^ THE \ O LIBRARIES =t Given by Heni3^ W. Howell .?«- M E M O'l R S OP CELEBRATED FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. BY MRS. JAMESON, AUTHOKESS OF "THE DIABY OF AN ENNUYEE," ETC., ETtt IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW Y O R K : HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 82 CLIFF STKE K l\ V i *': uasive gifts. Her accomphshments rendered her an object of admiration, and her extreme youth of 34 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. sympathy and commiseration. We are not told who were the ministers and advisers of Cleopatra at this period, but her measures were concerted with so much wisdom, and executed with so much energy and promptitude, that in spite of all we* are told of her precocious intellect and singular powers, we can scarcely believe them to have emanated entirely from herself. At the time of her retreat to Syria she was not more than sixteen, — an age at which a woman is sometimes a finished coquette " par instinct,?' but seldom a bold and practised diplomatist. She despatched, in the first place, ambassadors to Rome, to justify herself before the Senate, and com- plain of the conduct of Achilles and Photinus, whom she denounced as traitors to her government, and enemies of the Roman people ; and as at this time Pompey and Caesar were contending for empire, she sent to Pompey, the benefactor of her family, a re- inforcement of fifty galleys, manned and armed After some time had elapsed without any answei from the Senate, Cleopatra found that the Romans were too much occupied with their ow^i intestine dissensions to attend to the affairs of Egypt ; she therefore took her cause into her own hands, and levied an arm^^, at the head of W'liich she boldly marched into Egypt to claim her rights. Ptolemy, or rather his ministers (for he was then only thir- teen), raised an army to oppose her, and stationed himself at Pelusium, a celebrated fortress at the entrance of the Nile. At this juncture occurred the battle of Pharsalia, which rendered Caesar the sole and undisputed master of the vast resources of the Roman em.pire. Pompey, pursued or rather con- ducted by his evil destinies, fled from the plains of Thessaly, and sought a refuge in Egypt; trusting— vamly trusting — that the favours he had formerly heaped on the family of Ptolemy would give hixa CLEOPATRA. 36 the strongest claim to the hospitaUty and protection of the Egyptians. But the news of the battle had arrived before him, and with it the intelligence that Caesar was pursuing his fallen adversary to the shores of Egypt. The perfidious ministers of Ptolemy resolved to aban- don the weaker side, and to bespeak the friendship of the conqueror by the sacrifice of his great rival : the well-known catastrophe need hardly be repeated here. Pompey was basely assassinated at the mo- ment of his landing, and his head and signet-ring were presented to Caesar as the most acceptable gifts which could be offered to him, and the most expressive homage to his pov/er. Caesar would probably have taken signal vengeance on the mur- derers, if the small number of his troops had not obliged him, from prudential motives, to restrain his indignation ; he contented himself, therefore, by merely issuing his commands, in the name of the Roman people, that Cleopatra and iier brother should appear before him, and submit their differences to his arbitration. Cleopatra was at this time between sixteen and seventeen. She was not, by all accounts, so beautiful in person, as she was graceful and captivating in manner : but the melody of her voice, the bright- ness of her smiles, the various accomplishments of her mind, and a peculiar art of adapting herself to the individual tastes and habits of those she addressed, formed that combination of charms by which she subdued all who approached her. She was fond of learning, and a patroness of learned men ; had studied with success the Greek philosophy and lite- rature, and spoke ten different languages with equal fluency. But she had been educated in a most cor- rupt court, and imbibed its vices : from her child- hood she had been immersed in vile intrigues, and in continual struggles for power. She was dissem- bling, ambitious, vajn, perverse, and utterly unprin- 36 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. cipled ; prosenting a strange mixture of talent and frivolity, of firmness and caprice, of magnanimity and artifice, of royal pride and more than feminine weakness. She had made herself well acquainted with the character of Caesar, and she resolved not to trust only to the justice of her cause, but, if possible, to inter- est him personally in her favour before he should be called on to give judgment in her aflfairs. Caesar was so surrounded by the minions of Ptolemy, that it was difficult to enter the palace, or to procure ac- cess to him in private. But to compass her object no instrument was too mean, no expedient too de- grading, no sacrifice too great, though it should in- clude that of her sex's honour, as well as of her queenly dignity. She procured the assistance of a chamberlain named ApoUodorus, and he conveyed her on his back, concealed in a mattress or a bundle of linen, to the very apartment of Caesar. If the Roman general was surprised by this unexpected introduction, he was not less struck by the boldness and dexterity with which she had obtained access to him. But when Cleopatra threw herself, all bathed in tears, at his feet, he was no longer able to resist her. In a speech of the most artful and per suasive eloquence she expatiated on the injustice of her enemies; she recapitulated the injuries and in- dignities she had endured from the minions of her brother; she defended herself on the plea of policy and gratitude for the assistance she had sent to Pompey, the friend of her family ; and concluded by appealing, as a defenceless woman and an injurea queen, to the generosity and compassion of the Ro- man general. The appeal was not made in vain. Caesar was captivated by her charms and her elo- quence ; he not only promised his favour and protec- tion, but he proffered love, and laid himself and his power at her feet. A few days after this first inter- /iew he commanded that the -.brother and sistei CLKOPATKA. 37 should disband their respective armies, and submit entirely to iiis judgment. Cleopatra was well con- tent to leave her destinies in the hands of a man who was so completely subdued to her power as to have no will but hers. But the adherents of Ptole- my were not so inclined. They exclaimed against the insolence of a man who attempted to dictate laws to them in their own capital, as if he had been their conqueror rather than their friend and all}^ They could easily guess at the means by which Cleo- patra had seduced her judge; and Ptolemy, filling the city with his just complaints, excited the people of Alexandria to attack Csesar in the palace. Many engagements took place, in which both Cleopatra and Czesar were exposed to the most imminent dangers. The young queen showed herself worthy of the con- fidence and affection of Caesar during thisteirible emergency ; and by her advice, her presence of mind, and her knowledge of the people and the coun- try, rendered him the most essential services. The insurrection was at length quelled, after many vicissitudes of fortune and much bloodshed. The famous Alexandrian hbrary being accidentally set on fire in one of these encounters, forty thousand volumes were consumed before the conflagration was extinguished. Two of Cleopatra's most deadly enemies had perished during this short war : Photinus had been put to death by Caesar, not without just provocation and Achilles had been murdered by the orders jf Arsinoe, the younger sister of Cleopatra, who nad joined the rebels against her. Ptolemy, who had given early proofs both of wickedness and weak- ness, was afterward accidentally drowned by the sinking of a galley ; and all Egypt submitted to the conqueror. Tranquillity being thus restored, Caesar undertook a progress through Eg>^pt in company with Cleopa- tra. They ascended the Nile together in the sam« I.— C 38 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. vessel, followed by a splendid retinue ; and it is said that Caesar would have proceeded with her beyond the cataracts into Ethiopia if his veteran troops had not refused to follow him. The^^ blushed to behold their general, who had so often led them to victory, abandoned to luxury^ and indolence, and completely in the power of an artful and ambitious woman. Thsy returned, therefore, to Alexandria, and soon afterward Caesar was called by the state of affairs into Armenia and Cappadocia. Previous to his de- parture, he caused Cleopatra and her only surviving brother, the younger Ptolemy, then about eleven years old, to be proclaimed King and Queen of Egypt. His son by Cleopatra, to whom the Alexandrians had given the name of Caesarion, he declared heir to the Egyptian crown ; and then, taking leave of his enchanting queen with regret, he conducted his le- gions against Pharnaces, King of Pontus Young Ptolemy died a short time afterward, and it is supposed by some authors that Cleopatra poi- soned him, either to reign alone, or to ensure the undisputed succession to her son Ceesarion. If we may judge from her character, and the frequency of such crimes in her family, she was not incapable of the atrocity imputed to her if it would have answered any purpose. But it is fair to remark, that the ac- cusation does not rest on historic proof; and to cause the death of an unoffending and helpless child with- out some more adequate motive bespeaks a heart more completely hardened against the natural affec- tions than Cleopatra ever exhibited. During a period of twelve years, that is, from the departure of Caesar to the rupture between Octavius and Mark Antony, Cleopatra continued to rule her kuigdom in great splendour and prosperity. Either through a natural taste for magnificence, or a belief that the vulgar are imposed on and governed by means of outward show, she never appeared in jaib- lic but with the most dazzling pomp. She even as- CLEOPATRA. 39 stimed the habiliments and headdress of the gcddess Isis. the principal divinity of the Egyptians, and she was thus represented in her coins and statues. Very little i-s recorded of the life and actions of Cleopatra during: this time ; but it appears incidentally that she governed in such a manner as to secure the aflfectiou and reverence of her people, and the respect of the neighbouring- nations, some of whom submitted vol- untarily to her power, and others chose her as the arbitress of their mutual differences. She did not attempt to extend her dominion by force of arms, but rather by policy and prudence. A disposition to violence, or even personal courage, formed no part of the character of Cleopatra; and her ambition, though unbounded, was never warlike. She was luxurious and magnificent, but not indolent; she transacted all affairs, gave audience to ambassadors, and administered justice in person. She made a journey to Rome in the j^ear 46 B. C. to congratu- late Caesar on his Asiatic triumphs ; and on this oc- casion she displayed all that profuse magnificence for which she was remarkable. She presented to Cffisar and to the Roman people gifts of extraordi- nary value, rare pictures, sculpture, gems, gold, and tapestries, which Avere deposited in the Capitol ; and Caesar returned the compliment by placing her statu in massive gold on the right-hand of Venus, in the temple of that goddess. Within two years after this memorable visit Caesar was assassinated in the Capitol. We are not told how Cleopatra received the intelligence of his fate, or whether she was deeply affected by the violent death of one who had been her friend, protector, and lover; but it appears that '^bout this time Sextus Pompey visited her in Egypt, where he was enter- tained with magnificence ; and that she attached him to her interests by the same means which she had found so successful with others. Young Pompey was at this period master of the whole Mediterra- 40 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. nean ; his victorious and innumerable galleys swept the seas ; and at a crisis when the death of Caesar eft her without a protector at Rome, Cleopatra felt all the advantage of securing such a partisan, and, as usual, was not scrupulous about the means she employed for that purpose. It was her connexion with Pompey which exposed her to the accusation of having aided the conspirators with money and arms after the death of Caesar. This accusation whether true or false — and one would wish for the honour of female nature to believe it false — led to the celebrated attachment between Mark Antony and Cleopatra, which ended in the destruction of both, and has rendered their names for ever insepa rable in the memory of man. The occasion of their first meeting was this:— ' After the battle of Philippi, in which Brutus and Cassius were defeated, Antony had taken the com- mand of the army against the Parthians, and, on leaving Greece to' pass into Asia, he sent orders to Cleopatra to meet him in Cilicia, and justify herself against the accusation of having assisted Brutus and Cassius in their war against ihe triumvirate. The queen prepared to obey this haughty summons, but she trusted more to her address and her personal charms than to the justice of her cause ; and being perfectly acquainted with the character of the man to wiiom she was about to introduce herself, did not despair of subduing Antony by the same arts which had already vanquished Caesar. Attended by a nu- merous and splendid retinue, and loaded with a world of treasures and gifts, and store of gold and silver, she proceeded through Syria to meet Antony in Asia Minor ; and though she was frequently in- formed that he waited her arrival with impatience, she did not condescend to hasten her progress ; but mocking at his letters and messengers with a smil- ing grace, travelled with pomp and leisure, as one who was about to confer an honour on an inferior n.EOPATRA. 41 rather than to obey the summons of a superior. On her arrival in Cilicia, she embarked on the rivei Cydnus, to sail down to Tarsus ; and this triumphant and maj^nificent vo^^age has become, from the de- scriptions of Shakspeare and Dryden, famous in po- etry as well as in history, — although poetry itself could scarcely enhance the gorgeousness of the pic- ture. The poop of the galley was of gold, the sails of purple silk, and the silver oars* kept time to the sound of various musical instruments, which breathed the most delicious harmony. The Queen of Egypt lay reclined on a couch, under a canopy of cloth of gold, crowned and attired like the goddess Venus, while beautiful boys winged to represent Cupids stood fanning her on either ^de ; the fairest among her maids, some habited like the Nereids, and others iike the Graces, were employed in the steerage and management of the vessel ; altars were raised and incense was burned along the shores, w^hich were covered with multitudes of people, who crowded to gaze on the splendid pageant, and filled the air with acclamations. Presently a rumour was spread abroad that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, and the whole populace of the city of Tarsus poured forth to meet and receive her. Antony invited her to supper, but she sent him word that he should rather wait upon her; that she was too fatigued to land, and would have the pleasure of receiving and entertaining him on board her galley ; in short, she assumed from the first the airs, not only of a queen, but of a divinity. How well she. understood the temper of the man she sought to captivate by ail this gorgeous display of oriental pomp and grandeur is shown by her success. Antony, like Caesar, had begun by being her judge ' I remember to have read some-Aiiere, though I cannctt refer to the authority, tlwt the silver oars of f'leopatra's barge were pierced at the extremities with holes of different sizes, and so mechanically contrived, that the water, as it flowed through them at every stroke, produced a harmony in coucord with that of the flutes and Ivres on board T)2 42 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. and the arbitrator of her fate, and he ended by be- coming the veriest slave that ever was chained' tO' a woman's footstool. At the time of his first meeting with Cleopatra the triumvir was past the meridian of life. He was in his forty-eighth year, " of a no- ble presence, a graceful length of beard, an ample forehead, and an aquiline nose;" he was thought to resemble in his person the pictures and statues of Hercules, and was in fact vain of his supposed de- scent from that hero. In his character he was fear- essly brave, open-hearted, and magnificent ; but ar- rogant, vindictive, and abandoned to every species of dissolute excess. He appeared by turns, as the humour seized him, generous and compassionate, or base, selfish, and relentless; could devote his life and fortune to the service of a friend, or insult over the remains of a murdered enemy; — and that enemy Cicero! On the whole, he appears to have been without one touch of true magnanimity, though sometimes irregularly great from accident or im- pulse : a magnificent, reckless libertine; a vahant but a coarse soldier. Cleopatra, laying aside her literary pursuits, her refined elegance, and the many- coloured robe and majestic deportm.ent of the god- dess Isis, lent herself to all his rough tastes : drank, and revelled, and jested with him ; hunted half the day, banqueted half the night ; and surpassed him in prodigahty and magnificence. Antony put off for her sake his Parthian expedition^ and she led him in triumph to Alexandria. Many anecdotes are told of the riotous and ex travagant life which they led for several months in the capital of Egypt, vying with each other in dissi- pation and reve-iry ; while treasures wrung from the blood and tears of thousands of human beings were lavished at a single feast. The famous story of Cleopatra's pearl is so often alluded to in history and poetry, besides being a favourite subject of paint- ers and sculptors,, that it ought to be mentioned here. CLEOPATRA. 43 It 's said that Antony having once boasted of the splendour of an entertainment he had ^iven to the queen, she laid him a wager that she would serve up to him a banquet of such exceeding- magnificence, that one single course should be of more cost tlian all his feasts put together. Lucius Plancus was chosen as umpire. Cleopatra was accustomed to wear in her ears two pearls unequalled in the world for their size, beauty, and value, the least of which was valued at 50,000/. of English money. When she was seated at the table with Antony, she took one of these pearls from her ear, and, dissolving it in a cup of vinegar, pledged Antony, and drank it off. She v/as about to treat the remaining pearl in the same manner, when Antony, in amazement, stopped her hand, and Lucius Plancus declared that she had already won the wager. Such is the story handed down to us from antiquity. That a woman like Cle- opatra should sacrifice 50,000/. or 100,000/. for a whim is not absolutely incredible ; but an acid of sufficient strength to melt a" pearl instantaneously could not be swallowed with impunity. Cleopatra, if she did dissolve her pearl, must have diluted her cup with two or three bowls of wine. The other pearl, which had -been the companion of that which Cleopatra had sacrifiiced with a kind of sublime os- tentation, was afterward carried to Rome, where it was divided into two, each almost inestimable, and hung in the ears of a celebrated statue of Venus which Agrippa had just placed in his Pantheon. The life which Mark Antony led with Cleopatra displeased Octavius and the Roman people. They called upon him to return, and at length the trium- vir, rousing himself as from a lethargy, set out for Italy. There a reconciliation was effected between the rival generals, and one of the conditions was the marriage of Antony with Octavia, the half-sister of Octavius, and a woman of equal beauty and virtue. Cleopatra heard of this union with grief and despair; 44 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. she feared that it would put an end to her power over Antony, — a power which rendered her, in fact, mistress of half the Roman empire ; and it is certain that the idea of reigning at Rome, and dictating laws from the Capitol, had taken strong possession of her ambitious mind and vivid imagination. She had a powerful rival in Octavia, whose character is one of the most beautiful recorded in history, unit- ing all the dignity of a Roman matron in the best days of the republic with all the gentleness and graces of her sex. Though the marriage had been one of policy, she became strongly attached to her husband ; and Antony, who was generous as well as facile, could not refuse her his esteem and his love. Octavia became the mediating angel between her fiery husband and her subtle brother ; and for four years Antony remained faithful to this admirable woman, and appeared to have forgotten his Egyp- tian siren. He was, however, the slave of circum- stance and impulse ; and in passing through Asia Minor to resume the Parthian war, his old love for Cleopatra seemed to revive as he approached the scenes of their former intercourse, and he had the weakness to send Fonteius Capit© to invite her to come to him. One might have imagined that the dignity of an offended woman, if not the pride of a great queen, would have prevented Cleopatra from obeying this invitation, or rather this command ; but neither the one nor the other was ever known to stand in the way of her passions or her policy. She did not hesitate to attend him ; and this time she travelled with rather more expedition than on a former occa- sion. On her arrival Antony presented her with gifts ; not rings, nor jewels, nor slaves, nor chariots, nor rich robes, but whole kingdoms and provinces, and millions of subjects. He gave her Phoenicia, Coelo-syria, the island of Cyprus, Cilicia, part of Judea, and part of Arabia. As all the Asiatic prov- CLEOPATRA. 45 mces, from the Ionian Sea eastward, had been given up to Antony as his share of the empire, he might perhaps snppose that in bestowing these dominions on Cleopatra he was onlj'^ presenting lier with what, in the insolence of power, he deemed his own ; and. it may be added, that several of these provinces formed part of the ancient empire of the Ptolemies. The Parthian war (B. C. 36) ended disgracefully ; Antony, after many disasters, was forced to retreat, and had nearly suffered the fate of Crassus. He brought the miserable remains of his army back to Syria, and Cleopatra met him on the coast of Judea, carrying with her money and clothing for his ex- hausted troops. Octavia also set out from Rome to meet Antony, taking with her reinforcements in men and money to assist him ; but when she had reached Athens, Antony, acting under the spell of the sorceress who had subdued his better nature, commanded her to return to Italy. Cleopatra dreaded the power of Octavia ; she felt, or she af- fected, the deepest atfliction at the idea of his leaving her, and her "flickering enticements," to borrow the expression of the old translator of Plutarch, are well described, and give us a complete idea of the woman. She pretended to be the victim of a concealed grief; wasted her frame by voluntary abstinence, and " caused herself to be surprised" in tears, which she wiped away in haste, as if unwilling that they should be seen. Meantime those who were devoted to her interest were incessantly representing her sufferings to Antony, and appealing to his pity in behalf of a woman who loved him more than life or fame ; who had sacrificed the one, and was ready to sacrifice the other for his sake. Such artifices subdued An- tony, as they have wrought on better and wiser men ; and in the height of his infatuation he sent peremptory orders to Octavia to quit his house at Rome. The lavish gifts bestowed on Cleopatra without the sanction of the Roman state, the dere- 4G FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. liction of all his duties as a general and citizen, and now tlie indignities heaped on his excellent wife, the noblest lady in character and station in the em- pire, exasperated the Romans, and lent the fairest excuse to Octavius Caesar for the breach he had long meditated. Octavia, the ever-generous, ever-ad- mirable Octavia, entreated her brother not to make her wrongs the excuse for a war which v/ould plunge the whole empire into confusion ; and when her prayers availed not, she shut herself up in her house, devoted herself to her children, and refused to take any share in the deplorable contest she had no power to avert. It soon became apparent that a civil war between Octavius and Antony was inevitable. They assembled their forces by sea and land, and Cleo- patra brought to the assistance of Antony two hun- dred galleys, twenty thousand talents, and provisions for liis whole army. While these warlike prepara- tions were going forward, they spent some time in the island of Samos, revelling in every species of luxury, and afterward sailed for Athens, where the people decreed to Cleopatra public honours. Antony and his friends had requested of the queen that she Vould return to Egj^pt, and there wait the event of the war ; but this she positively refused, representing that as she was one of Antony's prin- cipal allies, it was unreasonable to deny her the privilege of being present, and commanding her own vessels and troops. It is probable that she dreaded a reconciliation between the rivals, and would rather have hazarded all on the issue of a battle, than have run the risk of losing her power over Antony. It was in compliance with her wishes that he resolved to engage Octavius by sea, contrary to the advice of his most experienced generals. " Her motive," says Plutarch, " was not the superior chance of vic- tory, but in case of being vanquished, the better op portunity to escape." That such an idea should have sugges-ted itself to the mind of a woman con- CLKOPATRA. 47 stitutionally timid even beyond the timidity of lier sex, is not surprising ; but that a veteran soldier hke Antony sliould have yielded his opinion and convic- tion to her upon such an occasion is indeed wonder- ful. It was a saying among the ancients, that "those whom the gods wished to destroy, they first deprived of understanding;" and the infatuated folly of Antony devoted himself and thousands of brave men to destruction. The sea-fight of Actium took place, therefore, under the most unfavourable auspices. Cleopatra insisted on being present at the engagement, but in the very outset of the battle, while all remained as yet undecided, she was seized with a sudden panic, and lier sixty galleys were beheld, with all their sails spread, flying from the combat. This derehclion, which was the effect of fear rather than treachery might have involved only Cleopatra and her fol- lowers in assured destruction, but for the madness of Antony, who, leaving his brave friends, his army and his navy to their fate, sprang into a five-oared galley, and followed the Queen of Egypt in her igno- minious flight. She saw him approaching, put up a signal in her vessel, and took him on board ; but both were so overcome with shame and despair that they could not look upon each other. Antony sat down and covered his face with his hands, and Cleo- patra, retiring to the opposite extremity of the ves- sel, wept, while she gazed upon him, and had not courage to address him. At the end of three days their attendants succeeded in reconciling them, and they sailed for Libya. Antony remained himself for some time in Libya, abandoned to despair, but he sent forward Cleopatra under a safe convoy to Alexandria. It has already been observed that Cleopatra had no martial spirit, no disposition to meet violence with violence ; on the contrary, she was, as a woman, " born to fears ;"" but the physical cowardice which 18 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. caused her terrors and her flight at Actium was ac- companied by great mental activity and energy. On her arrival in her own capital she reflected on the situation to which she was reduced, and she saw that only two alternatives remained, either a war which she was incapable of conducting, or the loss of freedom and empire, to which she was determined not to submit. She formed an extraordinary and a bold resolution, tinctured indeed with the egotism which belonged to her character, but such as would never have occurred to a common mind. She re- solved to transport her galleys, with all her choicest t) easures, across the narrowest part of the Isthmus of Suez to the Red Sea, to embark therewith her most faithful follov/ers, and, like another Dido, sail in quest of some distant and hospitable clime, where she might found a nevv' empire, and dwell in free- dom and in peace. This singular enterprise she would probably have carried into execution, but it iiappened that the first vessels, which with infinite fhi^kulty had been drawn across the isthmus, were burit.^d by the Arabs, and at the same time that she eceived this information Antony arrived in Egypt, md she abandoned all thoughts of her expedition. They recommenced their former mode of life, and vvhile destruction was gradually closing upon them 3n every side like a net, they spent their time in feasting and in the most magnificent and luxurious amusements. They instituted a society of twelve or fourteen intimate friends, the companions of their revels, and called themselves the " Inimitable Band," a title which, as fortune darkened around them, they exchanged for another, signifying the " United in Death.''' Meantime Octavius was approaching with hia army, and their adherents were daily deserting or betraying them ; in this emergenc}'' Cleopatra sent an ambassador to Octavius, requesting his protectior for her children, and that Egypt, as their inheritance^ CLFOrAlRA. 49 might be preserved to them. She did not ask any thing for herself; for it appears lliat even at this time she had resolved not to survive her power and her freedom. Antony, so low had he fallen, asked his life, and permission to retire to Athens. Octa- vius refused to hsten to the petition of Antony ; but he sent his freedman Thyrsus to Cleopatra, prom- ising her every possible favour if she would eithei put Antony to death, or banish him from her do- minions. We are not told whether Cleopatra spurned this messenger from her presence, nor what answer she returned to Octavius : it is merely said that Thyrsus behaved with an insolence which provoked Antc*ny, and by his order the man was scourged, and dismissed with disgrace and contempt. Tliere is not, however, the slightest reason to suspect that Cleopatra listened to the base sugges- tions of Octavius, or entertained for a moment the idea of betraying Antony'; on the contrary, she treated him in his misfortunes with increased ten- derness and respect. It is related, that at this time she kept her own birthday as a day of mourning, " with double pomp of sadness," while the birthday of Antony, which occurred soon after, was cele- brated with such magnificence, " that many of the guests who came poor returned wealtlw." The winter passed away in this manner; in the -spring Octavius again took the field and marched upon Alexandria, subduing all the cities and towns which lay in his route Cleopatra had erected near the Temple of Isis a magnificent building, which in history is called her monument, and which was probably designed as a sepulchre for her family; but, like many of the ancient tombs, it was constructed on the scale and with the solidity of a fortress. Thither she conveyed all her treasures, her gold and silver, her jewels, her pearls, her ebony, ivory, and cinnamon It is cm ious Vol. 1.— E 50 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. to find cinnamon enumerated among the most valua- ble of her possessions ; but in ancient times, when the countries which produced it were yet unknown, this spice was considered almost equivalent to gold : with these she mingled a quantity of flax and a number of torches. Octavius, under the greatest apprehension lest in a fit of despair or wilfulness she should destroy these vast treasures, which ha intended to appropriate to himself, sent to her mes- sage after message, assuring her of the gentlest treatment, all which the queen received and an- swered with a complacency more aff'ected than real; her subsequent behaviour showed that she had never trusted Octavius, and his conduct and character equally proved that she had no reason to do so. Meantime the adverse army appeared before the walls of Alexandria, and Antony, like a lion in the toils, seemed resolved to sell his life as dearly as he could ; he made a desperate sally, in which he had the advantage, and drove back the enemy to their intrenchments. Cleopatra met him on his return to the palace ; she threw herself into his arms, covered as he was v/ith dust and blood, and when he presented to her a certain soldier who had fought with distin- guished bravery by his side, the queen called for a helmet and target of pure gold from the royal treas- ures, and bestowed them on the warrior, adding " words of such sweet breath composed as made the gifts more rich." Loaded with these treasures, the soldier deserted the same night, and went over to the enemy; an instance of ingratitude which some of the friends of Antony regarded with super- stitious horror, as ominous of his approaching fall. Another engagement took place a few days after- ward with a far different result. All that remained of Antony's fleet and army surrendered to Octavius almost before a blow was struck ; and Antony re- urned to the city, exclaiming in a fury that he had CLE0P4TRA. f) 1 been betrayed by Cleopatra, and execrating her as the cause of his misfortunes. The unhappy queen, terrified by this explosion of passion, fled to her monument, accompanied by her two favourite women, Charmian and Iras, and having secured it strongly within, sent a slave to tell Antony that she was dead ; but immediately afterward, re- penting of this message, and fearful of the effect it might produce on him, she despatched her secretary Diomed to inform him that she still lived, and de- sired to see him once more. This assurance ar- rived too late. Diomed found the worst anticipa- tions of his royal mistress fatally fulfilled : Antony lay stretched on the ground, and weltering in his blood. He had given himself a mortal wound, but he was not yet dead ; and in a faint voice he desired to be carried to Cleopatra. With her characteristic timidity and selfishness, she could refuse, even at such a moment, to open the gates, from the appre- hension of treason, and he was drawn up by cords into the monument ; the queen herself assisted her women, distorting every feature by the violence of her efforts ; while Antony, already in the agonies of death, extended his arms towards her from below. When they had succeeded in lifting him into the in- terior of the monument, he was laid on a couch, and Cleopatra, hanging over him, beat her bosom, rent her garments, called on him by a thousand tender names, and gave way to ail the violence of feminine grief. Antony endeavoured to sooth her, and w^hile she wiped from his brow the blood, and the damps of approaching death, he called for wine, and drank to her. Soon afterward he expired in her arms, con- gratulating himself that, "being a Roman, he 'had been by a Roman overcome." Antony w^as scarcely dead, when Proculeius ar- rived from Octavius, with orders to take Cleopatra alive, but she refused to yield, or to admit the mes- senger into her presence, and would only confer 52 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. with him fro\n the window. Procuieius assured her of the favour of Octavius, and sh^ rephed by again demanding Egypt for her childr-en; she asked no- thing for herself but permission to bury Antony. Octavius, struck by this unexpected reserve, now began to suspect her design, and as her death would have disconcerted all his hopes of exhibiting her in triumph at Rome, to take her alive became an object of almost feverish anxiety. He succeeded by the following stratagem : he sent Gallus to confer with her at the gate of the monument ; meanwhile Pro- culeius placed a ladder at the v/indow, and while the queen was in deep conversation with Gallus, he entered from behind. Thus taken by surpri-se, she turned, and instantly drew her dagger, with intent to plunge it in her bosom; but Proculeius snatched it from her, and while she struggled in his arms, en- deavoured to sooth her by the most persuasive ar- guments. He carefully examined her dress, lest she should have poison or weapons concealed about her, and then hurried with the news of his success to Octavius, who received it with exultation. The means of self-destruction being carefully withheld, and guards posted day and night round the monument, Cleopatra apparently resigned herself to a. fate which it was in vain to resist. Having ob- tained by her prayers the body of Antony, she per- formed the funeral rites herself with as much pomp and magnificence as she could have displayed in the days of her power. Soon after she was seized with a violent indisposition, and not only refused to take the remedies prescribed, but with a sullen resolution obstinately rejected food. Octavius became alarmed, and h« had recourse to a cruel expedient to force her to attend to her health : all the children of Cleo- patra were iji his power, and he threatened to treat them with the utmost severity unless she submitted to the treatment of her physicians. Maternal ten- derness was one of the few virtues of this woman, CLEOPATRA. 53 and the imfeeling menace of Octavius had its full effect : she consented to take medicine and food, and recovered. Octavius soon after paid her a visit in her monu- ment, and she received her conqueror with all that politeness, that artificial grace, for which she was so remarkable. Her appearance was deplorable, for her eyes were swelled with incessant weeping-, and her bosom disfigured by the blows which she had inflicted on herself, according to the Egyptian cus- tom, when she had performed the obsequies of Antony. Still she preserved her presence of mind, and her object was evidently to blind and disarm Octavius by her apparent submission, rather than impose on him by assuming any airs of dignity. She wept feigned tears, and threw herself on the protection of Octavius, as though she had not re- solved to die. She gave up an inventory of her treasures ; and when her treasurer Seleucus accused her of keeping back some articles of value, she gave a strong proof of the natural violence and wilfulness of her temper ; she started up with sudden passion, caught him. by the hair, and struck him several blows on the face. She assured Octavius that the jewels she had withheld were not for herself, but intended as presents to Octavia and Livia (the sister and wife of Octavius), by whose good offices she hoped to win his favour. Octavius in return spared neither protestations norcomplim.ents ; and after a conference of some length, the conqueror departed with the per suasion that her spirit was broken, and that she was completely subdued to his wishes — but he was totally mistaken. Cleopatra, with as much subtlety, had far more penetration than the Roman ; she had seen through his mean designs and his deep dis guises, and while he was exulting in the hope of having deceived her, she triumphed in the certainty of having cheated him. Her resolve was fixed, — to die, rather than be led in triumph through the streets 54 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. of Rome, a spectacle for the ferocious multitude; but timid by nature she dreaded what slie most wished, and feared the means of death more than death itself. For several months, and even long before the death of Antony, she had occupied her- self in experiments on the nature and operation of different poisons, and she found that the bite of the asp, a small venomous serpent was the least painful and the most rapid in its effects. She had prevailed on a young Roman named Dolabella, to give her timely notice of the intentions of Octavius with respect to her future destination ; and he sent her word privately, that in three days she would be des- patched into Italy, with her children, to grace the triumph of the conqueror. On receiving this intelligence, Cleopatra sent a message to Octavius, requesting that she might be permitted to visit the tomb of Antony, and offer such oblations to the dead as vv^ere the custom of her nation. This being granted her, she was carried (still surrounded by a numerous guard) to the monu- ment of her lover, and there, falling prostrate before it, and shedding floods of tears, she burst into the following lamentation : — " It is not long, my An- tony, since with these hands I buried thee. Alas ! they were tlien free ; but thy Cleopatra is now a prisoner, attended by a guard, lest, in the transports of her grief, she should disfigure this captive body, which is reserved to adorn the triumph over thee. These are the last offerings, the last honours she can pay thee ; for she is now to be conveyed to a distant country. Nothing could part us while we lived, but in death we are to be divided. Thou, though a Roman, hest buried in Egypt ; and I, an Egv'ptian, must be interred in Italy, — the only favour I shall receive from thy country. Yet, if the gods of Rome have power or mercy left (for surely those of Egypt have forsaken us), let them not suffer me to be led m living triumph to thy disgrace ! No '— CLEOPATRA. 55 hide me, hide me with thee in the grave ; for hfe, since thou hast left it, has been misery to me." Having uttered tliese words, she again embraced the tomb, and, assisted by her women, she hung it with wreaths of flow^.s, and poured over it the funeral libations. Thes ^ ceremonies duly performed, she returned with an air of composure to her monument, ordered her women Charmian and Iras to prepare a bath, to array her in her royal robes, and place the diadem of Egypt on her head. She then sat down and wrote a letter to Octavius, and having despatched this epistle by a confidential servant, she commanded a sumptuous banquet to be prepared, of which she partook cheerfully. Meantime her letter had been delivered to Octavius, and when he opened it, the plaintive and despairing style in which it was ex- pressed at once betrayed her fatal intentions. He immediately despatched Proculeius and others v/ith orders to save her if possible : but though they made the utmost speed, they arrived too late. On break ing open the doors of the monument, a spectacle at once terrible and affecting presented itself; Cleo- patra, magnificently arraye'd, lay dead on her couch ; Iras, one of her women, was extended at her feet ; the other, still alive, was ai ranging the diadem on the head of her mistress. Proculeius exclaimed, " Was this well done, Charmian ?" to which she replied, " Yes, Roman ! it was well done ; for such a death became so great a queen :" and on uttering these words, she fell and expired on the body of her mistress. Thus perished this celebrated woman, whose character exhibits such an extraordinary mixture of grandeur and littleness, and whose life and fate present something so wildly magnificent to the fancy, that we dare not try her by the usual rules of conduct, nor use her name to point a commonplace moral, but must needs leave her as we find her. a dazzling piece of witchcraft, with which sober rea- 56 FEMALE SOVEHEIOXS. soning has nothing to do. She died in her 39th year, having reigned twenty-two years from the death of her brother Ptolemy. ShQ was twenty- ttiree years younger than Antony, to vvhom her at- tachment had lasted fourteen years ; and though poli- cy and ambition might have mingled with her love for him, there is no reason to suppose her guilty of treachery or infidelity to him during this period. Although Octavius was beyond measure incensed and disappointed by her death, he could not refuse to pay her funeral honours ; but, with characteristic meanness, he commanded all the statues which ex- isted of her to be demohshed — a usual method among the Romans of expressing hatred and ven- geance. A man named Archidius, whom Cleopatra had treated with kindness, offered a thousand talents to redeem them from destruction ; and Octavius, in whom the spirit of avarice was even stronger than the spirit of vengence, suffered them at this price to stand. The children of Cleopatra were carried to Rome. CtBsarion, her son by Caesar, was afterward put to death by Octavius. Her three children by Anthony were Alexander, Cleopatra, and Ptolemy : they were still in their childhood when they adorned the tri- umph of Octavius, and walked in procession as cap- tives, while the statue of their mother, exhibiting her as she appeared in death, with a golden asp upon her arm, was paraded before them. The generous Octavia afterward took them under her care, and brought them up in her own house, making no dis- tinction between them and her own children. She afterwards married Cleopatra to Juba, king of Mau- ritania, and the two brothers settled with their sis- ter in that country. The younger Cleopatra inherited much of her mother's grace and accomplishments Some medals remain with the head of Juba on one side with a Latin inscription, and the head of Cleo- patra on the reverse, bearing a Greek inscription ; a ZENOBIA. 57 proof, that though transplanted into a foreign land she still remembered her native country, and loved and continued her native language and literature. ZENOBIA. QUEEN OF PALMYRA. Of the government and manners of the Arabians before the time of Mahomet we have few and im- perfect accounts ; but from the remotest ages, they led the same unsettled and predatory life which they do at this day, dispersed in hordes, and dw^elling under tents. It was not to those wild and wander- ing tribes that the superb Palmyra owed its rise and grandeur, though situated in the midst of their deserts, where it is now beheld in its melancholy beauty and ruined splendour, like an enchanted island in the midst of an ocean of sands. The mer chants who trafficked between India and Europe, by the only route then known, first colonized this sin- gular spot, which afforded them a convenient rest- ing-place, and even in the days of Solomon it was the emporium for the gems and gold, the ivory, gums, spices, and silks of the far Eastern countries, which thus found their way to the remotest parts of Europe. The Palmyrenes were, therefore, a mixed race, — their origin, and many of their cus- toms, were Egyptian ; their love of luxury and their manners were derived from Persia ; their language, literature, and architecture were Greek. Thus, like Venice and Genoa, in more modern times. Palmyra owed its splendour to the opulence and public spirit of its merchants ; but its chief fame and historical interest it owes to the genius and he- roism of a woman. 68 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. Septiniia Zenobia, for such is her classical appel- lation, was the daughter of an Arab chief, Amrou, tlie son of Dharb, the son of Hassan. Of her first husband we have no account ; she was left a widow at a very early age, and married, secondly, Odena- thus, chief of several tribes of the Desert, near Palmyra, and a prince of extraordinary valour, and boundless ambition. Odenathus was the ally of the Romans in their wars against Sapor (or, more properly. Shah Poor), king of Persia: he gained several splendid victories over that powerful mon- arch, and twice pursued his armies even to the gates of Ctesiphon (or Ispahan), his capital. Odenathus was as fond of the chase as of war, and in all his military and hunting expeditions he was accompa- nied by his wife Zenobia, a circumstance which the Roman historians record with astonishment and ad- miration, as contrary to their manners, but which was the general custom of the Arab women of that time. Zenobia not only excelled her countrywomen in the qualities for which they were all remarkable; — in courage, prudence, and fortitude, in patience of fatigue, and activity of mind and body, — she also possessed a more enlarged understanding ; her views were more enlightened, her habits more intellectual. The successes of Odenathus were partly attributed to her, and they were always considered as reign- ing jointly. She was also eminently beautiful — with the oriental eyes and complexion, teeth like pearls, and a voice of uncommon power and sweetness. Odenathus obtained from the Romans the title of Augustus, and General of the East; he revenged the fate of Valerian, who had been taken captive and put to death b}'- Shah Poor : the eastern king, with a luxurious barbarity truW oriental, is said to have used the unfortunate emperor as his footstool to mount his horse. But in the midst of his victo- ries and conquests Odenathus became the victim of a domestic conspiracy, at the head of which was his- ZEN013IA. 69 nephew Meeonins. He was assassinated at Emessa during a hunting expedition, and witli him his son by his first marriage. Zenobia avenged the death of her husband on his murderers, and as her sons were yet in their mfancy, she first exercised the supreme power in their name; but afterward, ap- parently with the consent of the people, assumed the diadem with the titles of Augusta and Queen of the East. The Romans and their effeminate emperor Gal- lienus refused to acknowledge Zenobia's claim to the sovereignty of her husband's dominions, and Heraclianus was sent with a large army to reduce her to obedience ; but Zenobia took the field against him, engaged and totally defeated him in a pitched battle. ^Not satisfied Mith this triumph over the haughty masters of the world, she sent her general Zabdas"^ to attack them in Egypt, which she subdued and added to her territories, together with a part of Armenia and Asia Minor. Thus her dominions ex- tended from the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and over all those vast and fertile countries formerly governed by Ptolemy and Seleucus. Jerusalem, An- tioch, Damascus, and other cities famed in history, were included in her empire, but she fixed her residence at Palmyra, and in an interval of peace she turned her attention to the further adornment of her magnificent capital. It is related by histo- rians, that many of those stupendous fabrics of which the mighty ruins are still existing, were either erectfcd or at least restored and embellished by this extraordinary woman. But that which we have most difficulty in reconciling with the manners of her age and country was Zenobia's passion for study, and her taste for the Greek and Latin litera- ture. She is said to have drawn up an epitome of history for her own use ; the Greek historians, poets, and. philosophers were familiar to her; she invited Longinus. one of the most elegant writers 60 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. of antiquity, to her splendid court, and appointed him her secretary and minister. For her he com- posed his famous " Treatise on the Subhme," a work which is not only admirable for its intrinsic excel- lence, but most valuable as having preserved to our times many beautiful fragments of ancient poets whose works are now lost, particularly those of Sappho. The classical studies of Zenobia seem to have in- spired her with some contempt for her Arab ances- try. She was fond of deriving her origin from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, and of reckoning Cleo- patra among her progenitors. In imitation of tlie famous Egyptian queen, she affected great splendour in her style of living and in her attire ; and drank her wine out of cups of gold richly carved and adorned with gems. It is, however, admitted that An female dignity and discretion, as well as in beauty, she far surpassed Cleopatra. She administered the government of her empire with such admirable prudence and policy, and in particular with such strict justice towards all classes of her subjects, that she was beloved by her own people, and respected and feared by the neighbouring nations. She paid great attention to the education of her three sons, habited them in the Roman purple, and brought them up in the Roman fashion. But this predilection for the Greek and Roman manners appears to have dis- pleased and alienated the Arab tribes ; for it is re- marked that after this time their fleet cavahy, inured to the deserts and unequalled as horsemen, no longer formed the strength of her army. While Galhenus and Claudius governed the Ro- man empire, Zenobia was allowed to pursue her conquests, rule her dominions, and enjoy her tri- umphs almost without opposition ; but at length the fierce and active Aurelian was raised to the purple, and he was indignant that a woman should thus brave with impunity the offended majesty of Rome. ZENOBIA. 61 Having subdued all his competitois in the West, he turned his arms against the Queen of the East Zenobia, undismayed by the terrors of the Romar name, levied troops, placed herself at their head, and gave the second command to Zabdas, a brave and hitherto successful general. The first great battle took place near Antioch ; Zenobia was totally de- feated after an obstinate conflict ; but, not disheart. ened by this reverse, she retired upon Emessa, rvA- lied her armies, and once more defied the Roman em- peror. Being again defeated with great loss, and her army nearly dispersed, the high-spirited queen wiLh drew to Palmyra, collected her friends around her strengthened her fortifications, and declared her re solution to defend her capital and her freedom tc the last moment of her existence. Zenobia was conscious of the great difficulties which would attend the siege of a great city, well stored with provisions and naturally defended ^y surrounding deserts ; these deserts were infested by clouds of Arabs, who, appearmg and disappearing with the swiftness and suddenness of a whirlwind, continually harassed her enemies. Thiis defended without, and supported by a strong garrison v/ithin, Zenobia braved her antagonist from the towers of Palmyra as boldly as she had defied him in the field of battle. The expectation of succours from the East added to her courage, and determined her to persevere to the last. " Those," said Aurelian in one of his letters, " who speak with contempt of the war I am waging against a woman are ignorant both of the character and pov/er of Zenobia. It is impos- sible to enumerate her warhke preparations of stones, of arrows, and of every species of missile weapons and military engines." Aurehan, in fact, became doubtful of the event of the siege, and he offered the queen the most honour able terms of capitulation if she m ould surrender to his arms ; but Zenobia, v, ho was aware that famine I—E 62 FEMALI-: SOVKRKIGNS. raged m the Roman camp, and daily looked for the expected relief, rejected his proposals in a famous Greek epistle, written with equal arrog-ance and elo- quence ; she defied the utmost of his power; and, alluding to the fate of Cleopatra, expressed her reso- lution to die like her rather than yield to the Roman arms. Aurelian was incensed by this haughty let- ter, even more than by dangers and delays attending the siege : he redoubled his efforts, he cut off the succours she expected, he found means to subsist his troops even in the midst of the desert ; every day added to the number and strength of his army, every day increased the difficulties of Zenobia, and the de- spair of the Palmyrenes. The city would not hold out much longer, and the queen resolved to fly, not to ensure her own safety, but to bring relief to her capital: — such at least is the excuse made for apart of her conduct which certainly requires apology. Mounted on a fleet drome'dary, she contrived to elude the vigilance of the besiegers, and took the road to the Euphrates ; but she was pursued by a party of the Roman light cavalry, overtaken, and brought as a captive into the presence of Aurelian. He sternly demanded how she had dared to oppose the power of Rome ? to which she replied, with a mixture of firmness and gentleness, " Because I disdained to acknowledge as my masters such men as Aureolus and Gallienus. To Aurelian I submit as my con- queror and my sovereign." Aurelian was not dis- pleased at the artful compliment implied in this an- swer, but he had not forgotten the insulting arro- gance of her former reply. While this conference was going forward in the tent of the Roman empe- ror, tlie troops, who were enraged by her long and obstinate resistance, and all they had suffered during the siege, assembled in tumultuous bands calling out for vengeance, and with loud and fierce cries de manding her instant death. The unhappy queen surrounded by the ferocious and insolent soldierj'' ZENOBIA. 63 fov£[ot all her former vaunts and intrepidity: her feniiuine terrors had perliaps been excusable if they had not rendered her base ; but in her first panic she threw herself on the mercy of the emperor, accused her minister-s as the cause of her determined resist- ance, and confessed that Long-inus had written in her name that eloquent letter of defiance which had so incensed the emperor. Longinus, with the rest of her immediate friends in\d counsellors, were instantly sacrificed to the fury of the soldiers, and the philosopher met death with ail the fortitude which became a wise and great man, employing his last moments in endeavouring to con- sole Zenobia and reconcile her to her fate. Palmyra surrendered to the conqueror, who seized upon the treasures of the city, but spared the build- ings and the lives of the inhabitants. Leaving in the place a garrison of Romans, he returned to Europe, carrying with him Zenobia and her family, who were destined to grace his triumph. But scarcely had Aurelian reached the Hellespont, when tidings were brought to him that the inhabit- ants of Palmyra had again revolted, and had put the Koman governor and garrison to the sword. With- out a moment's deliberation tlie emperor turned back, reached Palmyra by rapid marches, and took a terri- ble vengeance on that miserable and devoted city : he commanded the indiscriminate massacre of all the inhabitants, men, women, and children ; — fired its magnificent edifices, and levelled its walls to the ground. He afterward repented of his fury, and de- voted a part of the captured treasures to reinstate some of the glories he had destroyed ; but it was too late ; he could not reanimate the dead, nor raise from its ruins the stupendous Temple of the Sun. Palmyra became desolate ; its very existence was forgotten, until about a century ago, when some English travellers discovered it by accident. Thus the blind fury of one man extinguished life, happi- 64 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. ness, industry, art, and intelligence through a vast extent of country, and severed a link which had long connected the eastern and western continents of the old world. When Aurelian returned to Rome after the ter- mination of this war, he celebrated his triumph with extraordinary pomp. A vast number of elephants, and tigers, and strange beasts from the conquered countries; sixteen hundred gladiators, an innumer- able train of captives, and a gorgeous display of treasures, — gold, silver, gems, plate, glittering rai- ment, and oriental luxuries and rarities, the rich plunder of Palmyra, were exhibited to the populace. But every eye was fixed on the beautiful and majes- tic figure of the Syrian queen, who walked in the procession before her own sumptuous chariot, at- tired in her diadem and royal robes, blazing with jewels, her eyes fixed on the ground, and her deli- cate form drooping under the weight of her golden fetters, which were so heavy that two slaves were obliged to assist in supporting them on either side ; while the Roman populace, at that time the most brutal and degraded in the whole world, gaped and stared upon her misery, and shouted in exultation over her fall. Perhaps Zenobia may in that moment have thought upon Cleopatra, whose example she had once proposed to follovr ; and, according to the pagan ideas of greatness and fortitude, envied her destiny, and felt her own ignominy with all the bit- temess of a vain repentance. The captivity of Zenobia took place in the year 273, and in the fifth year of her reign. There are two accounts of her subsequent fate, differing widely from each other. One author asserts that she starved herself to death, refusing to survive her own disgrace and the ruin of her country ; but others inform us that the Emperor Aurelian bestowed on her a su- {)erb villa at Tivoli, where she resided in great lonour; and that she was afterward united to a JOANNA OF SICILY. 66 Roman senator, with whom she hved many years, and died at h eood old h^re. Her daughters married into Roman families, and it is said that some of her descendants remained so late as the fifth century. The three sons of Zenobia are called, in the Latin histories, Timolaus, Herennicanus, and Vaballathus. The youngest became king of part of Armenia; but of the two eldest we have no account. JOANNA I. QUEEN OF NAPLES. RoBEKT of Taranto, who ascended the throne of Naples in 1309, was one of the most admirable and enhghtened monarchs of his age, and the third of the Angevine princes who had reigned over Naples, from the time that Charles of Anjou usurped that crown in 1265. The name and the memory of King Robert have descended to us, linked with the most delightful associations ; he is distinguished in Itahan history by the epithets of the wise and the good, and if some of his political arrangements may render his claims to the former epithet a little doubtful, yet in one respect it was justly merited. He lived at the period when literature and civihzation were begin- ning to dawn in Italy ; if that can be called a doivn which was illuminated by such men as Dante, Pe- trarch and Boccaccio, with all of whom he was con- temporary. It must, however, be allowed that the light they shed was at the time only partial, and that the munificent and general protection which Robert extended to letters and learned men contributed greatly to cherish and diflfuse that light. His own acquirements were extraordinary for the thnes in which he live i, particularly in the sciences, for until 66 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. his acquaintance with Petrarch, he seems to have despised poetry. However, he became so snicere a convert to the charms of verse, that in his old age he commenced poet himself, and several of his com- positions in the Tuscan dialect are yet extant.* It was w^isdom in Robert to perceive in vvhat his most just and durable fame w^ould hereafter consist. It was wisdom too, in those dark and turbulent times, to feel and acknowledge the blessings of peace and to avert by every possible means war and its at- tendant horrors from his hereditary dominions. The name of" II buon Re Roberto," the friend of Petrarch and the first patron of Boccaccio, has a far dearer interest in our memory than that of any of the iron-girt, fighting raonarchs of his age, if we except his illustrious namesake and contemporary Robert Bruce, whose celebrity, though so different in char- acter, is not brighter or purer than that of Robert of Naples. Robert had one son, Charles Duke of Calabria, kcmarkable for his accomplishments, his filial piety, and his love of justice, who unhappily died before his father. This prince had espoused Maria de Va- lois, sister to that Philippe de Valois who disputed the crown of France w ith our Edward the Third ; and by her, who survived him only three years, he left two infant daughters, Joanna and Maria. Joanna, the elder of these princesses, became afterward one of the most celebrated, most accomplished, and most unfortunate of women and of queens. Her elegant biographer has truly observed,! that in person, in character, in conduct, in her destiny and tragical ««>nd, Joanna can only be compared to Mary Queen 4>f Scots : the parallel, as we shall see, is indeed sin- gularly close, and perhaps one of the most remark- uble and interesting which is presented in history. Queen Joanna was born at Naples about the end * They were printed at Rome in 1642. I See the Historical Life ot' Joanna of Sicily, Preface. JOANNA OF SICILY. 6'<( of February, 1328, and was not quite a year old when she lost lier lather, the Duke of Calabria. King Robert, whose grief for the death of his excellent son IS represented as overwhelming, undertook the care and education of his infint granddaughters, to whom he transferred all the affection he had felt for their father; and in 1331, when Joanna was about four years old, he declared her the heiress of his crownj and caused his nobles to take the oaths of allegiance to her, as Duchess of Calabria, and in- heriting with the title all the rights of her father in Naples and in Provence. To understand the situa- tion of the royal family of Naples at this period, it is necessary to refer to the preceding reign. Charles the Second, the father of King Robert, had married Maria, heiress of Hungary/, and having succeeded to that kingdom in right of"^his wife, on his death-bed he divided his dominions, bequeathing the throne of Hungary to his eldest son Charles Martel ; while Naples and Provence were left to his younger son Robert. The princes of the elder branch, thus ex- cluded from the fairest part of the succession, never acquiesced in this division, although it had been confirmed by a solemn decree of the pope, but were continually advancing claims on the kingdom of Naples : hence the singular connexion between the histories of Hungary and Naples during the whole of the fourteenth century ; hence were two countries so remote and dissimilar brought in con- tinual collision ; hence sprang a series of domestic divisions, crimes, usurpations, and murderous wars, which long desolated the loveliest provinces of Italy ; and hence, in the first instance, arose those complicated misfortunes and extraordinary vicissi- tudes which checkered the hfe of Joanna of Sicily. It was the smgular fate of this queen, during the whole of her eventful reign, to suffer by the mistakes, the follies, or the crimes of her nearest connexions, and to be injured by her ov/n virtues ; for the weak- 68 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. nesses of a man are sometimes the virtues of a wo- man ; or at least, if the indulgence in the gentle and kindly feelings proper to her sex, as pity, tender- ness, and confidence, in despite of calculation and self-interest, may become weak or criminal in a woman when trusted with sovereign power, it is the best argument that has yet been adduced in favour of the Salique law. But the consequence is not surely necessary and inevitable, though, from some examples left us in history, we might almost deem it so. The first steps taken by the wise grandfather of Joanna, long before she could judge or act for her- self, were the cause of many of her subsequent mise- ries, and of the darkest imputations which rest on her memory. Tn the first place. King Robert appointed as her governess and the guardian of her person a woman who has obtained a tragical celebrity in Italian his- tory by the name of Philippa the Catanese. She tVcLH the daughter of a fisherman of Catania in Sicily, and on a sudden emergency she was employed by Queen Violante, the first wife of Robert, to nurse her infant son, the Duke of Calabria. Philippa was gifted beyond her birth or her years. Beautiful, in- telligent, and aspiring, she recommended herself so much to the queen by her zeal and affection, that she became her principal attendant, and afterward filled the same office to the second wife of Robert, Queen Sancha, who was not less attached to her. Her foster-child, tlie Duke of Calabria, who tenderly loved her, married her to the seneschal of his pal- ace, and appointed her lady of the bedchamber to nis wife ; thus it happened that she was present at the birth of Joanna, and was the first to receive her in her arms. The elevation of this plebeian woman to offices of trust and honour about the persons of four princesses successively, the extreme attache ment they all manifested for her, and the favour and JOANNA OF SICILY. 69 confidence of King- Robert during a period of forty years, appeared so offensive and so incomprehen- sible in those times, that it was ascribed to magic. In her character, in her destiny, in her extraordinary exaltation from the meanest station to rank and power, and in her sudden and terrible fall, Philippa does, in fact, remind us of Leonora Galigai ; but it was not certainly in this case the magic influence of a strong mind over a weak one ; and though Or- loff calls her " femme intrigante et sans mceurs,"* yet it must be allowed that the worst offences charged against her appear exceedingly problemati- cal, and seem to have originated in the universal jealousy with which her elevation and that of her family were beheld by the proud nobility. The power which Philippa obtained over the affections of Queen Joanna was one of the heaviest accusa- tions against her unhappy mistress, and led to her own ruin and horrible death ; yet, considering all the circumstances, nothing surely could be more natural and inevitable. If the appointment of the Catanese to be her governess was impolitic and disreputable, on account of her low origin and the offence it gave to many of the high-born ladies of the court, yet the confidence of King Robert and the dispositions and qualities afterward displayed by Joanna prove her to have been not wholly unworthy of the trust reposed in her. The next great error committed by Robert in the management of his infant heiress was, her marriage with his grand-nephew Andreas, the second son of Carobert, King of Hungary. By this marriage he fondly hoped to extinguish all the feuds and jealousies which had long existed between the two kingdoms, by restoring to the elder branch of his family, in the person of Andreas, the possession of the throne of Naples, without prejudice to the rights of his grand * M6moires sur Naples. 70 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. daiiffhter. Neither does the arrang-ement appear at first view so impoUtic as it eventually proved; it was founded in a principle of justice, and was rather hastily executed than imprudently devised. Joanna was only five years old, and Andreas only seven, when this ill-fated union was celebrated at Naples with all possible splendour, and in the midst of feasts and rejoicings. The infant couple were thenceforward brought up together, with the idea that they were destined for each other ; but as they grew in years, they displayed the most opposite qualities of person and mind. " For me," said King Robert to Petrarch, who has himself recorded this memorable speech, " for me, I swear that letters are dearer to me than my crown ; and were I obliged to renounce the one or the other, I should quickly tear the diadem from my brow." Filled with this enthusiastic conviction of the advantages of learning, the king surrounded his granddaughter with the best preceptors in science and literature which could be procured throughout all Italy. Those chronicles which differ most on the character and conduct of Joanna are yet all agreed on one point, — all bear testimony to her ex traordinary talents and her love of literature ; and the Neapolitan historians assert, that at twelve years old " she was not only distinguished by her superioi endowments, but already surpassed in understanding, not only every child of her own age, but many wo- men of mature years." To these mental accom- plishments were added a gentle and generous tem- per, a graceful person, a beautiful and engaging countenance, and the most captivating manners. Andreas, on the contrary, had been surrounded by his rude Hungarian attendants, and grew up weak, indolent, and unpolished, though without any of those evil dispositions and degrading and profligate propensities which have been imputed to him.* His * See Historical Life of Joanna of Si?ily. JOANNA OF SICILY. 71 father, the Kinff of ITung^ary, had appointed as rns preceptor a monk named Fra Roberto, or Friar Rob- ert, the declared enemy of the Catanese, and her competitor in power. Of this monk historians have left us a far more frig-htful and disgusting- portrait than of his rival Philippa. It was his constant aim to keep his pupil in ignorance, that he might keep bim in subjection ; to inspire him with a dislike and jealousy of the Neapolitans, whom he was destmed to govern; and keep up his partiality for the Hun- garians, to Avhose manners, dress, and customs he obliged him to adhere. The extreme indolence and pliability of the prince's temper aided the designs of this wretch, and enabled him to obtain an unbounded influence over the mind of his pupil. The good King Robert perceived too late the fatal mistake he had committed ; he saw the miseries and perils he had prepared for his beautiful and accomplished heiress by this unequal marriage ; and the compact being irrevocable, he endeavoured at least to obviate some of the threatened evils by excluding Andreas from any share in the sovereign power. In a gene- ral assembly of his nobles he caused the oath of allegiance to be taken to Joaima alone, as queen in her own right. But this precaution, so far from having the desired effect, added to the dangers he apprehended ; while it gratified the Neapolitans, it excited the jealousy and anger of the Hungarians, and laid the foundation of many troubles and factions in the state. Meantime, the young Joanna, who could not yet judge of the policy or impolicy of the measures taken for her safety and personal Avelfare, grew up to the age of fifteen, happy in the studies and plea- sures befitting her years, happy in the unconscious- ness of the storms impending over her, and every day improving in beauty and intellect. She showed at this time no dislike to her young husband, and no repugn?aoe to the solemnization of their marriage 72 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. contract ; though Andreas, as he advanced in years, disphiyed the same slotliful and imbecile temper for which he had been remarkable from infancy. They bore the title of Duke and Duchess of Calabria, and constantly resided together under the care of King Robert and Queen Sancha. The whole of the royal family inhabited the Castel Novo at Naples, which, with the strength of a fortress, united the magnifi- cence of a palace. It contained at this time the finest library then existing in Europe, and its walls had been decorated by the paintings of Giotto, one of the first restorers of the art in Italy. Under the same roof resided the Princess Maria, the younger sister of Joanna, and Maria of Sicily, a natural daugh- ter of King Robert, remarkable for her beauty, her accomplishments, and her gallantries. She was the mistress of Boccaccio, and his too celebrated Fiam- metta, at whose command he wrote the Decame- rone.* King Robert died in 1343, leaving .Toanna, at the age of fifteen, sovereign over three of the most beau- tiful countries of Europe, — Naples, Provence, and Piedmont. On the refusal of Queen Sancha to ac- cept the office of sole regent, for which her capacity and virtues well fitted her, but which a mistaken idea of religious humility induced her to decline, he had appointed a council of regency during the mi- nority of the young queen, and had especially ex- * Maria of Sicily became the wife of Robert, Count d'Artois. An old French writer is of opinion that this princess loved Boccaccio merely " pour son beau dire et sa belle plume, i)our la rendre excellente et im- mortelle par son rapport A tout le monde de ses belles vertiisi ; mais le galant n'en fit rien ; et la laissa trompee, et s'en alia ecrire ces deux livres menteurs, qui Font plus scandalisie qu'edifi.'e." Assuredly, the kind of immortality which Boccaccio has bestowed on the Princess Maria is not exactly that which she anticipated. The Fiammetta, not- withstanding the reality, force, and beauty of the picture which her lover has left of her (considered as a portrait), will never bear a com parison wixh her contemporary, Laura, — "Basso desir non •':' ch' ivi si senta Ma d'onor, di virtute " JOANNA OF SICILV. 78 eluded Andreas and his ITuiijrnrian adherents from any participation in the (government. But all his arran^rements for the welfare of Joanna and for the safety and peace of the kinG:"d()m were defeated by the intrig-ues and the wickedness of Fra Roberto, who interfered with the government in the name of his pupil Andreas. The younsr king and queen be- came little else than state prisoners in the hands of this monk and his Hungarian faction, who, by their arrogance, rapacity, and tyranny, drove away and disgusted all the friends of Joanna : the weak were oppressed, the great insulted, and the sovereigns, the court, and the populace all trembled alike in the presence of an ignorant, ragged, dirty friar. Petrarch, who about this time visited Naples as envoy from the pope, has left us in one of his eloquent letters a description of Fra Roberto, written in a strain of vio- lent, but apparently just, invective. " I\Iay Heaven," he exclaims, " rid the soil of Italy of such a pest ! — a horrible animal, with bald head and bare feet, short in stature, swollen in person, with worn-out rags torn studiously to show his naked skin, not only de- spises the supplications of the citizens, but from the vantage-ground of his feigned sanctity treats with scorn the embassy of the pope." Joanna wished to have attached Petrarch to her court, for she was able to appreciate his genius and his w^orth, and seems to have inspired him in return with the strong- est admiration for her character and talents. On every occasion he speaks of her with esteem for her virtues and pity for her helpless situation. But the court of Naples was at this time no enviable resi- dence for a sentimental poet and a man of letters in love with tranquillity and retirement : it was a con- tinual scene of factious disturbances between the Neapolitans and the Hungarians ; so that Petrarch compares the young queen and her consort to "two lambs in the midst of wolves." Joanna, being sove- reiijn in name only, and not in authority, conferred 74 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS- on Petrarch the only honours which it was in her power to bestow. She appointed him her chaplain and almoner, titles not merely nominal, since they were accompanied by some valuable privileges. Pe- trarch left Naples in 1343. About a year after the accession of Joanna, the Duke of Durazzo secretly carried off her younger sister Maria, the promised bride of Louis of Hun- gar}^, and married her. For the better understand- ing of what follows, it is necessary to observe here that the princes of Durazzo, the princes of Taranto, the reigning family in Hungary, and the reigning family in Naples were all descended from a common ancestor, Charles of Anjou; hence they were all related, being cousins in the second degree. The coronation of Joanna was fixed for the 20tb of September, 1345; and while preparations were going forward for this grand ceremony, the young king and queen retired from Naples in the month of August, and went to take their diversions in the gardens of the Celestine monastery at Aversa. This town, so fatally celebrated for the tragedy which en- sued, is situated about fifteen miles from Naples. The queen, who expected soon to become a mother, and whose health had lately been very delicate, ap- peared restored by the change of air, the tranquil- lity, and the enchanting scenery around her ; all was happiness and repose, and nothing indicated the ter rible catastrophe at hand. On the night of the 18th of September, Andreas was called from the queen's apartment by the information that a courier had just arrived from Naples, and waited to confer with him. In the gallery adjoining he was seized by some per- sons whose names were never exactly known ; they stopped his mouth with their gloves, strangled him by means of a cord or handkerchief, and suspended his body from the balcony, whence, the cord break- ing from the weight, it fell into the garden. The murderers were proceeding to bury it on the spot, JOANNA OF SICILY. 75 but, an alarm being given by the king's nurbe, they fled precipitately, and made their escape.* It is necessary to pause for a moment in the nar- rative, and to observe that the popular accounts of tliis shocking event, and the accusation against Jo- anna of having contrived the murder of her unfor- tunate husband, do not appear founded in truth. It is not possible to produce here, and separately weigh and examine, all the proofs and arguments brought together by historians, who differ on the q-uestion of her guilt or innocence ; but it may be ob- served, that while all that is adduced against her rests on vulgar report, or the invectives of her ene- mies, there are three considerations wiiich appear conclusive in her favour. In the first place, Joanna had no particular reason to wish for the death of her husband, the father of her infant ; for though it has been asserted by many authors that Joanna hated her husband, and took no pains to conceal her aver- sion, yet this is as positively denied by others ; and if her hatred had been so public, the queen would hardly have had the assurance to make use of the expressions, " My good husband, with whom I have always associated without strife," which occur in her letter to the King of Hungary. And if she had wished for his death — as she is acknowledged by all to have possessed an extraordinary understanding — she would surely have contrived to execute her pur- pose in a manner less desperate, less foolish, and less perilous to herself. Secondly, it is agreed by all, that the disposition of Joanna was mild, tender, and generous ; that she was never known to commit an unjust or cruel action either before or after this trans- action ; or give the slightest indication of such vio- * There is a story often repeated that Joanna was employed in twist- ing a silken cord for the purpose of strangling her husband, when ho eiuered her apartment, and asked her what she was doing. To which she replied, with a smile, '• Twisting a rope to hang you with." It is hardly necessary to add, that this is a mere vulgar t^a^Iitioa, without the least foundation in truth. 76 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. lence of temper, or such early depravity of heart as alone could have impelled her to comiive at the as- sassination of her husband, the father of her up.< oorn child, and this within her hearing, if not before her eyes! It is too horrible for belief. The woman who, under such circumstances, could have commit- ted such an atrocious crime at the age of seventeen, could never have either begun or ended there ; yet all historians, even her enemies and accusers, affirm, that from the age of seventeen Joanna was a model of virtue, gentleness, and feminine discretion. Thirdly, not only all the best historians of Provence and Naples, — " not only the most worthy, but what is of as much consequence in such matters, the most enlightened of her contemporaries — men independent of her favour and protection, remarkable for their freedom of censure, personally acquainted with her character, with that of her court and family, and with the political circumstances of her kingdom, — all these acquit her."* It is related that when Joanna was informed of the fate of her husband, she remained for some time speechless, and without shedding a tear. One his- torian imputes this suspension of her faculties to guilt and confusion ; another terms it the eftect of terror and horror, which is at least as probable. The queen says of herself, — " I have suffered so much anguish for the death of my beloved husband that, stunned by grief, I had wellnigh died of the same wounds."! When the news of the murder of Andreas was spread through Aversa and Naples, a most extraor dinary tumult ensued. The Hungarians, struck with consternation, fled in all directions. Joanna the next morning returned to Naples with a few attendants, and shut herself up in the Castel Novo, where, withir^ *See the Historical Life of Joanna of Sicily; and Count OrloflPt ' M6moires sur Naples." t In her letter to the King of Hungary. JOANNA OF SICILY. 77 two months afterward, she gave birth to a son. Soon after her recovery from her confinement, she took the administration of affairs into her owr hands ; she formed a council composed of the friends of her grandfat?her Robert, and signed a commission to Hugh del Balzo to seek out the murderers of her husband, and execute justice on them without re- spect of persons. " The assassination of Andreas," says the historian of Joanna, " appears to have been a sudden burst of desperate ferocity in a set of mis- creants who feared the loss of their fortunes and lives under the sway of the implacable and equally unprincipled friar ;" but who those miscreants were is still uncertain. Some of the chamberlains of Andreas w^ere seized and put to the torture, accord- ing to the barbarous and stupid practice of those times. They accused, among others, Philippa the Catanese, who, since the death of Robert, had been created Countess of Montoni ; her son, the Count Evoli; her granddaughter Sancha, a young and beau tiful w^oman ; and Count Terhzi, the husband of the latter. When Hugh del Balzo, invested with the full powers Avhich Joanna herself had bestowed upon him, presented himself before the gates of the Castel Novo, the young queen without hesitation com- manded the gates to be thrown open to him ; hor astonishment and her anguish may be imagined, when her friends and favourites were summoned be- fore him, accused, — upon the evidence of men who had been tortured almost to death before they had uttered a word to criminate themselves or others, — as accessaries to the murder of Andreas, and dragged from her protection to expire in the most shock- ing and lingering torments that ingenious cruelty could devise. Thenceforward it is observed that a change en- sued in the character of Joanna ; and in the death of her husband, and the horrible catastrophe of her L—F 78 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. foster-mother Philippa, and lier companion and play- fellow Sancha, she appears to have received a shock from which she never afterward recovered. Previous to her eighteenth year her temper had been remark- ably frank, cheerful, and confiding ; but from that time a visible alteration took place. Though she displayed equal dignity and mildness in her deport- ment ; though in the interior of her palace " she was so gracious, gentle, compassionate, and kind, that she seemed rather the companion than the queen of those around her" (these are the words of Boc- caccio) ; yet she was always more grave than gay and was never known to have a familiar friend, fa- vourite, or confidant of either sex, or to put entire trust in any of those about her person. Treachery had come so near her, — anguish and fear had struck her so deeply, that confidence and happiness seemed to have fled together : — the spring of her life was changed to winter ; and her dawn, which ought to have been followed by sunshine and the cheerful day, settled into a cold, calm twilight, to be finally swal- lowed up in storms and midnight darkness. More than two years after the death of Andreas, Joanna married, by the advice and recommendation of her ministers, her second cousin, Louis of Ta- ranto, a brave, accomplished, and very handsome prince, who, from his singular beauty, acquired the name of Phoebus, or the Day.* Soon afterward Louis, King of Hungary, the elder brother of An- dreas, raised a party against her, invaded her do- minions, and, under pretence of revenging the mur- der of his brother, proclaimed his intention of seiz- ing the crown for himself. But before he entered the kingdom of Naples as an enemy, he endeavoured * Count Orloff asserts that Joanna, "amante trop empress6e, ou femme irr6fl6chie," was united to the Prince of Taranto in the first year of her widowhood, which, on a comparison of dates, appears evidently false. The death of Andreas took place in 13-15 ; and her union witb . Louis was solemnized in August, 1347. That she had long been at- tached to her handsome cousin may possibly be true. JOANNA OF SICILY. 79 • to give some colour ot justice to his cause, by sol- emnly accusing]: Joanna before the tribunal of Cola Rienzi, that illustrious democrat, who was at this time at the height of his power at Rome, and con- sidered as the arbitrator of the minor states of Italy. Joanna did not disdain to defend herself by her dep- uties, and Rienzi heard the pleadings of both parties in public ; but he refused to pronounce judgment be- tween them, and left this great cause undecided. While it was pending Louis of Hungary continued to advance, and in December, 1347, he passed the frontiers of Naples. Wherever he appeared a black standard was carried before him, on which was painted the murder of Andreas; a company of mourners, also habited in black, surrounded this hor- rible banner, on which the populace gazed with affright and disgust. In this terrific array did Louis of Hungary advance wathout opposition as far as Aversa ; and that il^-omened spot, which had alreadj been the scene of midnight murder, was destined to witness another act of atrocity strongly character- istic of those dark and evil times. Among the no- bles who joined Louis, upon a promise of safe con- duct, was the Duke of Durazzo, who had married the younger sister of Joanna. He was a weak but ambitious man, who seems to have been possessed with the idea, that if Joanna were once deposed or removed, it would make way for the accession of his wife and her children to the throne ; he was also one of those who were suspected, but without any reason, of participating in the murder of Andreas. When they arrived at Aversa, the Duke of Durazzo was desired by the King of Hungary to show him the place where his brother Andreas was killed. The duke replied by denying all knowledge of the place or of the crime ; but Louis, without listening to him, led the way to the fatal balcony in the Ce lestine monastery ; he there accused him as the mur- derer X)f his brother, and desired him to prepare for 80 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. death. Durazzo entreated for mercy, but at a sig:r from Louis he was stabbed to the heart in his presi ence, his body thrown over the balcony, and his friends and attendants w^ere forbidden on pain of death to inter it. After the commission of this treacherous and cruel murder Louis hastened on to Naples. On his approach some of the nobles were mduced by bribes and promises to join his party. Some believed, or affected to believe, the queen guilty of the crimes imputed to her ; others fled to their castles, and fortified themselves separately against the invader, or submitted to his arms. Jo- anna, taken by surprise, and surrounded by treachery and violence, had yielded to those of her friends and ministers who advised her to take refuge in Pro- vence, the beautiful and ancient inheritance of her family, till the storm was past. She accordingly embarked with her household in three galleys, and sailed from Naples ; while the -^iddy and versatile populace, who \vanted resolution and fidelity to de- fend her from her enemies, crowded along the shores, weeping bitterly, lamenting her departure, and pray- ing for her return. On her arrival in her Provencal dominions, Joanna landed at Nice, and proceeded to Avignon, where Pope Clement the Sixth then held his court in the utmost splendour. Li the presence of that pontiff, and in a solemn assemblage of the cardinals and principal clerg}^ she pleaded her own cause against the King of Hungary, and proved the falsehood of all the imputations against her. Her address on this occasion, whicli she composed in the Latin tongue, and pronounced herself, has been described as " the most powerful specimen of female oratory ever re- corded in history." The Hungarian ambassadors sent by the kmg her enemy to plead against her were so confounded that they attempted no reply to her defence. The pope and the cardinals unani- mously acquitted her. with every expression of JOANNA OF SICILY. 81 honour and admiration, and her Proven9al nobility crowded round her to proffer their services for the recovery of her Neapohtan dominions. While re- siding in Provence, Joanna wns joined by her sister Maria, the widow of the murdered Durazzo, who with her inftmt children had escaped almost by mira- cle from the ruthless conqueror. The two sisters, who had always been affectionately attached to each other, met with transport, and Joanna adopted the children of Maria as her own. Naples in the mean time had been a scene of hor- ror. Louis, after staining that city wdth the blood of its chief inhabitants, and, with his rude Hunga- rian followers and German mercenaries, scattering terror and lamentation along its beautiful shores, was at length driven away by a terrible pestilence, which had prevailed more or less throughout the whole of Italy, and extended its ravages to othei parts of Europe. This was the memorable plague of which Boccaccio has left us so striking a descrip tion, and of which Petrarch's Laura died at Avignon about three weeks after the arrival of Queen Joanna in that city. On his departure from Naples, Louis left as his lieutenant Conrad Wolf, a wretch worthy ' of his name, whose cruelties and exactions com- pleted the desolation of that devoted country. The tyrannical and rapacious government of the Hunga- rians at length so disgusted and exasperated the Neapohtans, that they rose with one accord against the invaders, and the nobility sent a deputation to Joanna, inviting her to return, and promising their support and aid against her enemies. Joanna gladly avaiied herself of this summons, and with a nume- rous and brilliant retinue of noble knights, w^ho had sworn to die in her cause, she returned to Naples, where she was welcomed by her people with the most enthusiastic rapture. The court resumed its gayety and splendour ; for Louis of Taranto, the hus- band of Joanna, was in his habits as princely and 82 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. magnificent as he was brave and handsome in per- son, and almost all the young nobility crowded to their banners. Those who in the late struggle had been disaffected or neutral were pardoned; those who had stood faithful, and had suffered from the tyranny of the Hungarians, were welcomed with joy, and loaded with gifts and honours. Some at- tempts were made to enter into an accommodation with Louis of Hungary; but that fierce and cruel monarch, enraged at a reverse so little expected, re- jected all pacific overtures with disdain, and return- ing with a large army, he again invaded Naples, but not with the same success ; the people had learned the difference between his government and that of the mild Joanna, and everywhere they rose against him. Louis of Taranto led the armies of the queen, and opposed the mercenaries of Hungary with equal valour and prudence ; the war still lasted two years before the troops of the Hungarian king were finally driven from Naples, and it was marked by many vicissitudes, by many daring exploits, and by the usual accompaniments of misery, bloodshed, and desolation. Joanna, feeling for the wretched condi- tion of her subjects, endeavoured to alleviate it by ' every means in her power ; and Louis of Taranto, with the chivalrous feeling which distinguished his age and personal character, offered to terminate the horrors of this domestic war by encountering the King of Hungary in single combat. The Hunga- -"ian monarch accepted the challenge, but the duel, for some unknown reasons, did not take place. Pope Clement sent his legate to mediate between the two parties ; and the King of Hungary, finding it impossi- ble to retain possession of Naples, concluded a treaty on the terms required by Joanna ; that is, the establishment of the government according to the will of her grandfather Robert, and the title of king for her husband Louis of Taranto. Two incidents connected with this treaty will JOANNA OF SICILY. 83 serve to show the spirit of those limes, in the jajoss superstition whioh could cloud a brilliant intellect, and the magnanimity which could occasionally min- gle with the most detestable ferocity. Joanna, in solemnly repeating her declaration of innocence, relative to the murder of Andreas, attributed the dissensions which existed between them to sorcery . and Louis of Hungary refused to accept the one hundred thousand florins which the pope had ad- judged to him, as an indemnity for the expenses of the war, saying, with a fierce generosity, " I did not come hither to sell my brother's blood, but avenge it!" Peace was thus restored in 1353, after a sangui- nary contest which had lasted more than four years from the first invasion of Louis of Hungary. A bull being granted by Pope Clement for the corona- tion of Joanna and Louis, the ceremony took place at Naples, and was performed with extraordinary splendour and rejoicings. Magnificent recompenses were distributed by the young sovereigns to those who had served them faithfully during the late war. The nobility tendered their allegiance with one ac- cord ; the populace, enchanted by the transition from a cruel war to the blessings of peace, and by their delivery from their Hungarian oppressors, threw up their caps and shouted their congratula- tions ; the streets of Naples resounded with joy and exultation, and the whole land seemed to burst into a hymn of thanksgiving at this termination of all dis- asters, this promise of future felicity and peace. But poor Joanna ! she was doomed to taste #f grief in every possible form ; and on this great day of tri- umph, which beheld her at length securely seated on the throne of her fathers, even while the shout of revelry echoed round her palace, there was weeping and waihng within. When, after their coronation, Louis and Joanna returned from their solemn cavalcade round the city, they found their 84 FEMALE SOVEREIGN'S. only child, then about four years old, dead in her cradle; by what accident does not appear, but appa- rently of some sudden fit or other disorder incidentaf to childhood. During the late war Joanna's son by Andreas had been carried off into Hungary, and had died there ; and another little daughter, born subse- quently, also perished in her infancy : we may well believe that for sorrows and privations such as these no outward prosperity could console the mother's heart. In the year 1356 Joanna and Louis were invited by the Sicilians to reign over their country, and the next year Joanna was solemnly cro wjied at Messina : but before she had entirely settled the government of her new kingdom, she was recalled to Naples by fresh disturbances and contentions, which in her absence had broken out between Philip of Taranto, the elder brother of her husband, and Louis of Du- razzo, the brother of that Duke of Durazzo who had married her sister, and had been nmrdered by the King of Hungary. Both these princes were re- duced to submission ; and on the death of Louis of Durazzo, whose turbulence and haughtiness had often agitated her kingdom and disquieted her ow^n domestic peace, Joanna gave a strong proof of her benevolent and forgiving disposition. She took un- der her peculiar care his orphan son, Charles of Durazzo, educated him at lier own charge, and treated him in all respects with the tenderness of a mother. This boy, destined to cause the destruc- tion of Ids benefactress, was then about twelve years old. Thre? years of comparative tranquillity ensue/1 In 1362 Louis of Taranto died of a fever, the con sequence of his own intemperance. He had latterly given himself up to a course of dissipation, which must have grieved and displeased his consort ; but she loved him to the last, in spite of the wrongs and infidelities of wliich she had too often to complain. JOANNA OF SICILY. 85 One of the women about the court, who was mis- tress of Louis, had endeavoured to paUiate her own misconduct by cahnnniating the queen. Louis either beheved, or pretended to beheve, this slander ; he burst into the most violent reproaches against his wife ; and it is even said that in the height of his fury he struck her. Joanna sent for the woman, confronted her with her husband, and easily proved the falsehood of both ; but instead of punishing her rival and accuser, she merely dismissed her from the court, saying with dignity, " Thank your God that your enemy is your queen !" If we consider \he passionate attachment which Joanna entertained *i)r her husband, and the wrongs she had just re- ceived, as a woman, a wife, and a sovereign, a no- bler, a more beautiful instance of female magna- nimity can hardly be imagined. Being left a second time a widow, and without children, Joanna was advised by her council to en- ter into a third marriage, as necessary to the tran- quillity of her kingdom. She agreed to the election of her ministers, whose choice had fallen on James of Majorca, the son of the King of Majorca, and their union was celebrated with great magnificence. The marriage-feast was held at Gaeta, and a love- lier spot could hardly have been chosen to celebrate a royal bridal. A very singular incident distinguished the festivities on this occasion; Joanna had chosen as her partner in the dance Prince Galeazzo of Mantua, who, in his rapture for such courteous condescension, made a vow that he would requite the honour she had done him, by bringing to the foot of her throne two captive knights, to be dis- posed of as she thought fit. At the end of a year, he appeared before her with two knights of noble biood and approved valour, whom he had vanquished in single combat, and presented them to her as her slaves by all the laws of chivalry. Galeazzo having thus acouitted himself of his vow, the queen equally 86 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. fulfilled her duty as a lady and a princess ; she ^rt* the knights their freedom, and sent them back to their country loaded with presents. The Prince of INIajorca bore a high character for honour and bravery. But Joanna was not destined to derive either happiness or advantage from this most luckless marriage. Within three months after their union, her husband quitted her to avenge the death of his father, who had been treacherously murdered by Peter King of Arragon. Joanna was therefore left alone and unaided to guide her fickle people and rule her turbulent nobility. She had the grief to hear that her husband, whose valour was more rash than prudent, was first defeated, and af- terward — though supported by the friendship and assistance of Edward the Black Prince — taken prisoner and detained in Arragon. His generous queen paid an immense ransom for his freedom ; but no sooner had he returned to Naples than he pre- pared another expedition to avenge his father. Jo- anna used every argument, and even descended to entreaties, to dissuade him from his purpose, but in vain ; he pursued the war with all the inveterate obstinacy of hatred and revenge, and in the midst of his violent career he fell sick and died. Joanna was again advised by her council to mar- ry ; but this time she deliberately refused, and re- solved to struggle alone against the difficulties of her situation, rather than again subject herself to the pain and continual anxiety she had suffered from her union with James of Majorca. The twelve following years, during which Joanna held the reins of government unassisted and uncon- trolled, were marked by successes abroad and tran- quillity and prosperity at home. The bands of rob- bers who had infested her kingdom were destroyed or dispersed : by a mixture of firmness and gentle- ness she curbed the pride of her nobility, so that it was said " they trembled at her frown, while they JOANNA OF SICILY. 87 courted her smiles." The strict administration of justice in lier dominions, the security of the roads, and her excellent ordinances for the encouragement of commerce, were the admiration of neighbouring states. The mariner's compass was first constructed, if not invented, in her reign, by one of her sub- jects, Gioja Flavio, a mathematician of Amalfi. Her court was considered one of the most brilliant in Europe, and the modesty of her own manners main- tained its propriety. Her patronage of the arts and learning was liberal, and even magnificent. She built many churches and palaces, and endowed the hospital of St. Anthony. Those who have driven along the beautiful shore of the Mergellina, uttder the promontory of Posilippo, will remember the ruins of the unfinished palace beneath the clifl', with the blue sea breaking against its foundations — the " Palace of Queen Joanna," as it is still called. The completion of this edifice was apparently in- terrupted by her subsequent misfortunes. Nothing can be more splendid than its situation ; nor more mournful in its appearance and the associations con- nected with it. Joanna at this time undertook no foreign wars. Satisfied with defending her own people and her own rights, she uniformly protected the poor against the rich, and the weak against the strong ; and ap- pears to have been really one of the most blameless women, and one of the most wise and magnani- mous sovereigns that ever filled a throne ; yet the close of her life was darkened by misfortunes even worse than those which assailed her in her youth. She had adopted, as it has been already related, Charles of Durazzo, and married him to her favour- ite niece Margaret, the daughter of her sister Maria. Charles of Durazzo possessed many great qualities which justified this preference, and the intentions of the queen to bequeath him her crown ; but he had bnuiidless ambition, a restless and warlike 88 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. temper; and instead of remaining near Joanna as her defender and counsellor (as her wishes and his own interests equally required him), he left her to seek military distinction under the banners of her old enemythe King of Hungary. She was thus once more left alone ; and in a situation of great difficulty and danger, she was induced to enter into a fourth mar- riage, at the age of forty-six ; her choice fell on Otho of Brunswick, a prince of the Guelph family, distinguished for almost every accompUshment of mind and person, and of years equal to her own. Without demanding the title of king, or arrogating any power to himself, this generous, brave, and amiable man won and deserved the entire affection of his queen, and maintained her throne for some time in peace and security. In the fourteenth century, during the latter years of Joanna's reign, two rival popes divided Christen- dom between them. The emperor of Germany, the kings of England, Denmark, Sweden, and Hungary and Bohemia, most of the states of Italy and Flan- ders, adhered to pope Urban VI. While the kings of France, Spain, Naples, Scotland, Cyprus, Savoy, the dukedom of Austria, some of the Italian and many of the German states, acknowledged Clement VII. This event, which ranks among the grand data of modern history, is called the " Great Schism of the West." Clement, who was a native of Geneva, and held his court at Avignon, was mild, learned, and pious ; Urban, on the contrary, was violent, arrogant, treacherous, and cruel ; he took up his residence at Rome, and during his pontificate that city was a scene of atrocity and oppression almost unparal- leled, even in the time of the Borgias. Urban had a nephew named Butillo, whom it was his ambition to raise to an independent principality. In those days the popes assumed to themselves the right of appointing and dethroning monarchs ; and JOANNA OF SIUILV. 89 Urban, at the very moment 'that he professed a friendship for Joanna and accepted her gifts, des- patched a messenger to Charles of Durazzo, and offered to grant him the investiture of the crown oi Naples, provided he would yield to his nephew Butillo certain principalities in that kingdom. — Charles of Durazzo was at first shocked at a pro- posal so monstrous ; but he listened, debated, and reflected, till, by continually brooding over this project, its atrocity and ingratitude lessened to his view, aijd the temptation hourly increased. Before he could take any open measures against his bene- factress, it was necessary to withdraw his wife and children from her power : they had constantly re- sided in the palace of Joanna, as a part of her family, and were all treated by her with truly ma- ternal tenderness. When Margaret of Durazzo required permission to leave Naples and join her husband, the generous queen suspected the motive of the request — for she had received some intima- tion of the designs entertained by Charles of Dii- razzo, and of his secret negotiations with the pope — yet she suffered her niece to depart with all the honours due to her rank. It was their first separa- tion and their last parting, for they never met again. A few weeks afterward, in 1381, Charles of Du- razzo entered Italy at the head of a large army, and marched to take possession of the kingdom, which he claimed by the pope's investiture, m de- fiance of every law of justice, right, and gratitude. He advanced to Naples, and attacked Joanna in her capital. Otho of Brunswick had levied an army to oppose him, and while the two parties were con- tending round the walls and in the streets of Naples, the queen, who was in hourly expectation of suc- cours from Provence, threw herself for present se- curitv into the fortress of the Castel Novo, and comnianded the gates to be sl-^it. At that moment R crowd of old men, women, and children, and a 90 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. number of the clergy, flying from the ferocious enemy, presented themselves before the entrance, and implored a refuge and protection. Joanna had only a certain quantity of provisions : to admit these people was imprudent ; to refuse them bar- barous. She could not harden her heart against their cries and entreaties, and commanded them to be taken in to share her last asylum. Her gene- rosity was fatal to her; for thus the provisions, which would have lasted seven months, were consumed in one. Being in expectation of relief from Provence, and from her brave husband, who was still before the walls, though the partisans of Durazzo had pos- session of the city, Joanna held out to the last, and until she and her companions had endured the ex- tremity of famine. Two of her nieces were with her; the eldest of these, Agnes, Duchess of Du- razzo, was a woman of a covetous spirit, who had ac- cumulated great riches ; yet before the siege she had refused, on some pretence, to lend the queen a sum of money to aid in her defence ; when this woman beheld the terrible sufferings of Joanna, and the miserable extremity to which herself and others were reduced, she was seized with vain remorse. She filled an immense vase with her gold and jewels, and carrying it into the apartment of the queen, she laid it at her feet, in silence and in tears. Joanna thanked her with a sad smile, but added, " that it was now too late. A sack of wheat," said she, "were more precious to me now, my fair niece than all this treasure, which you have reserved only to fall a prey to our common enemy." Meantime Otho of Brunswick made a desperate attempt to release his queen. He assembled all hia forces, and attacked Durazzo immediately under the walls of the city. A battle ensued, which was ob- stinately contested ; but neither Otho's talents as a commander, nor his bravery, animated as he was hy honour and despair, availed him ; he was wouudei JOANNA OF SICILY. 91 Struck from his horse, and taken prisoner, and his troops, overpowered and disheartened, fled towards Aversa. After this disastrous defeat it was in vain for Joanna to resist. She had pledged herself, if not relieved, to surrender on the Sf.ih of August, and accordingly on that day Charles of Durazzo entered the castle as conqueror; but so much did his former habits of love and reverence for the queen prevail even at such a moment, that from an involuntar)^ impulse, he fell at the feet of his un- happy captive, and poured forth excuses and pro- fessions of respect : — he even addressed her by the tender and sacred name of mother — the name he had been accustomed to give her in his childish years. The queen, restraining her indignation, merely replied by demanding for herself and her husband the treatment due to their rank, and recommending her friends in the castle to his mercy, particularly the women and clergy. Four days after her surrender the expected suc- cours arrived from Provence. Ten galleys laden with provisions sailed into the bay of Naples, which, had they reached her before, would have saved her country, her throne, and her life. Wlien Charles of Durazzo had the queen in his power, he endea- voured, first to persuade, and then to force her to give up her title to the kingdom, and yield him up the sovereignty of Provence ; and after many con- ferences, he began to hope that he had at last terrified or beguiled her into making some concession in his favour. With this idea he granted a safe-conduct to the commanders of the Proven9al galleys, and other chiefs who yet remained faithful to Joanna, and per- mitted them to appear in her presence for the last time ; but, instead of the result he had expected, this high-minded woman seized the opportunity to assert her own dignity and power, and confound her oppressor. She began by gently upbraiding hex 92 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. friends with the tardiness of their arrival ; she then solemnly revoked the declaration she had formerly made in favour of Durazzo ; claimed their allegiance for Louis of Anjou, as her heir and successor, and commanded them never to acknowledge as their sovereign the ungrateful traitor and usurper who had seized her throne, and now held her a prisoner in her own palace. — " If ever," said she, " you are told hereafter that I have admitted his unjust claims, believe it not ! even if they place before you an act signed by my hand, regard it as false, or ex- torted from me by fraud or violence — believe it not ! — believe not your own eyes ! — believe nothing but these tears which I shed before you, and avenge them I" Her adherents swore to obey her last commands, and left her presence weeping as they went. Du- razzo, exasperated by her firmness, ordered her to be more closely confined, and for eight months she suf- fered all the miseries and insults that could be heaped on her by a cruel and ungrateful adversary. Every day, however, fresh disturbances arose to distract him : the friends of Joanna were everywhere assem- bling; the populace were ready to rise in her behalf, and many nobles were in open rebelHon against him. Perhaps Charles of Durazzo had not in the first in- stance contemplated the monstrous crime to which he was now driven, and by which he consummated his treason ; but who that plunges into the torrent of ambition can tell whither it will carry him 1 The usurper, finding that as long as Joanna existed, there was neither repose nor security for him, resolved on her destruction. He despatched her to the castle of Muro, a dismal and solitary fortress in the Apen- nines, about sixty miles from Naples : and her spirit still holding out — even in this wretched abode, so that his threats were only answered by defiance, and his persuasions by scorn — he sent four Hunga- iKia soldiers with orders to put her to death. The JOANNA OF SICILY. 93 manner of her assassination is not certain, but it is most probable she was either strangled or suffocated for when her body was afterward exposed to public view in the church of Santa Chiara, it exhibited no sign of external violence. She was murdered on ihe 22d of May, 1382, after a reign of thirty-nine y^ears. Such was the end of Queen Joanna; "a most rare and noble lady," a just and beneficent queen, of whom Boccaccio has left this memorable testi- mony, — " I not only esteem her illustrious and resplendent by conspicuous excellence, but the sin- gular pride of Italy, and such as altogethei" no other nation has ever seen her equal." Joanna was buried in the church of Santa Chiara, at Naples, wliere her tomb is now^ to be seen. Her memory is still revered by the populace, and her name familiar on their lips. If you ask a Neapoli tan in the street who built such a palace, or such a church'? the answer is generally the same, "Our Queen Joanna." Otho of Brunswick, her brave husband, remained two years a prisoner ; he was afterward released, on condition that he should never again enter the kingdom of Naples, and died on the field of battle, fighting in the cause of Louis of Anjou, the heir of Joanna. Her assassin, Charles of Durazzo, met with a doom which should seem to have been con- trived by the avenging furies. After a turbulent imhappy reign of three short years, he deemed him- self securely fixed on the throne of Naples, and pro- ceeded to Hungary to wrest that crown from Maria, the daughter and heiress of Louis of Hungary, tlie old enemy of Queen Joanna. The young Queen of Hungary, who was then about fifteen, was of a generous, frank, and noble nature ; but her mother, the Regent Elizabeth, was more than a match for Durazzo in artifice and cruelt}'. By her niacliina- tions he was decoyed into the apartment of Maria, 1.— G 94 FEMALK SOVKREIONS. and while he stood reading a paper, a gigantic Hun. garian, secretly stationed for that purpose, felled him to the e;irth with his sabre. His death, how- ever, was not instantaneous : he lingered for two days in agonies, neglected and abandoned ; at length his enemies, becoming impatient of his prolonged existence, and fearful of Ins recovery, caused him to be suffocated or strangled. " Voila," says Brantome, after relating the death of Joanna and the fate of her murderer, — " Voila un juste jugement de Dieu, et une noble et brave prin- cesse, vengeresse de son sang innocent. " Voila aussi la fin de cette brave reyne qu'on a calomniee bien legereraent." Gaillard, in his " Rivalite de la France et de I'Es- pagne," terminates his account of Joanna of Na])les by observing, that history affords no subject more powerfully dramatic than the life of this queen. In fact, what splendid materials for tragedy and ro- mance — for a Shakspeare or a Scott — in the char- acters, passions, incidents, and wild vicissitudes of which I have just given a rapid and superficial sketch. Joanna herself, vvith ail her elegance and loveliness ; her tenderness and her magk^'iimity ; her wrongs, her sorrows, and her miserable end : — the gifted intriguing Catanese ; — her daughter, the beautiful and faithful Sancha ; the villain friar ; the chivalrous Prmce of Taranto ; the fierce implacable Louis of Hungary; the perfidious, ambitious Du- razzo ; with Boccaccio and his Fiammetta ; and then Petrarch appearing occasionally among them like a superior intelligence, a being of another sphere : — what a group to be brought together within the same canvass ! what variety ! what brilliant con- trast ! what light and shade ! what capabilities of scener\ and costume, in the country, the manners, and the age ! La Harpe has written a tragedy on the story of Joanna, which is as dry and formal as the rest of his tragedies ; the use he has made of the JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. 95 magnificent materials before him reminds us of the pontiff who demolished the interior of the Colos- seum to build himself a palace out of its sublnne fragments. There is also a French novel founded on the story of Philippa, entitled " L'Histoire de la Catanoise," and published in 1731, but I have not been able to meet with it. JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. The crimes and miseries of his family ceased not with the horrible catastrophe of Durazzo. He left two children, who wore successively his usurped crown. Ladislas, his son, equally ambitious, cruel, and unprincipled, after a reign of thirty years spent in contending for the possession of his throne, perished at length the victim of his own depravities. During this period literature was neglected, the arts declined, and Ladislas, while he lived, was con- sidered as the scourge of the countries he governed. He died in 1414, and was succeeded by his sister, the Princess Joanna. In the Neapolitan histories the two Joannas are distinguished as " Queen Gio- vanna," and " Queen Giovannella," and they are so very different in conduct and character, that in jus- tice to Joanna the First, she should never be con- founded with Joanna the Second. The virtues and talents of the former could not indeed avert the most terrible misfortunes from herself and her king- dom ; but a mere caprice of her feeble and worthless namesake entailed upon Italy two centuries of deso- lating war. She it was who called in those herds of French Avolves which, rushing down the Alps, " drank th' ensanguined waters of the Po," and spread wnr, pestilence, and famine through the fertile plains of southern Italy. There was a prophecy 96 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. current at Naples, in her time, that " the last of the Durazzi sliould be the ruin of her country ;" and Joanna, who was perhaps the immediate occasion of this prophecy, was certainly the remote cause of its fulfilment. She was born at Naples in 1371, and was the oniy daughter of Charles of Durazzo by his wife Mar- garet, the favourite niece and adopted daughter of the first Joanna. At the death of her father she was about fifteen, and during the minority of her brother Ladislas, remained under the guardianship of her mother, who had been declared regent. The kingdom was divided between the party of Ladislas and that of Louis of Anjou, who were both in their infancy ; and Margaret of Durazzo, the mother of Ladislas, and Marie de Blois, the mother of Louis, were at the head of the respective parties. These two wome'a were very different in character, but they were equal in talents, and for twenty years car- ried on the terrible struggle for power with equal boldness, capacity, and obstinacy, while armies moved at their bidding, and statesmen and warriors were but as the tools with which they worked out their purposes. Ladislas, as he grew up, displayed all the quaaties of a bold but fierce soldier ; his own military talents, combined with the art and the firmness of his mother, and a number of concurring circumstances, at length secured him the superiority over his riva] and about the year 1399 the court was once more fixed at Naples. Amid these wars and intrigues, in continual vicis Bitudes of flight or victory, sometimes in a camp of fortress, sometimes in a convent or mixing in the £ourt of her perfidious and profligate brother, Joanna spent the first twenty-eight years of her life. It was proposed in this interval to put an end to the war by uniting Joanna to Louis of Anjou ; but the young prince shrank with horror from the idea of JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. 97 marryinof the (Umafhter of a murderer, and his motnei found it impossible to vanquish his repug'nance to the match. When Ladiskis was at length in peace- able possession of his kingdom, his first care was to consolidate his power by forming a suitable alli- ance for his sister, and he married her, in 1403, to William, the son of Leopold III. Duke of Austria ; within three years she became a widow, and re- turned to Naples, where she resided in the court of her brother during the remainder of his reign. The conduct of Joanna both before and after her marriage had been scandalously profligate ; equally without beauty or virtue, she yet contrived to keep a strong party round her, for she had talents of a certain class, and what she wanted in understanding was supplied by artifice. All the opprobrium with which her former life had covered her did not pre- vent her from being proclaimed queen as the heiress of her brother Ladislas, and on his death in 1414, his sceptre, ill gotten and blood-stained as it was, passed into her hands, to be further polluted and de- graded, and at length flung, hke a firebrand, between the rival houses of Francfe and Spain . Joanna was in her forty-fourth year when she ascended the throne. Among the unworthy favourites who had surrounded her as duchess, was a certain Pandolfo Alopo, a man of plebeian birth, but of singular beauty of per- son ; he had been her cup-bearer, and on her acces- sion she created him grand seneschal, or chamber- lain, — one of the highest offices under the crown, since it gave him the disposal of the principal part of the revenues ; his power over the queen was un- bounded, and he used it, or rather abused it, with a degree of audacity which rendered himself an ob ject of hatred and his mistress of scorn. But in a short time he found a formidable rival in the famous Sforza, the first of that name, and founder of that dynasty of sovereigns which aftorward reigned over Milan 98 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. During the intestine wars which for the last fifty years had set at variance all the minor states of ttaly, a class of men had arisen who by degrees almost equalled themselves with princes. These were the Condoftien, or leaders of mercenary bands, who sold their services for stated periods to the highest bidder, and v/hen not in the pay of any state or sovereign, lived by plunder or by raising contribu- tions on the towns and peasantry. Sforza, whose real name was Muzio Attendola, liad risen from the ranks by his valour and intelligence during the reign of Ladislas. He was distinguished as one of the most formidable of these Condottieri, from the number and discipline of his followers, as well as his own military prowess ; and on the accession of Joanna, he Vv^as considered as the most efficient sup- port of her throne. His exploits, his bravery, and iiis personal advantages gradually gained him an ascendency over tlie weak, excitable Joanna ; but Pandolfo Alopo, who saw with terror the decline of his power, contrived to fill the queen's mind with jealousy, and at length extorted from her an order by which Sforza was suddenly arrested and closely imprisoned. The contentions and intrigues of these two favourites had thrown the whole kingdom into confusion, and excited the indignation of the nobility, and the murmurs or derision of the populace. The counsellors of Joanna represented that the only ex- pedient to restore tranquillity was a marriage with some foreign prince, whose firm administration would awe her subjects, and strengthen her govern- ment at home and abroad. Though the queen was no longer young, and her frailties but too public, a crowd of competitors presented themselves, and her choice fell on James de Bourbon, Count de la Marche, a nobleman of illustrious birth, but without sovereign power ; he was distinguished as a militnr^f leader, and possessed of many generous and elevated qualities ; but it v/as not to these he owed the JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. 99 honour or dishonour of Joanna's preference. The Count (Je la 3.iarche was distantly related to Charles VI. th.e reitruing King of France ; and the queen and lier counseilois hoped that by this election they M-ould dctacli the French king from the interest of Louis of Anjou., who had never ceased to advance his claims to the crown of Naples. Pandolfo /\lopo had done every thing in his power to avert this in- tended marriage ; he beheld in a legitimate partner of the throne and heart of Joanna the downfall of his own disgraceful power. But finding that the unanimous voice of the nobles and the people ren- dered such a measure inevitable, he endeavoured to provide for his own safety by forming a numerous party against James de Bourbon, previous to his arrival. Further to strengthen himself, he made overtures to Sforza, who remained in his dungeon in perfect ignorance of the cause or the author of his disgrace ; him Alopo visited, expressed his pity for his misfortunes, and assured him that his own influence and that of his sister Catherine d'Alopo, should be employed in his favour. Having thus raised the hopes and tlie spirits of the prisoner, he returned a few days after ; " My sister," said he, *' has been indefatigable in her exertions for you, and you well know, illustrious Sforza, that even my power is as nothhig compared to hers : I now come from her to tell you, that you are not only free, but that the queen acknowledges her injustice towards you, restores you to her favour, and ot!ers you once more the baton of grand constable, which in her name I bring you." Alopo, having thus liberated his rival from the dun- geon to which his own machinations had condemned him, found it easy to induce him to accept the hand of the woman to whom he believed himself so much indebted, and this strange coalition was sealed by the marriage of Sforza with Catherine d'Alopo. While these intrigues were going on in the court of 100 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. Naples, the Count de la Marche, attended by a bril- liant train of French knights, arrived to claim the hand of his bride. The marriage was celebrated with due magnificence, and on the same day Joanna bestowed on her husband the title of king. She was then in her forty-sixth year. If the queen had hoped to find in the Count de la IMarche a convenient husband, who w^ould consider the honour of sharing her throne sufficient amends for a dishonoured bed, — or if Pandolfo and Sforza had expected to meet with a monarch who was to be swayed to their purposes, and to retain, either by their own audacity or the influence of the queen, the power they had alternately exercised, — all were equally mistaken. The new king had believed, or wished to beheve, that the reports of Joanna's con- duct were either false or exaggerated ; but after his arrival at Naples, the whole truth by degrees opened upon him ; disclosures the most w^ounding to a hus- band's ear met him on every side, and his was not a spirit tamely to submit to disgrace. Shame, jeal- ousy, and rage by turns possessed him, and, using the power and the dignity of a king to revenge his injuries, he ordered Pandolfo and Sforza to be seized and imprisoned : the former was first put to the tor- ture, confessed his guilt, and w^as then beheaded ; others of the queen's immediate favourites and de- pendants were put to death or banished ; and Joanna herself was confined to her own apartments, deprived of all the honours due to her rank, and guarded day and night by a French captain, one of her husband's retainers, an ill-favoured, iron-visaged old man, witli a heart as hard as his armour, equall}'^ inaccessible to pity and bribery. Here for some months Joanna spent her time in weeping over her fate rather than lamenting her past errors, and forming projects of escape, not vows of reformation. In he mean time James de Bourbon governed almost absolutely in her name and his own. Joanna JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. 101 hati ill many instances incurred the just contempt of her sul)jects ; but her mild rule and gentle dispo- sition contrast(^d with the tyranny and ferc-city of Ladislas had gaine*l her many hearts ; and the Nea- politans could not look on with absolute indifference while her husband, a foreigner, treated their native queen with a degree «)f severity and indignity which at length roused their Itahan blood to mutiny and vengeance. The imprudence of James furnished them other causes of discontent : he committed the usual but dangerous error of preferring his own countrymen to the peojile he had come to govein ; and honours and offices \a ere luvished on his French followers to the exclusion of the Neapolitans, wiio made the real or imagined wrongs of the queen tlie plea for their discontent and disatfection. There were others, however, who were apparently influ- enced by more honourable or more disinterested mo- tives, and at the head of these was a young Neapoli- tan whose name was Gianni, or Sergiano Carraccioli. Joanna, by an artful show^ of submission to her hus- band's will, and by basely betraying one or two of her OW'U friends into his power, had so wrought upon him, that he gave her permission 10 attend a mar- riage-feast given by one of the nobles who were m the plot. Carraccioli and his friends were in wait- ing to receive her, fell upon her giiards, mas.^acred them, and carried off the queen in triumph to the Castel Capuana, calling on the Neapohtans to rise in her behalf. The people were seized with a kind of loyal intoxication ; they flew to arms, surrounded the Castel Novo with shouts of execration, and were about to force the gates and inflict summary ven- geance on the devoted king, when he escaped by a private way, and threw himself with a few friends into the Castel del Ovo, a fortress situated upon a rock in the bay of Naples, and joined to tlie main- land only by a narrow mole, defended by dr.iw- bridges. I.— H 102 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. Joanna was once more absolute upon her tiirone, and her first (mre was to reward her hberators. 1 he chivalrous Carraceioli, who had first engaged in hei cause, quickly assumed that ascendency in her heari and in her councils which had been possessed by Alopo; and every favour that the gratitude of a w^oman and a queen could bestow was freely lav ished on him. Sforza v^^as released from his dun geon ; all the French were deprived of their ofllces, which were bestowed on Neapolitans ; and the court became once more a scene of gayety, dissipation, and intrigue. In the mean time James de Bourbon remained shut up in the Castel del Ovo, where, being in want of provisions, and all succours intercepted, he would have been forced to surrender at discretion, but for the interference of some of Joanna's wisest coun- sellors, wlio were anxious to avoid this additional scandal: they undertook to negotiate between the queen and her husband, and at length a hollow recon- ciliation was effected on terms the most humiliating to James. It was agreed that he should resign the title of king, and be content with that of Prince of Taranto; that all his French followers should be dismissed from his service, and sent bafik to France ; and that the sovereign power should be lodged ex- clusively in the person of the queen. To these hard conditions the unfortunate prince acceded, not with- out many a painful struggle between pride and ne- cessity ; but his situation was critical, and admitted no alternative. He signed the articles submitted to Iiim, and returned to inhabit the royal palace, no longer as king, but merely as the husband of the queen. Where mutual wrongs and injuries, and those of the most unpardonable description, had struck so deep, it could hardly be expected that a reconcilia- tion on such terms could be either sincere or dura- ble. JGfines felt himself a spectacle of deri.'sion and JOANNA 11. 01" NAPLES. 103 fiumiliation in a court crowded by insolent and aspir- ing favouiites, and his gloomy, unbending dej;ortnient betrayed his internal disgust. Joanna, who w^as a better dissembler, concealed her feelings, and only waited a favourable opportunity to rid herself of one whom she now regarded merely as a constraint on her pleasures and a spy on her actions. The ven geance of the queen was for some time retarded by the policy of Carraccioli, but it was not the less de- termined, and the moment at length arrived. One evening, as they were seated at supper in the palace, a dispute arose relative to some of the French knights who still remained in the kingdom, contrary, as Jo- anna averred, to the express stipulation on that subject. The contention rose high, and at length James, rising from the table with some strong ex- pressions of contempt and indignation, retired to his own apartment. Joanna, instigated by Carraccioli had previously taken her measures ; she immediately ordered the doors to be barred and bolted, placed a guard before them, and that chamber became the dungeon of her husband for three long years. It was now her turn to tyrannize ; and though a natu- ral mildness of temper prevented her from proceed- ing to the last extremities against her unfortunate husband, yet no remonstrances or entreaties froni the most powerful monarchs could induce her to liberate him, or soften the rigorous treatment to which he was subjected, till Pope Martin V. inter- fered in his behalf through his legate Morosini. At his request James was released, and retired almost immediately to his principalit}^ of Taranto. Thither persecution and mortification foilov/ed him ; and at length, soured by disappointment, and almost broken- hearted, he returned to France. Passing through Besan(;on, he was lodged for a fev/ nights in a con- vent of Franciscans, and in a sudden fit of religious melancholy or enthusiasm he assumed the habit of this order, in which he died about 1438. James d© 101 FEMALE- SOVEREIGNS. served a better fate ; but it may be observed, thai having married merely from motives of ambition such a woman as Joanna, and accepted a throne from her hands, a httle more suavity of temper and conduct had, perhaps, ensured his power over her, and enabled him, without compromising his own honour, to remove from her those favourites who had disgraced her court and sullied her reputation. But he had been too rash in his projects of reform : he began by making himself detested, and this with every personal advantage which might have secured him the heart of his wife and an ascendency over her mind. All his excellent qualities were neutral- ized by that gloomy asperity of temper which, if carried into his convent-cell, must have rendered liim as wretched in his character of a monk as ho had been in that of a monarch.* But we must return to Joanna. The power of Carraccioli daily increased, so that under the title of seneschal of the palace he in fact reigned as king He was a man of consummate art as well as great ambition, and before his authority was perfectly established, his government was so conducted as to please both the nobles and the people. Were there any whose talents or vvhose accomplishments mad(? him dread a rival in power or in love, he quietly re moved them from the precincts of the court by giv- ing them some honourable employment at a distance. * An old French author, who does not give James much credit for his conversion, draws a ludicrous picture of him in his monkish habili- ments. " Olivier de la Marche, qui 6tait alors k Besancjon, et le vit quand ce roi s'y vint rendre Cordelier, dit qu'il se faisait porter pai ^uatre hommes en une civiere, telle sans aucun difference que les civi- eres que Ton porte les fumiers et les ordures, et 6tait d demi-couch6 (quel sot et fat !) demi-a|>puy6 et lev6 4 1'encontre d'un m6chant d6rompu oreiller de plume, v^tu pour toute j)arure d'une longue robe de gris do petit prix ; et 6tait ceint d'une corde nou6e A la faqon d'un Cordelier, et en la t^te avait un gros bonnet blanc. que I'on appelle une culle, nou6e cu bridce par dessous le menton. II ne lui eut fallu qu'une plume de coq suj la bonnette, et voJlA le galant bien v6iu '. .To crois que si la reyne, sa femme, I'eut ainsi vu habille et emb6^uin6, elle, qui 6taii toute gentiUe et d'esprit, s'en serait bien moquee 1"" Jt)ANNA II. OF NAPLES. 105 Tlius the young Count Origlia, who had attracted the notice of Joanna, was sent as ambassador to the council of Constance, — an office which he accepted with unsuspecting gratitude ; while Sibrza, the val- iant Sforza, was despatched to Rome, to watch over the queen's interests in that city, and to oppose an- other famous leader of the age, Braccio, who had sold his sen'ice to the pope. But it was not long before Sforza began to pene- trate the designs of his rival. Oarraccioli, by with- holding money and supplies for the troops, continu- ally crossed his best concerted measures and checked the progress of his arms. Sforza, exasperated by his treachery, and having in vain attempted to open the queen's eyes to the real character of her favour- ite, tendered back his ensigns of command and the royal banner, under which he had hitherto conquered in her name. Having thus formally renounced her service, he immediately joined the party of Louis of Anjou, whose pretensions to the kingdom of Naples, founded on the last will of Joanna I., were still in full force, and acknowledged by many of the foreign •and many of the native princes. While Louis, supported by the almost invincible Sforza, advanced towards Naples, the queen, or ra- ther Carraccioli, who was now all-powerful, opposed them by a grand stroke of polic}'. Joanna called in the aid of Don Alphonso, surnamed the Magnani- tnous. King of Arragon and Sicily, who had some ■distant hereditary claims upon her throne; and being now too old to offer him her hand, she formally adopted him as her son, and declared him her heir, on condition that he would defend her with heart and arms against her enemies. Alphonso, then in the flower of his age, handsome, brave, ambitious, was engaged by every motive of generosity and policy to attend the summons of an oppressed queen, w^ho besought his assistance, and offered him so rich and enviable a heritage as his recompense. He first 100 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. despatched a powerful fleet, with some of his besi troops on board, and soon afterward landed at Na- ples with a splendid and martial retmue, and made his triumphant entry into that cit}^ July 7, 1421» Braccio, changing sides, was induced to take the conniiand of the queen's troops, and again opposed to Sforza. These two celebrated generals were personal and intimate friends, though they were ri- vals in mihtary glory, and almost always combating for opposite interests. After various vicissitudes of war, in which both displayed consummate general- ship, Braccio resolved, if possible, to reconcile Sforza to Joanna. He succeeded ; Sforza could not resist the entreaties and caresses of the queen, and the flatteries of Alphonso. Again changing sides, with marvellous facility, he assumed the command which Braccio resigned to him, and with Sforza victory re- turned to the banners of Naples. Joanna, meantime, was declinmg in age ; and her natural feebleness of character increasing with her years, she was more under the personal control of Carraccioli than ever. The favourite, released from his fears of Louis, now dreaded the influence of Alphonso ; the brilliant qualities of the latter had rendered him so popular with the people, and so be- loved by Joanna, that Carraccioli beheld himself eclipsed, or feared to be so ; he contrived to fill the queen's mind with the darkest suspicions of her adopted son : he called to her recollection the con- duct of her fathei;, Charles Durazzo, towards his benefactress and adopted parent, the first Joanna; the example was too recent to be forgotten; might not Alphonso remember it too, and profit by it to her ruin? The suggestion once admitted, her own imagination and the artifices of Carraccioli soon turned suspicion to conviction. Alphonso, not aware of the mistrust and aversion which were gaining upon the mind of the queen, made an imprudent dis play of his power, which gave some colour of truth JOANNV II. OF NAPLES. 107 to the insinuations of his enemy ; and Joanna no longer saw in him a son and a defender, but an un- grateful traitor, who only watched an o{>portui)ity to seize on her kincrdom, and cany her off to a diui- geon in Spain or Sicily. In an agony of rage and terror she shut herself up in the Castel Capuana, and wrote to Sforza, who was at a distance with his troops, to fly to her succour; he obeyed the summons instantly, and Alphonso and his Arra- gonese, thus converted into enemies in their own despite, were obliged to stand on the defensive. Several battles were fought, in which Sforza had generally the advantage ; but Alphonso took and kept possession of the city of Naples, and made Carraccioli his prisoner ; and these and other suc- cesses kept the issue doubtful for some time. While the fierce struggle continued, Joanna solemnly re- voked her adoption of Alphonso ; — absolved her sub- jects from the allegiance they had sworn to him as the heir apparent to her crown ; and, — with a strange versatility!* — declared Louis of Anjou her son and heir in his stead, with all the titles and privileges she had formerl}^ bestowed on Alphonso. Thus Louis found himself, by the most unexpected turn of for- tune, by a mere feminine caprice, assured of that throne for which himself, his father, and his grand- father had for forty years striven in vain. This famous treaty, which was followed by such tremendous consequences not only to Naples but to all Italy,! was signed by Joanna, at Nola, June 2, 1423, two years after Alphonso had been called over to assist her against Louis. Whatever disasters eventually hung on this mem- orable compact, Joanna had no reason to repent it during her own life. Louis had not all the brilliant * " Nella instabilitA, sola fu stabile," says the Italian historian of Joanna. t It led to the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII., which in its turo jivolved all Europe in long and sanguinary wars 108 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS qnalitics of A Iplionso, but neither had he his restless ambition. Generous, gentle, frank, and brave, he won and deserved the confidence and affection of Joanna, and repaid the favours and honours she had conferred upon him with a submission and devotion more than fihal ; — the two rivals were indeed worthy of each other, and of the high destiny to which they vvere called. Neither would abandon his preten- sions ; but Alphonso was called from Italy by the affairs of Spain, and sailed from Naples in October, 1423 ; he left his brother Don Pedro to continue the war, assisted by Caldora, another famous Condot- tiere, who, in the true spirit of his military trade, soon afterward changed sides and went over to Louis. Joanna had previously redeemed her favourite Carraccioli, by exchanging for him many of the best generals of Alphonso, made prisoners by Sforza ; and about the beginning of the year 1424 we find Joanna, or rather Carraccioli, again setiled tranquilly in the government of Naples. It was not, however, in the power of the favourite to injure Louis of An- jou in the estimation of his mistress. The prudent , conduct of that amiable prince gave no cause of um- brage, and Carraccioli was obliged to remain satis- fied with removing him on different pretences as far from the court as possible. Shortly afterward the tranquillity of Joanna'? government was threatened by that turbulent Brac- cio who had been alternately her defender and her enemy ; and having lent his sword and skill to all the powers of Italy by turns, had now resolved to win an independent sovereignty for himself; hehaa seized on Capua, and was now besieging Aquila. Sforza, his old friend and adversary, was sent againsi thisjormidable leader; he had proceeded northwards as far as the banks of the river Pescara, when, a^ he was riding forwards to give his orders to cross the river, his horse plunged with him i'jto a morass, and horse and rider disappeared ; thus, after hn\ ing JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. 109 stood the encounter of a hundred battles, perished this remarkable man. His death threw the court of Naples into consternation, and Joanna bitterly wept the loss of her friend and defender; all his titles and offices were at once bestowed on his son Francesco Sforza, except the staff of high-constable, which was given to Caldora, Avith orders to proceed to Aquila : Braccio and Caldora met before the gates of that city ; the former was completely defeated, and died a few days afterward of his wounds. The battle of Aquila would have secured to Joanna the tranquil possession of her throne, if the traitor Carraccioli, jealous of the increasing favour of Louis, had not again made overtures to Alphonso ; and the interior of Joanna's palace exhibited at this time a scene of perfidy and depravity from which the mind recoils in disgust. The influence of Carraccioli over the queen had long ceased to be that of aflec- tion or confidence, and had become merely a weak- ness or habit. He treated her with the utmost in- solence and arrogance ; it is even related, that when she hesitated to grant his unreasonable demands, he not only reviled her with the most injurious lan- guage, but even beat this miserable and doting old woman until she complied with his wishes. But latterly Carraccioli had met with a degree of obstinacy in his feeble mistress which was wholly unexpected, and appeared to him incomprehensible ; this energy she owed, not to herself, but to a new confidant, the Duchess of Sessa, a woman as wicked as Carraccioli, and excelling him infinitely in all the talents of intrigue ; she was his deadly but his secret enemy, and had vowed his destruction. Carraccioli bore the titles of Count of Avellino, and Duke of Venosa and of Melfi. He was seneschal af the kingdom, and held other high and important offices ; his riches were incalculable, and his power to all appearance boundless ; but not satisfied with all this, he dared to demand of the queen the inves- 110 FEMALE SO EREIGNS. titure of tlie principality of Salerno, ^vhich had generally been conferred on the princes of the blood royal. Joanna, acting under the influence of the Duchess of Sessa, absolutely refused this request, and even went so far as to upbraid Carraccioli with his insatiate avidity, which no gifts nor favours could satisfy. The favourite, astonished and furious at a denial so unlocked for, burst into a torrent of re- pioaches, and finding these availed nothing, from words he proceeded to outrages; he struck her a violent blow on the face, which made the blood gush from her mouth, and then turning his back on her, abruptly quitted the apartment, leaving the miserable queen bathed in tears, and almost suffocated with impotent rage. In this condition she was found by the Duchess of Sessa, who from an anteroom had listened to the dispute. The moment was favour- able to her views; she extorted from the queen without much difficulty, a warrant for the arrest of Carraccioli ; and, resolving not to trust to the fee- bleness of Joanna, she sent a party of her own friends and dependants to execute it — but with secret orders not to arrest, but to assassinate Carraccioli. On the 17th of August, 1432, the day on which he had celebrated the marriage of his son with the daughter of Caldora, Carraccioli was called from his chamber about midnight under pretence of a mes- sage from the queen ; and the warrant being shown to him, he was at the same moment felled to the ground, and his brains dashed out with a battle-axe. When the news of his death was brought to Joanna she wept bitterly, and appeared inconsolable ; but all the estates of Carraccioli were confiscated, and his murderers remained unsought for and unpunished. During the next three years the Duchess of Sessa governed almost absolutely in the queen's name ; and sometimes intriguing with Alphonso, sometimes with Louis, she kept the rivalship of these princes constantly alive, and the court and kingdom in per- JOANNA II. OF NAPLES. Ill plexity and confusion. At length, in 1434, Louis of Anion died of a fever at Cosenza, in Calabria. His fidelity and devotion to the queen, his adopted mother, had never been shaken, either by her^-a- prices or the intrigues and provocations of her un- worthy favourites; and Joanna v^^as perhaps more truly attached to him than she had ever been to any human being. Her grief for his loss was so deep and so sincere, her tears so incessant, that her feeble frame sank under the weight of affliction, and within a few weeks after the death of Louis she expired, in the 65th year of her age, after an unhappy, disgrace- ful, and unquiet reign of tw^enty years. Her people could not respect her, but neither could they hate her: all her faults and follies could not prevent her from being loved and lamented. Such is the in- fluence which a mild temper and sweet and gracfous manners can exercise from a throne ; but had she never reigned, what disgrace had been spared to her memory, what mischief and what misery to her country ! Her few good qualities were buried with her, but " the evil that she did lived after her ;" the arts and sciences, which had flourished under Robert and the first Joanna, fled in affright before the ruf- fian Ladislas, and turned away in shame from the corrupt court of his sister. She had neither the un- derstanding to appreciate, nor the power to protect them ; the only accomplishment in which she ex- celled was dancing. Joanna, as a last proof of her affection for Louis of Anjou, had left her crown to his brother and heir, Rene of Anjou ; but after her death, Alphonso of Arragon invaded Naples, wrested the crown from Rene, and transmitted it to his own posterity. Rene retired to Provence, and resided at Aix, his hereditary capital, cultivating poetry, painting, and music, and presiding over jousts and tournaments. This " bon Roi Rene," as he is caUed in the old histories bore during his life the titles of 1 12 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. Kin^ of Naples, Sicil)^ and Jerusalem, without pos- sessing a foot of land in any of those countries. He was the father of Margaret of Anjou, the heroic wife Ql^our Henry the Sixth. ISABELLA OF CASTILE. Should we seek through the pages of history for the portrait of a sovereign such as the Supreme Spirit of Good might indeed own for his vice- regent heije on earth, where should we find one more blameless and beautiful than that of Isabella 1 or should we point out a reign distinguished by great events — events of such magnitude as to involve in their consequences, not particular kings and nations, but the whole universe, and future ages to the end of time — where could we find such a reign as that of Isabella, who added a new world to her heredi- tary kingdom 1 or did we wish to prove that no vir- tues, talents, graces, though dignif^dng and adorning a double crown and a treble sceptre ; nor the pos- session of a throne fixed in the hearts of her peo- ple ; nor a long course of the most splendid pros- perity, could exempt a great queen from the burthen of sorrow which is the lot of her sex and of hu- manity ; where could we find an instance so forcible as in the history of Isabella? This illustrious woman was the daughter of John the Second, King of Castile and Leon, and born ir. 1450, four years before the death of her father King John, after a long, turbulent, and unjiappy reign, died at Medina-del-Campo, leaving by his first wife, Maria of Arragon, a son, Don Henry, who succeeded him ; and by his second wife, Isabella of Portugal, two children in their infancy, Alphonsc and Isabella. ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 113 To account for the accession of Isabella to the throne of Castile, — an event which during the first years of her life seemed scarce within the verge of probability, — it is necessary to look back a little. Spain, in the middle of the fifteenth century, was divided into four separate kingdoms, Castile, Arra- gon, Navarre, and the Moorish kingdom of Grenada; the political institutions of Castile and Arragon were nearly alike, and though the form of govern- ment in both was monarchical, the spirit and princi- ples were almost republican. The sovereign was merely the chief of his nobility ; his power was cir cumscribed by that of the cortes, or parliament, composed of four distinct orders ; — the nobles of the first class, or grandees ; the nobles of the second class ; the representatives of towns and cities, and the deputies of the clergy. By law the cortes was to be convoked once in two years, and once assem- bled, could not be dissolved by the king without its own consent ; all questions of peace and war, the collection of the revenues, the enacting and repeal- ing of laws, and the redressing of all grievances in the state, depended on this assembly. When they pronounced the oath of allegiance to a new king, it was in these striking terms : " We, w^ho are each of us as good as you, and altogether more powerful than you, promise obedience to your government, if you maintain our rights and liberties ; but not other- wise." It was a fundamental article in the consti- tution, that if the king should violate their privi- leges, the people might legally disclaim him as their sovereign, and elect another in his place — though that other should be a heathen; — so ran the law. This state of things had its disadvantages: the proud, warlike, turbulent barons stood between the king and the people ; braved the former and oppressed the latter, and by their mutual factions, and con- tinual revolts against the throne, plunged the country into continual civil dissensions and sanguhiarv wars. 114 FKMALE SOVEREIGNS. The king held his power by so precarious a tenure, that he was continually in arms to defend it, either abroad or at home ; from the time when Pedro the Cruel and Henry of Transtamare contended for the crown in 1369, to the reign of Ferdinand and Isa- bella, the history of Spain presents a confused pic- ture of wars, popular msurrections, royal treasons, and domestic tragedies. Yet, as in Italy,when the early Italian republics were contending within themselves and with each other, Spain, thus divided, and under the most unsettled government, was flourishing and populous : less powerful, perhaps, as a nation, and less formidable to neighbouring states than it afterward became when consolidated into one vast empire under a des- potic monarch ; but inhabited by a brave, free, high- spirited, industrious people. Conmierce and the arts, philosophy and the sciences, had flourished under the Moorish princes, and were extended to the Span- iards : they had a beautiful language, and rich poet- ical literature. " We have been accustomed," says Mr. Lockhart, in his beautiful introduction to the Spanish Ballads, " to consider the modern Spaniards as the most bigoted, and enslaved, and ignorant of Europeans ; but we must not forget that the Span- iards of three centuries back were in all respects a very different race of beings." They had then less bigotry, were possessed of more civil liberty, a more elegant literature, and more refinement of manners than any nation of Europe. Henry the Fourth of Castile, the eldest brother of Isabella, was a weak and vicious prince : about ten years after his accession his misgovernment led to a general revolt, and the chief nobility, with Ca- rillo, Archbishop of Toledo, at their head, resolved to exercise one of the undeniable privileges of their order, and degrade their unworthj'^ monarch from his throne. They brought him to trial, and sen- tenced him, in effigy, in a maimer the most extra- ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 1 1 5 ordinary. On the 5th of June, 1405, a solemn as- sembly of the states was convened at Avila; an im- mense' amphitheatre was constructed in apJain witli- oiit the city; in the midst was placed an ill-carved wooden ima^e representing the king : it was seated on a throne, the diadem on its head, the sceptre in its hand, and the sword of justice girded to its side. In the midst of a solemn and breathless silence, the articles of accusation and condemnation were read aloud ; at the conclusion of the first article, the Archbij5hop of Toledo advanced to the statue and lifted the royal crown from its head ; upon the read- ing of the second article, the Count of Placentia snatched away the sword of justice ; at the third article, the Count of Benavente tore the sceptre from its hand ; and at the close of the last article, Don Diego de Zuniga hurled the image from the throne, and as it rolled in the dust, the whole as- sembly gave a shout of execration,— the next mo- ment the young Alphonso, brother to Henry, was raised to the vacant seat of power, and proclaimed king ; he was then about twelve years old. This sub- lime farce, or pantomime, or whatever else it may be called, had not the effects that it was expected to produce. Henry raised a large army, and opposed his brother's party ; but a negotiation was set on foot, and the Marquis of Villena, w^ho was at the head of the malecontents, proposed, as one article of reconciliation, the marriage of Isabella with his brother Pacheco. The feeble Henry consented, but Isabella, then about fifteen, resisted a union which she deemed degrading to her rank. She had also a personal dislike of the man proposed to her, and who, in spite of her open repugnance, persisted in pressing this marriage. The king, urged by Villena, was on the point of forcing his sister to the altar, when the sudden death of Pacheco released her from this hated alliance ; and during the next two or three years, while her brothers, Henry and Al- lHJ FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. phonso, were carrying on a furious civil war, she remained in retirement, quietly and unconsciously preparing herself to grace the crown for which they were conteiiding. At length the young Alphonso, whose spirit, bravery, and opening talents offered the fairest promise of happiness to the people, died, at the age of fifteen, and the party of nobles op- posed to Henry immediately resolved to place Isa- bella at their head. When their deputies waited on her with the offer of a crown, she replied, that " it was not theirs to bestow ; and that while her elder brother Henry existed, nothing should induce her to assume a title which was his by the laws of God and man ;" at the same time she claimed her right of succession, and the title of Princess of Astu- rias, which belonged to her as heiress to the throne. The chiefs were astonished and disconcerted by a reply which left them without an excuse for revolt. Having in vain endeavoured to overcome her scru- ples, they concluded a treaty with Henry the most humiliating certainly that ever was extorted from a father and a king. By this treaty, he acknowledged his reputed daughter Joanna to be illegitimate ; he consented to set aside her claims entirely, and de- clared Isabella his heiress and successor. At such a price did this despicable monarch pur- chase for a few years longer the empty title of king, forfeiting, at the same time, all kinglj^ attributes, as love, obedience, honour, power : being a husband, he had branded his own name with ignominy ; and being a' father, had disgraced and disinherited ins unoffending child. The next important object of the nialecontent party was to select, from among many aspirants, a fit consort for Isabella. The King of Portugal made overtures for himself; Louis XI. asked her in marriage for his brother, the Due de Guienne ; Ed- ward IV. of England offered his brother, the Duke of Clarence, who was afterward drowned in a butt ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 117 3f malmsey; and the King of Arrag-on asked her riand for his son Don Ferdinand. The latter was pre- ferred by Isabella herself, as well as by all her party; but as it was the interest of her brother Henry to throw every possible impediment in the way of such a marriage, the Archbishop of Toledo carried Isa- bella privately to Valladolid, where Ferdinand met her in disguise, and the articles being previously prepared, and on principles the most favourable to Isabella and her future kingdom, Ferdinand sub- scribed to them at once, and received from the arch- bishop the hand of the young princess. At the period of her marriage (in 1469), Isabella had just entered her twentieth year. In her person "she was well formed, of the middle size, with great dignity and gracefulness of deportment, and a mingled gravity and sweetness of demeanour. Her complexion was fair; her hair auburn, inclining to red ; her eyes were of a clear blue, with a benign expression, and there was a singular modesty in her countenance, gracing, as it did, a wonderful firm- ness of purpose and earnestness of spirit." *' She exceeded her husband in beauty, in personal dignity, in acuteness of genius, and gi'andeur of soul."* She combined a masculine energy and firmness of purpose with the utmost tenderness of heart, and a softness of temper and manner truly feminine. Her self-command was not allied to coldness, nor her prudence to dissimulation, and her generous and magnanimous spirit disdained all indirect measures, and all the Uttle crooked arts of policy. While all her public thoughts and acts were princely and au- gust, her private habits were simple, frugal, and un- ostentatious ; without being learned, she w-as fond of literature, and being possessed of a fine under- standing, had cultivated many branches of know- ledge with success. She encouraged and patronised the arts, and was the soul of every undertaknig * Tjfc and Voyages of C'yiuinbus, vol. i ji. 105 118 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. vmicli tended to promote the improvement and hap- piness of lier subjects. Her only fault — most par donable in her sex, her situation, and the age in which she lived — was, that her piety tended to big- otr)^, and placed her too much at the disposal of her priestly advisers. This led her into some errors, sad to think of, and fraught v.ith evil consequences to her people ; they are a subject of regret ; they cannot be a subject of reproach to this glorious creature, who, in an age of superstition and igno- rance, was sometimes mistaken and misled, but never perverted. Ferdinand, when he received the hand of Isabella, was a few months youfiger than his bride. " He was of the middle stature, well proportioned, hardy, and active from athletic exercise ; his carriage was free, erect, and majestic ; he had an ample forehead, and hair' of a bright chestnut colour; his eyes were clear ; his complexion rather florid, but scorched to a manly brown by the toils of war ; his mouth was handsome and gracious in its expression; his voice sharp ; his speech quick and fluent."* His courage was cool and undaunted, not impetuous ; his temper close and unyielding, and his demeanour grave ; his ambition was boundless, but it was also selfish, grasping, and unchecked by any scruple of principle any impulse of generosity ; he had great vigour of mind and great promptitude in action, but he never knew Vv'-hat it was to be impelled by a disinterested motive ; and even his excessive bigotry, which after- ward obtained for him and his successors the title of " Most Catholic," was still made subservient to his selfish views and his insatiate thirst for domin- ion. Yet, however repulsive his character may appear to us who can contemplate at one glance the events of his long reign, and see his subtle, per- fidious policy dissected and laid bare by the severe pen of history, he did not appear thus in the eyes of * Life and Vovages of Columbus. ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 119 Isabella when they met at Valladohd. He was in the bloom of youth, handsome, brave, accomplishf.d ; the vices of his character were yet undeveloped, his best qualities alone apparent. Animated by the wish to please, and no doubt pleased himself to find in the woman whom ambition had made his bride all the cliarms and excellences that could engage his attach- ment, we cannot wonder that Ferdinand at this time obtained and long fixed the tenderness and respect of his wife, whose disposition was in the highest degree confiding and aftectionate. Within a few days after the nuptial ceremony Ferdinand and Isabella were obliged to separate ; the prince retired from Valladolid as privately as he had entered it, and during the next two or three years it appears from the course of events that they met seldom and at long intervals. When Henry found that this dreaded marriage had been solemnized without his knowledge or consent, he was struck at once with rage and terror ; he re- voked the treaty he had made in Isabella's favour, declared his daughter Joanna his only legal heir, and civil war again distracted and desolated the kingdom for more than three years. In 1474 Isa- bella proposed an interview with her brother, and they met at Segovia ; she employed on this occa- sion all the eloquence, all the powers of persuasion she possessed as a woman, and all the ascendency which her superior energy and spirit gave her over the feeble, vacillating mind of the king, to procure a reconciliation. Wlien Henry appeared inclined to yield, and even went so far as to lead her palfrey as she rode through the streets of Segovia, Isabella sent for her husband, as if merely to pay his dutiful respects to his brother-in-law. They appeared in public together, entertained each other with seem- ing cordiality, and thus by her address Isabella led on her brother apparently to countenance those pre- tensions which he had himself denied. At the end 120 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. of the same year the d^ath of Henry opened a surer road to peace : he died of a fever in December, 1474. His minister, Villena, had died a short time before ; and Ferdinand and Isabella were immediately, and almost without opposition, proclaimed King and Queen of Castile. The Archbishop of Toledo, who had been so in- strumental in placing Isabella on the throne, and the chief negotiator of her marriage, believed himself now at the summit of power, and expected every thing from the gratitude or the weakness of the young queen ; he was very much surprised to find that the Cardinal Mendoza had at least an equal share of influence and favour, and that Isabella was not of a character to leave the government in the hands of another. He was heard to say, tauntingly, " that he would soon make Isabella lay down her sceptre, and take up the distaff again." But it was not so easy ; and the ambitious archbishop, quitting the court in a fit of jealousy and disgust, threw him- self into the party of Joanna, whose pretensions were supported by the young Marquis of Villena and other nobles. Alphonso, King of Portugal, also en- gaged in the cause of Joanna, upon condition that she should be contracted to him, although he w.as her uncle (her mother's brother), and more than twice her age. He accordingly invaded Castile with a powerful army, and Joanna was proclaimed queen at Placentia. But Ferdinand, who possessed con- summate skill as a general, engaged the Portuguese at Toro, defeated them, and obliged Alphonso to re- tire to his own kingdom. The disaffected nobles submitted one after another to the power of Isabella, and Castile breathed at last from the horrors of civil war. As for the poor Princess Joanna, whose destiny it was to be. disgraced and unfortunate through the vices of her parents, after being the afli- anced bride of several princes, who all, one after another, disclaimed her when she could no longer ' ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 121 bring a crown for her dowry, she at last sought refuge in a convent, where she took the veil at th-e age of twenty, and died a nun. Thus Isabella remained without a competitor, and was acknowledged as Queen of Castile and Loon ; and three years after the battle of Toro, the death of his father raised Ferdinand to the throne of Arra- gon; the kingdoms of Castile and Arragon were thenceforward united indissolubly, though still inde- pendent of each other. There arose at first some contest relative to the order of precedence. Castile and Leon had hitherto been allowed the precedence over Arragon in all political transactions ; but Fer- dinand now insisted that as king and husband his titles should precede those of his wife. It was a very delicate point of conjugal and state etiquette, and Isabella was placed in a difficult situa- tion ; she conducted herself, however, with that mix- ture of gentleness, prudence, and magnanimity which distinguished her character. She acknowledged, as a wife, the supremacy of Ferdinand, as her husband ; in public and private she yielded to him all the obe- dience, honour, and duty he could require, naming him on every occasion her lord, her master, her sovereign ; but she would not concede one iota of the dignity of her kingdom. She maintained, that the Queen of Castile should never yield the prece- dence to the King of Arragon, and in the end she overruled all opposition. It was decided that in all public acts promulgated in their joint names the titles of Castile and Leon should precede those of Arragon and Sicily. Isabella managed this delicate affair with a firmness which endeared her to her Cas- lilian nobles, who were haughtily jealous of the honour of their country ; yet she upheld her rights with so much sweetness and femmine address as to gain rather than lose in the affections of her hus- band ; while her influence in his councils and the resuect of his ministers were evidently increased by 122 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. the resolution she had shown m maintaining what was considered a point of national honour. In the same year that the kingdoms of Castile and Arragon were united Queen Isabella lay-in at To- ledo, and gave birth to her second daughter, the Infanta Joanna, afterward the mother of Charles the Fifth. The first great event of the reign of the two sove- reigns was the war of Granada. Hostility against the Moors seems to have been the hereditary appa- nage of the crown of Castile ; and it was one of the principal articles in Isabella's marriage-treaty, that Ferdinand shouldlead the armies of the queen against the infidels as soon as the affairs of the kingdom allowed him to do so. Isabella has always been represented as a principal adviser and instigator of this sanguinary war, and, during its continuance, the animating soul of all the daring enterprises and deeds of arms achieved by others ; and though the Spanish historians have added this to the rest of her merits, yet, disguise it as we Vvdll, there is something revolt- ing to female nature in the idea of a woman thus interested and engaged in carrying on a war, not de- fensive, but offensive, and almost exterminating. We ought, therefore, in justice to Isabella, to look into the motives by which she was impelled ; to con- sider the situation of the two countries at the time, the opinions and spirit of the age, and the deep-seated religious prejudices on both sides, which gave a tincture of fierce zeal to this great and terrible con- test. It was bigotry on one side opposed to fanati- cism on the other. The Spaniards fought for hon- our, dominion, and the interests of the clmrch ; the Moors fought for their homes and hearths, their faith, their country, their very existence as a nation. Isabella, in undertaking this war, which had been in a measure transmitted to her with her crown, was certainl}'- swayed b)' motives of which we can hardly estimate the full force, unless we transport ourselves ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 123 In fancy back to the very times in wliicJi she hved Tor seven huncired years the existence of a Moorish king-doni in the sonth of Spain had been hke a thorn in the side of Christendom. Isabella deemed it a reproach that her frontiers should be endang^ered, tier power defied, by a people occupying a slip of land between her kinfrdom and the sea; and a sense of religion, sincere though pitiably mistaken, made ner regard the conversion of tlie floors as a neces- sary consequence of their subjection, and a war against them, even to extremity, as good and accept- able service to Heaven. On the other hand, the policy of Ferdinand in conducting this war, though cloaked under an appearance of religious zeal, v/as far more deep and selfish ; with him it was not only the desire of extending his dominions and increasing his revenues, but, in accordance with a deep-laid plan, to aggrandize the crown at the expense of the power of the nobihty and the liberties of the people, — a plan which he pursued through his v.hoie reign with the most profound sagacity and the most un- wearied perseverance ; and he well knew that a popular war, which should place an immense army at his disposal, and exhaust the resources and the ardent spirit of the nobles in the general service, would be an eflfectual step to the object he had in view. The kingdom of Granada extended along the south of Spain for about one hundred and eighty miles, and between the mountains and the sea its breadth was about seventy miles; ^'^et this narrow space was filled with populous cities, enriched by agriculture and commerce, defended by strong fortresses, and in- habited by a wealthy, warlike, industrious, and pol- ished race of people. Nearly in the centre of the kingdom stood the royal city of Granada, on two lofty hills, the one crowned by the glorious palace of the Alhambra, within whose splendid courts forty thousand jiersons might have been ]odt?ed and entei- 124 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. tained ; the other by the citadel of Alcazaba. The sides of these hills and the valley between them were occupied by houses and palaces to the number of seventy thousand, and Granada alone could send forth from her gates twenty thousand fighting men. Around this noble city stretched the Vega, or Plain of Granada, which resembled one vast and beautiful garden in the highest state of cultivation; there flourished the citron and the orange, the pomegran- ate and the fig-tree ; there the olive poured forth its oil, and the vine its purple juice. On one side, a range of snowy mountains seemed to fence it from its hos- tile neighbours; on the other, the blue Mediterra- nean washed its shores, and poured into its harbours the treasures of Africa and the Levant. Nor were the inhabitants of this terrestrial Eden immindful or unworthy of its glorious loveliness. They believed themselves peculiarly favoured by Heaven in being placed in a spot of earth so enchanting, that they fancied the celestial Paradise must be suspended im- mediately over it, and could alone exceed it in de- lights. Their patriotism had in it something roman- tic and tender, like the passion of a lover for his mistress : they clung to their beautifuJ country with * a yearning affection ; they poured their blood like water in its defence; they celebrated its charms, and lam.ented its desolation in those sweet and mournful ballads which are still extant, and which can yet draw tears from their Christian conquerors. Long before the last invasion of Ferdinand and Isabella the Moorish power had been on the decline They had once possessed nearly the whole of the peninsula, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Pyre- nees ; but had, by degrees, been driven southward by the Christian powers, until they were circum. scribed within the boundaries of Granada. Even this they had held for some time as tributary to theii enemies, paying annually two thousand pinoles of gold and sixteen hundred Cliristian captives or Moor- ish slaves to the sovereigns of Castile. ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 125 During the weak government of Henry the Fourth, and the civil wars which had distracted the king- doms of Castile and Arragon, this tribute had fallen into disuse. It had not been paid for several years ; and while the Christian monarchs were weakened by internal and mutual warfare, the Moors had been mcreasing in w ealth and power, and had even ex- tended their dominions by the addition of several tracts and towns lying on their frontiers. Their king, Muley Aben Hassen, was a tyrant in his family, and at this time distracted by domestic feuds ; but he was a man of strong mind, with talents both for war and government ; he had been distinguished in his youth for personal valour, and still retained in old age the fiery spirit and haughty bearing of his earlier years. Such, in few words, was the state of the two nations when the war began. The first step taken by P'erdinand and Isabella was, to send a solemn embassy to the Moorish king, requiring the payment of the long arrears of tribute due to the monarchs of Castile. Aben Hassan re- ceived the ambassador in the state-chamber of the Alhambra, and to the haughty requisition he replied as haughtily, — " Tell your sovereigns that the kings of Granada who were used to pay tribute in money to the Castilian crown are dead. Our mint at pres- ent coins nothing but blades of cimeters and heads of lances." The ambassador, Don Juan de Vera, probably longed to hurl back this proud defiance in the teeth of the infidels; but it was then no time to answer it in the same spirit. The contest with Por- tugal was still pending; the claims of Isabella to her throne still undecided; it was not till 1481 that Ferdinand and Isabella, having signed a treaty with the King of Portugal, were enabled to turn their whole attention to the long-meditated, long-deferred war with Granada. The Moorish king, aware of their intentions, and of the vast preparations making against him, was 126 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. resolved to strike the first blow. He attacked Za- hara, a celebrated fortress, perched on the summit of a mountain, and deemed so impregnable from its situation, as well as the strength of its defences, that a woman of severe and inaccessible chastity was proverbially called a Zahareiia. In the dead of the night, Zahara was surprised by tlie Moors, the garrison massacred, and the rest of the inhabitants driven into Cciptivity and sold as slaves. Although this inroad had only anticipated the intentions of Ferdinand and Isabella, and had given them a fair pretext for carrying the war into Granada, they af- fected the strongest indignation, and at their com- mand all the chivalry of Castile flew to arms. Among the nobles who first hfted their banners in this war, and afterward became celebratjed for their exploits, four were especially distinguished ; Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Marquis of Cadiz ; Don Alonzo de Aguilar (the elder brother of Gonsalvo de Cordova) ; the Count de Cabra ; and the Duke of Medina Sidonia. Ail these were in fact feudal sove- reigns ; they were often engaged in petty wars with each other ; and there was not one of them who could not bring a small army of his own retainers into the field. The Marquis of Cadiz had immense possessions in Andalusia, including even populous cities and strong fortresses ; his near neighbourhood to the Moors, and frequent and mutual inroads, had kept up a constant feeling of hostility and hatred between them. This nobleman was the first to avenge the capture of Zahara ; and his measures were taken with equal celerity and secrecy. He as- sembled his friends and followers, made a descent on the territories of the enemv, and took bv storm the strong tovvn of Aihama, situated within a few leagues of the Moorish capital. When ihe news of the capture of Aihama was brought to Granada, it filled the whole city with con- sternation ; the old men tore their garments, and ISABELLA OF CASTILE. 127 scattered ashes on their heads ; the women rent their hair and ran about weeping and waihng; with their children in their arms, they forced their way into the presence of the king, denouncing wo on liis head, for having thus brought down the horrors of war on their happy and beautiful country. " Ac- cursed be the day," they exclaimed, " when the flame of war was kindled by thee in our land I May the holy Prophet bear witness before Allah, that we and our children are innocent of this act ! Upon thy head, and upon the heads of thy posterity to the end of the Avorld, rest the sin of the destruction ot Zahara !"* Aben Hassan, unmoved by these feminine lamen tations, assembled his army in all haste, and flew to the relief of Alhama ; he invested it with three thou- sand horse and fifty thousand foot, and Alhama would assuredly have been retaken by this over- whelming force, but for the courage and magnanimity of a woman. When news was brought to the Marchioness of Cadiz that her valiant husband was thus hard beset within the fortress of Alhama, — so that he must needs yield or perish, unless succour should be af- forded him, and that speedily, — she sent immediately to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the most powerful of the neighbouring chiefs, requiring of him, as a Christian knight and a gentleman, to fly to the as- sistance of the marquis. Now, between the family of the duke and that of the Marquis of Cadiz there was an hereditary feud, which had lasted more than a century, and they were moreover personal ene- mies ; yet, in that fine spirit of courtesy and gene- rosity which mingled with the ferocity and ignorance * The lament of the Moors on thelossof Allianaa is perpetu her submission was far less bljpd and bigoted than is usually imagined. She drew a line, beyond which she w^ould not permit the.ecclesiastical power to presnme. When the President and Council of Valladolid permitted an appeal to the pope, on a mat- ter merely civil, she was so indignant, that she first suspended and then deposed the whole of these functionaries as a warning to others. While yet a girl. Isabella had for her confessor the 168 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. Dominican Torqiiemada. This fanatic, of whom we may in charity suppose tliat his brain was turned by zeal and religious austerities, had extorted from her a promise, ratified by a solemn vow, that if ever she ascended the throne of Castile, she would em- ploy all human means to root heres}' and infidelity out of her kingdom. But neither this vow, though subsequently pressed upon her ; nor the impetuous eloquence of the fiery Torquemada ; nor the argu- ments of the Cardinal Mendoza ; nor the persua- sions of her confessor Taiavera ; nor the influence of her husband, nor all united, could, for a length of time, conquer her repugnance to the establishment of the Inquisition. She consented at last, after re- sisting for five years, and. could she have foreseen all the horrors that ensued, she would herself have died at the stake rather than have lent her fair name to sanction that infernal engine of tyranny. It was under the auspices of Isabella that Cardi- nal Ximenes introduced his famous reforms into the religious orders of Spain; the correction of the hor- rible abuses which had crept into the convents was strongly resisted, and occasioned a general outcry of all the clergy. The General of the Franciscans waited on the queen, and remonstrated in high terms against this interference with the privileges of his order ; at the same time reflecting severely on Car- dinal Ximenes, and his influence over her mind. Isa- bella listened to this turbulent friar with some impa- tience ; but little accustomed to be dictated to in this style, she^t length rose from her seat, and de- sired him to remember who he was and to whom he spoke. " Madam," replied the monk, undauntedly " I remember that. I am but ashes and dust, and thai 5 speak to Queen Isabella, who is but dust and ashea like myself." Isabella immediately turned from him with a look of cool disdain. The next day he was or- dered to quit the kingdom, and Ximenes, supported by the royal power, pursued his system of reformation ISABELLA Ol-' CASTILK. IQQ It is worthy of remark, that Isabella, though ex- posed ill early life to all the contag-ion of a most depraved court, preserved a reputation unsullied even by the breath of calumny. The women who formed her court and liabitiial society were generally esti- mable. The men, who owed their rise to her par- ticular favour and patronage, justified her penetra- tion, and were all distinguished either for woith or talent. The most illustrious were Columbus and Ximenes, certainly tlie two greatest men of that time, in point of original capacit}^ boldness of thought, and integrity of purpose. Iler husband, Ferdinand, hated and oppressed the former, and hated and feared the latter. Both would have been distinguished in any age or in any circumstances, but, next to themselves, owed their rise and their fame to Isabella. It was in the reign of Isabella that the Spanish language and literature began to assume a polished and regular form. The two most celebrated poets of her time were the Marquis de Santillana (father of the gay young Duke del Infan- tado already mentioned) and Juan de Kncina, whom she particularly patronised, and who translated the Eclogues of Virgil into Spanish for her pleasure and amusement. She also patronised the newly-invented art of printing. The first printing-piess set up in Spain was established at Burgos under her auspices, and printed books, and foreign and classical works were imported free of all duty. Through her zeal and patronage the University of Salamanca rose to that eminence which it assumed among the learned institutions of that period, and rivalled those of Pisa and Padua. She prepared the w^ay for that golden age of Spanish literature which immediately succeeded. Garcilaso de la Vega, the greatest of "the Spanish poets, was born in the same year that Isabella died. The plan which Isabella appears to have had most at heart during the w^hole of her reign, was the in- lernal regulation of her states, and the moral im Vol. I.— P 170 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. provement of her people. The long civil wars, and the weak, disgraceful reign of her predecessor, had disjointed all the springs of government, had substi- tuted for the royal authority that of many petty tyrants, and filled the country with bands of lawless depredators. Some idea may be formed of the ex- tent of these evils from the fact, that when Isabella repaired to Seville, in 1481, for the avowed purpose of apprehending and punishing all those who lived by illegal or violent means, no less than four thou- sand persons took to flight, conscious that the sword of justice, once unsheathed, must find and strike at their misdeeds. The institution of the Holy Brother- hood (La Santa Hermandad), so often alluded to in Don Quixote and the Spanish tales and dramas, was a confederacy of respectable persons of different great cities, for the protection of their persons and property in those evil times. Isabella, conscious of its importance, granted the royal sanction to this brotherhood, and caused its officers to be legally in- corporated into a kind of royal or national police ; this she effected in spite of the most determined opposition from the nobility and higher clergy, who deemed their privileges invaded, and whose power of dohig evil was certainl}^ thereby diminished. Of Isabella's innate sense of justice, her magnanimity, her strong and warm affections, her gentle and be- neficent disposition, sufficient has been said in the foregoing sketch of her life. Brantome records one speech of hers, but without relating the occasion which gave rise to it. " The fruit of clemency," said Isabella, " is more sweet and grateful to a queen, endued by Heaven with beauty, spirit, and the love of true honour, than any gratified vengeance, however just and reasonable." Upon the whole, Isabella appears to have deserved the simple, but beautiful designation, which the love of her people bestowed upon her : — " Isabella de la paz y bontad :" — Isabella of peace and goodness ; MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 171 and the universal regret and enthusiastic eulogies with which they embalmed her memory have been ratified by history and posterity. On tlie death of Isabella, her daughter Joanna and Pliilip of Austria succeeded to the throne of Castile. Ferdinand had promised Isabella on her death-bed, that he would never enter into a second marriage which might deprive her children of the inheritance of Arragon. But excited b}^ ambition and jealousy of his son-in-law Philip, Ferdinand ungratefully vio- lated this promise, and within two years after the death of Isabella, he married Germaine de Foix, niece of Louis XII., and sister of the celebrated Gaston de Foix; she was then in her eighteenth year, Ferdinand in his fifty-fourth ; by this marriage he left no heirs, and on his death, in 1517, his grand- son, Don Carlos, the eldest son of Joanna and Philip, ascended the throne of Spain m right of his mother, and was soon afterward elected Emperor of Ger- many, by the title of Charles V. MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. To a young and candid mind, a state of suspicion, mistrust, and uncertainty is at once painful and un- natural; — but however disagreeable and difficult it may be to doubt ; — however pleasant and easy to take all things for granted, the youthful reader ought to be informed, that there are certain points on which the highest historical authorities are at variance with each other ; and human testimony so nicely balanced, that every reasonable being has a right, after due re- flection and examination, to form his own opinion Where men of equal information, equal judgment, 172 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. equal talent, equal candour, differ absolutely and en- tirely, it must be hard for others to determine. Young people are apt to form rasTi and hasty judg- ments ; to imagine they know all, when in fact they know only a part. It would teach them a becoming caution in forming, and a becoming modesty in ex- pressing opinions, if, in the course of their studies, the subjects of dispute were frankly pointed out to them, and the reasons for doubts explained, — if they considered the numerous points on which wise, and learned, and good men have found it most diffi- cult to decide, and after all differ from each other. The character and many events of the life of Mary Stuart are among these disputed points She has had determined, able, and conscientious adversaries ; she has found enthusiastic, accomplished, and equally conscientious defenders ; and since in this little work no part of the testimony for or against her can be properly introduced, every controverted point will at least be noticed as such in its place. Those who may not have time or opportunity to consider the \vorks written on both sides of the question should keep their opinions for the present suspended. Let them not permit their compassion for unexam- pled misfortunes, nor their admiration for acknow- ledged accomplishments, to bias them on one side ; nor their natural horror for imputed crimes, and re- spect for great names, to incline them on the other. For this is not like some of the disputes which have distracted antiquaries and divided the literary world ; it is not as to whether a battle was fought on this spot or that spot, whether an event occurred in this or that year ; it is a question of justice or injustice. When Dr. Robertson says that " Humanity will draw a veil over such parts of Mary's conduct as we can- not approve," — meaning, we presume, over her pro- fligate attachment to Bothwell, and the murder of the husband of her youth, of which he believes her guilty, — it may be answered, that Humanity will MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 173 \iraw no such veil, and ought not ; the dead, who aie insensible to our pity and our tears, ought at least to have justice at our hands for the sake of the living. The parallel which in Mary's own time, or at least immediately after her death, was drawn between her and Joanna of Naples,* presents so many curious coincidences, and so many striking points of com- parison, that it shall be examined hereafter, though not exactly in the spirit of the original author, who appears to have been bitterly pr»ejudiced against both queens. We must first, however, cast a glance over the principal events of Mary's life and reign, and re- call the most striking parts of her character, whether founded in nature, or springing from education and external circumstances. Mary Stun it. Queen of Scotland, was born in the palace of Liidithgow on the 7th of December, 1542. Her father James V. was a brave, handsome, gallant, and accomplished prince ; her mother was Mary of Guise, sister of the celebrated Due de Guise, and widow of the Due de Longueville ; she was a woman who in private life was without blame, universally respected for her wisdom and talents, her justice, her piety, and her humanity. She had, however, the high spirit and the passion for political power which characterized the family of Guise, and she lived and died in the midst of troubles which she could not appease, and in the midst of factions which she could not reconcile. Mary was only seven days old when her father died, and within ten months afterward she was solemnly crowned at Stirling by Cardinal Beaton, and proclaimed Queen of Scotland. James Hamil- ton Earl of Arran was appointed regent of the king- dom during her minority ; but the principal care of * In a work entitled " L'apologie ou defense de I'honorable sentence et tres juste execution de defftmcte Marie Sluard, derniere Regne (VE<;osse," published in England for the purpose of being distributed abroiia, and quoted by Brantome in his Life of Joanna. I.— -^ 174 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. the young queen was left to her mother, who watched over her infancy with truly maternal anxiety. A very short time after her birth a design was formed to match her with young Edvv-ard VI. of England, then Prince of Wales. It was a favourite obiect with Henry VIII. thus to unite the two kingdoms, and he brought over the regent to his views ; but the queen-mother and Cardinal Beaton, supported by many of the nobles, strongly opposed a measure which would render Scotland a mere province of England, endanger the Roman Catholic religion, and embroil the country with France, tlieir ancient friend and ally. Arran was obliged to yield to these representations ; the treaty of marriage was broken off, and the consequence was a destructive war, in which the Scotch w^ere defeated at the battle of Pinkie with the loss of 8000 men, and many towns and villages were ravaged and pillaged by the English invaders. At this time Mary resided at Stirling castle, under the guardianship of Lord Erskine and Lord Living- stone ; thence she was removed, when about four years old, to Inchmahone, a little island on the lake of Monte ith. Her mother selected four young ladies of rank of her own age to be the companions of her studies and her playmates in this solitude : they all bore the same name, and were afterward called " the Queen's Maries." They were Mary Beaton, Mary Seyton, Mary Fleming, and M^ir}'^ Livingstone ; they are thus alluded to in an old ballad : " Last night the queen had four Maries, To-night she'll hae but three ; — There was Mary Seyton, and Mary Beaton, And Mary Livingstone, and me .'" Who me was is not known; for as the four original Maries, ane by one, married and left her service, the queen replaced them with new ones of the same name, and seems to have pleased herself with the MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 175 fancy of having four Maries always in attendance upon her. The result of the disputes with England was a new and closer alliance with France, which materially changed the destiny of the young queen. A treaty of marriage was concluded between her and the in- fant Dauphin, Francis, the son of Henry the Second. By this treaty it was agreed that Mary should be sent to France, placed under the care of the French king, and educated in his court ; and Henry was to send an army of 6000 men to aid the Scotch against the English. The articles of this treaty were duly performed on both sides; and the same vessels which brought over the French troops conveyed Mary from her native shore. In July, 1548, she sailed from Dumbarton, accom- panied by her guardians, her four Maries, and other attendants, landed at Brest, and proceeded to Pari? where she was received as became the Queen cf Scotland and the destined Queen of France. Of the education which Mary received at the French court it is necessary to say a few words, because it must, by influencing her character, have greatly influenced her fate. She w^as only five years old when she arrived there, and spent thirteen happy years in that country. She was first sent to a convent with the king's daughters, where she made a rapid progress in all the accomplishments they attempted to teach her. Here her enthusiastic disposition and lively fancy were so strongly impressed with religious feel- ings, and she became so fond of a retired life, that when, in consequence of her too great inchnation for the cloister, she was removed to gayer scenes, and obliged to take up her residence in a palace, she shed torrents of tears. She afterward made fre- quent visits to the young friends she had left in the convent, and embroidered v/ith her own hands an altar-piece for the chapel. When w^e are told that Catherine de Medicis was at the head of -Jiat court 176 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. and society in which Mary's education was com« pleted we shudder at her very name, and tremble at the idea of the contagion to which the youthful queen was exposed ; but we must not forget that at this time Catherine de Medicis was herself a very young woman ; she was not long married ; — she had given no indication of those perfidious and cruel de- signs which afterward worked in "her Italian brain," and have associated her name with all we can con- ceive of most detestable. She was respected for her splendid talents, and for the dignity and propriety of her conduct. The Princess Margaret of France, her sister-in-law, was a woman of singular accom- plishments and virtue. There was much wickedness and profligacy in the court; but with these two prin- cesses and her own Scottish attendants Mary princi- pally associated. Her governess, Lady Fleming, was a Scotch w^oman, and her confessor, Reid Bishop of Orkney, was also her own countryman. Her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, undertook to direct her studies, and all her tutors were celebrated men : Buchanan taught her Latin; Pasquier instructed her in history; and Ronsard, the most famous of the early French poets, cultivated her taste for poetry. She sung and played on the lute and the virginals (a kind of spinet or harpsichord). The fashion foi learning prevailed at that time in France, and Mary profited by it: — she understood French, Latin, and Italian perfectly, and she wrote in French with pecu- liar elegance ; she was well acquainted with history and with classical literature : she rode on horseback fearlessly, yet with feminine grace, and was fond of hunting. Her dancing was always admired : we are assured, that " in the Spanish minuet she Avas equal- led only by her aunt, the beautiful Anne of Este, and no lady of the court could eclipse her in the gal- liarde." Her beauty and the charming expression of her countenance were such, that as her contem- porary Brantome asserts, " no one could look upon MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 177 her without loving her." When her mother, Mary of Guise, came over to visit her in 1550, she burst into tears of joy, and congratulated herself on her daughter's capacity and loveliness. It is very pos- sible that in tlie midst of all these advantages, flat- tery and the homage of those around may have rendered Mary impatient of contradiction, and fond of admiration and pleasure ; neither is it too much to suppose that her early initiation into the French court had somewhat blunted in her mind the severity of moral principle. Soon after Mary of Guise re- turned to Scotland she was declared queen-regent, and under that name governed the kingdom till her death, in 1560. The marriage so long contemplated between Mary of Scotland and the dauphin was celebrated on the 24th of April, 1558, when Mary was in her sixteenth year. The ceremony was performed in the church of Notre Dame by the Cardinal of Bourbon, Arch- bishop of Rouen. " Upon this occasion the festivi- ties were graced by the presence of all the most illustrious personages of the court of France ; and when Francis, taking a ring from his finger, presented it to the archbishop, who, pronouncing the benedic- tion, placed it on the young queen's finger, the vaulted roof of the cathedral rung with congratulations, and the multitude without rent the air with joyful shouts. The spectacle was altogether one of the most im- posing which, even in that age of spectacles, had been seen in Paris. The procession, upon leaving the church, proceeded to the palace of the arch- bishop, where a magnificent collation was prepared ; largess, as it moved along, being proclaimed among the people, in the name of the King and Queen of Scots. In the afternoon the royal party returned to the palace of the Tournells ; Catherine de Medicis and Mary sitting in one palanquin, and a cardinal walking on each side. Henry and Francis followed on horseback, with a long line of princes and prin- 178 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. cesses in their train. The chronicler of these nup- tials is unable to conceal his rapture when he de- scribes the manner in Avhicii the palace had been piepared for their reception. Its whole appearance, he tells us, was 'light and beautiful as Elysium.' During supper, which was served upon a marble table in tlie great hall, the king's band of ' one hun- dred gentlemen' poured forth delicious strains of music. The members of parliament attended in their robes, and the princes of the blood performing the part of servitors, the Duke of Guise acting as master of the ceremonies. The banquet being concluded, a series of the most magnificent masks and mumme- ries, prepared for the occasion, was introduced. In the pageant twelve artificial horses of admirable mechanism, covered with cloth of gold, and ridden by the young heirs of noble houses, attracted de- served attention. They were succeeded by six gal- leys, which sailed into the hall, each rich as Cleopa- tra's barge, and bearing on its deck two seats, the one filled by a young cavalier who, as he advanced, carried off from among the spectators, and gently placed in the vacant chair, the lady of his love. A splendid tournament concluded these rejoicings."* Francis was far inferior to his young bride both in person and in mind, and is described as being of a sickly constitution, and of a shy, timid, reserved, but affectionate and kind disposition. They were fond of each othet, for they had been brought up together from infancy, with a know^ledge that they were destined to pass their lives together. Francis did not survive his marriage more than two years, and during that time Mary treated him with invari 182 ■ FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. though the late king, your master, used all the im- peachment he could both to stay me and catch me when I came hither, yet you know, Monsieur I'Am- bassadeur, I came hither safely, and I may have as good means to help me home again. It seemeth that the queen, your mistress, maketh more account of my disobedient subjects than she doth of me, their sovereign, who am her equal in degree, though inferior in wisdom and experience, her nighest kins- woman, and her next neighbour." She repeated hef refusal to subscribe to the treaty of Edinburgh, and gave her reasons in the most forcible, but at the same time the most courteous, terms ; denying all inten- tion to wrong or offend Ehzabeth, and amply apolo*- gizing for the assumption of the crown and arms of England during the life of her late husband ; she re- minded the ambassador that since that time she had neither borne the arms nor used the title of Eng- land. "Methinks," she said, "these my doings might ascertain the queen, your mistress, that what was done before was done by commandment of them that had power over me ; and also, in reason, she ought to be satisfied, seeing I now order my doings as I tell you." But Elizabeth was neither to be paci- fied nor satisfied. When Mary embarked at Calais in August, 1561, vv'ith a cortege of noble and distin- guished persons (among whom were three of her uncles, the Duke d'Anville, son to the constable Montmorenci, the historian Brantome, and the poet Chatelard,her four Maries, from whom she had never been separated, and several French ladies of distinc- tion), Elizabeth sent out vessels to intercept her but she passed them in a thick fog, and thus escaped The grief, almost desi)air, with which Mary took leave of her adopted country is well known. She stood upon the deck, gazing through her tears on the fast receding shore, and when night came on she caused a couch to be spread for her on the deck, and wept herself to sleep. " I am s« far unlike the MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 183 Giirfcliaginian Dido," said Mary on this occasion, " that she looked perpetually on the sea when j^neas departed, while all my regards are for the land."* jNIary landed in Scotland on the 20th of August, and when we consider the distracted state of the country, and the characters of tliose with whom she was henceforth to be surrounded, we may easily excuse the sensations of terror and sadness with which she approached her capital. The poverty of the country struck her, who had so lately left the fertile plains of France, with a feeling of disap- pointment. The weather was wet and "dolorous;" and a serenade of bagpipes with which the populace hailed her seems to have greatly disconcerted her polished attendants ; but Mary took every thing in good part, and after a while she so far recovered * The scene is thus described, with the most picturesque naivete, by IJrantnme, who was present: — "Elle, sans songer d autre action, s'appuye les deux bras sur la pcups de la galf^re du c6te du tiinon, et se mic A foudre en grosses larmes, jettant toujours ses beaux yeux sur le port et le lieu d'o5 elle etait partie, prononqaiit toujours ces tristes pa- roles : — 'Adieu, France! adieu, France I' lesrepetant A chaquecoup; et lui dura cet exercise dolent pres de cinq heures jusques qu'il commenca d lliire nuit, et qu'on lui demanda si elle ne se voulait point 6ter de la et souper un peu. Alors redoublarit ses pleurs plus que jamais, dit ces mots :— ' C'est bien i cette heure, ma chere France, que je vous perds du lout de vue, puisque la nuit obscure, et jalouse du contentement de vous voir tant que j'eusse pu, ni'appone un voile noir devant les yeux, pour me priver d'un tel bien. Adieu, done, ma chere France I que je perds du tout de vue : je ne vous verrai jamais plus.' Ainsi se retira, disant qu'elle avail fait tout le coiitraire de Didon, qui ne fit que regarder la mer, quand Enee se departit d'avec elle, et elle regardait toujours la terre. Elle voulut se coucher sans avoir mange, et ne voulut descendre en has dans la chambre de poupe, mais on lui fit dresser la traverse de la galere en haut de la poupe, et lui dresser son lit. Et reposant un peu n'oubliant nullement ses soupirs et larme.s, elle commanda au timounier* 8it6t qu'il serait jour, s'll voyail et decouvrait encore le terrain de la France, qu'il I'eveillait et ne craignit de I'appeller, a quoi la fortune la favorisa ; car le vent s'etant cesse et ayant recours aux rames, on ne fit gueres de chemin cette nuit ; si bien que le jourparaissant. parut encore le terrain de la France, et n'ayant failli le timonnier au conimandement qu'elle lui avait fait, elle se leve sur son lit et se mit A contempler la Fra-nce encore tant qu'elle pent. Mais la galere s'eloignant, elle 61oignait son conlenfement, et ne vit plus son beau terrain. Adonc redoubla en- core ces mots :— ' Adieu, France, cela est fait ; adieu, la France I ie pense ae vous voir jamais plus!'" - h «»"«» 184 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. her gayety, that the masks and dancing, " llio fiddUng" and " uncomely skipping," she introduced into Holyrood House, gave great offence to John Knox, and the rest of the grave Reformers ; though they might have been forgiven, one would think, to a young and beautiful queen who was " brought up in joyousness." Mary was warmly attached to her own religion : the truth and excellence of the reformed doctrines were not understood or appreciated by her ; she was shocked by the sacrilegious destruction of th6 ancient cathedrals and monasteries, and disgusted by the excessive austerity of the Presbyterians ; she yielded, however, to what she could not help, and her conduct in this respect is one of the disputed points already alluded to. Some historians assert, that Mary merely endured the ascendency of the reformed part)^, with the secret intention of crushing it the moment she had the power to do so, and ex- terminating those who adhered to it. Others, ap- pealing to the moderation she had already expressed, and to the natural kindliness of her disposition, deny the truth of this accusation. The leading men in Scotland at this time were, Mary's natural brother, the Lord .Tames Stuart, afterward t]ie Earl of IMurray, a very able and ac- complished man, but artful, ambitious, and devoted to the English interests ; the Earl of Morton, who was of a cruel, rapacious, and factious disposition ; Sir William Maitland of Letliington, the secretary of state, a learned man and profound politician these were of the reformed persuasion. At the head of the Roman Catholics were Gordon Earl of Huntley, Hamilton Duke of Chatelherault, and his son the Earl of Arran. But the principal guidance of affairs rested with the Earl of Murray, to whom Mary, in the commencement of her reign, trusted implicilly : the chief power was possessed by the Reformers, and most of the members of the privy MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 18^ council were Protestants. Bothvvell, who became afterward so fatally conspicuous, was at this time regarded as a powerful nobleman, retaining the offices he held under the former government, but not yet regarded with favour in the court of Mary : he was a daring and violent man, as wicked as he was daring, as crafty as he was violent; coarse and brutal in his manners, and described by a con- temporary as one of the ugliest men in existence. Among the foreign princes who at this time solicited the hand of the Queen of Scots were Don Carlos, the son of Philip the Second, the Archduke Charles of Austria, and the Prince de Conde : but Mary was not inclined to marriage ; she was well aware that a foreign alliance would be impolitic, displeasing to her people, and offensive to Elizabeth. Among her suitors at home were the Earl of Arran and Sir John Gordon, but neither of these were fortunate enough to win her favour ; though Sir John Gordon (who of all her lovers is the only one who is sup- posed to have been attached to Mary for her own sake) certainly captivated her attention, and, but for the interference of Murray, might possibly have won her heart. It is observable that all the events of Mary's reign were of a domestic nature ; she carried on no foreign wars, nor did she interfere with the affairs of other countries. Her personal and her political history are the same, and cannot be considered separately, as in the case of many other princes. The first occurrence of any importance after Mary's return from France, was her expedition to the north, to put down the power of the Gordons ; a powerful and warlike clan, who had risen against the crown, or, at least, were suspected of hostile and treasonable intentions. The queen's brother, Lord Murray, had his own reasons for being a personal enemy of the Gordons : Mary, who con- fided in his superior age and experience, perceived 186 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. his acknowled2:ed abilities, and had at present no reason to doubt his integrity or his devotion to her, left the management of tliis afiair to him. She herself marched on horseback at the head of her troops, and displayed great spirit and intrepidity. A battle was fought at Corrachie near Aberdeen, be- tvv^een Alurray and the Earl of Huntley, the chief of the Gordons, in v)hich Huntley was defeated. On beholding the destruction of his clan and family the unfortunate earl fell dead from his horse with- out a wound ; and his son, Sir John Gordon, Mary's rejected lover, was taken prisoner, tried, condemned, and executed at Aberdeen. Murray insisted that the queen should be present at this execution, as a measure of policy, and that the public might be convinced that she gave her countenance to all these proceedings. The j'oung queen yielded most reluctantly, but being brought to the window op- posite to the scaffold, she fainted away, and could not for some time be recovered. The eldest brother of Sir John Gordon was also taken prisoner, and found guilty ; but Mary, perhaps remembering this terrible scene, could never be persuaded to sign his death-warrant, and some time afterward he was restored to favour. The court returned to Edinburgh on the 22d of November, 1562, after an absence of three months, during which time the queen visited all the principal tov/ns and castles to the north of her capital. Poor Chatelard, a half-mad poet of that time, was executed for treason in the beginning of the year 1563. As his name has become celebrated from being associated with that of IMary, I shall add the account of him from Chalmers. " When the queen arrived from France, there came in the train of Monsieur D'Anville,* one Chatelard, a gen- tleman by birth, a soldier by profession, a scholar " The Due D'Anville was second son of the famous constable Anne MoDtiTiorciici. and one of Mary's most ardent tiilinirers. Mary queen of scots. 187 from education, and a poet by choice.* He returned with D'Anville to Francs, after enjoying from the rank of his protector the various amusements of lilary's court. In November, 1562, he again visited Scotland, bringing letters from D'Anville and others to Uie queen. It is supposed that the duke employed him as the interpreter of his passion for Mary, but that Chatelard was mad enough to entertain hopes for himself, upon what grounds we cannot now judge." He proceeded the full length, on the 12th of February, 1563, of concealing himself in the queen's bed-chamber, v/ith his sword and dagger beside him. He was discovered, but the fact was concealed from the queen by her female attendants, from prudential motives, till the morning; on being made acquainted with this piece of temerity, the queen commanded Chatelard out of her sight, and banished him from the court. The queen, with a part of her train, left Edinburgh on the 13th, and slept at Dunfermling; on the 14th she proceeded to Burnt Island, where she slept. Havmg retired to her chamber, Chatelard followed her thither, and suddenly presented himself before her, to clear himself, as he said, from the former irnputation. She ordered him to be gone ; he refused ; and, as- tonished at his audacity, the queen herself was fain to cry out for help. "The Earl of Murray was sent for, when the queen in her agitation and terror called out to him to defend her, and strike his dagger into the intruder ; but Murray thought proper to send him to ward, reserving this daring or in- fatuated miscreant to the due course of the law, which would lay open the whole transaction." He was tried at St. Andrew's, condemned to death, and executed on the 22d of Februar}^ He refused to avail himself of any minister or confessor, but having read aloud Ronsard's hyn.u on Death, he * AccorJiiijr to nranfotne. CtiPtfi.Td w^s the g«-!i"d nephf'W' ^ tb» 188 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS turned towards the palace, and exclaimed, "Adieu ! la plus belle et la plus cruelle princesse du monde !" he then quietly submitted to the stroke of the exe- cutioner. As his crimes arose from a heated ima- gination, and a too daring admiration of the queen, we may wish that Mary had extended her mercy to him, or could have done so without drawing suS' picion on herself. It was at this time David Rizzio first rose into notice and favour; he had arrived in 1561, in the train of the ambassador of Savoy ; the three pages, or songsters, who used to sing trios before Mary, wanted a fourth as a bass, and Rizzio was recom- mended and appointed. Being not only the most scientific musician in the household, but likewise a good penman, well acquainted with French and Italian, supple and intelligent, Rizzio contrived to make himself generally useful, and was appointed French secretary to Queen Mary in 1564, which office he retained till his death. The next important event was Mary's marriage^ in 1565. Two years had passed away in tranquillity, during which Mary had exerted herself to win the affection. of her subjects and propitiate the re- formers. John Knox, whose piety and integrity were unquestionable, but whose zeal was rather violent, and betrayed at times both his judgment and his feehng as a man, treated her sometimes with severity, and confesses that he once made her weep " so that they could scarce get handkerchiefs to hold her eyes dry," by the bitterness and insolence of his reprimands.* But on the whole, the two or three years previous to her marriage may be con- sidered prosperous and happy. She gave four or * Even on Tier first arrival in Scotland, and before she could have given any real or pretended cause of offence asrainst his party, Knox, as •we are told, " did knock so hastily upon her heart, that he jnade her to ■weep;'" but, adds the writer (Randolph), "JVcre be some of her sex that will do that as well for anger as for § ;-jj" Maryi tears might well hnvf spj uiig from both MARV QUEEN OF SCOTS. 189 five hours every clay to state affairs : she was ac- customed to have her embroidery-frame placed in the room where her privy council met, and while she plied her needle she listened to the discussions of her ministers, displaying, in her opinions and suggestions, a vigour of mind and a quickness of perception which astonished the statesmen around her; at other times she applied herself to hterature, particularly poetry and history. She brought a great many books with her to Scotland; and the first artificial globes that had ever been seen there were in her librar}^ She w^as exceedingly fond of music, and entertained a band of minstrels, whom she paid generously. Her other amusements were dancing, hunting, and hawking, and she was fond of walking much in the open air. A love of gardening was one of her favourite pursuits. She had brought from France a little sycamore plant, the first, accord- ing to tradition, which had ever been seen in Scot- land : this she planted in the gardens of Holyrood, and from this parent stem arose the beautiful groves of sycamore which are now met with in Scotland. She did not encourage tournaments, from a horror of accidental bloodshed. She was fond of playing at chess, and excelled in it. She delighted in masks, such as were the fashion of that day, w^hich generally exhibited some allegorical repre- sentation, with verses and music. Sir James Mel- ville says, that "when she had leisure from the affairs of her country, she read upon good books the his- tories of divers countries, and sometimes would play on the lute and tiie virginals, reasonably for a queen :" he adds, that " she was anxious to know and to get intelligence of the state of other countries, and would be sometimes sad when she was solitary, and glad of the company of them that had travelled to foreign parts." To this it may be added, that she rose habitually at eight, supped at seven (suppei being then the principal meal), and went to rest a\ 190 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. ten. She endeavoured to conciliate Elizabeth, and the two queens made a great exhibition of courtesy and comphment and sisterly affection towards eac4 other, thoug-h at the same time INIary, who could not easily forgive the injurious treatment she had already received from Elizabeth, regarded her with suspicion and resentment ; and the English queen beheld her beautiful rival with envy, hatred, mahce, and ail un- charitableness. Mary, however, paid Elizabeth the compliment of consulting her on her marriage. To choose a consort pleasing to herself, agreeable to her subjects, and not likely to give umbrage to the Queen of Eng- land, appeared not only difficult, but impossible. Elizabeth proposed her favourite, Dudley Earl of Leicester, not without some intention of offending her " good sister," but certainly without any wish or any expectation that the proposal should be ac- ceded to. Mary was, in truth, deeply and justly affronted. The grandfather of Leicester had been one of the mean and upstart instruments of Henry the Seventh's extortion; he himself was the minion of Elizabeth, and his character universally odious. Mary refused, of course, to listen to him, and Eliza- beth found something to object against every other. At length Mary cast her eyes on j'oung Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and though the event proved that she could not have made a more rash and fatal choice, yet at the time many circumstances ren- dered it most eligible. Darnley, who was of the blood-royal, was first cousin to Mary,* and second cousin to Elizabeth : he w\as a Protestant. He was possessed of all external accomplishments, being re- markably tall, handsome,' and graceful, "well in- structed in all comely exercises," and to please Mary, he affected a degree of refinement, and a taste for music and poetrj'-, M'hich, in realitj^ he did not ' The Countess of Lennox, mother of Henry Lord Darnley, was half- sister to James V and first a>?i.sin to Queen Elizabeth. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. I&l possess. Those vices of temper and disposition he afterward betrayed were of course kept out of siq-ht. The principal objection that could be made to him tvas his youth, for he was not more than nineteen. His mother, Lady Lennox, " a very wise and dis- creet matron," Kizzio, and others, instructed him. in tlie best methods of rendering- himself agreeable to the queen, inwhich he succeeded. They were mar- ried on the 29th July, 1565, when Mary was in her 23d year, and Darnley received from his bride the title and many of the Drivileges of the King of Scotland. For a short time Mary thought herself happy, in spite of the unreasonable displeasure of Elizabeth and the murmurs of some of her nobility. Murray, whose power was shaken by this event, ventured to rebel openly, but was vigorously opposed by the queen, and obliged to take shelter in England. However, before many weeks were past, Mary be- gan to repent of her imprudent marriage. Darnley was a headstrong, conceited boy, whose head v»^as turned by his exaltation. He was indeed the hus- band of the queen, but she was by birth and law his sovereign, to v/hom he owed in public ail external marks of duty and respect. As a woman, who had freely bestowed on him that favour for which the greatest princes of Europe had sued in vain, he owed to her unbounded love and gratitude. But Mary's tenderness and merit were equally thrown away upon him, and instead of respect, devotion, and gratitude, she met with neglect, brutality, and insolence. Among his other vices he was addicted to drinking, and within four months after his mar- riage, " at an entertainment in a merchant's house in Edinburgh, she only dissuading him from drink- ing too much himself and entic-ing others, in both which he proceeded, he gave her such words that she left the place with tears."* Darnley bore the * See Randolph's letters. 192 FIl^IALE SOVEREIGNS. title of king, but this did not satisfy him ; he wished to have all the power and privileges which had been conferred on Francis by the Scottish parliament, " the crown matrimonial," as it was termed ; and less would not content him. But as his temper and character became better known to Mary, she felt a natural disinclination to intrust him with further power ; and in this resistance she was confirmed by the advice of her secretary, David Rizzio. The young king, who could not endure contra- diction, was loud in his discontent, sullen and inso- lent in his demeanour, and threw out various threats against Rizzio. Several noblemen, at the head of whom was the Earl of Morton, already mentioned, encouraged and exasperated him still more for their own selfish views: the removal of Rizzio and an utter breach between the queen and her husband were precisely what they most wished for ; and a conspiracy was fdrmed so dark and daring in its contrivance, and so atrocious in its object, that we cannot think of it without astonishment, pity, and horror. It was resolved to assassinate Rizzio ; and among the ruffians who undertook to perpetrate this deed, in the very presence of a woman and their queen, were the king her husband, the lord chan- cellor (Morton), the justice general of the kingdom, and several lords of the privy council — what a pic- ture of barbarism ! The details of the murder of Rizzio are well known. On the 9th of March, 1566, while sitting at supper with the queen and some other ladies, he was attacked by the conspirators, stabbed over Mary's shoulder, who attempted to de- fend him, then dragged out of the room and des- patched at the head of the staircase. Mary was kept locked up in her chamber (where this horrible scene had taken place) the whole night ; even her women were not allowed to approach her ; but the next day, which was Sundaj", Darnley came to her ; he could not stand in her presence without feeling MAKY QUEEN OF SCOTS. l93 some remorse and fear, and Mary, who was igno- rant of the whole extent of his guilt, employed all ner eloquence to induce him to forsake the desperate men with whom he was leagued, and escape with her ; he consented, and they fled together to Dunbar. The wrongs and insult which had been offered to Mary were so apparent, that she was soon at the head of a powerful army ; she consented to pardon Murray and Argyle, but the cruel and perfidious Morton, and the two barbarians Ruthven and Lind- say, who were among the immediate perpetrators of Rizzio's murder, she threatened with the ex- tremity of her vengeance ; they fled to England, always the safe asylum of Mary's enemies, and re- mained there in safety for some months, till her resentment began to wear away, and other objects engrossed her attention and her feelings. In June, 1566, Mary gave birth to a son in the castle of Edinburgh, whither she had retired with her husband and her brother, Lord Murray, for the sake of quiet and safety. After her recovery she made a short progress through the country for the benefit of her health, accompanied by the king and her infant son; but though generally together, Mary and her husband were not on good terms ; he had deeply disgusted her, and had incurred general con- tempt and odium by the weakness and ill temper he displayed on every occasion. It was at this time that Bothwell — the restless, ambitious, dissolute, and daring Bothwell, found fa- vour at court. His character was well known, but through all these troubles, and amid all the treasons and treachery of those who surrounded her, he had remained faithful to Mary's interests. With regard to the two principal imputations against her, first, of having regarded Bothwell Avith stronger feelings of approbation than as a virtuous woman she ought to have done; secondly, of having participated in his subseauent crimes, 'and conspired with him the 194 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. death of her husband : — these are points on which historians have set forth a mass of contradictory evidence. Some consider her as deeply stained with guilt, tempting at once, and tempted ; others have pronounced her the helpless victim of a dark, cruel, and desiirning man. But to return to well-known and undisputed facts : soon after the birth of her son, the general assembly of the kirk sent a deputation to the queen, praying that she v.ould be graciously pleased to allow the young prince to be educated in the reformed faith. To have acceded to this re- quest w^ould have been against her conscience ; to refuse it was perilous. Mary released herself from this dilemma with that grace and woman's wit for which she was remarkable ; she replied to the depu- ties benignly, but without making any definite promise, and calling for her son, she placed him herself in the arms of their spokesman : the grave minister, unable to withstand so much sweetness, pronounced over the infant a prayer for its future prosperity, and at the conclusion won from it a kind of indistinct murmur, vdiich the good man mter- preted into an " Amen." The queen, amused b}"- this scene, and gratified in her maternal feelings, loaded the minister with thanks and expressions of the kindest import, playfully styling him " Mr. Amen," by which name he was afterward known. The baptism of the infant prince took place at Stir- ling on the 19th of December, 1566. Elizabeth, not- withstanding her envious and repining exclamation, that " the Queen of Scots should be mother of a fair son while she was only a barren stock," — stood god- mother, and despatched the Earl of Bedford as her ambassador on this occasion, while she deputed the Countess of Argyie to officiate as her proxy. She also presented a font of gold to her godson, with a letter full of congratulations and compliments to his mother. The conduct of Darnley meanwhile was so offen- MARY qUEEN OF SCOTS. 195 give and grievous to his queen, and she was so dis- tracted by the turbulent passions and the discontent of those around her, partly excited by his ill be- haviour, that in the midst of the splendid rejoicings and festivities vv^hich accompanied the christening of her son she was often seen in tears, and was heard to wish herself dead. She would not, how- ever, consent to be divorced from Darnley, though a divorce was urged, not by Both well only, but by her brother Lord Murray, the Earl of Huntley, Maitland, and others of her counsellors. A fear of the consequences to her son, and a feminine horror against the expedient altogether, seem to have been felt by her, or at least were strongly expressed in her decided reply to her counsellors : " I will that you do nothing by which any spot may be laid on my honour and conscience, and therefore, I pray ye, let the matter be in the estate that it is abiding, till God of his goodness put a remedy to it. That which you believe would do me a service may possibly turn to my hurt and displeasure." Finding the queen immoveable on this point, Both- well, whose object it was to make himself master of her and of the government, decided on the murder of Darnley : he was then recovering from the small- pox, and lodged for the benefit of the air in a house called the Kirk-of-field, near Edinburgh. Mary was a great deal with him during his convalescence. Subdued by illness, and removed from his evil coun- sellors, Darnley was no longer peevish, wayward, or violent, but penitent and grateful for kindness ; and Mary, in whose facile mind enmity and hatred were ever short-lived, appeared touched by the condition of him, " her life so late and sole delight," and treated him with tenderness. She sometimes brought her band of musicians up from Holyrood House to amuse him. But on Sunday the 9th of February, a day fa- tally memorable in thehistory of Mary, after having visited him as usual, she left him to be present at an 196 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. entertainment given at the palace of Holyrood, to celebrate the marriage of her French servant Sebas- tian with Margaret Garwood, one of her ladies in waiting. While engaged in these festivities, the house in which her husband slept was blown up with gunpowder, and his body and. that of his servant were found in a garden at some distance. He perished in his twenty-first year, having reigned only eighteen months. Of the grief and horror which Mary displayed on this occasion it is not necessary to speak ; evidently, however, she felt more horror than grief; and considering how little reason she had to regret Darnley, it is something in favour of her sincerity that she did not seem to act a part, but recovered herself quickly, and resumed all her self-possession. So many circumstances conspired to fix sus- picion on the Earl of Bothwell, that he was brought to trial on the accusation of the Earl of Lennox, the father of the murdered king. But the trial was fixed for an early day, the proceedings hurried over ; Lennox himself, pleading the shortness of the time, did not appear against him ; and Bothwell, in the absence of his legal accuser, was acquitted by a jury composed of the first noblemen in the kingdom. Bothwell's next object was to marry the queen, and the steps taken for this purpose, if with Mary's consent, were as incomprehensible and apparently unnecessary as they were unpardonable ; if taken without her participation, and contrary to her will, the expedients resorted to were so base and villa- nous that they cannot even be glanced at without horror. The queen, we are told, was returning from Stirling Castle, towards Edinburgh, with a small retinue, when Bothwell, at the head of one thousand armed men, encountered her on Fountain Bridge, about a mile from Linlithgow, seized the reins of her horse, and carried her, without any resistance, MARV QL'EJiN OF SCOTS. IV / to the Castle of Dunbar, Avhere he kept her closely " sequestrated" for a fortni^-ht ; during: the first week her own servants had not access to her. Dur- ing the second week a privy council was called, attended by two or three nobles devoted to Both- well. He had previously contrived to have a bond signed by one arclibishop, four bishops, and sixteen of the most distinguished noblemen and statesmen of the time, in which he was recommended to the queen as a fit and proper husband for her majesty ; the subscribers to this infamous bond obliged them- selves by oath, " to advance and set forward such marriage by word and deed, and to consider as a common enemy whoever should oppose it." Armed with this document, and having procured with dis- graceful celerity a divorce from his wife, Lady Jane Gordon, — Bothwell brought the queen back to Edin- burgh on the 3d of May; and on the 15th of May this guilty and fatal marriage was solemnized. If Mary had been disgusted by the coarse vices of Darnley, what must she not have suffered when she found herself in the power of the rufhan Both- well 1 She passed but one month with him, and this month is usually considered as the most mise- rable of her miserable life. He treated her with such indignity, that a day did not pass in which " he did not cause her to shed abundance of salt tears." He surrounded her with a guard, so that none of her movements could be said to be voluntary ; and once, in a paroxysm of passion and despair, she threatened her own life. Those very lords who had signed the bond already mentioned in his favour now made this marriage a pretence for rebellion, but still with- out breathing a syllable that could cast an imputa- tion on Mary. A party, at the head of which was the Earl of Morton', with the ostensible purpose of delivering their " sovereign lady's most noble per son" from the power of Bothwell (for she was not at this time accused of having placed herself will J.— P 198 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. ingly in his hands), had assembled at Stirling. Both- well on his part called his followers together in the que«3n's name, and the two factions met at Carberry Hill. Here a negotiation was entered into, for both parties seemed averse to an immediate engagement, and Mary took a very unexpected and decisive step. She agreed at once to dismiss Bothwell, and place herself in the hands of the adverse party, if they would be answerable for her safety and return to their allegiance : this was agreed to ; she persuaded Bothwell to ride off the field, and he retired to Dun- bar. They never met again ; and thus, in less than a month, this disgraceful union was virtually ended : its fatal consequences terminated not so soon — they only ended with the life of Mary. The noblemen to whose loyalty Mary had trusted her safety and her person brought her to Edinburgh, where she was received with insults instead of honour. A ghastly banner was displayed before her, on which was depicted the body of the murdered Darnley, and the young prince kneeling by his side — with this legend, " Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord." Faint, weary, terrified, covered with dust and bathed in tears, she was thus led through the town to the provost's house. After being kept in constraint for a few days, the lords, who feared that the populace would rise in her favour, conveyed her forcibly to the castle of Lonhleven, where she was kept a close prisoner, without any of the attendance befitting her rank. This her first captivity took place in June, 1567. While Mary was shut up in the castle of Loch- leven, the rebel lords extorted from her a formal abdication of the crown in favour of her infant son. The unhappy queen signed this paper in a paroxysm of tears, exclaiming against the violence used towards her, and calling all present to witness that it was done in fear of her life, and therefore not vahd. It appears that at this time she did not be- MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 199 Mere her brother, Lord Murray, so deeply implicated in the plots against her as he really was ; for, with a fond confidence, which, if Murray had a heart, must have wrung it to its core, she flung her arms round him, pressed him to her bosom, and entreated him to take on himself the regency, " for the pro- tection of her son, until she should be liberated." This was the end and aim of all Murray's machina- tions : he left his sister, deceived for the present, was immediately proclaimed regent during the mi- nority of the young king, and Mary was declared to have forfeited all right and title to the throne. — Eleven months were passed by Mary in close con- finement, under the particular custody of Lady Mar- garet Douglas, styled in those times "the Lady of Lochleven ;" and her captivity was further imbittered by the stern and harsh temper of this woman, who had motives for private and personal irritation against her prisoner. But the second son of Lady Margaret, and a young boy of about fifteen, who was called little William Douglas, could not behold the misfortunes of Mary without pity and sympathy, and resolved to undertake her deliverance. The first attempt failed through tlie carelessness of the queen herself. She had succeeded in leaving the castle in the disguise of a laundress, with whom she had changed clothes, and when seated in the boat, which was pushing from the shore, she betrayed herself by lifting her hand to her head. The beauty and extreme whiteness of that hand discovered her at once, and she was carried back to her chamber, in tears and bitterness of heart. The next attempt '*^as more successful. At midnight, on the 3d of May, 1568, William Douglas contrived to possess himself of the keys of the portal ; a small skiff was in waiting under the walls of the castle : in this he placed the queen and her maid, Jane Kennedy, and rowed across the lake to the opposite shore, where George Douglas and a few faithful friends were *200 FE.TIALE SOVEREIGNS. waiting to receive them. The queen was then mounted on a swift horse and brought to Niddry, the house of Lord Seaton, where she took some re- pose, and Avas thence brought to Hamilton, her iriends and followers increasing every hour. The strongest enthusiasm was excited in her- favour Many nobles of the highest distinction for rank and character crowded to her standard, and in thre© days after her escape from the solitary towers of Lochleven she found herself at the head of six thousand men devoted to her cause. Hamilton not being fortified, her partisans resolved to convey her to the castle of Dumbarton, a place of strength, v/here she v/ould be in safety from he? enemies, and accordingly they commenced theii march northwards. In the mean time the regent Murray had assem- bled his troops at Glasgow, and hastened to oppose her ; and when we consider that Murray v/as the brother of Mary, that she had loaded him with benefits and honours, and twice pardoned him for treason against herself, and that on this occasion he was pursuing the destruction of the mother in the name and under the banners of her own son, it is scarcely possible to conceive any thing more frightful and unnatural than such a state of things. The two armies met at Langside, a little village to the south of Glasgov/. The queen wished to avoid an engagement, but the headlong impatience and enthusiasm of her adherents were not to be re- strained, and the mortal strife began. From a neigh- bouring eminence Mary viewed the vicissitudes of ? battle on which her fate depended. She beheld — with what anguish of heart we may imagine — the fortune of the day turn against her; she saw, through blinding tears, her faithful friends cut to pieces, taken prisoners, or flying before the victo- rious iMurray. When all Avas indeed lost, her general, Lord Herries, came up to her, seized her bridle, and MARV QUEEN OF SCOTS. 201 turned her horse's head from the dismal scene. They fled southwards, with a few adherents, nor staid nor reposed till they had reached Dundrennan, sixty miles from the field of battle. There Mary, trusting in Elizabeth's late profes- sions of attachment, took the fatal resolution of passing into England, to throw herself upon the compassion and protection of the Enghsh queen; and such protection she found indeed as the wolf affords the lamb which has strayed into his den ; such pity as the dove, escaped " with plumage all impaired" from the talons of the hawk, finds within the snares of the watchful fowler. It was on Sun- day the 13th of May, 1568, that the Queen of Scots quitted for the last time her own dominions, and landed at Workington, in Cumberland ; and though she was received with great show of respect, and treated with the honours due to her rank, by the gentlemen residing near the borders, yet from that moment may be xlated her long and sorrowful cap- tivity of nearly nineteen years. When Mary arrived in England her retinue con- sisted of about twenty persons, among whom were Lesley, Bishop of Ross, an excellent prelate and an accomplished man; the good Lord Herries, Lord Livingstone, and Lord Fleming; her deliverers George and WilUam Douglas, two secretaries, Se- bastian the Frenchman, and his v>4fe; Ladies Living- stone and Fleming; and Mary Seaton, the only one of the original Maries who survived to her. All these, with the exception of the two secretaries, remained true and attached to her till death. She was at this time in her twenty-sixth year, in the very prime of existence, in the full bloom of her beauty and hei health, when a dark pall was flung over her life. Thenceforward Mary's history presents one painful picture of monotonous suffering on the one hand, :f)f meanness, treachery, and cruelty on the other. Elizabeth, Avith relentless and perfidious policy, kept 202 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. her rival in perpetual bonds ; the only changes were from prison to prison, and from one harsh keeper to another, from tlie gleam of a delusive hope to the tenfold darkness of succeeding disappointment. Elizabeth arrogated to herself the right of deciding between Mary and her Scottish subjects. A confer- ence met at York, in which the Queen of Scotland and the Queen of England were represented by their respective commissioners, and the regent Murray appeared in person. In this conference Murray and his confederates accused Mary of participating m the murder of her husband, and of other monstrous crimes, which rendered her not only unfit to govern,^ but unfit to live ; and they produced as proofs of her guilt certain letters said to have passed between the queen and Bothwell. The commissioners of tlie Queen of Scots, acting from her written instructions, repelled these accusations, declared the letters to be forgeries, and formally accused Murray, Morton, and the rest of high-treason and scandal against their sovereign. This famous conference, by the artful management of Elizabeth,^ closed without coming to any decision; and as Lord Murray had been permit- ted to return to Scotland, Mary required that she also should be set at liberty, as there could be no longer the slightest pretence for keeping her under restraint. In answer, it was mtimated that if she would voluntarily confirm her forced abdication and renounce her throne and kingdom, she should be permitted to reside in quiet and privacy in England. " The eyes of all Europe," replied Mary, with her usual spirit, " are upon me at this moment ; and were I thus tamely to yield to my adversaries, 1 should be pronouncing my owii condemnation. A thousand times rather would I submit to death than inliict this stain upon my honour. The last words I speak shall be those of the Queen of Scotland." Thus refusing her libert}^ on these conditions, she remained a captive. In 1569 she was removed from MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 203 Bolton to the castle of Tutbury, in Staffordshire, and placed in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his wife, the famous " Bess of Ilardwicke," a woman ^penurious and rapacious character, and of a most violent and jealous temper. Both were hon- ourable, but most strict and watchful guardians, and great fears were obviously entertained of the power of Mary's charms over those who were suffered to approach her. " If I miglit give advice," writes one of the statesmen who saw her at this time, " there should be very few subjects of this land have access to a conference with this lady ; for besides that she is a goodly personage (and yet in truth not com- parable to our sovereign), she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scotch speech, and a searching wit, clouded with mildness. Fame might move some to relieve her; and glory, joined to gain, might stir others to adventure much for her sake." The advicb contained in this letter was too acceptable not to be followed, and every succeeding year found Mary re- duced in society, comforts, and health. Her principal occupation was needlework, and her amusements reading and composition; she retained her early love of literature, and it was now, next to her religious feelings and hopes, her best resource. The unva- rying mildness and saint-like patience with which Mary endured her long captivity is the more r(:!mark- able, if we remember that she was disinclined to sedentary amusements, and by nature and habit fond of walking, riding, gardening, hunting, and hawking, and all exercises in the open air. Her gentleness, therefore, under a restraint so painful and so heart- wearing, may be considered as a proof of singular sweetness of temper and strength of mind, if we must not admit it as a proof of a clear and tranquil conscience. One of Cecil's emissaries, who visited her at Tutbury, with Avondrous impudence and hy- pocrisy, recommended to her " to thank God, that after so many perils she had arrived in a realm 204 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. where, through the goodness of Queen Ehzabeth's majesty, she had rather cause to regard herself as receiving prince-Uke entertainment, than as suffering the shghtest restraint." To which M*y rephed, meekly, "that indeed she had great cause to be thankful to Heaven and to her good sister for such ease as she enjoyed ; and that though she would not pretend to ask of Gad contentment in a state of cap- tivity, she made it her daily petition that he would endue her with patience to endure it."* Ronsard, the French poet, who hai^l known, ad- mired, and celebrated her when she was young, ad- dressed a book of verses to her in her captivity. In many of these poems there is much beauty and deep feeling; and Mary, who received this tribute with gratitude and pleasure, at a time when she seemed to have fallen into total oblivion, and all the world appeared to have forsaken her but this generous poet, sent him from her prison 2000 crowns and a silver vase from her toilet, on which she had writien. "A Ronsard, TApollon de la source des Muses." There was also another who, from motives less generous and unselfish, was deeply interested in the fate of Mary. This was the unfortunate Duke of Norfolk, who, impelled by mingled motives — by per- sonal ambition, by his rehgious feelings or prejudices, by his admiration and pity for the imprisoned queen —engaged himself in various plots for her deliver- ance, which ended in his ov/n destruction. Norfolk, though generous and brave, appears to have been a weak man. He had not sufficient talent or strength of character to play the daring part assigned to him. He vacillated, — would have been great, " but was too full o' the milk of human kindness to catch the near- est way." He was betrayed by one of his own ser- vants, tried for high-treason, condemned, and exe- • Letter of Nicholas AVbyto MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 205 cuted. When the news of his firrai^-nment and condemnation was brought to Sheffield castle, where Mary then resided, she abandoned herself to grief, and wept most bitterly, exclaiming that " all who had ever loved her fared the worse for her sake." Lady Shrewsbury, by way of comfort, argued that the duke was justly condemned; on which Mary gave way to a fresh burst of sorrow ; but would talk no more on the subject, and refused to leave her chamber for a week.* Elizabeth, though anxious to implicate Mary in all the guilt of Norfolk, could not succeed in fixing any imputation on her beyond that of seizing with avidity any means which offered for her deliverance from a hateful captivity. This Mary freely acknow- ledged ; but as to being privy to any plot against the life or throne of Elizabeth, she constantly and stren- uously denied every intention of the kind. Apparently the health of Mary declined, from the want of exercise and the dampness of the prisons in which she was confined; she suffered, too, from con- stant pain in her side, and rheumatism and weakness in her limbs. f From Tutbury, where she spent, with few changes, nearly sixteen years, she was removed to Chartley, under the care of Sir Amias Paulet and Sir Drue Drury; and thence to Fotheringay, whither she was carried in 1586. But where, during this long period of suffering, was the only son of Mary, — he who in duty and affection should have stood forward to protect and defend her 1 To her other sorrows was added his coldness, his ingratitude, and his undutifulness ; and it was the most bitter of all. He had been brought up to contemn and detest his mother ; to regard hei * Vide Letter from Sir Ralph Sadler to Lord Burleigh, in Ellis's col- JlBction, vol. ii. p. 329. t " To this state of suffering and disease we must add, that the econo- iriy of Elizabeth did not permit to her who had once been a queen the accommodations which are furnished in modern hospitals to invalids of the meanest order "—Vide Sir Walter Scott's Hist, of Scotland, voL ii. 2(57. 206 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. with selfish fear, as one who might deprive hirn of his throne ; and v/heu Mary sent him a present of a vest_eml)roidered with her own hands, accompanied by a tender letter, and some jewels which remained in her .possession, all were returned to her with dis- dain, and the messenger refused even an audience, because his mother, never having relinquished her own rights, addressed him as the Prince, and not as the King of Scotland.* Her chief enemies all passed away from the earth during her long imprisonment ; and, if it had been in her nature, she might have rejoiced to see that each found a fitting doom. The crafty and relentless Murray was assassinated with vengeful and cunning ferocity by one who had received a private injury, not from Murray himself, but one of his followers. The fierce and cruel Morton perished on a scaffold ; the acute, subtle, and accomplished Maitland ended all his politic intrigues with self-murder, — he poi- soned himself; and Bothwell, that fiend in human shape, after being hunted as an outlaw from place to place, became a pirate on the North Seas, was taken prisoner, thrown into a dungeon in the castle of Mal- moe in Norway, where, after ten years' misery, he died in a state of mental derangement, forsaken, de tested, and even forgotten, by all. During sixteen years no plots had been formed against Elizabeth in which Maiy was not supposed to be implicated ; in fact, while she existed Eliza- beth was stretched upon the rack of fear and suspi- cion, and even went the length of tampering with some of her officers to induce them to assassinate Mary : this is unhappily proved beyond dispute. At last, an infamous law was made by the English par- * It is even said that when Courcelles, the French minister at the Scottish court, endeavoured to rouse James to some vir;orous measure for his mother's safety, he replied, with a coarseness and a calnmess equally characteristic, " that as she brewed, she must drink."- -Jiethune. (Set- Miss Benger's Life of Marv vol. ii. p. 450 ) MAUV QUEKN OF SCOTS. 207 He merit for tlie purpose of entrapping- her, and vvhicli declared, not only the conspirators themselves, but those persons (however innocent or ignorant of their purpose) in vviiose cause they conspired, as e(iually guilty of treason : a law of such barefaced injustice we can but wonder that an English parliament should be found to promulgate it. By this law was INIary tried, as consenting to Babington's plot, in 1586; and by this law w^as she condemned, by a bench of judges, consisting of twenty-eight English peers, and seven- teen other persons, illustrious either by birth or office, and "all honourable men." Notwithstanding her admirable defence, in which, though broken in health and spirits, she exhibited as much vigour and dignity of mind, and acuteness of intellect, as she had ever displayed when in possession of youth, health, and power, a sentence, universally acknowledged to be unjust and iniquitous, was pronounced against her, and but three months were suffered to elapse betw^een the verdict and the execution. Elizabeth was anxious to ascertain how far she might proceed with safety to herself; and finding that all those who were most bound to befriend, to protect, or to avenge Mary were too much engrossed by their own selfish inter- ests to stir in her behalf, she hesitated no longer. On Tuesday the 7th of February, 1587, the war- rant for the death of the Queen of Scots was brought down to Fotheringay by the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent, who were commissioned to see it put into execution. In the afternoon of that day it was inti- mated to her, for the first time, that she was to die the next morning; her attendants burst into lament- ations, and she appeared herself a little surprised at the suddenness of the news, and the short time al- lowed her for preparation. She, however, very calmly expressed her submission to the will of God, and her readiness to die, at the same time protesting most solemnly against the injustice of her sentence. The moment the two earls withdrew she fell on her 208 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. knees, and thanked God " that her suifermgs were now so near an end, and prayed that she might be enabled to endure what yet remained Vv-ith decency and with fortitude." She afterward spent great part of the night in arrang-ing her affairs, and making lier last will, which is still extant, and consists of four pages, closely written, in a neat and firm hand- Not one person was forgotten Avho had any claims on her gratitude or her remembrance ; — she also wrote several letters, but these, it is said, are blotted with her tears. She supped with cheerfulness, and drank to her attendants in a last cup of wine, who pledged her on their knees, and bathed in tears. She then went to bed, and either slept, or seemed to sleep, for a few hours. Next morning, at eight 'clock, all was ready, and Maiy, after spending 'me time in fervent devotion, descended to the hall M which the scaffold was prepared. She was in full dress, habited in a robe of black, silk, bordered with crimson velvet, and a long veil of white crape, edged with lace ; she wore a rich chain round her neck, and held in her hand a small ivory crucifix. She walked into the hall, leaning on the arm of herphy- '■cian Bourgoigne, and took her seat, while the Dean of Peterborough began a long exhortation, to which she paid little attention, praying aloud, and according to the forms of her own church. She requested that some of her female attendants might be allowed to perform the last offices about her per- son. This was at first refused ; but she represented so earnestly the indignity and indelicacy of suflfering her to die surrounded by men only, that at length they consented for very shame. Two of her maids unrobed her : — as she had answered for their self- possession, they restrained their cries and tears, but trembled so violently that they could scarcely stand. Mary remained perfectly calm ; her colour did not change, her voice did not falter ; there was no defiance Pr effort in her deportment, but the utmost njodesty MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 209 and meekness, united to the utmost firmness. When she had finislied her devotions, in which she prayed audibly for EUzabeth, she quietly prepared for death, Jane Kennedy (who was still with her) performed the last sad office of binding her eyes ; she then laid her head upon the block, saying, with a firm voice, " Lord, in thee have 1 hoped, and into thy hands I commit myself!" One of the executioners, a bar- barian well chosen for such a purpose, performed his office ; — the other lifted up the severed head by the hair, and cried out, " God save Elizabeth, Queen of England !" — the Earl of Kent and the Dean of Peter- borough responded, " Thus perish all her enemies V — the rest of the spectators, overcome with horror, pity, and admiration, remained silent, and drowned in tears. Mary Stuart perished at the age of forty-four j^ears and two months, and in the nineteenth year of her sad captivity. Her life had been most unfor- tunate ; her death, though tragical, can hardly be called tinforiunate, since it removed her from a state of suffering to a better world ; and since the piety, fortitude, and sublime resignation she displayed on this occasion have furnished her defenders with one strong presumptive proof of her general innocence. Her remains were taken from her weeping ser- vants, and a green cloth, ton in haste from an old billiard table, was flung over her once beautiful form : thus it remained, unwatched and unattended, except by a poor little lapdog, which could not be induced to quit the body of ifs mistress.* After the lapse of a few days, she was inteiTed, by Ehzabeth's order, in the cathedral of Peterborough ; and on the acces- sion of her son to the English crown, as James I., her remains were brought to Westminster Abbe^ where they repose among the sovereigns of her race * This faithful little animal was fmind dead two days afterward ; and the circumstance made such an impression even on the hard-hearted ministers of Elizabeth that it was mentioned in the ofRcial despatches 210 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. The striking similarity between the char;»ctsr and fate of Mary of Scotland and Joanna of Naples has freqnently been alluded to ; but the parallel has never, 1 believe, been closely and regularly drawn, and it presents a series of very curious coincidences. Both were from their birth destined to a throne ; — both were called to reign in early youth ; — both were highly and equally gifted b}?" nature, in mind and in person ; — both beautiful, and even resembling each other in the character of beauty attributed to each ; — both were remarkable for a love of pleasure, a taste for magnificence, and an early predilection for literature and learned men. If Mary was the most accomplished of the two, it was because she lived in more favourable times, and her education took place under more favourable auspices. She loved poetry, and patronised Ronsard, the best poet of his time. The court of Joanna was graced by Petrarch, one of the greatest poets of any age. Jo- anna left many monuments of her splendid taste ; for she had enjoyed, in the midst of tumults and re- verses, some intervals of tranquillity, and reigned thirty years. Mary's short and unquiet reign did not permit her to leave any lasting memorials of her splendour or her beneficence, and what she might or would have done must be left to conjecture. Mary and Joanna were both married in their in- fancy, and without their own choice, to men far in- ferior to themselves, both in mental powers and ac- complishments. Andreas of Hungary was brought to Naples to be educated with his future bride ; and Mary was sent fo Paris to be educated with her future husband. According to some historians, Andreas appears to have greatly resembled Francis in his dis- position : they describe him as timid, deficient iq intellect, but good-natured and affectionate : accord- ing to other writers, he united all the deficiencies of Francis to all the vices of Darnley. Both queens have been accused as accessary to a husband's nmr- der, under circumstances nearly similar, and on very MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 211 uncertain and contradictory evidence. The mar- riage of Joanna witli Louis of Taranto, who had been suspected of conspiracy against her former husband, had nearly proved as fatal in its conse- quences as Mary's union with Bothwell, and exposed her to the same dishonourable imputations. The marriage of Joanna with Louis caused a rebellion among her subjects, and her own banishment from her kingdom for several years : Mary's precipitate union with Bothwell likewise gave her subjects an excuse for rebellion, and banished her from her kingdom for ever. Louis of Hungary, with his open violence and secret treaclier)^ his ceaseless machinations and deadly irreconcilable hatred, played the same part in the history of Joanna that Elizabeth enacted in that of Mary. There is reason to imagine that the idea of the black banner, painted with the murder of Darnley, which Mary's rebel subjects paraded before her eyes at Carberry Hill, was suggested by the ter- rific banner of the King of Hungary, borne before him when he invaded Naples, and on which was represented the nuu'der of Andreas : the comcidence would otherwise be almost incredible. The state of Naples in the reign of Joanna, ilie power and ferocity of the feudal barons, the uncivil- ized condition and factious spirit of the populace, remind us strongly of the situation of Scotland when Mary succeeded to her hereditary crown ; and both Joanna and Mary, as women, nppear to have been strangely misplaced in the barbarous times in which they lived. Mary, a queen, in her own capital, saw David Rizzio stabbed almost before her eyes, power less to save him. Joanna, in her own palace, be- held her seneschal, her nurse Philippa, and her friend Sancha, dragged from her side to perish in tortures in both instances, it happened that these circum- stances of horror took place when Mary and Joanna were each on the point of becoming a mother; in both instances their condition, their entreaties, and 212 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. their tears failed to procure either forbearance or compassion from the savages who outraged them. But by far the most striking coincidence is the similarity in character, conduct, and fate between the Earl of Murray and Charles of Durazzo ; both were Yemarkable for talents and accomplishments, equally skilled in war, in policy, and intrigue ; both were valiant, crafty, ambitious. Murray was the brother of Queen Mary ; had been distinguished by her with boundless confidence and affection, and in the beginning of her reign had been loaded with benefits, and promoted to offices of the highest trust and power. Joanna had taken Charles of Durazzo under her protection when an orphan, had adopted and cherished him as a son, and married him to hei heiress. Murray plotted with Elizabeth to dethrone his sister and sovereign, and built his power on hei ruin ; — Durazzo, with treachery and ingratitude yet more flagitious and detestable, joined with Louis of Hungary, and first dethroned, then murdered his benefactress. Within a short time afterward, Du- razzo was himself murdered by a w^oman ; and Mur ray, within a few years after his accession to power, perished, if not by the hand or act of a woman, yet the wrongs of a woman inspired and armed his assassin. Both Mary and Joanna owed their chief troubles and final ruin to a religious schism ; the}'" both re- fused in their latter years to purchase freedom and life by relinquishing their regal dignity ; both died in prison, and by violence. The imprisonment of Mary was long and cruel, and a sore trial of her for- titude. On the other hand, the captivity of Joanna was short, but her death horrible to the imagina- tion, — mysterious, frightful, unseen, unpitied, and executed by vile hands. She perished as a victim ; Mary, like a martyr; by vile hands indeed, and viler practice ; but witli friendly hearts near her, and al) Europe looking on to admire, to applaud, and to be wail her. ( 213 " QUEEN ELIZABETH. Before we enter on the reign and character of Ehzabeth, it is proper to say a few words of her sister and predecessor Mary, who governed Eng- land as sovereign in her own right during five years, that is, from 1553 to 1558. Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VHI. and Catherine of Arragon, succeeded to the throne on the death of her amiable brother Edward VI. The innocent and accomplished Lady Jane Grey had borne the empty title of Queen of England for ten days only, and expiated that involuntary and short- lived exaltation by a violent death at the age of seventeen. Mary was in her 39th year when she ascended the throne. Her reign presents a dark and repulsive page in our history, a series of conspira- cies, factions, executions, domestic miseries, and na- tional disgraces. Her character was like her gov- ernment, gloomy, tyrannical, and sanguinary. We are told of the " sweet uses of adversity ;" but the effect of adversity on Mary's mind was to harden and imbitter a disposition naturally reserved and haughty. The persecutions and vexations she had endured in the reigns of her father and brother, on account of her adherence to the Romish faith, had taught her to vex and to persecute others. Her sour temper rendered her one of the most unhappy prin- cesses that ever lived, for she was unhappy within herself, as well as from external mortifications and reverses ; and her whole life seems to present the lingering torment of a sullen, jealous, irritable dis- position, for ever preying on itself. The picture of atrocious cruelty and siaffering exhibited by the mar- I.-Q 214 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. tyrdoms of her reign is unrelieved, except by & sense of painful interest, and admiration for the sufferers who died with such sublime fortitude ; but as they endured torments, so did Mary inflict them,— for conscience' sake. This wretched woman was rather the perverted instrument of evil than evil in herself; what she perpetrated was not in fear or re- venge, or from any personal motives ; but from blinded zeal, and the idea that she was acting for the glory of God and religion. She executed these bar- barities with such a frightful coolness and uncon- sciousness, that we regard her with the same kind of horror with which we look on some passive en- gine of torture, — some wooden rack or wheel stained with innocent blood. Mary, though a remorseless bigot, was not in her nature a wicked woman ; she had strong affections, she had uprightness of pur- pose, and a high sense of her own and the nation's honour. The principal events of her short reign were, the burning of the bishops Ridley, Latimer, Cranmer, and about two hundred others — scenes on which we will not dwell, for we may thank God that in these more enlightened times such agonizing details are no longer necessary either as example or warning ; the queen's marriage with Philip II. of Spain, whom she deeply loved, and who in return neglected and despised her ; and the loss of Calais. This town, the last of the English possessions in France, was taken from us in her reign by the famous Due de Guise, and Mary never recovered this stain on the national honour. She died broken-hearted, leaving a name linked with the most horrible associations, and doomed to bear through future ages the most frightful cognomen ever bestowed by vulgar hatred, or deserved by human guilt, — that of bloody Mary ! Far different were the destinies of her renowned sister; — she who was prosp<;rous in he*- life, and ELIZABETH. 215 since her death has been exalted by historical flat- tery, and consecrated to popular veneration as " good Queen Bess." Elizabeth Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII. and Ann Boleyn, was born at Greenwich in 1533. She ascended the throne of England in 1558, being then in her 25th year, and died in 1603, after a reign of forty-four years and 'some months ; comprising an era of unexampled interest, not only in the history of nations, but in the history of the human intellect. It was an age in some respects resembling our own ; a period not only fertile in great events, but in great men ; it was the age of heroism and genius, of won- derful mental activity, extraordinary changes and daring enterprises, of fierce struggles for religious or political freedom. It produced a Shakspeare, the first of poets; Bacon, the great philosopher; Hooker, the great divine ; Drake, the great seaman, and the first of our circumnavigators ; Gresham, the great merchant ; and Sydney, noblest 6f courtiers ; and Spenser, and Raleigh, and Essex, names renov/ned in history and song. In other countries we find Luther the Reformer, and Sully the statesman; Ariosto and Tasso ; Cervantes and Camoens ; Mi- chel Angelo, Titian, and Coneggio ; Palestrina, the father of Italian music ; all these, and many other famous men never since surpassed, were nearly conteraporaiy; it was an age of greatness, and our Elizabeth was great and illustrious in connexion with it. To separate the personal from the political history of Elizabeth would not be difficult ; but it would give a very unjust and imperfect idea of her charac- ter. The political events of her reign were of that magnitude and importance, that to give a distinct and intelligible account of them would require, not pages, but volumes ; while merely to mention them in the order in which they occurred would convey no nev information to the readers of this little book. 215 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. It is supposed that tb^y have already obtained from those histories of England which are generally read at an early age, a knowledge of the chief events of EUzabeth's life, and the striking points in her char- acter. Almost from our infancy, we have a genera) impression that her reign is distinguished as onf of the most memorable in history ; and at a latei period we hear of the " Elizabethan age," as equall} illustrious in the annals of our literature. Her wis dom, her courage, her prudence, and her patriotism, her unconquerable spirit, her excellent laws and vigi- lant government ; her successes at home and abroad, her wars and her alliances with the greatest and most powerful princes of her time ; the magnificent position which England maintained in her reign, as the stronghold of the reformed religion; her own grandeur as the guardian of the Protestants, and the arbitress of Europe; her magnanimous stand in de- fence of the national faith and independence, when the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588; the long list of great men, warriors, statesmen, and poets, ■who sustained her throne, who graced her court, obeyed her slightest word, lived in her smiles, and " worshipped as she passed ;" all these things are familiar to young people almost from the time they can remember, and they leave a strong and magnifi- cent impression on the fancy. As we grow older, and become acquainted with the particular details of history, we begin to perceive with surprise that this splendid array of great names and great achieve- ments has another and a far different aspect. On looking nearer, we behold on the throne o? Eng- land a woman whose avarice and jealousy, whose envious, relentless, and malignant spirit, whose coarse manners and violent temper, render her de- testable ; whose pedantry and meanness, whose childish vanity and intense selfishness, render her contemptible. We see England, the country of freedom, ruled 3'* absolutely as any Turkish prov ELIZABETH. 217 ince by this imperious sultana and her ^rand vizier Burleigh ; — we see human blood poured out like water on the scaffold; and persec ution, torture, and even death again inflicted for the sake of religion ; — we see great men, whose names are the glory of their country, pining in neglect; and a base, un- worthy favourite revelling in power. We read and learn these things with astonishment: we find it difficult to reconcile such apparent contradictions, and are at a loss to conceive whence they could have arisen, and how they could ever have existed. It will therefore be something new and amusing to endeavour to explain and account for them in a clear and comprehensive manner. Within the century inmiediately preceding the reign of Elizabeth occurred the three greatest events which, since the redemption of mankind, have taken place in this our world : the invention of printing, which took place about 1448 — the discovery of America in 1492 — and the reformation in 1517. The first, by rendering knowledge more accessible, pre- pared the way for the two last ; and Luther, when he plunged into a sea of difficulties and dangers to bring to light the errors of the church of Rome, was as bold a man as Columbus, when he launched on the wide Atlantic in search of unknown worlds. The reformation and the discovert' of America were destined to produce a w^onderful and beneficial effect on posterity ; yet the immediate result of both was similar and sad \ both began by causing much crime, and bloodshed, and strife between man and man, ai the same time that they roused and called into action energies hitherto unknown. The first wild, agi- tating ferment w as beginning to subside into a bold, settled activity ; and the light which had been strug- gling through clouds of violence and ignorance began to shine forth with a steady splendour when Eliza- beth, under happy and glorious auspices, ascended the throne ; and being thus, by position and accident, 218 FEMALE SOVEREIGNS. a conspicuous person in an illustrious age, vfhsA wonder is it that a part of its glory fell upon her, as the most promip-tnt objects catch and reflect most brightly the light around them ? Religion. — During the life of her sister Mary, Elizabeth was suspected of favouring the reformed doctrines; hut she outwardly conformed herself to all the ceremonies of the Romish church, and she afterward gave sufficient proof that in her secret soul she was no more of a real Protestant than he? father. When she first came to the throne, she had not, apparently, decided on the course she was to pursue in matters of religion. She sent the usual dutiful notification of her accession to the court of Rome ; and had the reigning pontiff returned a be- nignant answer, there is no knowing what might have been the consequences, at least for the time; but Paul IV. (Caraffa), an arrogant, fiery-spirited old man, assumed on this occasion a tone which he thought became the infallible representative of St. Peter. He thundered forth his displeasure at her presumption in daring to assume the crown of Eng- land without his permission, and commanded her to submit herself to the holy see, on pain of excon> munication. Elizabeth, never inclined to submit, was alarmed and disgusted. She immediately took the title of Head of the Church, to the great scandal of the Roman Oathohcs; aixl, it may be added, to the great scandal of all religion, considering her sex, her age, and the power she took upon herself at so critical a period. Thenceforward she was resolved to allow no foreign interference in religious affairs, and there she was right : but neither would she ad- mit of advice from the wise, aged, learned, and vir- tuous ecclesiastics of her own kingdom ; and liere she was wrong, unwise, and presumptuous. The dangers to which she was subjected from her de- fiance of the pope, and the resolute spirit with which she met and repelled theni^ were the foundation oi ELIZABETH. 219 her popularity ; so that she was regarded as the he- rome of the English church, and her accession was long celebrated by the people as " the birth-day of the gospei."* But assuredly no thought of the gos- pel, and its pure and humble principles of action, en- tered into Eliz? or TOL. 1. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ] 0023661020 „^j^Aj «^ afe^f: ,^' p ^^"'1