis of, 757 Rivers, Earl, 463 Rizzio, David, 548 Robert of Artois, 435 — — See Robert, king of Naples — I., king of France, 301 — of Gloucester, son of Henry I., 408, 409 — Guiscard, 316, 317 — of Jumieges, 314 — king of Naples, 435, 447, 448, 482, 486 — I. (Brace), king of Scotland, 431-4 — III. (Bruce), king of Scotland, 458, 459 — son of St. Louis, 442 Roberts, Earl, 757, 762 Robespierre, M. M. I., 652-6 Roches, Peter des, 421, 423-5 Rockingham, second marquis of, 638, 639. 642 Roderick, king of the Visigoths, 279 — governor of Andalusia, 279 Rodney, first baron, 642 Roger of Apulia, 317 — of Aquila, 371 — of Loria, 393, 394 — bishop of Salisbury, 407, 409 —'king of Sicily: I.. 316. 317; II., 317, 318, 348 Rogers, John, 533 Rohan, Cardinal, 679 Rokycana, John, 480 Roland, 285 — J. M., 653, 655 — Madame, 655 Romanovs, the, 614 Romanus II., emperor, 332 Romulus, 132 — Augustulus, 255, 256 Rooke, Sir George, 403, 612 Roon, Count von, 742 Roose veldt, Theodore, American president, 764 Roric, 305 Rosamund Clifford, 416 Rosamunda, wife of Alberic, 263 Rosebery, fifth earl of, 759, 765 Rosecrans, W. S., 738 Rossi, Count P. L. O., 713 Rostopchin, Count F. W., 693 Roth family, the, 509 Roxana, 170, 174, 175 Rudiger, Count F. W , 721 Rudolf I. (of Hapsburg), emperor, 388, 389, 392, 443-5, 448, 491, 492 — II., emperor, 557 Rudolf, king of Burgundy : I., 298, 299 ; II., 327 ; III., 340, 341 — of Burgundy, king of France, 301 — count of Hapsburg, 375 — son of Rudolf I., 444, 446 — — Albert I., 445, 446 — — — II., 470 Rufinus, 249 Rufus Sulpicius, 191 Rugilas, king of the Huns, 252-3 Rukeija, 275 Rupert III., Count Palatine, anti-king, 473, 474 — of the Rhine (Prince), 597 Rurik, 493, 614 Russell, Lord John (first earl), 710-12 — Lord William, 598 Rustum, 278 Ruy Diaz, The Cid, 401 Ruyter, M. A. de, 587, 588, 595 Sabinus, Julius, 222 Sabokon, 43 Sabu, 28 St. Andre\ Marshal, 540, 541 St. Arnaud, Marshal, 723 St. Cyr, Marshal, 690, 695 St. Pol, Constable, 506, 507 St. Ruth, General, 609 St. Valery, Aymer de, 391 Sachs, Hans, 519 Saladin, 360, 361, 415, 418 Salinguerra, 377, 378 Salisbury, earl of : Richard Neville, 462. 463 ; Robert Cecil, 556, 565 — William Longsword, 366, 421, 423 — third marquis of, 757, 759, 765 Sallust, 196 Sallustius, 245 Saloman, bishop of Constance, 299 Samsi Bin, 47 Samson, 53, 54 INDEX OF PERSONS 787 Samsuditani, 30 Samsuiluna, 30 Samuabu, 28, 30 Samuel, 53 Sanchia of Aragon, 365 — of Provence, wife of Bichard of Corn- wall, 425 Sancho, son of Alfonso II., 401 Sancroft, Archbishop, 559 Sandwich, fourth earl of, 638 Santa Cruz, Marquis of, 554 Santa Eosa, P. di, 727 Sarakos, 49 Sardanapalus. See Assurbanipul Saigon I.. 22, 23 — II., 48, 65 Sarsfield, Patrick, 609 Sarus, 251 Saturnius, L. Apuleius, 190 Saul, king of Israel, 53, 54 Savage, John, 552 Savelli, the, 483 Savonarola, Girolamo, 503 Savoy, dukes and counts of — Amadeus : I., II., III., V., 485 ; VI., 486 ; VIII., 486 (see Felix V.) ; IX., 486 Charles Emmanuel I., 558 Humbert (count of Maurienne), I., II., III.. 485 Louis, 486 Oddo I., 485 Peter I., 485 Philibert I., 486 Thomas I., 485 Victor Amadeus II., 593, 606 - — Boniface of, 425 — Carignan, Eugene, prince of, 577 — — — Francois, prince of, 577, 591, 602-4 Saxe, Marshal, 630 Saxe-Weimar, 1 Bernard of, 560, 562, 563 — — William of, 560 Saxony, electors and kings of — Augustus, 524 Frederick III., the Wise, 516, 518, 519 Frederick Augustus III. (I.), 633, 634, 686 John the Steadfast, 516, 519, 520 John Frederick, 516, 520-22, 524 John George I., 524, 559, 562, 563 — — III., 590 Maurice, 521-4 — Liudolf, duke of, 319 — Otto, duke of, 319 Schalkbiirger, 763 Schartlin of Burtenbach, 522 Scherer, B. L. J., 659 Schill, Friederich von, 691 Schimmelpennink, Count, 680 Schlich, Chancellor, 481 Schwarzenberg, Prince von, 693-5, 697 Scipio, L. Cornelius, Asiaticus, 182 — P. Cornelius, 160, 162 ■ — — — Africanus, 162-4, 181, 182, 186 — — — Aemilianus, 184-6, 188 Scribonia, wife of Augustus, 215 Scrope of Masham, Lord, 460 — archbishop of York, 459 Sebekhotep, 15 Sebeknofrure, 15 Segovia, John of, 480 Sejanus, 219 Selden, John, 567 Seleucus I. (Nicator), 175-7 — II. (Kallinicus), 178 Seneca. L. Annaeus, 221 Sennacherib, 41, 48, 65, 66 Septimius, L., 200 — Severus, emperor, 228-30 Sergius III., pope, 302 Sertorius, Q., 193, 194] Serurier, Marshal, 680 Servetus, 517 Servius Tullius, 133-6, 138 Sesonchis. See Shesonch Sesostris I.. 13 1 — III., 13, 14 — See Sethos Seth, 2-6 Sethos I., 40 Setnacht, 41 Severinus, 272 Seymour, Sir Thomas, lord, 531 — Jane. See Jane S. Sforza family, the, 508 — Francesco, 479, 485, 486, 519, 520 — Ludovico, 511 Shaftesbury, first earl of, 595, 597, 598 Shallum, 63, 67 Shalmanezer II., 47, 62 ; III., 47 ; IV., 48, 65 Shelburne, second earl (first marquis of Lansdowne), 642, 643 Shemaiah, 56 Sheridan, P. H.,739, 741 Sherman, W. T., 733, 737-41 Sherwin, Ealph, 551 Shesonch (Sisak, Sesonchis), 43, 56, 58 Shrewsbury, first duke of, 600, 607, 613 Sickingen, Franz von, 518 Sidmouth. See Addington Sidney, Algernon, 598 — Sir Philip, 538 Sidonius Apollinaris, 255 Siegfried, archbishop of Mainz, 344 Siegwan-Muller, Constant in, 714 Sieves, Abbe, 648, 655, 656, 664, 665, 673, 703 Sigebert, king of the Franks, 264 Sigismund, emperor, 471, 473-81, 490, 492, 496 — III., king of Sweden and Poland, 616 — count of Tyrol, 506, 509 Sigurd Eing, 303, 304 — Snake Eye, 303 Silo, Q. Pompaedius, 191 Silvanus, M. Plautius, 191 Silvester II., pope, 335-8, 340, 390 Simnel, Lambert, 464, 465 Simonides, 82, 97 Sinmuballit, 28 Sisak. See Shesonch Sisigambis, 167, 169 Siward of Northumbria, 314 — son of Eegnar, 304 Sixtus (pope) : IV., 502 ; V., 543, 553 . Skanderbeg. See Castriota Slavata, Count William, 558 Smerdis, 76 788 A GENERAL HISTORY Smith, Adam, 644 — Sir Sidney, 664 Snofru, 7, 13 Soaemis, 231 Socinus, Faustus, 517 — Laelius, 517 Socrates, 105, 108 Soliman, caliph of Damascus, 280 — of Saragossa, 285 ■ — See Suleiman Solomon, king of Israel, 42, 54-7 Solon, 75-9, 84 Somers, John, lord, 610 Somerset, Protector, 530, 531 Sophia, empress, wife of Wenzel IV., 478 — electress of Hanover, 610, 613 — regent of Russia, 615 — Dorothea, wife of George I., 622 Sophonisba, 163 Sosilas, 160 Sosthenes, 176 Souham, Comte Joseph, 659 Soult, Marshal, 680, 690, 691, 696, 697, 700 Spartacus, 194 Sphodrias, 114, 116 Spinola family, 486 — marquis of, 538 Spurina, Vestritius, 202 Stadion, Count von, 728 Stael, Madame de, 662 Stahremberg, Rudolf of, 590 Stanhope, first earl of, 613. 622, 623 Stanislaus (I.), Leszczynski, king of Poland, 617, 620 — (II.), Poniatowski, king of Poland, 632 Stanley, Lord, 463 Stateira, wife of Darius III., 167 — daughter of Darius III., 172 Staupitz, Johann von, 517 Stephen (pope) : III., 273 ', IV., 293 ; V., 298 ; VI., 300 — king of England, 408-10 — king of Hungary : I., 312, 329 ; II., 490, 491 ; III. and IV., 491 ; V., 389, 491 — of Hungary, brother of Bela IV., 492 — (Batori). king of Poland, 616 — of Blois, 345 Stibor of Transylvania, 474 Stilicho, 249, 250 Stofflet, Nicolas, 656 Strabo, Gn. Pompeius, 191 Strachan, Sir Richard, 692 Strafford, Thos. Wentworth, earl of, 567-9 Straw, Jack, 455 Strickland, 550 Strode, William, 570 Strongbow, Robert Fitzgilbert, 413 Stuart, Arabella, 565 — Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, 636 ■ — James Francis. See James III. — Murdoch, 458 Sudbury, Simon, 438, 455 Suetonius Tranquillus, C, 219 Suffolk, Charles Brandon, duke of, 532 — duchess of. See Mary Tudor Suleiman, Sultan : II., 590 ; III,, 591 — son of Bajezid I., 496 — . son of Orchan, 495 Suleiman the Turk, 494 Sulla, L. Cornelius, 148. 189, 191-3, 196, 203 Sully, duke of, 544 Sulpieius, 229 Sumner, E. V., 736 Sumulailu, 28 Sunderland, third earl of, 613, 623 Surajah Dowlah, 637 Surrey, Henry Howard, earl of, 530 Suvorov, A. V., 662, 663 Svatopluk, 299 — of Kiev, 493 Sven Estrithson, 313 — Forkbeard, 303, 310, 311, 335 Swinford, Catherine, 461 Syagrius, 261 Symmachus, 257 Syphax, 163 Tachos, 120 Tacitus, C. Cornelius, 218-20 Tahaka, 43 Tallard, Marshal, 603 Talleyrand-P£rigord, C. M. de, 649. 662, 664, 672, 681, 683, 688-90, 698, 703 Tallien, J. L., 656 Tamerlane, 496 Tanaquil, 133 Tancred of Antioch, 346, 347 — of Hauteville, 316 — of Sicily, 362 Tanutamon, 43 Tarif, 279 Tarik, 279, 288 Tarpeia, 132 Tarquinius Priscus, 133 — Superbus, 134 Tassilo of Bavaria, 287 Tefnacht, 43 Tejas, king of the Ostrogoths, 260 Telesinus, Pontius, 191, 193 Teleutias, king of Sparta, 112 Teli, 10 Tellez, Leonard, 468 Temple, Sir William, 596 — Earl, 638 Terence, 186 Tetepe, 7 Tetzel, John, 517 Thaddeus of Suessa, 380 Thais, 169 Thankmar, 322, 323 Thebe, 119 Theispes, 69 Themistocles, 85-8, 91, 92, 95, 96, 98 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 410, 411 Theodelinde, wife of Autharis, 263 Theodohat, king of the Ostrogoths, 258, 259 Theodora, mother of Crescentius, 302, 333 — daughter of Kantakuzenos, 495 Theodore, abbot of Croyland, 306 Theodoric, king of the Franks, 263, 264 — the Great, king of the Ostrogoths, 256-8, 262, 292 — I., king of the Visigoths, 251, 254 — II., king of the Visigoths, 255 — Count, 286 INDEX OF PERSONS 789 Theodosius I. (the Great) emperor, 237, 248, 249 — II., emperor, 239, 252, 254 — general in Britain, 246, 247 Theophano, wife of Otto II., 331-6 Theramenes, 108 Thiers, L. A., 715, 751, 753, 754 Thistlewood, Arthur, 710 Thomas of Cellano, 371 — of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, 456 Thomas, G. H., 738 Thoralf, 308 Thou, J. A. de, 574 Thrasybulus, 108 Throgmorton, Francis, 551 Thugut, Baron F. M., 670 Thuringia, Louis IV., landgrave of, 369 Thurkil of East Anglia, 312 Thurn, Count, 558 Thurstan, archbishop of York, 409 Thusuma, 28 Thutmosis I., 39 — III., 39 Thymbrotus, 109 Tiberius (I.), emperor, 209, 214-19 — (II.!, emperor, 274 Tichborne, Chidiock, 552 Tiepolo, 489 — Vieri, 375 Tiglath Pileser I., 46 — — II., 48 Tigranes, king of Armenia, 195 — • Persian general, 93 Tilly, Count J. T. von, 559, 560, 562, 563 Timesitheus, 232 Timocrates of Rhodes, 109 Timoleon of Corinth, 123, 157 Timophanes of Corinth, 123 Timotheus, 115, 123 Timur, 496 Tirhakah, 43 Tirhaqua, 48, 49 Tiribazus, 110, 111 Tissaphernes, 109 Titus, emperor, 219, 222, 223 — Tatius, 132 Togo, Admiral, 764 Tokoly, Count, 590 Tolmides, 101, 104 Tone, Wolfe, 666, 668 Tooke, Home, 638, 667 Torquatus, Titus Manlius, 151 Torquemada, Juan de, 480 Torre, della, the, 485 — — Guido, 446 Tostig, 314 Totila, king of the Ostrogoths, 259, 260 Townshend, Charles, 639, 640 — — second viscount, 622, 623 Tracy, William, 412 Trajan, emperor, 225-7 Trebonius, G., 202 Trelawney, bishop of Bristol, 599 Tresilian, C. J., 455 Trochu, L. J., 751, 752 Tromp, Martin, 579 — Cornells van, 588, 595 Tudor, Jasper, earl of Reenbecke, 463 Tullus Hostilius, 132, 133, 135 Turenne, Marshal, 576, 586-8 Turgot, A. R. J., 648 Turner, bishop of Ely, 599 Tyler, Wat, 455 Tyrconnel, Richard Talbot, earl of, 609 Tyrone, Hugh O'Neill, earl of, 555 Ubba, 307 Uberti, Farinati degli, 386 Udo, Count, 323 Uhtred of Northumbria, 312 Uldin, king of the Huns, 253 Ulfilas, 246 Ulpiau, 231 Ulrica, Eleanora, queen of Sweden, 620 Ulrich, bishop of Augsburg, 329 Unos, 10 Urban (pope) : II., 345 ; IV., 386, 387, 427 ; V., 471, 473, 475, 484 ; VI., 454, 475, 484 Urengur, 24 Usaphais, 5 Userkef, 9 Usher, Captain, 098 Uzziah, 48, 63 Valence, Aymer de, earl of Pembroke, 432 Valens, emperor, 245, 246, 248 Valentinian, I., emperor, 245 — II., emperor, 247, 248 — III., emperor, 239, 251, 252, 255 Valerian, emperor, 233 Vandamme, D. R., 659, 695 Vane, Sir Henry, 580-2 Varrazzi, the, 398 Varro, C. Terentius, 161 Varus, Quintilius, 214, 218 Vauban, Marshal, 586, 004 Veleda 222 Vend6me, Marshal, 586, 603-5 Vercingetorix, 198 Vere, Robert de, 456 Vergniaud, P. V., 652, 654 Vernon, Sir Edward, 626 \erus, L. Aelius, 227 — L. Aurelius, 228 Vespasian, emperor, 219, 222, 223 Victor, C. P., 690, 691 — Amadeus II., king of Sardinia (king of Sicily), 593, 606 — — III., 659 ■ — Emmanuel I., king of Sardinia, 705 — — II., king of Italy, 713, 726-9, 744, 751 Victoria, queen of England, 712, 725, 758, 759, 761, 763, 765 Vieuville, Marquis de la, 574 Villars, Marshal, 586, 603, 604 Villele, Comte de, 705 Villeneuve, Admiral, 664, 681 Villeroi, Marshal, 602, 603 Vincent de Paul, St., 534 Vinci, Leonardo da, 521 Vindex, G. Julius, 221 Vipsania Agrippina, wife of Tiberius, 215 Viret, Pierre, 525 Virgil, 156 Viriathus, 185 Visconti family, the, 469, 470, 485, 499 — Azzo, 485 790 A GENERAL HISTORY Visconti, Bernabo, 485 — Filippo Maria, 479, 487 — Galeazzo, 447 — Gian Galeazzo, 473, 485 — Giovanni, 485 — Lucchmo, 485 — Matteo, 446, 485 — Ubaldo, 376 — Valentina, 485 Vitellius, emperor, 219, 222 Vitiges, king of the Ostrogoths, 259 Vitiza, king of the Visigoths, 279 Vladimir of Russia, 493 Vladislaus IV., king of Poland, 616 Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 628, 632, 637 Vortigern, 252 Wade, Marshal, 623 Waldrada, 297 Wallace, William, 431 Wallenstein, Albert of, 560, 561, 563 Wallia, king of the Visigoths, 251 Walpole, Sir Robert, 622-6, 635 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 551, 552 Walter of Contances, 417 — the Penniless, 345 — of Troja, 365 Walworth, John, 455 Warbeck, Perkin, 464-6 Wareime, John, earl of Surrey, 430 Warwick, earl of, Thomas Beauchamp, 456 — — Richard Neville, 462, 463 — — Edward Plantagenet, 464, 466 Washington, George, 640, 641 Welf of Bavaria, Count, 293 — VI., 349, 359 — Henry, 298 Wellesley, marquess, 692 Wellington, first duke of, 690, 691, 696, 697, 699-701, 707, 711, 712 Wenzel the Holy, prince of Bohemia, 326 — I., king of Bohemia, 377 — II., king of Bohemia, 444-6 — III., king of Bohemia, 445, 492 — IV., king of Bohemia, emperor, 471, 473, 474, 478, 485 Werder, Count August von, 753 Werner, archbishop of Mainz, 443 Westmoreland, Charles Neville, earl of, 549 Weston, Richard, 569 Weyland, 306 White, bishop of Peterborough, 599 Whitelocke, Bulstrode, 582 Whitgift, John, 551, 556 Whitworth, Earl, 677 Widekind, 285-7 Wilkes, John, 638-40 William I., German emperor, 627, 742-4, 746, 748, 749, 751, 752, 754 ■ — II., German emperor, 765 — king of England : I., 314, 315, 345, 405 ; II., 405 ; III., 587, 588, 593, 595-7, 599-601, 607-11, 615 ; IV., 711, 712 — son of Henry I., 407 William the Lion, king of Scotland, 414, 430 — I., king of Sicily, 318 — II., king of Sicily, 318, 360, 410 William of Apulia,' 317 — Clito, 407 ■ — the Iron Arm, of Hauteville, 316 — count of Holland, 367 - — king of the Romans, 380, 382, 383 — son of Henry the Lion, 359 — archbishop of Mainz, 328 ■ — of Orange, the Silent, 535-8, 551 — — V., 646, 659 Willibrord, 271, 272 Wilbgis of Mainz, 336-40 Wilmington, earl of, 635 Wimpffen, E. F. de., 751 Winchelsey, Archbishop, 431, 432 Windischgratz, Prince von, 721 Winfrid. See Boniface Winkelried, Arnold von, 472 Witt, John de, 587, 595, 596 Wittgenstein, Field-Marshal, 694 Wolfe, James, 641 Wolseley, Garnet, viscount, 758 Wolsey, Cardinal, 527-9 Woodville, Richard, 463 — See Elizabeth Worcester, Thomas Percy, ear] of, 458 Wrangel, Count Friedrich von, 743 Wulfstan, archbishop of York, 309 Wurmser, Field-Marshal, 660 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 532 Wycliffe, John, 438, 453-5, 476 Wykeham, William of, 456 Wyndham, William, 669, 678, 684 Xanthippds, 158 Xavier, St. Francis, 534 Xenophon, 70, 109, 113 Xerxes, 87, 92, 95, 96, 100, 169 Yorck, General, 694 York. Edmund, duke of, 456, 461 — Frederic Augustus, duke of, 659, 663, 667 — Richard, duke of, 461-3 — — (the Little Prince), 464 Ypres, William of, 409 Ypsilanti, Alexander and Demetrius, 706 Zabarella, Francesco, 476 Zachariah, king of Israel, 63 — — Judah, 63 Zachrias I., pope, 27 2 Zedekiah, king of Judah, 67 Zeid, 275 Zeno, emperor, 256, 258 Zenobia, 233, 234 Zerabbabel, 68 Zet, 5 Zeuxis, 122 Ziethen, H. A. von, 631 Zimri, 58, 61 Ziska, John, 478 Zoe (Palaeologus), empress, 493 Zoroaster, 38 Zoser I., 7 — II., 7 Zwentibald, 298-300 Zwingli, Huldreich, 516 II.— GENERAL INDEX Aachen, 288, 291 ; Congress at, 705. See Aix-la-Chapelle Academy, French, 586 Achaean League, 176, 183 Adrianople, Treaty of, 707. See Index 3 Aequi, 149 Aetolian League, 176 Africa (Roman province), 163, 185-9, 200, 252, 259 Aix-la-Chapelle, Treaty of (1668), 587, 596 ; (1748) 630, 636 Akkadians, 18-21 Alexandria, 168, 277. See Index 3 Algiers, 521, 708 Alt-Ranstadt, 617 Amboise, 539, 541, 547 Amiens, Mise of, 427 ; Peace of, 673-7 Amorites, 22, 28 Anabasis, the, 109 Appian Way, 153 Apulia, 316, 385 Arabs, 274 Aragon, 400, 466, 510. See Alfonso, Ferdinand, Peter, in Index 1 Armed Neutrality (1781), 642 ; (1806) 675 Armenians, 31, 35 Arras, Treaty of, 507 Aryans, 35, 37 Asia Minor, 31 ; Roman province, 185 Assyrians, Bk. I. ch. ii.-iv. Athens, 81, Bk. I. ch. vi., vii., x. Augsburg, 509 ; Confession, 520 ; Interim, 523 ; Treaty of, 524 Austria, 348. See Table of Contents and Austria, Dukes of ; and Ferdinand, Francis, Leopold, Mettemich, in Index 1 Austrian Succession, War of the, 629 Avars, 289 Aversa, 316 Avignon, popes at, 475 Babel, 28 Babylon, Bk. I. ch. ii., 67, 173 Bank of England, 609 ; banks, German, 509 Barcelona, 401 ; Treaty of, 574 Basel, Council of, 479 ; Treaty of, 659, 667 Bativi 222 Bavaria, 287, 293, 343, 348. See Index 1 Bavarian Succession, War of the, 634 Baylen, capitulation of, 690 Bee, Concordat of, 407 Belgium, 538, 708 Bender, 618 Berlin, Treaty of (1742), 629, 635 ; (1878) 757 Bill of Rights, 608 Bishops' War, 569 Black Death, 436 Blanketeers, 709 Boeotian War, 114 ; League, 116 Bohemia, 321, 343, 389, 445, 478, 504, 522, 561 ; and see Boleslav, Ottokar, Wenzel, in Index 1 Brandenburg. See Index 1 Breda, Peace of, 595 Breslau, Treaty of, 635 Bretigny, Treaty of, 436-7, 452 Britain, 198, 220, 227, 252-3 Brittany, 262, 287, 301 Bruges, 398 Bulgarians, 258, 756 Burgundy, 262, 294 ff ., 343, 505. See Index 1 Byzantine Empire. See Eastern Empire Cabal, the, 595 Cabinet, the, 610-11, 622 Cambrai, Treaty of (1508), 512 ; (1529) 520 Camisards, 592 Campania, 342 Campo Formio, Treaty of, 660-1, 668, 670 Canada, 631, 640-1 Canossa, 342 Carlowitz, Peace of, 590-1, 615 Carthage, 73, 79, 96, Bk. I. ch. ix., 184 Castile. See Aragon Cateau Cambresis, Treaty of, 535 Cato Street Conspiracy, 710 Charter, the Great, 422 ; Confirmation of, 431 Cherasco, Treaty of, 659 Chinon, Treaty of, 421 Cimbri, 189 Cintra, Convention of, 690 Clair sur Epte, Treaty of, 301 Clarendon, Constitution and Assize of, 411, 413 Coloni, 242 Concordat, the Gallican Constance, Council of, 476 ; Diet of, 358 Constantinople, 236, 240, 258. See Eastern Empire Convention Parliament, the, 583 Copenhagen, Treaty of, 616. See Index 3 Corcyra, 101 Counter Reformation, 533, 545 Crespy, Treaty of, 521 Crete, 33-4, 38, 194, 707 Crimean War, 723 Crusades. See Table of Contents, Bk. n. Cyprus, 33, 77, 94 793 A GENERAL HISTORY Damascus, 60. See Index 3 Danegelt, 310 Danes, Bk. II. ch. iii. Defenestration of Prague, 558 Delos, Confederacy of, 94 Denmark, 302, 321, 351, 687, 743. See Danes ; and Christian, Frederick, Harold, in Index 1 Diadocui, the, 174 Dorians, 78 Dover, Treaty of, 596 Dragonnades, 592 Dresden, Treaty of, 629. 636. See Index 3 Eastern Empire, 237, 247-8, 253, 258, 274, 281, 317, 335, 345. See Constantinople Edinburgh, Treaty of, 547 Egypt, Bk. i. ch. i.— iii.. 67, 162, 178, 200, 277, 395, 663, 707, 758, 760. See Ptolemy, Index 1 Epidaurus, Congress at, 706 Estaples, Treaty of, 465 Ethiopians, 43 Etruscans, 79 Evangelical Union, 556 Exclusion Bill, 597 Family Compact, 625 Fashoda, 760 Ferrara, Treaty of, 479 Florence, Bk. II. ch. xiv., xv., 508. See Index 3, and Medici in Index 1 Fontainebleau, Treaty of (1807), 687 ; (1814), 698 Fort Sumter, 732 France. See Table of Contents, and Charles, Francis, Louis, Napoleon, Philip, in Index 1 Frankfort, Treaty of, 754 Franks, 233, Bk. n. ch. i. Fronde, the, 575 Fussen, Peace of, 629 Gastein, Convention of, 744 Gaul, 159, 185, 197, 244, 262 Geneva, 516, 525 Genoa, 486 Germans, 214, Bk. I. ch. xiii., 250, &c, 292 Germany, 272-3, 295, 299, 443, 564, 694, 716. See "the Empire" (Bk. n.) and Prussia, Austria, &c, in Table of Contents Ghent, Treaty of, 537 Ghibellines, 348, Bk. II. ch. vii., viii. Golden Bull (1), 478 ; (2) 491 Goths, 233, 248 ff. Granada, 280, 403, 510 Grand Bemonstrance, 570 Greece, Bk. I. ch. v.-vii., x., xi. ; 706-7 Greeks, 33 Guelfs. See Ghibellines Gueux, 536 Habeas Corpus Act, 598, 709 Hanover, 621 ; Treaty of, 625 Hansa, the, Bk. n. ch. ix. Hegira, the, 276 Hernicans, 150 Hieroglyphics, 4, 20 Hittites, 30 Hohenstauffen, the, 347, Bk. II. ch. vi.-vii. Holland, 343, 535-6, 579, 587, 596, 666-7, 708 Holy Alliance, 704 Hubertsburg, Treaty of, 631, 638 Hundred Years' War, 435 Hungarians, 299, 320-1, 328 Hungary, 343, 445, 490, 504, 590, 716, 720. See Andrew, Bela, Ladislaus, Matthias, Stephen, in Index 1 Huns, 247, 253 India, 37, 170-2, 636, 757 ; Mutiny in, 725 Indo-Germans, Bk. I. ch. iii. Indulgence, Declarations of, 594, 599 Indulgences, 517 Instrument of Government, 580 Interregnum, the, 388 Iranians, 69. See Persia Ireland, 271, 304, 410, 413, 457, 465, 550, 555, 568, 579, 608-9, 645, 668, 675, 711, 759 Jacquerie, the, 452 Janissaries, 494, 707 Jansenists, 591 Jassy, Treaty of, 646 Jerusalem, 53 ff, 222, 346, 360. See Crusades Jesuits, 533, 551 Jews, Bk. I. ch. iv., 227 Kalisch, Treaty of, 694 Karlowitz. See Carlowitz Keys, Army of the, 371 Kiev, 493 Kutschuk Kainardji, Treaty of, 633 Laibach, Congress of, 706 Latins, 131, 150-1 League of Princes, 634 Leipzig Interim, 523. See Index 3 Lewes, Mise of, 427. See Index 3 Licinian Laws, 139 Limerick, Treaty of, 609. See Index 3 Lodi, Peace of, 490. See Index 3 Lollards, 454-6, 460 Lombard League, 356, 373. See Milan Lombards, 262-4 London, Treaty of (or Westminster), 1674, 588, 597 ; Conference (1827-8), 707 ; Con- ference (1830-1), 708; Protocol 1832) 743 ; Great Fire of, 595 Long Parliament, 569 Lords Appellant, 456 Lords Ordainers, 432 Liibeck, 398 ; Peace of, 561 Luneville, Peace of, 674 Lydia, 80 Maccabees, 179, 195 Macedonia, 121 ff., Bk. I. ch. x„ xi. Madrid, Treaty of (1525), 519 ; (1803) 687 Margraves, 289 Mayors of the Palace, 268 Medes, Bk. I. ch. v. Megalopolis, 117 Mercen, Treaty of, 295 Methuen Treaty, 612 GENERAL INDEX 793 Mexico, the French in, 747 Milan. See Index 3, and Sforza, Visconti, in Index 1 Mise of Amiens, 427 Mongols, 395, 491, 493 Moors, 280, 400 ft., 468, 510 Municipal Reform Act, 712 Mycenae, 77 Nantes, Edict of, 544, 592 Naples, 318, Bk. n. ch. viii., ch. xiv. ; 511, 705. See Francis, Ferdinand, Louis, in Index 1 National Debt, 609 Navarre, 467 Navigation Act, 579 Netherlands, Revolt of, 535. See Holland Nineveh, Bk. i. ch. iv. Normandy, 301, 406, 419, 462. See Index 1 Normans or Norsemen, 301, Bk. n. ch. iii. Northampton, Assize of, 414 ; Treaty of, 434 Norway, 303, 351, 620 Novgorod, 398 Nuremberg, Peace of, 520 Nymphenburg, Treaty of, 628 Nymwegen, Peace of, 589, 593, 597 Nystadt, Treaty of, 620 Oliva, Peace of, 614 Olynthus, 126 ; Olynthian War, 112 Ostrogoths, 256-60 Palestine, Bk. I. ch. iv., 179, 195, 344, 369, 372, 722. See Crusades Paris, Treaty of (1763), 631, 638, 643 ; (1815), 703; (1856), 725; (1871), 753. See Index 3 Parliament. 426-7, 435, 437-8, 566, 569 Partition, Treaty of (1), 601, 610 ; (2) 610 Passau, Treaty of, 524, 561 Pecquigny, Treaty of, 463 507 Peloponnesian War, 106-7 Persia, 35-8, Bk. I. ch. v., vi. ; 119, ch. x. ; 245, 277. See Artaxerxes, Chosroes, Darius, in Index 1 Peterloo Massacre, 709 Petersburg, 618 Petition of Bight, 567 Phocians, 124, 127 Phrygians, 35 Pilgrimage of Grace, 529 Pirates, 194, 520 Pisa, Council of, 475, 486 Poland, 492, 505, 615, 633, 708 Poor Law, 565 Port Royal, 591-2 Portsmouth, Treaty of, 764 Portugal, 401, 467, 687, 750. See Alfonso and John, Index 1 Poynings' Law, 463 Pragmatic Sanction, 625 Prague, Treaty of, 747. See Index 3 Pressburg, Treaty of (1491), 509; (1806), 682, 688 Protestants, 520 Prussia, 343, 348, 587-8, Bk. m. ch. ix., 653-4 Puritans, 550 Pyrenees, Treaty of, 577. See Index 3 Radicals, 710 Radstadt, Treaty of, 606 Rastadt, Treaty of, 661 Reformation, the, Bk. in. ch. i.-ii. Reform Bill, the, 711 Restitution, Edict of, 561 Ripon, Pacification of, 569 Rois Faineants, 264 Rome, Treaty of, 744 Roncaglia, Diet of, 354 Roses, Wars of the, 462 Rubicon, the, 199 Rump, the, 572, 5S2 Russia. See Ivan, Peter, Catherine, in Index 1 Ryswyk, Peace of, 593, 601, 607, 009 Sabines, 131 Sacred War, 125, 128 St. Bartholomew Massacre, 542 St. Germain, Treaty of, 542 St. Helena, 701 St. Petersburg. See Petersburg Samnites, 151-3 San Germano, Treaty of, 372 San Stefano Treaty, 756 Saragossa, 401. See Index 3 Savoy. See Victor an! Savoy, Index 1 Saxons, 233, 284-6 ; Emperors, Bk. n. ch. iv. Saxony. See Index 1 Schleswig-Holstein, 321, 743 Schmalkalden, League and War of, 520-2 Schonbnmn, Treaty of, 684 Scotland, Union with, 613 Semites, 18 ff., 23, 49, 274 Senlis, Treaty of, 510 Settlement, Act of, 610 Seven Years' War, 630 Seville, Treaty of, 646 Shiites, 278 Ship-money, 568 Sicily, 79, 107, 158, 162, 317, 348, 385, 393 Silesian War (1), 628 ; (2), 629 Sistowa, Treaty of, 646 Sonderbund, the, 714 Spain, 157-60, 185, 201, 279, 285, 373, Bk. ii. ch. ix., 437 ; Bk. n. ch. xh, 510, 538, 553, 705. See Ferdinand ani Philip, Index 1 Spanish Succession, War of, Bk. n. ch. vii. Sparta, 81, 118, Bk. I. ch. viii. Stamp Act, 639 Stockholm, Treaty of, 620 Sumerians, 18-21 Sunnites, 278 Supremacy, Act of, 546 Swabian League, 509 Sweden, 303, 343, 560-4, 614-20. See Frederick and Gustavus, Index 1 Switzerland, 343, 448, 472, 507, 663, 713 Syracuse, 107, 157 Syria, 35, 60 ff., 80, 178, 182, 195, 348, 707 Szegedin, Treaty of, 497 Tauroggen, Treaty of, 694 Teschen, Peace of, 634 Test Act, 596, 711 Teutones, 189 Thebes (Egypt), 12, 16 ; (Greece) 113 ff., 124 Thirty Years' War, Bk. in. ch. iv. 794 A GENERAL HISTORY Thorn, Peace of, 505 Tilsit, Treaty of, 68G-7 Tolentino, Treaty of, 660 Tories, 598, 612 Traven thai, Peace of, 617 Trent, Council of, 521-3, 534 Triple Alliance (1668), 586-7 ; (1717), 623 (1788), 646 Troppau, Congress of, 706 Troy, 32, 38, 77 Troyes, Treaty of, 461 Turks, 494 ft*., 504, 589-91 Uniformity, Acts of, 531, 546 United Provinces. See Holland Usedoni, 561 Utica, 185 Utrecht, Peace of, 605-6, 613, 626, 628 ; Union of, 538 Vandals, 250-9 Vassy, Massacre of, 541 Venice, 255, 362-3, 486-90, 662 Verdun Treaty, 294 Vereeniging, Treaty of, 763 Verona, Diet of, 334 Versailles, Treaty of, 643 Vervins, Treaty of, 544, 555 Vienna, Treaty of (1731), 625 ; (1809), 691 ; (1864), 744 ; Congress of, 698-99, 703-4 . See Index 3 Vikings, 304-5 Villafranca, Treaty of, 729-30 Visigoths, 248 Vossem, Treaty of, 588 Walijnoford, Treaty of, 410 Welau, Treaty of, 587 Wends, 321, 326 Wenelo, Peace of, 646 Westminster, Treaty of, 588, 597 Westphalia, Peace of, 538, 564, 573, 575, 587 Whigs, 598, 612 Winter King, the, 559 Wisby, 398 Wittenberg, capitulation of, 522 Worms, Concordat of, 342 ; Diet of, 518 ; Treaty of, 635 III.— INDEX OF BATTLES, SIEGES, ETC. Aboukir, 664 — Bay, 664, 668 Abraham, Plains of, 641 Acre: (1191) 360; (1799) 663, 664 Actium, 204, 213 Adrianople, 248 Aegates, 108 Aegospotami, 107 Agincourt, 460 Agosta, 588 Ai, 52 Ajalon, 52 Alalia, 79 Alarcos, 403 Albuera, 696 Alessandria, 357 Alexandria, 675 Aljubarrota, 467. 468 Allenstein, 685 Allia, 149 The Alma, 723 Almanza, 604 Alnwick, 414 Amphipolis, 106 Angora, 496 Antietam, 736 Antioch, 346 Aphek, 53 Aquileia, 232 Arbela, 168 Areola, 660, 664 Arcot, 636 Arginusae, 107 Arpad, 48 Artaxata, 195 Artemisium, 90 Ascalon, 347 Aspem, 691 Assandun (Ashdown), 311 Asti, 249 Auerstadt, 684 Auray, 452 Ausculum, 155 Aussig, 478 Austerlitz, 681-3 Badajoz, 696 Baecula, 162 Balaclava, 724 Ball's Bluff, 734 Bannockburn, 422 Bar-sur-Aube, 697 Barossa, 696 Bautzen, 694 Beaumont, 751 Beda, 276 Benevento, 388 Biethen, 323 Blenheim, 603, 612, 627 Blore Heath, 462 Bocholt, 285 Borodino, 693 Bosworth, 464 Bouvines, 366, 421, 439 Bovianum, 153 Boyne, the, 609 Bozra, 278 Bramham Moor, 459 Bravalla, 303 Breitenfeld, 562 Brenta, the, 299 Brescia: (siege) 375 ; (battle) 473 Brienne, 697 Brunanburgh, 308, 309 Budweis, 559 Bull Run : (1861) 733 ; (1862) 736 Bunker's Hill, 641 Bury St. Edmunds, 414 Byzantium, 128 — See Constantinople Cabira, 195 Calais, 436, 533 Calcutta, 637 Cambuskenneth, 431 Camperdown, 668 Cannae : (B.C. 216) 161 ; (a.d. 1019) 316 Cape Finisterre, 636 — St. Vincent, 668 Capua, 162 Carberry Hill, 549 Carchemish, 44, 67 Carpi, 602 Carrhae, 199, 201 Carthage, 184, 259 Cassano: (1259)385; (1799)662, Catalaunian Plains, 254 Caudine Forks, 152 Chaerone, 192 Chaeronea, 129, 165 Chalcedon, 236 Chamaubert, 697 Champion's Hill, 737 Chancellors ville, 737 Charenton, 576 Chateau Gaillard, 419 — Thierry, 697 Chattanooga, 738 796 A GENERAL HISTORY (394) 110 Chiari, 602 Chickahominy, 735 Chickamauga Creek, 738 Chioggia, war of, 489 Chocziin, 616 Cholovein, 618 Chotusitz, 629 Ciudad Eodrigo, 696 Civitella, 316 Clissow, 617 Cnidus, the, 110 Cold Harbour, 739 Constantinople: (1204)363; (1453)498 Copenhagen : (1801) 675 ; (1807) 687 Coracesium, 195 Corbiesdale, 579 Corinth, 183 Coronea: (447) 104; Cortenuova, 375 Corunna, 690 Cotrona, 334 Courtrai, 441 Crannon, 175 Craonne, 697 Crecy, 435, 450 Crefeld, 630 Cremona, 602 Crevant, 462 Crimisus, 157 Culloden, 636 Cunaxa, 109 Custozza, 746 Cynoscepale, 182 Cyzicus, 195 Czaslau, 558 Damascus, 48, 64 ; (1147) 348 Damietta, 367 Delium, 106 Denain, 606 Demiewitz, 695 Dermbach, 746 Detmold, 286, 292 Dettingen, 629, 635 Dijon, 262 Dol, 414 Dorrlaeum, 346 Downs, the, 595 Dresden, 695 Dreux, 541 Drogheda, 579 Dunbar: (1296)430; (1650)579 Dunes, the, 582 Durazzo, 317 Dyle, the, 299 Ebelsberg, 691 Eckmuhl, 691 Eddington, 307 Edessa, 347, 348 Edgehill, 570 Eger, 563 Engen, 673 Espagnol-sur-Mer, les (Winchelsea), 436 Essling, 691 Eupatoria, 724 Eurymedon, 96 Evesham, 427 Eylau, 685 Fair Oaks, 735 Falkirk : (1298), 431 ; (1746) 636 Farnham, 308 Fehrbellin, 588, 614, 627 Firket, 760 "First of June, the," 667 Five Forks, 741 Fleurus: (1690), 593 ; (1794)658,667 Florence, 520 Foggia, 384 Fontenay: (841) 294 Fontenoy: (1745) 636 Fomovo, 511 Fortore, 315 Fraustadt, 617 Fredericksburg, 736 Friederichshall, 620 Friedland, 685 Fuentes d'Onoro, 696 Gaines Mills, 735 Garigliano, the, 302 Gemblours, 537 Gettysburg, 737 Gollheim, 445 Grandson, 507 Granicus, the, 166 Grossbeeren, 695 Grossjager, 630 Guinegate : (1479) 507 Haliartus, 109 Hammelburg, 746 Hauau, 696 Harfleur, 460 Hastings, 315, 406 Heraclea Miroa, 158 Himera, 92, 157 Hippo, 252 Hittin, 360 Hochkirch, 630 Hochst, 559 Hohenfriedberg, 629 Hohenlinden, 674 Ilomildon Hill, 458 Inkerman, 724 Ipsus, 175, 177 Issus, the, 167 Ivry, 544 Jackson, 737 Jarnac, 541 Jena, 684 ' Jericho, 52 Jerusalem: (586 B.C.) 67 (1099) 346; (1187) 360 Kadesh, 41 Kappel, 516 Katzbach, the, 695 Kenesaw, 740 Kesselsdorf, 629 Khartoum, 758, 760 Killala, 668 Kissingen, 746 Kolin, 630 Koniggriitz, 746 (70 A. P.) 222 INDEX OF BATTLES, SIEGES, ETC. 797 Kossovo: (1389)495; (1449)497 Kulm, 695 Kunersdorf, 631 Kuropedion, 176 LADYSMITH, 762 La Fere Champenoise, 697 La Hogue, 593 Langside, 549 Laon, 697 La Rochelle, 567, 574 La Rothiere, 697 Las Navas de Tolosa, 403 Laupen, 472 Lech, the, 563 Lechaeurn, 110 Lechfeld, 329 Legnano, 357, 358 Leipzig (Breitenfeld), 562 Leipzig: (1813) 695, 696 Lepanto, 590 Lerida, 200 Leucas, 115 Leuctra, 114-6 Lexington, 641 Ley den, 537 Ligny, 700 Lille, 604 Lincoln : (1141) 409 ; (1217) 424 Lipan, 480 Lissa, 747 Lobositz, 630 Lodi, 660 Londonderry, 608 Longwy, 654 Lowestoft, 595 Lucknow, 726 Liitzen : (1632) 563 ; (1813) 694 Magdeburg, 523, 562 Magenta, 728 Magnesia, 182 Maidstone, 572 Majuba Hill, 759 Malplaquet, 604 Malvern Hill, 735 Mantinea: (418) 107; (362) 119, 120 Marchfeld: (1260)389; (1260) 492; (1278) 444 Marengo, 673, 674 Marignano, 519 Marston Moor, 571, 578 Meaux, 461 Medina, 276 Megiddo, 42, 67 Meloria, 378 Messana, 158 Metaurus, the, 162 Methven, 432 Metz 750 Milan: (1158)353,354; (1161)355,356 Millesinio, 659 Milvian Bridge, 236 Minden : (1679) 589 ; (1759) 631 Mirebeau, 419 Mbckern, 696 Mohacs, 591 Molara, 486 Mollwitz, 628 Moncontour, 541 Mondovi, 659 Montaperti, 386, 487 Montebello, 728 Montenotte, 659 Montereau, 697 Monte Rotondo, 748 Montmirail, 697 Mookerheide, 537 Morat, 507 Morgarten, 449, 472 Mortimer's Cross, 463 Mosskirch, 673 Miihlberg, 522 Miihldorf : (1257) 389 : Munda, 201 Mycale, 93 Mylae: (262 B.C.) 158; (1322) 448, 449 (36 B.C.) 212 Nafels, 472 Najera, 467 Nancy, 507 Naples, 383 Narva, 617 Naseby, 571, 578 Naulochus, 212 Navaretta, 437, 467 Navarino, 706, 707 Naxos, 115 Neerwinden, 593 Nemea, 109 Neon, 125 Neuss, 506 Neville's Cross, 435 . Newburn, 569 Newton Butler, 608 Nicopolis, 496 Nile, the, 664, 668 Nissa, 497 Nocera, 260 Nordlingen, 563 Noreja, 189 Northallerton, 409 Northampton, 463 North Foreland, the, 5E5 Novara, 726 Novi, 663 Numantia, 185 Ockley, 305 Oeniadae, 102 Oenoe, 100 Oenophyta, 101 Ohod, 276 Omdurman, 760 Oporto, 691 Orchomenos, 192 Orleans, 254 Ostend, 538 Ostrolenka, 708 Oudenarde, 604, 613 Palermo, 588 Pampeluna 285 Panormus, 158 Paris, 543-4, 752, 753 Parma, 380 Pavia, 284, 519 Pellene, 81 79 8 A GENERAL HISTORY Pelusium, 45 Perinthus, 128 Perusia, 212 Pharsalia, 200 PMlippi, 211 Philocrene, 494 Pinkie, 531, 533 Pima, 630 Pistoria, 196 Plassey, 637 Plataea : (battle) 92, 93 ; (siege) 106 Poitiers; (732) 272 ; (1356) 436, 451 Pollenti'a, 249 Prague, 630 Preston: (1648)572; (1715)623 Prestonpans, 636 Pultawa, 618 Pultusk: (1703)617; (1806)685 Pydna, 183 Pyramids, the, 663 Pyrenees, the, 697 Quatee Bras, 700 Eadcot Bridge, 456 Bamillies, 603, 604, 613 Earnleh, 361 Bamoth Gilead, 61 Bathmines, 579 Kaudian Plains, 190 Bavenna, 256 Baymond, 737 Beading, 306 Eiade, 321 Richmond, 735 Bivoli, 660 Borne : (408-410) 250, 251, 255 ; (1527) 519 Boncesvalles, 285, 293 Bossbach, 630 Bouen, 419 Saalfeld, 684 Saarbriicken, 749 Saguntum, 160 Saints, the (1782), 642 St. Albans : (I.) 462 ; (II.) 463 St. Antoine, 577 St. Denis, 541 St. Gotthard, 590 St. Privat, 750 St. Vincent, Cape, 668 Salado, 404 Salamanca, 697 Salamis, 91 Samaria, 48, 61, 65 Sandwich, 424 San Felice, 469 Santa Cruz, 581 Saragossa : (758) 285 ; '1710) 605 ; (1809), 690 Saratoga, 461 Sardis, 84 Sassbach, 588 Savannah, 740 Scarborough Castle, 432 Scarphaea, 183 Sebastopol, 732-5 Sedan, 751 Sedgemoor, 599 Seir, 63 Sellasia, 177 Sempach, 472 Seneffe, 588 Sentinum, 154 Sevenoaks, 462 Sheriffmuir, 623 Shiloh, 735 Shrewsbury, 459 Sievershausen, 524 Silarus, the, 194 Sluys, 435 Smerwick, 551 Smolensk, 693 Sohr, 629 Soissons: (486)261; (923)301; (1814)697 Solara. 401 Southwold Bay, 596 Spanish Armada, 538, 553, 554 Speicher, 473 Spicheren, 750 Squillace, 334 Stamford Bridge, 314 Stadtlohn, 560 Steinkeerken, 593 Stockach: (1799) 662 ; (1800) 673 Stralsvmd (1628) 561 ; (1715) 619 Strassburg : (357) 244, 589 ; (1870) 751 Sybote, 105 Syracuse (battle), 107 ; (siege) 162 Tagina, 260 Tasliacozzo, 391 Taillebourg, 425 Talavera, 691 Tamynae, 126 Tanagra, 101 Tauss, 478, 480 Tel-el-Kebir, 758 Tenchebrai, 406 Testry, 272 Tewkesbury, 463 Texel, the, 597 Thapsus, 201 Thermopylae : (480), 90 ; (191) 182 Therouenne (1479), 507 Thrasymene Lake, the, 160 Tiberias, 277 Tigranocerta, 195 Torgau, 631 Tortona, 351 Toul, 751 Toulon, 657, 658 Tours: (732) 272 ; (841, siege) 304 Towton, 463 Trafalgar, 681 Trebia, the : (218 B.C.) 160 ; (1799 A.r>.) 663 Trifanum, 151 Troja, 384 Troy, 77 Tschesme\ 632 Tunis, 158, 520 Turin, 604, 613, 627 Turnham Green, 570 Tushima, 764 Tyre, 167 INDEX OF BATTLES, SIEGES, ETC. 799 Holes, 401 Ulm, 681 Ushant, 636 Valmy, 654 Varna, 497 Vauchamps, 697 Veii, 149 Vercelli, 299 Verneuil, 462 Verona : (489) 256 ; (siege) 284 Vicksburg, 737 Vienna, 580 Villaviciosa, 605 Vimiero, 690 Vinegar Hill, 668 Vionville, 750 Vittoria, 697 Vouille\ 262 Wachau, 696 Wagram, 691 Wakefield, 463 Waterloo, 667, 699-702 Weissenberg, 749 Wexford, 579 White Mountain, 559 Wiesbach, 559 Wimpfen, 559 Winceby, 578 Worcester, 579, 582 Worth, 750 Xeees de la Fronteea, 279, 280 Yoektown : (1781) 642 ; (1862) 73; Zama, 163 Zela, 200 Zenta, 591 Zorndorf, 630 Ziilpich, 262 Zurich, 662, 663 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co. 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