Class
Book
fopyri^lit N" IP") 6
COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS
/
A
GENEliAL HISTOMY OF THE WOULD
BY
VICTOR DURUY
FORMERLY MINISTER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND MEMBER
OF THE ACADEMY
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
THOROUGHLY REVISED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND A SUMMARY OF
CONTEMPORANEOUS HISTORY (1848-1808)
J5Y
EDWIN A. GIlOSVENOFv
PROFESSOR OF EUROPEAN HISTORY IN AMHERST COLLEGl
NEW YORK: 46 East 14th Street
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY
BOSTON: 100 Purchase Street
■' - f ■ !S> ^ n ;
'^>
18516
COPYRIQUT, 1898,
By THOMAS Y. CKOWELL & CO.
Gov):
NorfaJOoU 5P«33
J. S. Gushing & Co. Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mas8. U.S.A.
b'2>V^,% C^e5^Vb?\%
INTRODUCTION
y^«<<
To write a general history of the world is an appalling
undertaking. The fewer the pages allowed, the more in-
tricate that undertaking becomes. Out of the overwhelming
mass of past events, the writer must discern the all-impor-
tant and imperishable in the life of each people, and then
flash it upon the page in language concise as an epigram.
Comprehensive learning, keen discernment, philosophic
accuracy and stainless impartiality are absolute essentials.
Another requisite is that divine gift, the faculty of terse
and pleasing expression. Moreover, the writer must be a
man living among men. No recluse is competent to write
history in the highest and noblest sense. Events must be
marshalled like an army. It is not enough to line them up,
soulless and listless, as in the dull sequence of the encyclo-
paedia. The heart of the true historian must pulsate to the
heart-beats of mankind.
All these requirements M. Duruy possessed in preeminent
degree. Minister of Public Instruction (1863-1869), he
revolutionized historical education in France. Grand
Officer of the Legion of Honor (1867), Senator of the Em-
pire (1869), Member of the Academy (1884), he attained
the highest grades of civic and literary distinction. But as
a historian he won his permanent renown. A tireless stu-
dent and author, during his life of over eighty years he
knew no such thing as rest. The mere enumeration of his
works is bewildering. Among them are a sacred history,
based upon the Bible, a history of the Komans in seven
volumes, of the Greeks in three volumes, of France in two
volumes, of the Middle Ages and of modern times. Of
his publications more than two million copies have been
sold in France.
This general history, up to 1848, embodies the condensed
results of M. Duruy's researches and reflections. Never-
IV INTRODUCTION
tlieless, for two reasons thorough revision has been neces-
sary. At times M. Duruy dwells on events, connected with
France, at greater length than is desirable for us. Fur-
thermore, history, like science, is progressive and never
standing still. Not rarely does she change her verdicts in
consequence of later light. In her domain, however often
travelled over, discoveries are constant. Therefore I have
abridged, enlarged or modified as I deemed best. Some few
chapters I have entirely recast, among them that on ^'.The
Three Eastern Questions." But, except with a careful and
a reverent hand, I have touched no word which the great
master wrote.
The work of M. Duruy ends with the year 1848. The
last quarter of the book — that devoted to " Contemporary
History " and covering the last fifty years — is wholly my
own. To write the story of to-day has been difficult. It
has been none the less arduous because a delightful task.
For aid in its treatment I have been indebted to many
friends, and specially to Professor H. B. Adams, LL.D. of
Johns Hopkins University. I have sought to continue the
same system which, in the earlier portion of the volume,
the French author follows so successfully and well. I have
endeavored to avoid the mistakes consequent upon nearness,
wherein the recent is prone to fill the sky, and have striven
to observe just proportion between related facts. But the
eye of a hundred years hence will mark and gauge the
closing events of this century with clearer and wiser vision
than can we.
EDWIN A. GROSYENOR.
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
September 7, 1898.
CONTENTS
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
PAG E
I. The Beginning . 1
The Earth.
Man.
Race and Language.
The Black and Yellow Races.
The White Race. The Aryans and Semites.
Earliest Centres of Civilization.
Primitive Books.
II. China and the Mongols . . . . . . 8
Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization.
Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism.
The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Im-
mense Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of
our Era.
Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century.
First Europeans in China.
New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India.
China in Modern Times.
Confucius and Chinese Society.
III. India 16
Contrast between India and China.
Primitive Populations. The Aryans. The Vedas.
History of India.
The Castes. Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras.
Political Organization and Religion.
Buddhism.
IV. Egypt 24
First Inhabitants.
First Dynasties.
Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds.
Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians.
The Last Pharaohs.
Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Arabs.
Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art.
VI CONTENTS
V. The Assyrians ........ 32
The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh,
Second Assyrian Empire.
Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus.
Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria.
VI. The Phcenicians 36
Phoenician Cities betv^een Lebanon and the Sea.
Phoenician Commerce and Colonies.
Conquerors of Phoenicia.
Vn. The Hebrews . 38
Ancient Traditions.
Religious and Civil Legislation.
Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation.
Conquest of Palestine. The Judges. The Kings.
The Schism and the Captivity.
The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the
Romans.
VIII. The Medes and Persians ,45
Mazdeism.
The Medes.
The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia.
The Persians under Cambyses and Darius.
Government.
HISTORY OF THE GREEKS
I. Primitive Times ........ 51
Ancient Populations. Pelasgi and Hellenes.
Heroic Times. The Trojan War.
The Dorian Invasion. Greek Colonies and Institutions.
II. Customs and Religion of the Greeks ... 55
Spirit of Liberty in Customs and Institutions.
Religion.
III. Lycurgus and Solon 60
Sparta before Lycurgus.
Lycurgus. His Political Ideas.
Civil Laws.
The Messenian Wars.
Athens until the Time of Solon. The Archonship.
Solon.
The Pisistratidse. Clisthenes. Themistocles.
CONTENTS Vll
IV. The Persian Wars (492-449) 65
Revolt of the Asiatic Greeks from the rersians.
First Persian War. Marathon and Miltiades (490).
Second Persian War. Salamis.
Platsea.
Continuance of the War by Athens.
Last Victories of the Greeks.
V. The Age of Pericles 68
The Athenian People.
Pericles.
Great Intellects at Athens.
The Parthenon.
VI. Rivalry of Sparta, Athens, and Thebes (431-359) . 70
Irritation of the Allies against Athens.
The Peloponnesian AVar to the Peace of Nicias.
The Sicilian Expedition. Alcibiades.
The Battle of JKgos Potamos. Capture of Athens.
Power of Sparta. Expedition of the Ten Thousand.
Agesilaus.
Treaty of Antalcidas.
Struggle between Sparta and Thebes. Epaminondas.
VII. Philip of Macedon and Demosthenes (359-336) . 75
Philip.
Capture of Aniphipolis. Occupation of Thessaly.
Demosthenes.
Second Sacred War. Battle of Chseronea.
VIII. Alexander (336-323) 78
Submission of Greece to Alexander (336-334).
Expedition against Persia (334). Conquest of the
Asiatic Coast and of Egypt.
Conquest of Persia. Death of Darius. Murder of
Clitus (334-327).
Alexander beyond the Indus. His Return to Baby-
lon, and Death (337-323).
The Age of Alexander.
IX. Conversion of Greece and of the Greek Kingdoms
into Roman Provinces (323-146) ... 82
Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire.
Kingdoms of Syria (201-64) and of Egypt (301-30).
Kingdom of Macedon (301-146). Cynocephalse and
Pydnn.
Death of Demosthenes (322). The Achaean League
(251-146).
viii CONTENTS
PAGE
X. Summary of Greek History 86
Services rendered by the Greeks to General Civiliza-
tion.
Defects of the Political and Religious Spirit among
the Greeks.
HISTORY OF THE ROMANS
I. Rome. The Ancient Roman Constitution (753-366) . 30
The Royal Period (753-510).
The Republic. Consuls. Tribunes.
The Decemvirate and the Twelve Tables.
The Plebeians attain Admission to All Offices.
II. The Conquest of Italy (343-265) .... 94
Capture of Rome by the Gauls (390).
The Samnite Wars.
Pyrrhus.
The Gauls.
III. The Punic Wars (264-146) 98
First Punic War (264-241). Conquest of Sicily.
War of the Mercenaries against Carthage (241-238).
Second Punic War (218-201).
Third Punic War (149-146) . Destruction of Carthage.
IV. Foreign Conquests of Rome (229-129) . . .103
Partial Conquest of ?Hvricum (229) and of Istria
(217).
The Conquerors of Asia Minor, Macedon, and Greece.
Conquest of Spain (197-133). Viriathus. Numantia.
V. First Civil Wars. The Gracchi. Marius. Sulla
(133-79) 106
Results of Roman Conquests on Roman Manners and
Constitution.
The Gracchi (133-121).
Marius. Conquest of Numidia (118-104).
Invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones (113-102).
Renewal of Civil Troubles. Saturninus (106-98).
Sulla. The Italian Revolt (98-88).
Proscriptions in Rome. Sulpicius and Cinna (88-84).
Victory of Sulla. His Proscriptions and Dictatorship
-. (84-79).
The Popular Party ruined by the Defeat of Sertorius
(72).
CONTENTS
IX
VI. Fkom Sulla to C.^sar, Pompey, and Cicero (79-60) . 115
War against Mithridates under Sulla (90-84).
War against Mithridates under LucuUus and Pompev
(74-08).
Revival of the Popular Party at Pome. The Gladia-
tors (71).
Alliance of Pompey with the Popular Party. War
with the Pirates (07).
Cicero. Conspiracy of Catiline (03).
VII. Cesar (60-44) 121
Csesar, Leader of the Popular Party. His Consulship
(00).
The Gallic War. Victories over the Helvetii, Ario-
vistus, and the Belgse (58-57).
Submission of Armoricum and Aquitaine. Expedi-
tions to Britain and beyond the Rhine (50-53).
General Insurrection. Vercingetorix.
Defeat of Crassus by the Parthians (53).
Civil War between Caesar and Pompey (49-48).
War at Alexandria. Csesar Dictator (48-44).
VIII. The Second Triumvirate . . . . . . 127
Octavius.
Second Triumvirate. Proscription. Battle of Philippi
(42).
Antony in the East. The Persian War. Treaty of
Misenum (39).
Wise Administration of Octavius. Expedition of An-
tony against the Parthiaii^s.
Actium. Death of Antony and Reduction of Egypt
to a Province (30).
IX. Augustus and the Julian Emperors (31 n.c. to 08 a.d.) 134
Constitution of the Imperial Power (.30-12).
Administration of Augustus in the Provinces and at
Rome.
Foreign Policy. Defeat of Varus (9 a.d.).
Tiberius (14-37).
Caligula (37-41).
Claudius (41-54).
Nero (54-08).
X. The Flavians (09-96) 144
Galba, Otho, and Vitellius (68-69).
Vespasian (09-79).
Titus (79-81).
Domitian (81-96).
X CONTENTS
PAGE
XI. The Antonines (96-192) 147
Nerva (96-98).
Trajan (98-117).
Hadrian (117-138).
Antoninus (138-161).
Marcus Aurelius (161-180).
Commodus (180-192).
XII. Military Anarchy (192-285) 152
Pertinax and Didius Julianus (192-193).
Septimius Sever us (193-211).
Caracalla (211-217).
Macrinus (217).
Heliogabalus (218-222).
Alexander Severus (222-235).
Six Emperors in Nine Years (235-244).
Philip (244-249). Decius (249-251). The Thirty
Tyrants (251-268).
Claudius (268). Aurelian (270). Tacitus (275).
Probus (275). Carus (282).
XIII. Diocletian and Constantine (285-337). Christianity 159
Diocletian (285-305). The Tetrarchy.
New Emperors and Civil Wars (303-323).
Christianity.
Reoi-ganization of the Imperial Administration.
Last Years of Constantine.
XIV. CoNSTANTius (337). Julian. Theodosius . . . 170
Constantius (337). ,
Julian (361).
Jovian (363). Valentinian and Valens (364).
Theodosius (378).
End of the AVestern Empire (476).
Summary.
HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
I. The Barbarian World in the Fourth and Fifth
Centuries ........ 177
Definition of the Middle Ages.
The Northern Barbarians. Their Habits and Religion.
Arrival of the Huns in Europe.
Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Inva-
sion of 406,
Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the
Visigoths, Suevi, a;id V^andals.
Attila.
CONTENTS xi
PAGE
II. Principal Barbarian Kingdoms. The Eastern
Empire ......... 183
Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain, and Africa.
Saxon Kingdoms in England.
Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric
(489-526).
Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565).
III. Clovis and the Merovingians (481-752) . . . 187
The Franks.
Clovis.
The Sons of Clovis (511-561).
Fr(^d^gonde and Brunehaut.
Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628).
The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace
(638-687). -
IV. Mohammed and the Arab Invasion .... 193
Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran.
The Caliphate. The Sumiites and Shiites. Arab
Conquests (637-661).
The Ommiades.
Division of the Caliphate.
Arabic Civilization.
V. The Empire of the Franks. Efforts to Introduce
Unity in Church and State .... 200
Difference between the Arab and Germanic Invasions.
Ecclesiastical Society.
Charles Martel and Pepin the Short (715-768).
Charlemagne, King of the Lombards and Patrician
of Rome (774).
Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition.
Limits of the Empire.
Charlemagne Emperor (800).
Government.
VI. The Last Carlovingians and the Northmen . . 209
Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the
Debonair.
The Treaty of Verdun (843).
Charles the Bald (840-877).
Progress of Feudalism.
Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms.
Eudes and the Last Carlovingians (887-987).
VII. The Third Invasion 214
The New Invasion.
The Northmen in France.
xii CONTENTS
The Northmen Danes in England.
The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Russia.
The Saracens and the Hungarians.
VIII. Feudalism . \ 219
Feudalism or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs.
Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century.
IX. The German Empire. Struggle between the Papacy
AND the Empire 227
Germany from 887 to 1056.
The Monk Hildebrand.
Gregory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085).
Concordat of Worms (1122).
The Hohenstaufens.
X. Crusades in the East and in the West . . . 235
The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099).
Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189).
Fourth Crusade (1203). Latin Empire of Constan-
tinople.
Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis.
Results of the Crusades in the East.
Crusades of the West.
XI. Society in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 247
Progress of the Urban Population.
Intellectual Progress.
National Literatures.
XII. Formation of the Kingdom of France (987-1328) . 251
First Capetians (987-1108).
Louis the Fat (1108-1137).
Louis VII (1137-1180).
Philip Augustus (1180).
Louis VIII (1223) and Saint Louis (1226).
Victory of Taillebourg (1242). Moderation of Saint
Louis.
Philip III (1270) and Philip IV (1285).
Quarrel between the King and the Pope.
Condemnation of the Templars.
Last Direct Capetians. The SaHc Law (1314-1328).
XIII. Formation of the English Constitution . . . 258
Norman Invasion (1066).
Force of Norman Royalty in England.
William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135).
Henry II (1154).
CONTENTS Xlll
Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199).
Henry III (1210).
First English Parliament (1258).
Progressof English Institutions.
XIV. First Period of the Hundred Years' War (1328-
1380) 264
Causes of the Hundred Years' War.
Hostilities in Flanders and Britain (1337).
Battle of Crecy (1316).
John the Good. Battle of Poitiers (1356).
Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie.
Treaty of Br^tigny (1360).
Charles V and Duguesclin.
XV. Second Period of the Hundred Years' War (1380-
1453) 268
Charles VI.
The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. John the
Fearless.
Insurrection in England. Wickliffe.
Richard II (1380).
Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of
Troyes (1420).
Charles VII and Joan of Arc.
Reforms and Success of Charles VII.
X VI. Spain and Italy (1250-1453) 273
Domestic Troubles in Spain.
The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265).
Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines.
Return of the Papacy to Rome (1578). The Princi-
palities.
The Aragonese at Naples.
Brilliancy of Letters and Arts.
XV^IL Germany and the Scandinavian, Slavic, and Turk-
ish States (1250-1453) 280
The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg.
Switzerland. Battle of Morgarten (1315).
Powerlessness of the Emperors.
Union of Calmar (1397).
Strength of Poland.
The Mongols in Russia.
The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453).
XVIII. Summary op the Middle Ages 286
XIV CONTENTS
HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES
PAGE
I. Progress of Royalty in France .... 289
Principal Divisions of Modern History.
Louis XI (1461-1483). League of Public Welfare
(1465).
Interview of P^ronne (1468).
Death of the Duke of Guyenne (1472).
Mad Enterprises and Death of Charles the Bold
(1477).
Union of the Great Fiefs with the Crown.
Administration of Louis XI.
Charles VIII (1483).
II. Progress of Royalty in England. War op the
Roses 295
Henry VI. Richard of York, Protector (1454).
Edward IV (1460).
Richard III (1483).
Henry VII (1485).
III. Progress of Royalty in Spain 299
Abandonment of the Crusade against the Moors.
Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of
Castile (1469).
Conquest of Granada (1492).
The Inquisition. The Power of Royalty.
Progress of Royalty in Portugal.
IV. Germany and Italy from 1453 to 1494 . . . 303
Frederick III (1440) and Maximilian (1493).
Italy. Republics replaced by Principalities.
V. The Ottoman Turks (1453-1520) 307
Strong Military Organization of the Ottomans. Mo-
hammed II.
Bayezid II (1481). Selim the Ferocious (1512).
VI. Wars in Italy. Charles VIII and Louis XII . . 310
Consequences of the Political Revolution. The First
European Wars.
Expedition of Charles VIII into Italy (1494).
Louis XII (1498). Conquest of Milan and Naples.
League of Cambrai (1508). The Holy League (1511).
Invasion of France (1513). Treaties of Peace (1514).
CONTENTS XV
PAGE
VII. The Economical Revolution 314
Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1497).
Colonial Empire of the Portuguese.
Christopher Columbus. Colonial Empire of the Span-
iards. Kesults.
VIII. The Revolution in Arts and Letters, or the Renais-
sance . . . . . . . . . 318
Invention of Printing.
Renaissance of Letters.
Renaissance of Arts,
Renaissance in Science.
IX. The Revolution in Creeds, or the Reformation . 321
The Clergy in the Sixteenth Century.
Luther (1517).
The Lutheran Reformation in the Scandinavian States.
The Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingii (1517),
Calvin (153G).
The Reformation in the Netherlands, France, Scot-
land, and England.
Character of the Three Reformed Churches.
Consequences of the Reformation.
X, The Catholic Restoration 329
Reforms at the Pontifical Court and in the Church.
The Jesuits.
Council of Trent (1545-1563).
XL New Wars in Italy, Francis I, Charles V, and
Souleiman I 332
Francis I, Victory of Marignano (1515).
Power of Charles V,
Pavia (1525). Treaties of Madrid (1526) and Cam-
brai (1529).
Alliances of Francis I, Successes of Souleiman I,
New War between Charles V, and Francis I.
Abdication of Charles V (1556).
Continuation of the Struggle between the Houses
of France and Austria (1558-1559),
XIL The Religious Wars in Western Europe (1559-1598) 339
Philip 11.
Character of this Period.
France the Principal Battlefield of the Two Parties.
The First War (1562-1563).
Successes of Catholicism in the Netherlands and
France (1564-1568). The Blood Tribunal (1567).
xvi CONTENTS
Dispersion of the Forces of Spain. Victory of Le-
panto (1571).
Catholic Conspiracies in England and in France.
Progress of the Protestants (1573-1587).
Defeat of Spain and of Ultramontanism (1588-1598).
XIII. Results of the Religious Wars in Western Eu-
rope 349
Decline and Ruin of Spain.
Prosperity of England and Holland.
Reorganization of France by Henry IV (1598-1610).
XIV. The Religious Wars in Central Europe, or the
Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) . . . .353
Preliminaries of the Thirty Years' War (1555-1618).
Palatine Period (1618-1625).
Danish Period (1625-1629).
Swedish Period (1630-1635).
French Period (1635-1648).
XV. Results of the Religious Wars in Central
Europe 358
Peace of Westphalia (1648).
Advantages won by the Protestants. Religious Inde-
pendence of the German States.
Political Independence of the German States.
Acquisitions of Sweden and France.
XVI. Richelieu and Mazarin. Completion op Monarch-
ical France (1610-1661) 360
Minority of Louis XIII (1610-1617).
Richelieu humiliates the Protestants and the High
Nobility.
Mazarin and the Fronde.
Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659).
XVII. England from 1603 to 1674 365
Europe in 1661.
James I (1603-1625).
Charles I (1625-1649).
The Civil War (1642-1647).
Execution of Charles I.
The Commonwealth of England (1649-1660).
Charles II (1660-1685).
XVIII. Louis XIV from 1661 to 1685 372
Colbert.
Louvois.
CONTENTS
XVll
War with Flanders (1667).
War with Holland (1672).
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685).
XIX. The English Revolution (1688) ... . .377
Reawakening of Liberal Ideas in England (1673-1679).
Catholic and Absolutist Reaction. James II (1685).
Fall of James II (1688). Declaration of Rights.
William III (1689).
A New Political Right.
XX. Coalitions against France (1688-1714) . . .380
Formation of the League of Augsburg (1686).
War of the League of Augsburg (1689-1697).
War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).
Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt (1714).
Louis XIV the Personification of Monarchy by Divine
Right.
XXI. Art, Literature, and Science in the Seventeenth
Century 385
Letters and Arts in France.
Letters and Arts in Other Countries.
Science in the Seventeenth Century.
XXII. Creation of Russia. Downfall of Sweden . . 389
The Northern States at the Beginning of the Eigh-
teenth Century.
Peter the Great (1682).
XXIII. Creation of Prussia. Decline of France and Aus-
tria 393
Regency of the Duke of Orleans. Ministries of
Dubois, the Duke of Bourbon, and Fleury (1715-
1743).
Formation of Prussia.
Maria Theresa and Frederick II. The War of the
Austrian Succession (1741-1748).
The Seven Years' War (1756-1763).
XXIV. Maritime and Colonial Power of England
England from 1688 to 1763.
The English East India Company,
399
XXV. Foundation of the United States of America
Origin and Character of the English Colonies in
America.
The Revolutionary War (1775-1783).
Washington. The Part of France in the War.
402
CONTENTS
PAGB
XXVI. Destruction of Poland. Decline of the Otto-
mans. Greatness of Russia .... 405
Catherine II (1761) and Frederick II. First Parti-
tion of Poland (1773).
Treaties of Kainardji (1774) and Jassy (1792).
Second and Third Partitions of Poland (1793-1795).
Attempt at Dismembering Sweden.
XXVII. Preliminaries of the French Revolution .
Scientific and Geographical Discoveries.
Letters in the Eighteenth Century.
Disagreement between Ideas and Institutions.
Reforms effected by Governments.
Last Years of Louis XV (1763-1774).
Louis XVI.
408
XXVm. The Revolution (1789-1792) 413
Divine Right and National Sovereignty.
The Constituent Assembly until the Capture of the
Bastile.
The Days of October. The Emigrants. The Con-
stitution of 1791.
XXIX. Ineffectual Coalition of the Kings against the
Revolution (1792-1802) 420
The Legislative Assembly (1791-1 '92).
Effect outside of France produced by the Revolu-
tion. The First Coalition (1791).
The Commune of Paris. The Days of June 20 and
August 10, 1792. The Massacres of September.
Invasion of France. Defeat of the Prussians at
Valmy, September 20, 1792.
The Convention (1792-1795). Proclamation of the
French Republic (September 21, 1792). Death
of Louis XVI.
The Reign of Terror.
The Ninth of Thermidor, or July 27, 1794.
Glorious Campaigns of 1793-1795.
Campaigns of Bonaparte in Italy (1796-1797).
The Egyptian Expedition (1798-1799). Second
Coalition. Victory of Zurich.
Internal Anarchy. The Eighteenth of Brumaire,
or November 9, 1799.
Another Constitution, The Consulate.
Marengo. Peace of Lun^ville (1801) and of Amiens
(1802).
XXX. Greatness of France (1802-1811) . ., . . 437
The Consulate for Life,
Bonaparte Hereditary Emperor (May 18, 1804).
CONTENTS
XIX
Third Coalition. Austerlitz and the Treaty of
Presburg (1805).
The Confederation of the Rhine and the Vassal
States of the Empire.
Jena (1806) and Tilsit (1807).
The Continental Blockade.
Invasion of Spain (1807).
Wagram (1809).
XXXI. Victorious Coalition of Peoples and Kings
AGAINST Napoleon (1811-1815) . . . .446
Popular Reaction against the Spirit of Conquest
represented by Napoleon.
Preparations for Insurrection in Germany.
Progress of Liberal Ideas in Europe.
Formation or Awakening of the Nations.
Moscow (1812). Leipsic (1813). Campaign in
France (1814).
The First Restoration. The Hundred Days. Water-
loo (1814-1815).
XXXII. Reorganization op Europe at the Congress of
Vienna. The Holy Alliance .... 455
The Congress of Vienna.
The Holy Alliance (1815).
XXXIII. Secret Societies and Revolutions (1815-1824) . 461
Character of the Period between 1815 and 1830.
Efforts to preserve or Reestablish the Old Regime,
Peculiar Situation of France from 1815 to 1819.
Alliance of the Altar and the Throne. The Con-
gregation.
Liberalism in the Press, and Secret Societies.
Plots (1816-1822). Assassinations (1819-1820).
Revolutions (1820-1821).
The Holy Alliance acts as the Police of Europe.
Expedition of Italy (1821) and of Spain (1823).
Charles X (1824).
XXXIV. Progress of Liberal Ideas 480
The Romantic School. The Sciences.
Formation in France of a Legal Opposition.
Huskisson and Canning in England (1822). New
Foreign Policy. Principle of Non-intervention.
Independence of the Spanish Colonies (1824).
Constitutional Empire of Brazil (1822). Liberal
Revolution in Portugal (1826).
Liberation of Greece (1827).
Destruction of the Janissaries (1826). Success of
the Russians (1828-1829).
Summary. State of the World in 1828.
zx
CONTENTS
XXXV. New and Impotent Efforts of the Ancient
Regime against the Liberal Spirit .
Dom Miguel in Portugal (1828). Don Carlos in
Spain (1827).
The Wellington Ministry (1828). The Diet of
Frankfort.
The Tsar Nicholas.
The Polignac Ministry (1829). Capture of Al-
giers (1830).
The Revolution of 1830.
493
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
Consequences of the Revolution or July in
France. Struggle between the Liberal
Conservatives and the Republicans (1830-
1840) ........ 498
Character of the Period comprised between 1830
and 1840.
King Louis Philippe.
The Latitte Ministry (1830).
The Casimir-P^rier Ministry (1831).
Success Abroad.
Insurrections at Lyons and at Paris (1834).
Attempt of Fieschi (1835).
The Thiers Ministry (1836).
The Mol6 Ministry (1836-1837).
Ministry of Marshal Soult (1839).
Consequences in Europe of the Revolution of
July (1830-1840) 507
General State of Europe in 1830.
England. Whig Ministry (1830). The Reform
Bill (1831-1832).
Belgian Revolution (August and September,
1830).
Liberal Modifications in the Constitutions of
Switzerland (1831), Denmark (1831), and
Sweden.
Revolutions in Spain (1833) and Portugal (1834).
Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance (1834).
Impotent Efforts of the Liberals in Germany and
Italy (1831). Defeat of the Polish Insurrection
(1831).
The Three Eastern Questions (1832-1848)
Interests of the European Powers in Asia.
The First Eastern Question : Constantinople.
Decline of Turkey. Power and Ambition of the
Viceroy of Egypt.
Conquest of Syria by Ibrahim Pasha (1832).
Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelessi (1833).
518
CONTENTS XXI
PAOS
The Treaty of London (1840) and the Treaty of
the Straits (1841).
The Second Eastern Question : Central Asia.
Progress of the Russians in Asia.
Indirect Struggle between the English and the
Russians in Central Asia.
The Third Eastern Question : The Pacific Ocean.
Isolation of China and Japan.
Opium War (1840-1843).
Treaty of France with China (1844).
Russia and China.
Summary of the Three Eastern Questions in 1848.
XXXIX. Preliminaries of the Revolution of 1848 . . 532
Character of the Period comprised between 1840
and 1848. Progress of Socialistic Ideas.
France from 1840 to 1846.
England. Free Trade. The Income Tax and the
New Colonial System (1841-1849).
Establishment of the Constitutional System in
Prussia (1847). Liberal Agitations in Austria
and in Italy.
XL. America from 1815 to 1848 544
American Progress. The Monroe Doctrine. Ad-
vantage of Liberty .
XLL The Revolution of 1848 547
CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
I. The Revolution of 1848 in its Influence upon
Europe 551
Contemporary History.
Outbreak at Vienna and Fall of Metternich.
Troubles in Bohemia.
Revolt in Hungary.
Commotions in Italy.
Popular Demands in Prussia and in Other German
States.
The German National Assembly.
XL The Second French Republic (1848-1852) . . 557
The Provisional Government.
Barricades of June.
General Discontent.
Presidency of Louis Napoleon.
The Coup d'Etat.
xxii CONTENTS
PAGE
III. Triumph of Reaction in Europe (1848-1851) . . 561
Subjugation of Hungary.
Return to Absolutism in Austria.
Defeat and Abdication of Charles Albert.
Conservatism of Pius IX.
Dissolution of the General Assembly at Frankfort.
IV. The Second French Empire (1852-1870) . . .567
The Plebiscites of 1851 and 1852.
The Crimean War (1853-1856).
War with Austria (1859).
Material Progress (1852-1867).
The Universal Exposition of 1867.
Humiliations of the Empire.
The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).
Sedan.
Fall of the Empire (September 4, 1870).
Surrender of Metz (October 27, 1870).
Siege and Surrender of Paris (January 28, 1871).
Treaty of Frankfort.
V. Germany (1848-1871) . 580
Rivalry of Prussia and Austria.
Question of Schleswig-Holstein (1848-1855).
King William I and Otto von Bismarck.
Austro- Prussian Occupation of Schleswig-Holstein
(1863-1864).
Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria.
(1866).
Sadowa (July 3, 1860).
Hegemony of Prussia (1866-1871).
Unification of Germany (1871).
VI. The Third French Republic (1870-1898) . . .587
The Commune (March 18-May 28, 1871).
M. Thiers, President of the Republic (1871-1873).
Presidency of Marshal MacMahon (1873-1879).
Presidency of M. Gr^vy (1879-1887).
Presidency of M. Sadi Carnot (1887-1894).
Presidency of M. Casimir-P^rier (1894).
Presidency of M. Faure (1895- ).
France in 1898.
VII. The German Empire (1871-1898) . . . . .600
The Imperial Constitution.
The Alliance of the Three Emperors (1871-1876).
Organization of Alsace-Lorraine (1871).
The Culturkampf (1873-1887).
Economic Policy (1878-1890).
CONTENTS XXIII
The Triple Alliance (1879- ).
Death of Emperor William I (March 9, 1888).
Frederick I (1888).
Reign of William II (1888- ).
VIII. Italy 607
Condition of the Italian Peninsula in 1850.
Count Cavour.
Piedmont in the Crimean War (1855-1856).
The War of 1859.
Successful Revolutions. Victor Emmanuel and Gari-
baldi (1859-1805). Alliance with Prussia against
Austria (1866).
Rome the Capital of Italy (1870).
The Last Bays of Victor Emmanuel (1870-1878).
The Reign of King Humbert (1878- ).
Italia Irredenta.
IX. Austria-Hungary ........ 616
Accession of Francis Joseph (1848).
Austrian Absolutism (1850-1866).
The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Political Re-
forms (1866).
Acquisition of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878).
Austria-Hungary from 1878 to 1898.
Political Problems of To-day.
X. Russia .623
Nicholas I (1825-1855).
The Crimean War (1853-1856).
Alexander II (1855-1881).
Revision of the Treaty of Paris (1871).
The Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).
The Congress of Berlin (1878).
The Nihilists.
Reign of Alexander III (1881-1894).
Nicholas II (1894- ).
XL The Ottoman Empire 635
The Hatti Sherif of Ghul Khaneh (1839).
Massacres in the Lebanon (1845).
Question of the Holy Places. The Crimean War
(1853-1856).
The Hatti Humayoun (1856).
Massacres at Djeddah (1858) and in Syria (1860).
European Intervention.
Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (1861-1876).
XXIV CONTENTS
The Insurrection of Crete (1866-1868).
Opening of the Suez Canal (November 17, 1869).
Foreign Loans and Bankruptcy.
Death of Sultan Abd-ul Aziz (May 27, 1876).
The Reign of Sultan Abd-ul Hamed II (1876- ).
XII. The Balkan States 649
The Five States.
Roumania.
Montenegro.
Servia.
Bulgaria.
Greece.
XIII. The Smaller European States 662
Denmark.
Sweden and Norway.
Switzerland.
Belgium.
The Netherlands or Holland.
The Five Smaller European States and the Five
Balkan States.
XIV. Spain and Portugal 669
Reign of Isabella II (1833-1868).
Revolution (1868). Experiments at Government
(1868-1875).
Restoration of the Dynasty (1875). Reign of Al-
phonso XII (1875-1885).
Regency of Queen Maria Christina (1885- ).
Cuba. War with the United States (1898).
Portugal. Death of Dona Maria da Gloria (1853).
Peaceful Development of Portugal.
XV. Great Britain 678
The British Empire.
Great Britain in 1848.
Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1849).
. The Great Exhibition (1851).
The Part of Great Britain in the Crimean War (1853-
1856).
Wars with Persia (1857) and China (1857-1860).
The Indian Mutiny (1857-1858).
Lord Palmerston Prime Minister (1859-1865). Lord
Russell Prime Minister (October, 1865-July, 1866).
The American Civil War (1861-1865).
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli Prime Ministers (July,
1866-November, 1868).
CONTENTS XXV
Second Reform Bill (1867).
Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister (December, 1868-Feb-
ruary, 1874). The Irish Question. The Alabama
Claims.
Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Disraeli (February,
1874-April, 1880).
Second Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (April, 1880-
June, 1885).
Occupation of Egypt (1882). General Gordon.
Third Reform Bill (June, 1885).
First Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June, 1885-
February, 1886). Third Prime Ministry of Mr.
Gladstone (February, 1886-August, 1886). The
Irish Home Rule Bill.
Second Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (August,
1886-August, 1892).
Fourth Prime Ministry of Mr. Gladstone (August,
1892-March, 1894). Lord Rosebery Prime Minis-
ter (March, 1894- June, 1895).
Third Prime Ministry of Lord Salisbury (June,
1895- ).
Characteristics of the Reign of Queen Victoria.
Mr. Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) and Mr. Gladstone.
XVI. Partition op Africa, Asia, and Oceania . . . 691
Seizure of Unoccupied Territory.
Occupation of Africa.
The Boer Republics.
Occupation of Asia.
The Route to India.
Occupation of Oceania.
Results of Territorial Expansion.
XVII. The United States 700
American History.
Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo (1848). The Gadsden
Purchase (1853).
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (1850).
Complications with Austria (1849-1854).
The Ostend Manifesto (1854).
Expedition of Commodore Perry to Japan (1852-
1854).
The United States and China (1858- ).
The Civil War (1861-1865).
Question of the Northwestern Boundary (1872).
The Newfoundland Fisheries. The Halifax Award
(1877).
The Centennial Exhibition (1876).
The Presidential Election of 1876.
XXVI CONTENTS
Assassination of President Garfield (1881).
Civil Service Reform Bill (1883).
The Bering Sea Controversy over the Seal Fishery
(1886- ).
Trouble with Chili (1891-1892).
The Columbian Exhibition (1893).
The Venezuelan Message (December 17, 1895).
Annexation of Hawaii (1898).
The War with Spain (1898).
INDEX 711
LIST OF MAPS
The World as kxovvn to the Ancients
Egypt
Kingdom of David and Solomon
Ancient Greece
Athens .....
Empire of Alexander
Italy divided by Augustus into Eleven Regions
Ancient Rome
The Roman Ejipire under Augustus
The Countries where the Apostles preached
The Roman Empire and the Barbarian World
Europe at the Death of Justinian
The Arabian Empire about 750
Empire of Charlejiagne ....
Europe during the Crusades, 1095 to 1270
Italy in the Fifteenth Century .
France under Louis XI ....
Voyages and Discoveries
Europe at the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648
Central Europe, indicating Battlefields and
Places, from 1792 to 1813
Europe in 1812
Europe at the Congress of Vienna in 1815
Europe in 1898 .
Italy in 1859
The British Isles
Asia . ...
The United States
Historic
p „ ,...oo^w<j ^ ^7S>^ 0 9, ASIA oMJNOR^-Sa.nTS^ta <
Sa?a/ ^"^^^r-f '^ '' ' '^.-^^ /Minor V* >^*^° ^*^g^ CVPR>
°Paphos/<-,S Y R I A^^
Siiioo/*?^ Damascus
roRTUNATAE 1./ ( CydamuBo i- - ^' \ - ^ -« -""^ -
o
'<^cH Arab
r D T a no „ Ammonium Memphis^
B R T A OR O £ g ^ ^ Hermopolis
AFRICA
(AETHIOPES OF HANNO
MELANO GAETULI
_y PHAZANIA
GARAMANTES
oNigira Metropolis
J \ G R i\ T A
Garama ^ '^ T q '"ptoienmi3\_1;^^"^^;;""-^ ^Them,
L I B Y^A \.S.Maco
. . ^Bade
Tliabudis \ j- ^ i -- s
Primis ParvaWV* 'ptolemaiVr: ^'"'
0 R
i-^haPaUs
'Gira Metropolis,^; Si.bitu^^K^' >efe^
A E T H >, I O P ; I A (, I N T E R I O R J \ -O t-P'dires^
J L
Aetliti
Longitude 40 I
, byT. V. C.ow«ll\Cu
100 no 12U
THE WORLD
AS KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS
CP
-^W
^- I
"^
ssedoii Serica
A
A#-
V
Thagora/"^
\
-OSolanal O
i.yColiui., OUuuiii i Co., S V.
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
THE BEGINNING
The Earth. — Every primitive religion has sought to
explain God, the world, the creation of man, and the co-
existence on earth of good and evil. Therefore all ancient
peoples had or still preserve pious legends in harmony with
their country and climate, their customs and social state;
that is to say, with the conditions under which they lived,
felt, thought, and believed. Of these early narratives the
most simple and the grandest is Genesis, the sacred book
of the Jews and Christians.
Science, in its turn, seeks to fathom those mysteries,
although the origin of things must forever elude it. It
indeed renounces the task of solving questions which faith
alone must decide. Yet, by a magnificent effort of exam-
ination and comparison, it has succeeded in acquiring a mass
of truths, the discovery of which would prove the greatness
of man, were not his littleness demonstrated every moment
by the infinity of time and space into which his gaze and
thought plunge Avith an insatiable and too often powerless
curiosity.
Our solar system, with all the stars which compose it, is
only a speck in immensity. According to the hypothesis
of Laplace, which nothing so far has disproved, those stars
themselves originally formed but a single whole. It was
one of those prodigious nebulse, such as are still seen in the
vastitude of the heavens, and are probably so many suns in
process of formation. Our nebula became concentrated
into a focus of heat and light, but as it followed its path
through space, it now and again threw off masses of cosmic
matter which formed the planets. The latter, as if demon-
B 1
2 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
strating their origin, still revolve in the orbit of the sun
from which they emanated.
The globe which we inhabit is therefore a tiny fragment
of the sun, which extinguished as it cooled and enveloped
itself successively in a gaseous ocean, the atmosphere;
then in a liquid ocean, the sea; and finally in a solid crust,
the land, the highest points of which emerge above the
waves.
Animal life awoke first in the bosom of the waters, where
it was represented in most ancient times, thousands of cen-
turies ago, by species intermediate between the vegetable
and animal, and analogous to corals and sponges. Then
came molluscs, Crustacea, and the first fishes. At the same
time the seaweeds had their birth in shallow waters.
Meanwhile the air, saturated with carbonic acid and nitro-
gen, developed upon the half-submerged land a mighty
vegetation, wherein predominated those tree-ferns and
calamites whose remains we find in mines of anthracite and
bituminous coal.
Thus in the animal and vegetable kingdoms the simplest
organisms were produced. Time passed, many thousand
centuries elapsed, but the work of creation went on.
Ancient forms were changed or new forms were created.
The organism became complicated; functions were multi-
plied; life took possession of the earth, the sea, and the
air, blossoming in greater variety of forms, and richer and
more powerful in its means of action. At last man appeared, '
Thus, continual ascent toward a more perfect life seems
to have been the law of the physical as it was, later on, of
the intellectual world. During the geological period nature
was modifying the organism, and hence the functions, and
was developing instinct, that first gleam of intelligence.
In the historical period, civilization modifies social order
and develops human faculties. In the first case, progress
is marked by change of form ; in the second, by change of
ideas.
Man. — At what epoch did man make his appearance upon
the earth? Hardly more than half a century ago unlooked-
for discoveries shattered all the old systems of chronology,
and proved that man himself had part in the geological
evolutions of our globe. Flints and bones shaped into axes,
knives, needles, arrow heads, and spear heads; bones of
huge animals cleft lengthwise, so that the marrow might
THE BEGINNING 3
be extracted for nourishment; heaps of shells and debris
of repasts; ashes, the evident remains of antediluvian
hearths ; even pictures traced on shoulder bones and slate
rocks, representing animals now extinct or seen only in
places very distant from those they then inhabited; finally,
human remains found unquestionably in the deposits of the
quaternary epoch, and traces of human industry, which
seem to be detected even in the tertiary strata, — prove that
man lived at a time when our continents had neither the
fauna, the flora, the climate, nor the shape which they have
to-day. • .
The most numerous discoveries have been made in
France. But, on the slopes of Lebanon as in the caves of
Perigord, in the valleys of the Himalayas as in those of
the Pyrenees, on the banks of the Missouri as on those
of the Somme, primitive man appears with the same arms,
the same customs, the same savage and precarious life,
which certain tribes of Africa, Australia, and the New
World still preserve under our ver}^ eyes. The future king
of creation was as yet only its most miserable product.
Thus, science has moved back the birth of mankind toward
an epoch when the measure of time is no longer furnished,
as in our day, by a few generations of men, but where we
must reckon by hundreds of centuries. This is the Stone
Age. It is already possible for us to divide it into many
periods, each showing progress over the one preceding.
We begin with stones roughly fashioned into implements
and weapons, and with caverns which serve for refuge ; we
reach stones artistically worked and polished, pottery
shaped by hand and even ornamented, and lake cities or
habitations raised on piles ; at last we arrive at dolmens
and menhirs, those so-called druidic monuments which were
formerly recognized only in France and England, but which
now are found almost everywhere. Thus the first man
recedes and becomes lost in a vague and appalling antiquity.
Do all men descend from a single pair? Yes, if we de-
termine the unity of the species from the sole consideration
that intermarriage of any two varieties of the human race
may result in offspring. Nevertheless, physiology and
linguistic science set forth very wide differences between
the various branches of the human family.
Bace and Language. — Intermarriage and the influence of
habitation, that is, of soil and climate, have produced many
4 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
• varieties of race. These are generally grouped in three
principal classes, the White, the Yellow, and the Black.
To them may be added a number of intermediate shades
arising from amalgamations that have taken place on the
borders of the three dominant classes. If all spring from
a common origin, they have none the less developed in dis-
tinct regions: the White, or Caucasian, on the table-land
of Iran, whence it reached India, Western Asia, and all
Europe; the YelT jw, or Mongolian, in China, in Northern
Asia, and thv, ^.tialay peninsula; the Black in Africa and
Austrpjia,. This race is regarded by certain authors as
descending from an earlier creation of mankind. The
aborigines of America appear to have Mongolian blood.
Languages are also classed in three great groups, the
monosyllabic, the agglutinative, and the inflected. The
first class possesses only roots, which are at once both nouns
and verbs, and which the voice expresses by a single sound,
but the meaning of which varies according to position in
the sentence and the relation they sustain to other words.
In the second class the root does not change, but is built
upon by the juxtaposition of particles that are easily rec-
ognized and answer all grammatical demands. In the third
class the root undergoes modifications of form, sound,
accent, and meaning. In this way the noun is made to
express gender, number, and relation ; and the verb, tense,
and mode. Hence the inflected languages are the most
perfect medium for the expression and development of
ideas.
All the languages spoken on the globe, whether in former
times or to-day, represent one of these j)hases. The white
race, being the most developed, employs the third. The
Turanian idioms (Tartar, Turkish, Finnish), those of the
African tribes, and of the American Indians, belong to
the second. The ancient Chinese stopped at the first phase.
Their descendants advance slowly toward the second, retain-
ing for their written language some fifty thousand ideo-
graphic characters, each of which was, like the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, originally the image of an object or the con-
ventional representation of an idea.
The Black and Yellow Races. — History preserves no
narrative of the Black Race, whose existence, passed in the
depths of Africa, has resembled rivers, the sources of
which are unknown and the waters of which are lost in the
THE BEGINNING 6
desert. We know little more about the American Indians
or the islanders of Oceanica. Our science is small as yet,
for it is young. In our own time it has created paleon-
tology or the history of the earth, and comparative philology
or the history of languages, races, and primitive ideas.
Thus it has lifted one corner of the veil that conceals the
creation of nature and the beginning of civilization. Hence,
of the black and red races, the ancient masters of Africa,
Oceanica, and the New World, there is nothing to inscribe
in the book of history save their names.
The Yellow Race, on the contrary, boasts the most ancient
annals of the world, an original civilization, and empires
which still exist. The Chinese and the Mongols are its
best-known representatives. Attached to it are all the
peoples of Indo-China and several among the most primitive
populations of Hindustan. So, too, are the Thibetan,
Turkish, and Tartar tribes, whose fixed or nomadic habita-
tions extend from the west of China as far as the Caspian
Sea; also the Huns, so terrible to Europe in the fifth cen-
tury of our era, and probably the Hungarians or Magyars.
The White Race : The Aryans and Semites. — The White
Race, which has accomplished almost alone the work of civi-
lization, is divided into two principal families : the Semites,
in the southwest of Asia and Northern Africa; the Aryans
or Indo-Europeans, in the rest of Western Asia and Europe.
They appear to have had their cradle in the lands north-
west of the Indus toward ancient Bactria, now the khanate
of Balkh, in Turkestan. Thence powerful colonies set out
which planted themselves at intervals from the banks of the
Ganges to the uttermost parts of the West. The kinship
of the Hindus, Medes, and Persians in the East; of the
Pelasgi and Hellenes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy ; of
the Celts, Germans, and Slavs north of the Black Sea, the
Balkans, and the Alps, has been proved by their idioms, by
grammatical analogies, and by word-roots. Thus Greek
and Latin are sister tongues, closely allied to Sanskrit,
the sacred language of the Indian Brahmans. Celtic, Ger-
manic, and Slavic languages or dialects show likewise that
they are vigorous offshoots of this great stock.
Before their separation these tribes had already domesti-
cated the sheep, goat, pig, and goose, and had subdued the
ox and horse to the yoke. They had begun to till the earth,
to work certain metals, and to construct fixed dwellings.
6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
Marriage among them was a religious act. The family was
the foundation of all public order. Associated families
formed the tribe ; many tribes constituted the people, whose
chief was the supreme judge during peace, and led the war-
riors in battle. They had the vague consciousness of a First
Cause, "of a God raised above other gods." But this doc-
trine, too exalted for people in their infancy, was obscured
and concealed by the deification of natural forces.
As for the Semites, established between the Tigris, the
Mediterranean, and the Eed Sea, they had, as far back as
we can penetrate, one single system of languages, which
leads us to attribute to them a single origin. Moreover,
the Bible makes the Arabs, as well as the Jews, descend
from Abraham. The Syrians and Phoenicians were of the
same blood. Semitic colonies peopled Northern Africa
as far as the Straits of Gibraltar. It was in the midst of
this race, born in the desert where nature is simple and
changeless, that in all its purity and splendor the dogma of
one only God was to be preserved.
Thus two great currents of white populations were
formed, which, starting from the centre of Asia, flowed
from east to west, over the western region of that conti-
nent, the north of Africa, and the whole of Europe.
Earliest Centres of Civilization. — These men of the ancient
ages, the first-born of the world, continued for a long time
savage and miserable before they constituted regular socie-
ties. When, at last, they had found localities endowed
with natural fertility, where the search for means of exist-
ence did not absorb all the forces of the body and mind,
association assumed regular forms. The elementary arts
were invented, the first compacts made, and the great work
of civilization was begun, which man will never complete,
but which he will always carry farther.
If we study the physical configuration of Asia, we shall
readily understand why in that continent there were three
centres of primitive civilization : China, India, and Assyria.
Like waters which, held back for a time in elevated regions,
flow toward lower levels and there form great streams, so
men descend into the plain sheltered by mountains and ren-
dered fertile by rivers. Such great natural basins, cradles,
as it were, of flowers and fraits, prepared by the hand of
God for infant races, were the valley of the Ganges, which
the Himalayas surround with an impassable rampart, the
THE BEGINNING 7
plain of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which the mountains
of Medig,, Ararat, Taurus, and Lebanon encompass, and the
fertile regions of the Kiang or Blue Kiver and of the
Hoang-Ho or Yellow Eiver, bounded on the west by
the Yung-Ling and In-Chan mountains. Egypt offers
another example of such civilization blossoming out upon
the banks of a great stream in a fertile land.
Primitive Books. — If from these general facts which his-
tory has recovered we wish to ]3ass to more precise details,
we must scrutinize the books which go far back in the series
of the centuries, and which narrate, without hesitation, the
creation of heaven and earth, and of man and animals, the
formation of the oldest societies, and the invention of
the first arts. But the examination and comparison of cos-
mogonies, of religions, and primitive legends, make us
recognize everywhere the creative power of popular imagina-
tion in the youth of the world. We see man in the state
of childhood, with the rashness of ignorance, applying his
curiosity to nature in its entirety. As the laws of the phys-
ical world were then hidden from him, we see him trying
to understand everything by conjecture. We see him, still
like the child in his effort to explain all, transforming into
living persons the effects derived from the First Cause,
while the Supreme Legislator remains hidden behind the
multiplicity of phenomena resulting from his laws. Even
in these venerable books, the exhaustive study of lan-
guages, following the order of their historical develop-
ment, has enabled us to discern the interpolations of
various later epochs. Therefore it has been necessary,
sometimes, to separate what has been brought together, to
bring together what has been separated, and to give a new
meaning to expressions, images, and ideas that had been
wrongly understood. All the sacred books of ancient
peoples have been subjected to these sure processes of
modern science. This mighty work of philological re-
search, dating almost from our own day, has already shed
upon the relation of peoples and the formation of their
beliefs a light which, though vacillating on many points,
tlie preceding centuries could not even suspect.
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 2200-247.
J
II
CHINA AND THE MONGOLS
Great Antiquity of Chinese Civilization. — To all ancient
peoples their antiquity is a title of honor. Thus the Chinese
inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, or, as they still call it,
the Middle Kingdom, claim for themselves eighty or a hun-
dred thousand years of existence prior to their half -authentic
history. Even that goes back to the thirty-fifth century be-
fore Christ, and about ten centuries later becomes sufficiently
positive to present connected annals.
We know not when or how that strange society was formed,
which for at least four thousand years has retained the same
character. Its practical mind was wholly occupied with the
earth, which it conquered by agriculture and by industry,
and but little concerned with heaven, which it left empty
and deserted. On one side of the Himalayas, man, cradled
with half -closed eyes on the bosom of an over-fertile nature,
was intoxicated by the enervating breath of the mighty
magician, and dreamed of countless benevolent or terrible
divinities, who enjoined upon him contempt for life, and
annihilation in Brahma. But on the other side of the moun-
tains, a laborious, patient, active race drew from life all
that it could give, and replaced the formidable systems of
the Hindu gods by a merely human. system of morality.
The Emperor Chun, who reigned in the twenty-third cen-
tury before our era, had already established for his people
the five immutable rules, or the five duties of a father and
his children, of a king and his subjects, of the aged and the
young, of married persons, and of friends. At that time the
empire was divided into provinces, departments, districts,
and cities, with a great number of tributary peoples and
vassal princes, who often revolted.
Imperial Dynasties and Chinese Feudalism. — Until about
the year 2200, the emperors were elected. Beginning with
that period heredity was established, but with the corrective
that the grandees could still select the most capable from
B.C. 2200-247.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 9
among the sons of the dead sovereign as his successor. The
Emperor Yii began the Hia dynasty, which lasted four cen-
turies, and ended as an abominable tyranny with frightful
disorders. The founder of the second or Chang dynasty was
a superior man, whose virtues were celebrated by Confucius.
To appease the wrath of heaven during a famine, he made
a public confession of his faults ; and afterwards, whenever
a great calamity occurred, his successors followed his exam-
ple. They and their people believed that heaven would
certainly be moved by this voluntary expiation, and there
was both grandeur and lofty morality in this belief.
The last of the Chang resembled the last of the Hia.
When one of his ministers remonstrated with him, he re-
plied: "Thy discourse is that of a wise man. But it is
said that the heart of a wise man is pierced with seven
holes. I wish to make sure of it," and he ordered him to
be disembowelled. Wou Wang, prince of Tchu, revolted
against the tyrant, who was vanquished, and died like Sar-
danapalus. He heaped together all his wealth in a palace,
set fire, and flung himself into the flames (1122). Wou
Wang reorganized the ancient Tribunal of History, whose
members held oflice for life that they might be independent.
The political wisdom of the Chinese was chiefly founded on
respect for their ancestors and for the examples which these
had left. Under this dynasty the feudal kingdoms in-
creased to the number of one hundred and twenty -five, and
China had a real feudal system, which favored its civiliza-
tion. To this epoch must be referred the construction of
an observatory, which still exists, as well as the sun-dial
set up by the successor of Wou Wang. The Chinese were
already acquainted with the compass and with the proj)er-
ties of a right-angled triangle.
The Great Wall and the Burning of the Books. Immense
Extent of the Empire at the Beginning of our Era. — Never-
theless, Chinese feudalism ended, like our own, by produ-
cing a vast anarchy. The emperor was without power.
One of his tributaries asserted his prerogative of offering
the sacrifice to Heaven, and confined the last Tchu in a
palace. A new dynasty, that of the Tsin, overthrew all
the feudal lords, and restored the great empire, which took
its name. Its most illustrious chief, Tsin-Chi-Hoang-Ti,
accomplished this revolution (247 b.c). He opened roads,
tunnelled mountains, and, in order to stop the incursions of
10 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 247-a.d. 1203.
the nomad Tartars, constructed the Great Wall, twenty-five
kilometres long; but he has a deplorable celebrity for hav-
ing burned books and persecuted men of letters. That
everything might date from his reign, he wished to efface
the past. Fortunately he could not destroy all the books
or kill all the learned men. Chinese society was disturbed
for the moment by this violent reformer, but soon returned
to its traditional life. The Tsin dynasty did not last long.
It was replaced by that of the Han, who ruled from 202 b.c.
to 226 A.D. Under them the literati regained their influ-
ence, and China attained the apogee of her power. Her
armies penetrated even to the Caspian Sea, almost within
sight of the frontier of the Eoman Empire; and on the
shores of the Eastern Sea kings and peoples obeyed her.
Invasion of the Mongols in the Thirteenth Century. — But
the two empires which shared between them the greater
part of the then known world, secretly undermined by the
vices fostered by too great success, tottered and fell under
the repeated shocks of invasion. From the steppes, extend-
ing from the Great Wall to the Caspian Sea, hordes set out
at different periods and hurled themselves, right and left,
upon the two societies where civilization had accumulated
the wealth which these barbarians coveted. The result, for
China, was its first dismemberment in two kingdoms, sepa-
rated by the Blue River ; and in both many obscure dynasties
followed one another. The two were reunited in 618, but
the new empire did not possess sufficient strength to resist
the continual incursions of the Mongols.
These nomads inhabited the same places whence, in the
fourth century, had begun the invasion of the Huns which
resulted in hurling barbarian Europe upon Roman Europe.
They were always easily set in motion. Horses, herds,
houses, all moved, or were readily carried, for the houses
were only chariots or cabins placed on wheels and drawn
by oxen. Such was the itinerant dwelling of the Tartar.
He himself lived on horseback, remaining there, in case of
need, day and night, awake or asleep. Meat packed between
his saddle and the back of his horse, and milk curdled and
dried, furnished his food. He feared neither fatigue nor
privations, yielded to his chief a passive obedience, but was
proud of his race and ambitious for his horde.
Temudjin, the chieftain of one of these Mongolian hordes,
united them all under his authority, in 1203. He took the
A.D. 1203-1644.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 11
name of Genghis Khan, or chief of chiefs, and promised
this irresistible cavalry, ferocious and cunning as few people
ever were, to lead them to the conquest of the world. He
began by overwhelming the Tartars, his former masters,
wrested from them northern China, which they had con-
quered, and, leaving to his successors the task of subjugat-
ing the provinces to the south of the Blue River and Corea,
threw his armies upon Western Asia and Europe, where they
marked their road across Persia, Russia, and Poland by
bloody ruins. The hardy horsemen who had bathed their
horses in the Eastern Ocean made them drink the waters
of the Oder and the Morava at the foot of the Bohemian
Mountains. Never had the sun shone upon such a wide
dominion. It was necessarily brittle, yet the Russians were
forced to endure it for two centuries, and were released from
the Mongol yoke only by Ivan III., at the beginning of
modern times.
At the death of Genghis Khan (1227) his empire was
divided into four states, — China, Turkestan, Persia, and
Kaptchak, or southern Russia. His grandson, Kublai, who
reigned over all China, Thibet, Pegu, and Cochin China,
bore the title of grand khan, to which was attached an idea
of superiority, so that, from Pekin to the banks of the
Dnieper, everything seemed to obey him. But this suzer-
ainty was not exercised long. Before the end of the* thir-
teenth century, the separation between the four kingdoms
was complete.
First Europeans in China. — Kublai Khan, founder of the
Yen dynasty (1279), adopted the customs of his new sub-
jects, respected their traditions, encouraged letters and
agriculture, but embraced Buddhism, a religion originating
in India, and now claiming in China two hundred million
adherents, or half the population. A Venetian, Marco Polo,
lived seventeen years at his court, and we still possess the
interesting account of his travels. A national revolution
in 1368 expelled the foreigners, when the Chinese Ming
dynasty replaced that of the Mongols. This family occu-
pied the throne until 1644, or till long after the arrival of
the first European colonists in China, since the Portuguese
establishment at Macao dates from the year 1514.
New Mongol Empire in Central Asia and India. — During
this period are determined the destiny of the Ottoman
Turks, a people originally from Turkestan, and hence re-
12 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 1453-18C0
lated to the Mongols, and the career of Timur, surnamed
Lenk, or the Lame, a descendant of Genghis Khan. The
Turks took Constantinople in 1453. Timur, best known as
Tamerlane, for the second time united the nomad Mongol-
hordes. Between 1370 and 1405 this terrible rival of Attila
conquered Turkestan, Persia, India, and Asia Minor, de-
feated in the Kaptchak the Mongols of the Golden horde,
though he did not destroy their kingdom, and at the famous
battle of Angora vanquished the Turks, whose sultan he
took prisoner. Gazing from one end of Asia to the other,
Tamerlane saw no empire still standing except that of China.
He was marching his innumerable hordes against it, when
death at last arrested the tireless old man who lives in his-
tory as the most terrible incarnation of the malignant spirit
of conquest. His empire was divided, and disappeared with
the exception of a magnificent fragment, the Empire of the
Great Mogul, which arose in the peninsula of the Ganges,
and which fell only at the close of the last century under
the blows of the English.
China in Modern Times. — In China the indigenous Ming
dynasty reigned with honor, but, content with prosperity
and peace, neglected the customs and institutions of war.
Thus the Celestial Empire was once more invaded in 1644
by western nomads, the Mantchu Tartars. The Tsin dy-
nasty, which they founded, still reigns at P'ekin. Yet such
was the resistant and absorbent force of this great Chinese
society that, far from yielding to foreign influences, it has
always conquered its conquerors. The Mantchu emperors
made no change in its customs, and restored its fortune by
giving it the boundaries which it possesses to-day. It was
these princes who in 1840 waged with the English the opium
war, which ended by the opening of five ports to foreign
commerce, and who carried on with the English and French
the war of 1860, which resulted in the victory of Palikao
and the capture of Pekin.
So the yellow race has made a great noise in the world.
Through the Huns, it brought about the fall of the Roman
Empire; through the Mongols of Genghis Khan, it raised,
in the thirteenth century, the vastest dominion of the uni-
verse ; through those of Tamerlane, it overthrew and crushed
the population of twenty kingdoms ; through the Turks, it
held Christianity in check for centuries ; through the Chi-
nese, it has constituted a great society which, for fifty cen-
B.C. 550-470.] CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 13
turies and with imbroken continuity, has caused a large
portion of the human race to enjoy the benefits of civilized
life.
Confucius and Chinese Society. — One man contributed, if
not to establish, at least to maintain, the character which
the Chinese constitution still preserves. This was Kung-
fu-tsze, or Confucius. His books, serving as a gospel in
the Middle Kingdom, must be learned by those who undergo
the examinations required for obtaining literary rank and
for admission to public functions. Confucius was not a
legislator; he never had authority to publish laws, but he
taught wisdom. "There is nothing so simple," he says,
" as the moral code practised by our wise men of old ; it is
summed up in the observance of the three fundamental laws
which regulate the relations between the sovereign and his
subjects, between father and children, and between husband
and wife, and in the exercise of the five capital virtues.
These are: humanity or universal charity toward all mem-
bers of our own species without distinction; justice, which
gives his due to each individual without partiality; con:
formity to prescribed rites and established usages, so that
those who make up society may live alike and share the
same advantages as well as the same disadvantages; up-
rightness, or that rectitude of mind and heart which causes
one to seek the truth in everything, without deception of
self or of others ; sincerity and good faith, or that frank-
ness mingled with confidence, which excludes all pretence
and disguise in conduct as well as in speech. These things
are what have rendered our first teachers worthy of respect,
and have immortalized their names after death. Let us
take them for our models ; let us make every effort to imi-
tate them."
Elsewhere he sets forth the principles of religion and
worship. "Heaven," he says, "is the universal principle,
the fruitful source whence all things have flowed. Ances-
tors who emerged therefrom have themselves been the source
of succeeding generations. To give to Heaven proofs of
one's gratitude is the first duty of man; to show himself
grateful toward his ancestors is the second. For this reason
Fou Hi established ceremonies in honor of Heaven and of
ancestors." Thus religion and government rest upon filial
piety. Heaven is honored as the author of beings, and the
emperor, the son of Heaven, is the father of his nation.
14 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
Thanks to the strength of this sentiment, China has been
enabled to pass through the numerous revolutions which
the succession of its twenty-two native or foreign dynasties
have brought upon it, while no essential change has been
wrought in the internal system of government, under which
the welfare of 400,000,000 men has been developed. Thus
the Chinese have the right to say to us: "We envy you
nothing ; we enjoy all the useful arts ; we cultivate wheat,
vegetables, fruits. In addition to cotton, silk, and hemp,
a great number of roots and barks furnish us with tissues
and stuffs. Like you we understand mining, carpentry,
joinery, the manufacture of pottery, porcelain, and paper.
We excel as dyers, stone-cutters, and wheelwrights. Our
roads and canals furrow the whole empire. Suspension
bridges, as daring and lighter than yours, span our rivers
or unite the summits of mountains." They might add,
"We have a literature which goes back more than four
thousand years, and a moral code as good as many another.
Our sciences need no aid from those of Europe to compete
with some of yours. Earlier than you we were acquainted
with the mariner's compass, gunpowder, and printing, those
great discoveries of which you make such boast. Now, if
we have reached this point without foreign assistance, it is
because, fixing our eyes on the past, we have not made over
our institutions with every generation. Despite the changes
of individuals on the throne of Pekin, and modifications of
our frontiers, we have, through the confusion of conquests
and invasions, preserved our social order and respected the
state, because we respect the family."
In that country there are neither nobility to guide and
govern the people, nor slaves to corrupt it. The emperor,
in homage to labor, himself at certain seasons opens the
furrow with a plough. Intellect has forced a recognition of
its rights, since office is bestowed with regard to neither
birth nor fortune, but on account only of learning. Never-
theless, there we see the vice and misery to which immense
agglomerations of men or long-continued prosperity gives
rise. Falsehood works its way into the institutions, which
it distorts. Since, so to speak, this people has neither relig-
ion, nor philosophy, nor art, and is ignorant of an ideal,
it has remained on that midway mental level whence the
fall to a still lower plane is easy. Absorbed by its needs
and pleasures, it has not undergone those painful birth-
CHINA AND THE MONGOLS 15
throes of ideas, on account of which other nations have
suffered so much, but have gained thereby an imperishable
name. China has given nothing to the world ; to the world
she has been as though she existed not.
Thus they have an airy architecture but no monuments.
Their brick and wooden houses suggest the primitive tent.
Their palaces are only piles of buildings constructed upon
the tent type, sometimes not devoid of grace, but always
devoid of grandeur. In painting and sculpture they imitate
what they see, but they see the ugly and grotesque rather
than the beautiful and true. Their imagination takes
pleasure in strange forms, instead of idealizing natural
forms. Their landscapes are without perspective and their
paintings without moral life. Everywhere are vulgar scenes
which represent neither a sentiment nor an idea, but only
reveal the sensual appetites of this listless and yet active
race.
16 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500-1000.
Ill
INDIA
Contrast between India and China. — China and India
adjoin each other. Nevertheless, between them intervenes
more than the bulk of the Himalayas, "the Palace of
Snow," as the Hindus call it. The two races are absolutely
separate by natui-al character and disposition. On the one
side a harsh, positive spirit, without horizon, has settled
and prescribed the rules of a moral code ; on the other are
a disordered imagination, a faith ardent but without works,
a useless asceticism which kills the flesh, and unbridled
passions which satiate it; in short, man lost in the bosom
of nature, and aspiring only to lose himself in the bosom of
divinity. On both sides, a regular, changeless machine is
the idea of government. With the former, this machine is
set in motion by the learned, Avho devote all their attention
to the life of the body ; with the latter, it is set in motion
by the priests, who issue their commands in the name of
the gods. In the former case, any one can attain anything;
in the latter, no one has the right or power to leave the caste
in which he was born.
Primitive Populations : the Aryans. The Vedas. — India,
which consists of the two great valleys of the Indus and
the Granges, Hindustan, and of a peninsula, the Deccan, was
first peopled by a black race, of which the Gonds are the
last remnants; then by the Turanian tribes, such as the
Tamils and Telingas, a distant branch of the Mongolian race ;
and lastly by men with brown and reddish skin, who appear
to have been the base of population along the shores of the
Indian Ocean, and with whom Herodotus was acquainted
in Gedrosia, under the name of Ethiopians. It was the
Aryans, however, who gave India its place in history.
These Aryans formed part of a large group of white people
permanently established in the valleys of the Hindu-koosh,
the Indian Caucasus, possessing tlie same degree of civiliza-
tion with similar languages, habits, and beliefs. When
B.C. 1500-1000.] INDIA ' 17
long centuries had crowded into this narrow place a too
numerous population, had accentuated tribal differences,
and aroused political and religious quarrels, then from this
table-land, in four directions and at different epochs, streams
of men poured forth who inundated half of Asia, India, and
the whole of Europe. The Celts, Pelasgi, laones, or loni-
ans, flowed toward Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, and Gaul;
the Iranians toward Media and Persia; the Germans and
Slavs, from the Ural Mountains to the Ehine ; as for the
Aryans, they turned to the southeast and crossed the Indus.
They subjected the region of the Five Eivers, or Punjaub,
after a prolonged struggle, the memory of which has been
preserved in the Vedas, the first of their sacred books and
among the most ancient monuments of our race.
Fifteen centuries, perhaps, before Christ, the Aryans of
the Punjaub conquered the fertile valley v/hich the Ganges
overflows with periodical inundations like the Nile, and
advanced as far as its mouths, which mingle with those of
the Brahmapootra, a river equally mighty, whose source is
found upon the northern slope of the Palace of Snow.
Checked on the east by the mountains and the mass of
Mongolian nations of Indo-China, the Aryans fell to fight-
ing among themselves. The Mahabharata, the great Indian
epic, still tells in 250,000 verses the story of the terrible
war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, which ended
only on the appearance of the hero Krishna, the incarna-
tion of the god Vishnu.
Delhi is the theatre of the principal events in the Maha-
bharata, whose heroes do not quit the valley of the Ganges.
This Indian Iliad presents singular affinities with the Greek
Iliad, in certain parts surpasses the latter in beauty, and is,
like it, the work of centuries. Together with the Vedas it
throws light upon the origin of many beliefs and symbols
spread among the ancient populations of Greece, Italy, and
Northern Europe. The Eamatana, another epic poem, re-
lates to the conquest by the Aryans of the peninsula of
Hindustan and of the great island of Ceylon, whither Rama,
" of the divine bow," carried the Vedic religion. This time
a single author, Valmik, narrates in 48,000 verses the ex-
ploits of the hero. The brilliancy and grandeur of his pict-
ures and the touching grace of his poetry place him by the
side of Virgil and Homer.
History of India. — Unfortunately, this poetic and relig-
18 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509-a.d. 1498.
ious race possesses no other history than that of its gods.
The conquest by Darius of the countries on the right of the
Indus gave Herodotus no information concerning the India
of the Ganges. On the left bank Alexander found the two
Porus and many kings and independent peoples. He wished
to go to Patna, the capital of the great Prasian Empire, at
the junction of the Jamna and the Ganges. A revolt among
his soldiers stopped him on the banks of the Hyphases.
An Indian of humble origin, named Tchandragoupta, ex-
pelled the governors whom the Macedonian hero left in the
Punjaub. He overthrew the empire of the Prasians, and
received the ambassadors of Seleucus Nicator. The Greek
kings of Bactriana held a part of the valley of the Indus,
wliere we still find their medals. Later on, regular commer-
cial relations were established between Egypt and the
Indian peninsula, where Roman merchants founded count-
ing-houses. Every year they carried thither more than
four million dollars in cash to purchase silks, pearls, per-
fumes, ivory, and spices. Thus, at the expense of the rest
of the world, began that flow of precious metals to India
whereby such enormous wealth has been accumulated in
the hands of its princes.
Such treasures tempted the Mussulmans of Persia. Early
in the eleventh century, a Turkish chieftain, Mahmoud the
Gaznevid, carried into the midst of those inoffensive popu-
lations his iconoclastic rage, his cupidity, and his religion.
The latter was adopted by a large number of the Hindus.
The Turks were followed by the Mongols, whose chief
reigned at Delhi until the last century under the name of
Great Mogul. The discovery of the Caj^e of Good Hope
and the arrival, in 1498, of Vasco da Gama at Calicut,
placed India for the first time in direct relations with Europe.
After the merchants of Lisbon came those of Amsterdam,
France, and England. The English ended by seizing every-
thing, and now reign from the Himalayas to Ceylon over
200,000,000 subjects.
The Castes : Brahmans, Kshatriyas, and Sudras. — Thus,
nearly ten centuries ago, this intelligent and gentle race
lost its independence, but it preserved its social organiza-
tion, religion, and literature. The great god Brahma, say
the sacred books, divided the people into four castes : the
Brahmans, or priests, who sprang from his head; the
Kshatriyas, or warriors, who came from his arms; the Vai-
B.C. 1200-900.] INDIA 19
syas, or laborers and merchants, who issued from his belly
and thighs; and the Sudras, or artisans, who came from his
feet. The first three, or "the regenerated," who represent
the Aryan conquerors, are the ruling castes. Marriage is
prohibited between them and the lowest caste, which also
includes the descendants of the aborigines, or the vanquished
first inhabitants. The children born of forbidden unions,
and all violators of religious laws are the parias or impure.
They cannot inhabit the cities, bathe in the Ganges, or
read the Yedas. To touch them occasions defilement. The
Brahmans alone had the right to read and expound the
Holy Scriptures or the revealed book. As all science and
all wisdom were contained therein, they were both priests,
physicians,* judges, and poets. Interpreters of the will of
heaven, they reigned by virtue of religious terror. Thus
they were able to surround the rajahs or kings, chosen
from the warrior caste, with the thousand prescriptions
of a ceremonial which the laws of Manu have preserved
for us.
Not without terrible struggles did the Kshatriyas submit
to this sacerdotal supremacy. Legends have preserved the
memory of their resistance. The final triumph of the
priests does not appear to have been complete until after
the ninth century before Christ. India then received the
organization, which in its principal features it still retains,
and which we find in the book of the laws of Manu. The
last compilation of these laws, certainly prior to the Buddh-
ist reform in the sixth century before Christ, carries back
this religious, political, and civil code to a far distant
antiquity.
Political Organizations and Religion. — The laws of Manu
remind one of the Pentateuch of Moses. They undertake
to set forth as by divine revelation the origin of the world ;
the institution of priests; certain precepts for the indi-
vidual, the family, and the town ; 'the duties of the prince
and of the castes ; the civil and military organization, and
penal and religious laws. Everything is summed up in two
rules : for society, the subordination of castes ; for the indi-
vidual, physical and moral purity. The Vedic gods are
preserved therein, but are subordinated to Brahmi, the
being absolute and eternal, impersonal and sexless, whence,
nevertheless, emanates Brahma, the active principle of the
universe, which in turn produces Paramatma, the soul of
20 AKCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 900-600.
the world. He, uniting with Manas, or the intellectual
principle, gives origin to all beings, who deviate less from
Brahma, their supreme source, in proportion as they possess
more wisdom.
Thus heaven and earth, with all the powers and beings
therein, are the product of a series of successive emana-
tions. In this immense chain, each being has the rank
which his intellectual or moral value has assigned him.
Thus, below the absolute Being appears the Indian Tri-
murti : Brahma, who creates the worlds ; Vishnu, who regu-
lates them ; and Siva, who destroys in order to regenerate
them; then the Devas or gods, symbolical representations
of the forces of nature ; then man ; still lower, the inferior
creatures, real or imaginary, such as the Nagas and the
Raxasas, with changing forms. By means of learning and
of^the rigorous observance of religious practices, especially
by austerities which subdue the flesh, and ecstasy which
annihilates personality and empties the individual soul into
the soul of the world, man may equal the gods, command
nature, and deserve at death annihilation in the bosom of
Brahma. They whose asceticism and piety have not sufficed
to secure such supernatural power and such annihilation in
God are recompensed for their vulgar merits, after Yama,
the god of death, has touched them, by entrance into the
Svarga, and into the seven and twenty places of delight.
The guilty are hurled into Naraka, which is divided into
twenty-one parts, according to the diversity of tortures
undergone there.
But the effect of good, as of bad works, is worn out by
time. Heaven and hell cast back into life the souls which
they have received. These souls reenter existence in differ-
ent conditions, which are always determined, nevertheless,
by the law of rise and descent in the scale of being according
to their merit and demerit. This is metempsychosis, a doc-
trine which subjected to successive transmigrations all or-
ganized nature from the plant up to man. At the time
iixed for the completion of a cycle everything was engulfed
in Brahma, but speedily another creation emerged from him,
and a new cycle began. The soul of the righteous alone
was exempt from these painful rebirths, since his perfec-
tions had won for him the privilege of absorption into the
eternal essence. This was the reward awaited by the priests
who had traversed a series of previous existences in such a
B.C. 600-530.] INDIA 21
manner as to deserve a final rebirth in the superior caste,
whence they were to pass into the bosom of Brahma.
This original conception of the transmigration of the soul,
at once profound and simple, forced a vast system of expia-
tion and reward, wherein evil and misery were explained by
sin, and good fortune and power by virtue. Unfortunately
this doctrine rendered legitimate a hierarchy of beings. It
ratified the unalterable distinction of castes, and the con-
tempt of the high for the low. It confirmed the constitu-
tion of a theocracy which, the better to defend its power,
made purity consist, not in real virtue, but in the observance
of innumerable rites, the performance of which the priest
superintended and regulated.
Buddhism. — This theocracy, the most powerful which
the world has ever known, was shaken in the sixth century
before our era by the preaching of Gautama, surnamed
Buddha, or the Wise. His father was the rajah of a country
near Nepaul. He was born in a royal palace, but at the
age of twenty-nine abandoned his family, wealth, and rank
to seek truth in the desert. Seven years later he returned
from his wanderings. To mixed crowds, regardless of indi-
vidual position or origin, he began to preach, but only by
parables. He moved his hearers profoundly. This popular
teaching was in itself a revolt against the Brahmans, who
forbade teaching of doctrines to the Sudras. Although it
was presented only as a reformation, the new doctrine went
much farther. Gautama was destroying Brahmanism by
substituting the equality of all men before the moral law
for the principle of caste, and by substituting virtues which
consist in the practice of the good, for the spurious virtues
exacted by a ritual. The promises of salvation, of union
with the divine essence, made to the Brahman alone, he
replaced by the recognized capacity of all men by their
merits to win Nirvana, or deliverance. In short, he broke
up priestly heredity by calling to the priesthood the poor
and the beggars who devoted themselves to a religious life.
Buddha established for men six perfections : knowledge,
which must, above all, apply itself to distinguishing be-
tween the true and the false; energy, which makes us war
against our chief enemies, the pleasures of sense; purity,
which demonstrates victory; patience in enduring imaginary
ills ; charity, the bond of society ; alms, the necessary con-
sequence of charity. " I am come, " he said, " to give to the
22 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 530-150.
ignorant wisdom, and wisdom is knowledge, virtue, alms.
The perfect man is nothing unless he comforts the afflicted
and succors the miserable. My doctrine is a doctrine of
pity. The prosperous find it difficult, and pride themselves
on their birth ; but the way of salvation is open to all those
who annihilate their passions as an elephant overturns a
hut of reeds."
These words, this so pure moral code, were astounding
novelties. " This law of grace," opposed to a law of terror,
made rapid progress among the lower castes, and even among
the Kshatriyas, who had to endure the haughty domination
of the Brahmans. Thus, despite the hatred of the priests
against the reformer, Gautama was able to continue his
apostolic work in peace until the age of eighty, without
ever appealing to force, because he respected established
order, and taught that men should render to princes that
which was their due. When he died, his disciples collected
his discourses, and convoked the first Buddhist council.
Five hundred monks were present. After seven months of
discussion they formulated their religious ceremonies and
doctrine, which were stated with precision in a second
council held in the fifth century, and in a third council
about one hundred and fifty years before Christ.
The ritual is extremely simple. The temple contains the
image of Gautama, who is honored and respected as the
wisest of men, but who receives no adoration. There are
no sacrifices or superstitious practices ; at least there were
none at the time when Buddhism had not yet been corrupted
by the idolatrous traditions of the peoples among whom it
spread and degenerated. In matter of dogma there was no
separation from the ancient church. It even added to the
Vedic divinities new but purer gods. It preserved the
theory of rebirths, which, according to the Brahmanic doc-
trine, were for the mass of the faithful only periodical returns
to misery and despair; but it gave to all men the means of
escaping from these evils by the individual's own merit
without the providential intervention of the gods.
The Western religions submit human personality during
life to the action of Providence, and eternally preserve that
personality after death by the resurrection of the body. In
the pantheistic religions of the East, on the contrary, since
all beings are of the same substance, they end by absorp-
tion into the bosom of the absolute Being, which is the
B.r.l50-A.D.800.] INDIA 23
metaphysical bond of the universe. Buddhism did, it is
true, recognize man's power to accomplish his own sal-
vation; but the soul, for it, as for Brahmanism, was a
temporary emanation from the infinite substance. Conse-
quently, it solved the problem of the future life by the
return of this particle of light to its home, by the absorp-
tion of the part in the great Whole.
The Hindu has at once less and more ambition than the
Jew, the Mussulman, and the Christian. The latter hope
to live again after death, and behold God face to face ; the
former consents to lose all individual existence on condition
of becoming God himself.
We lay emphasis upon this moral history of India, be-
cause, in the first place, its political history is not known ;
and because, in the second, that country has been the main
reservoir of philosophical and religious ideas, which, start-
ing thence, have taken their course in different directions.
The Brahmans, like the priests of Egypt, could well say to
the Greeks: "You are children." Who would affirm that
no echo of those great collisions of ideas of which India was
the theatre, of those philosophical and religious controver-
sies, of that peculiar organization of Buddhist churches
which were animated by an ardent proselyting spirit, did
not reach the commercial cities of the Asiatic coast, where
Hellenic civilization had its awakening, and even as far as
that great city of Alexandria whither the Ptolemies caused
the books of the nations to be brought and translated?
Against Buddhism the most terrible persecution finally
arose. "Let the Buddhists be exterminated," cried the
Brahmans, "from the bridge of Rama (Ceylon) to the snow-
whitened Himalayas! Whoever spares the child or the old
man, shall himself be put to death." Persecution was suc-
cessful in India, which returned to the Brahmans; but
Buddhism spread into Thibet, which is its stronghold
to-day, and into Mongolia, China, Indo-China, and Ceylon.
In those countries it still numbers multitudes of believers,
very few of whom, it is true, know and practise the pure
doctrine of Gautama.
From this brief history it is evident that, if India has
acted little, she has thought much. Let us add that the
country is covered with imposing monuments of great ele-
gance, of which we as yet are acquainted only with a small
part. In thought, poetry, and art, India has developed
three of the glories of Greece.
24 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 5000.
IV
EGYPT
First Inhabitants. — Herodotus said of a part of Egypt,
"It is a gift of the Nile." The same might be said of the
whole country, for without the periodical inundations of
that river the desert would cover everything which was not
hidden under the water.
This country is certainly not the one where the first
civilized society was formed. Nevertheless, its history,
explicit as to a very great number of facts and persons,
covers seventy centuries. Before the Persians conquered
it (527 B.C.), it had already been ruled by twenty-six
dynasties. The names and acts of many of its sovereigns
are carved on the monuments with which they covered
Egypt. To the fourth king of the first dynasty we may
attribute the step pyramid of Saccara, whose worn and
crumbling stones seem to support with difficulty the weight
of the centuries accumulated upon its head.
The first inhabitants of Egypt did not come from the
south, descending the Nile, as was long supposed, but from
the north, via the Isthmus of Suez. They belong to the
race personified in Genesis under the name of Ham, and
called by the Arabs " the Red " from the color of their com-
plexion. This race appears to have formed, under the name
of Cushites, the basis of the population all along the shore
of the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea.
These Cushites founded small states, which doubtless
existed for long centuries before a powerful chief, Menes,
subdued the whole valley from the sea to the cataracts of
Syene, and founded, at least five thousand years before our
era, the first royal race. To account for this unknown
period and for the revolution in which it ended, it was said
that at first the gods had reigned, then the demi-gods, that
is, the priests, their representatives, and that the latter had
been forced to yield their power to a warrior chieftain.
First Dynasties (5000 years b.c). — 'Little is known of
the first three dynasties, whose sway, eight centuries in
Cop>righi, 1S3S, l,y T. Y. CtowM A Co
n. Oli.i.an &Cq.. N. Y.
B.C. 5000-2200.] EGYPT 25
duration, reached the peninsula of Sinai, where on a rock
the name of one of their princes has been found, who
worked the copper mines in the peninsula. Under the
fourth we behold all the marvels of a civilization then un-
paralleled. Art then reached such development as the
most brilliant periods will hardly surpass. What space of
time must have elapsed between the day when the first man
was cast naked upon the earth with the instincts of a wild
animal, and that day six thousand years ago, which saw
the admirable statue of Chephren come forth from the
hands of an Egyptian Phidias, the pyramids of Gizeh rise,
and a great monarchical society formed with a strong
political and religious organization? The paintings or the
inscriptions of temples and tombs recall to us its industry,
its commerce, its agriculture, and all the bloom of its vigor-
ous youth. So early did Egypt enjoy all the art and science
which it ever possessed, and subsequent centuries found
themselves able to teach it little.
The most celebrated members of the sixth dynasty are a
conqueror, Apapu, and a queen, Nitocris. Manetho calls
the latter "the rosy-cheeked Beauty," and says that in order
to avenge her brother, she invited the persons guilty of his
murder to a banquet in a subterranean chamber, into which
the waters of the Nile were suddenly admitted.
From the sixth to the eleventh dynasty, monuments are
rare, and consequently history is silent. Great calamities
must have befallen the country during this period. When
the light reappears, we find royalty banished to the The-
baid, whence it emerged in triumph with the kings of the
twelfth dynasty, who restored to Egypt its natural bounda-
ries, and began the great struggle against the Ethiopians.
One of the family constructed an artificial reservoir, cover-
ing sixty -three square miles, and called Lake Moeris, to
regulate the overflow on the left bank of the Nile.
Invasion of the Hyksos or Shepherds (2200 b.c). — A
horde of shepherds, without doubt crowded westward by
some great movement of humanity in Assyria, penetrated
into the valley of the Nile by the Isthmus of Suez and sub-
jugated the Delta and Middle Egypt. Their kings, who
formed the seventeenth or Hyksos dynasty, established
themselves at Memphis, and fortified the town of Avaris or
Plusium at the entrance of the Delta in order to prevent
other nomads from following in their footsteps. Appar-
26 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1750-1288.
ently it was one of these kings whom Joseph served, as
minister. After having reigned for live hundred years, the
Hyksos were at last defeated by the kings of Thebes, and
gradually forced back to the very walls of Pelusium.
Ahmes I. succeeded in driving them thence, and the greater
part of the nation quitted Egypt. Nevertheless to this day,
in the vicinity of Lake Menzaleh, men of robust limbs and
angular features are to be found, who may be descendants
of the Shepherds.
Prosperity of Egypt from the Eighteenth to the Thirteenth
Century. — The expulsion of the Hyksos was followed by
prosperity that lasted for more than five hundred years.
Thanks to the protecting deserts and its strong political
organization, Egypt again developed a brilliant civilization
which the greatest men of Greece came to study. This epoch
begins with the princes of the eighteenth dynasty (1703-
1462): Ahmes the Liberator; Thothmes I., who commem-
orated his victories by columns on the banks of the Euphrates
and Nile ; the regent Hatasu, whose exploits the temple of
Deir-el-Bahari at Thebes hands down; Thothmes III., the
conqueror of western Asia and of the Soudan, " who set the
frontiers of Egypt wherever he pleased," as says the author
of a heroic song carved on a pillar in the Museum of Boulaq;
Amenophis III., the Memnon of the Greeks, the King of
the Speaking Statue, which at sunrise saluted Aurora, his
divine mother. In the tomb of the mother of Ahmes a
veritable treasure of precious stones of the rarest workman-
ship has been found.
This good fortune continued under the princes of the
nineteenth dynasty (1462-1288), several of whom rendered
the name Rameses glorious. Seti I., after having carried
his arms as far as Armenia, built the pillared hall of Karnak,
a masterpiece of Egyptian architecture. He even opened
from the Nile to the Red Sea a canal, vestiges of which can
still be discerned, and on the arid road to the gold mines of
Gebel Atoky he dug a well, which must be called artesian,
since the water spouted from it. His successor, Rameses II.,
is the Sesostris to whom the Greeks have ascribed all the
conquests of those ancient kings. He was indeed a warlike
prince. Columns found near Beirout, and a whole poem
carved on a wall of Karnak, still attest his achievements.
He was above all a great builder. He erected the two
temples of Ipsamboul, the Ramesseum of Thebes, and the
B.C. 1288-655.] EGYPT 27
obelisks of Luxor, one of which, a granite monolith seventy-
seven feet high, covered with inscriptions in his honor, is
the central monument of the Place cle la Concorde in Paris.
He compelled his captives to work on these monuments.
The Israelites, scattered in great numbers over Lower
Egypt, were treated as slaves. They were forced to labor
in the quarries, to make bricks, and construct embankments
to protect the cities from inundation. The oppression of
their taskmasters fired the slaves with resolution. Under
Meneptah the Hebrews departed from Egypt. The tomb of
this Pharaoh is still to be seen in the valley of Bab-el-Moluk.
Decline of Egypt. Invasion of the Ethiopians. — The
twentieth dynasty (1288-1110) begins with a great king,
E-ameses III., who represented on the magnificent temple
of Medinet Abu at Thebes his exploits in Syria and the
Soudan. After him came the decline. Egypt had become
enfeebled in attempting to expand. Instead of remaining
upon the banks of her sacred river, wherein was her
strength, and in the midst of the deserts which gave her
security, she sought to subdue Asia and the country of the
Cushites and Libyans, and even the great island of Cyprus.
She desired to control the sea. When indolent kings suc-
ceeded the glorious Pharaohs, priestly intrigue seated the
high priest of Amnion upon the throne of Thebes, while
another dynasty, the twenty-first, reigned at Tanis in the
Delta. Thus divided, Egypt submitted to the influence of
neighboring peoples instead of imposing her own. Her
kings assumed Assyrian names, gave princesses of their
blood to Solomon's harem, and surrounded themselves with
a Libyan guard, which portioned out the country among its
chiefs. The Cushites or Ethiopians took advantage of these
discords to seize Upper Egypt. Sabaco, their prince, even
captured King Bocchoris and burned him alive. " The vile
race of Cushites," as the twenty-fifth dynasty, reigned for
fifty years over all the land of the Pharaohs (715-655).
Among their kings are Sebichus or Sua, whom Uzziah
invoked against Shalmaneser, and Tharaka, who helped
Hezekiah against Sennacherib. According to Manetho, a
revolution drove the third successor of Sabaco back to
Ethiopia. The leaders of this movement were natives of
Sais and founded the twenty-sixth dynasty.
The Last Pharaohs. — Herodotus thus narrates the expul-
sion of the Ethiopians : " The last of the Ethiopian kings
28 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 700-a.d. 381.
was terrified by a dream, and fled to his native states, leav-
ing the government of the country to the priest Sethos.
At his death the warriors seized the supreme power and
intrusted it to twelve of their number. Psammeticus, one
of the twelve, overthrew his colleagues by means of Carian
and Ionian pirates. Realizing the military superiority of
the G-reeks, he invited them in great numbers to the coun-
try, and thereby angered the native army, part of which
emigrated to Ethiopia. Aided by the newcomers, he tried
to recover Syria, and for twenty-eight years besieged Azoth,
which he finally captured." Necho, his successor, attempted
to complete Seti's canal and unite the Red Sea and Mediter-
ranean. He caused the Phoenicians to circumnavigate
Africa, and defeated Josiah, king of Judah, at Mageddo.
Master of Palestine, he pushed on to the Euphrates, but
was defeated by the Babylonians and lost all his conquests.
The second of his successors, Apries, likewise failed in his
attempts against the Cyrenians. His soldiers, believing
themselves betraj^ed, installed in his place Amasis, one of
their own number, under whom Egypt emitted a final gleam
of brilliancy. Twenty thousand cities are then said to have
covered the borders of the Nile. This prince gave the city
of Naucratis to the Greeks, and entered into close relations
with the Median, Lydian, and Babylonian kings, who were
themselves menaced by a fresh invasion of the barbarous
Persian mountaineers. He could not avert their ruin, and
beheld the successive fall of Astyages, Croesus, and Bal-
thasar. The same fate awaited his own son, Psammeticus
III., who, after a reign of six months, was overthrown by
the Persian Cambyses (527).
Egypt under the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the
Arabs. — Since that day Egypt has never been independent,
though often rebelling against the yoke of foreigners. An
unruly province of Persia, she was conquered by Alexander,
who founded the famous city which bears his name (331).
The dynasty of the Ptolemies reigned gloriously for a cen-
tury, and ingloriously twice as long. The Romans took
their place after the death of Cleopatra (30 b.c). In
381 A.D. an edict of Theodosius suppressed the religion of
the Pharaohs. The temples were mutilated, the statues of
the gods destroyed, and of one of the richest civilizations
of the world nothing was left except the ruins, which at the
present day we piously preserve.
A.D. 640-1880.] EGYPT 29
Egypt, thus violently forced into Christianity, remained
nominally Christian for two centuries and a half without
finding j)eace. The Arabs brought Islam (640). It took
definite root, and under the Fatimite caliphs the land en-
joyed a brief splendor. Cairo, a city which they founded,
still contains the largest Mussulman school in the world.
Thrice has France touched the land, always leaving glorious
recollections of herself: in the thirteenth century with Saint
Louis ; in the eighteenth with Bonaparte ; in the nineteenth
with Frenchmen who conquered Egypt by their science and
opened to the commerce of the globe the Isthmus of Suez,
thus grandly realizing the dream of a Pharaoh who had been
dead thirty-five centuries !
Egyptian Religion, Government, and Art. — Two religions
existed side by side, the one held by the people and the
other by the priests. The former was coarse and material.
It regarded certain animals, the ichneumon, ibis, crocodile,
hippopotamus, cat, bull, and many more, as divine beings.
It was the old African fetichism, though elevated by theo-
gonic ideas, as is shown by those gods with the head of a
dog or falcon, and by the worship of the bull Apis, " en-
gendered by a flash of lightning." The latter religion
sought to account for the mysterious phenomena of nature,
and explained the good and evil encountered everywhere by
the opposition of two principles as Osiris, the representative
of all beneficent influences, and Typhon, the god of night
and of evil days. It even seems at first to have taught
belief in one God without beginning or end. The care
taken by the Egyptians to preserve the bodies of the dead
proves that they hoped for a future life. The inscriptions
even speak of numerous rebirths, which recall the metemp-
sychosis of the Hindus. But this idea of the absolute and
eternal Being was veiled from the eyes of the people and
the priests by the conception of a divine trinity, — Osiris
or the sun, the principle of all life. Is is or nature, and
Horus, their divine child. After once abandoning pure
monotheism, the Egyptians glided rapidly down the
descent of polytheism. The representations on their
monuments and in their religious rites of a host of
secondary divinities made them forget the chief god,
of whose attributes the others had at first been merely
symbols.
The government was a monarchy, all the stronger because
30 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST I ; ^ '
its kings, according to common belief, were participants of
divinity. All were " Sons of the Sun," and in that capacity
were chiefs of religion as well as of society.
Society had neither a sacerdotal nor aristocratic caste,
nor a popular body which might form a counterpoise to
the king. This state of affairs ended in the establishment
of a certain number of classes, which were non-hereditary,
but in which the son habitually remained in the father's
state of life. Herodotus enumerated seven of these classes :
priests, warriors, laborers, herdsmen, merchants, mariners,
and, after Psammeticus, interpreters. There were, no
doubt, many others. "Egypt," says Bossuet, "was the
source of all good police regulation." We read in Diodorus
that perjury was punished with death ; that he who did not
succor a man engaged in combat with an assassin, suffered
the same penalty ; that the slanderer was punished. Every
Egyptian was obliged to deposit with a magistrate a docu-
ment setting forth his means of livelihood, and a severe
penalty discouraged false statements. The tongue of the
spy, who betrayed state secrets to enemies, and both hands
of counterfeiters, were cut off. In no case was accumulated
interest allowed to exceed the capital; the property of the
debtor, not his person, constituted the security for his debt.
An Egyptian could borrow, giving his father's mummy as
surety, and he who did not pay his debt was deprived of
burial with his family.
The Egyptians successfully cultivated many industrial
arts, as well as mechanics, geometry, and astronomy.
They invented hieroglyphic writing, whose characters, at
first simple figurative representations of objects or symbols
of certain ideas, were completed by phonetic signs, which
like our letters and syllables stood only for sounds. In
painting they employed vivid colors, which time has not
effaced. Some of their finest statues might rival those of
Greece, did not a certain stiffness indicate a conventional
art wherein liberty was lacking; but their architecture is
unrivalled in its grand impressiveness. In proof are the
temples of Thebes; the hall of Karnak, where the vault
is supported by 140 colossal columns, many of which are
seventy feet high and eleven feet in diameter; and the
pyramids, one of which, 481 feet in height, is the most
tremendous pile of stone ever heaped up by man. Further
demonstration is furnished by the obelisks, the rock tombs,
EGYPT 31
the labyrinth, the enormous Sphinx, which measures twenty-
six feet from the chin to the crown of the head, the dikes,
the highways, the canals to contain or guide the waters of
the Nile, and Lake Moeris. No people in ancient times
moved so much earth and granite.
32 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1200-'o06.
THE ASSYRIANS
The Tigris and the Euphrates. Babylon and Nineveh. —
Erom the mountain^ of Armenia descend two rivers, the
Tigris and the Euphrates, whose sources lie near each other,
and which, after uniting their waters, fall into the Persian
Gulf. These two rivers embrace in their course a vast
tract of country, mountainous on the north and flat and
sandy in the centre and south, to which the general name
of Mesopotamia is applied. Its first inhabitants were : in
Chaldsea, or the southern part, those Cushites with whom
we are already acquainted ; toward the mountains, Turanian
tribes, which perhaps made the great Hyksos invasion
along the banks of the Nile ; in the centre, Semitic peoples
of a white race whose origin is unknown, but who are
famous in history as the Assyrians, Hebrews, Arabs, and
Phoenicians.
In this country rose two splendid cities, Babylon on the
Euphrates and Nineveh on the Tigris, each in turn the
capital of the Assyrian Empire. Nothing in antiquity is
so celebrated as Babylon, whose walls measured a circuit
of twenty leagues, and rose three or four hundred feet high.
The Chaldsean priests ascribed to it an antiquity of four
hundred thousand years, but Genesis fixes its foundation
within the historical period, where also it places the origin
of the Hebrews. It ascribes the building of Babylon to
Nimrod, the mighty hunter. His descendants reigned there
until the time of the great Iranian migration, which bore
one body of Aryans toward the Indus, and another to the
middle of Persia. Those who took the latter direction
arrived at Babylon, but did not rule there long, and Assyria
reverted to her first masters. The Pharaohs of the eigh-
teenth dynasty held her in subjection for more than two
centuries, and Arab chiefs, as their vassals, reigned on the
banks of the Euphrates. When the decline of Egypt began
with the twentieth dynasty, the Assyrian princes freed
B.C. 1200-606.] THE ASSYRIANS 33
themselves, and became conquerors in turn. All the coun-
try between the Euphrates and the Lebanon recognized their
sway. On the east of the Tigris, Media became their vassal
province. If we are to believe the Chaldsean priest Berosis,
they penetrated to Bactriana and India. The monuments
begin to give us certain information only with the ferocious
Assurnazirpal and his son, Shalmaneser, whose war against
the Hebrews and whose victory over Hosea, king of Israel,
is recorded in the Bible. A successor of these princes had
for his queen Semiramis, who was left at his death sole
mistress of the empire. She enlarged Babylon, constructed
quays and hanging gardens, and surrounded the city with
a wall forty-two miles long and broad enough for six chariots
to pass abreast on top.
Sardanapalus was the last sovereign of the first Assyrian
Empire. His excesses and effeminate life encouraged the
Chaldaean Phul and the Median Arbaces to rebel. Not dis-
couraged b}" four successive defeats, they succeeded finally
in imprisoning the king in Nineveh. Rather than sur-
render, Sardanapalus caused a funeral pyre to be prepared,
and flung himself into it with his wives and treasures.
Nineveh was destroyed (789).
Second Assyrian Empire. — The Medes had regained their
independence, and the Babylonians ruled over Assyria.
His victory rendered Phul, their leader, sufficiently strong
to resume the wars of the Ninevite kings against the nations
west of the Euphrates, and to compel Menahem, king of
Judah, to pay tribute. At his death, the Assyrians rebelled
under Tiglathpileser, a descendant of their ancient kings,
who conquered Babylon and set up a second Assyrian
Empire (744 B.C.). The distant expeditions of this prince
from Palestine to the Indus, the victory of Sargon at Kapha
over the Ethiopian, Sabaco, the successes of Sennacherib,
who rebuilt Nineveh (707), of Esarhaddon (681), who con-
quered Egypt, and of a new Sardanapalus, who subdued
Asia Minor, show the might of the new empire. But it
fell, like the first, before a coalition of the Babylonians
and Medes. Sarac, its last king, following the example of
Sardanapalus, threw himself and his treasures upon a funeral
pile, and the victors, entering Nineveh, utterly destroyed
the detested city (606). Wiped from the face of the earth
for twenty-four centuries, no one knew even the site of its
famous temples, when suddenly it reappeaVed in the world.
34 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 588-330.
with its arts, its language, its customs, its civilization, all
rescued from oblivion and attested by its numerous bas-
reliefs and sculptures, which the Frenchman Botta dis-
covered in 1844 at Mosoul, and which can now be wondered
at in the Louvre.
Last Assyrian Empire. Capture of Babylon by Cyrus. —
Babylon replaced Nineveh. IsTebuchadnezzar, its king, won
a glorious victory over the Egyptian Isecho at Circesium.
He destroyed Jerusalem (588), took Tyre after a siege of
thirteen years, traversed Egypt as a conqueror, and adorned
Babylon with magnificent monuments. His four successors
reigned shamefully. Cyrus, king of the Persians, besieged
Babylon and entered it by the bed of the Euphrates, which
he had diverted from its channel (538). Instead of destroy-
ing the city, he made it one of his capitals. So did Alex-
ander. The construction of Seleucia caused its abandonment
by the Greek kings. To-day nothing is to be seen on the
spot which it occupied except a heap of ruins, upon which
the Arab rarely plants his tent, and which furnish a lair
for the beasts of the desert. When the Parthians, and
afterwards the Persians, raised the great Oriental Empire
which the Romans were unable to overthrow, Ctesiphon
was their royal residence. Each new sovereign authority
gave birth to a new capital. Under the Arabian caliphs
Bagdad was the queen of the Orient. It is still one of the
great cities of the heir of the caliphs, the sultan of Con-
stantinople.
Government, Religion, and Arts of Assyria. — The king of
Nineveh or of Babylon was the absolute master of the life
and possessions of his subjects. Such is the law of oriental
monarchies. At least, on the banks of the Tigris and the
Euphrates, the king was not considered a deity, as on the
banks of the Nile. Neither were there any castes, nor even
a hierarchy of classes. Assyrian society was that sort of
promiscuous mass which is not displeasing to despotism,
because it permits the prince to raise or degrade whomso-
ever he sees fit.
At the base of the religion of these peoples, the idea of
a single God can be descried; but there also this idea was
concealed by a throng of secondary divinities, who are
always the personification of some force of nature. In
those immense plains of Chaldsea, where the horizon ex-
tends so far, under that cloudless sky, and during those
B.C. 900-588.] THE ASSYRIANS 35
nights which the Orient makes so beautiful, because the
stars shine there with a brilliancy unknown to us, the
dominating worship was Sabianism, or the adoration of
the stars. The sun, Baal, was the great god of the Assyr-
ians, and in the celestial bodies they located spirits which
exercised upon man and upon his destiny a powerful influ-
ence. Thus their priests had a great reputation as astrono-
mers. To them we owe the zodiac, the division of the
circle into 360 degrees, and that of the degree into sixty
minutes, the calculation of lunar eclipses, the so-called
table of Pythagoras, and a system of measures, weights,
and money which served nearly all the commerce of the
ancient world, since it was employed by the Phoenicians
and the ancient Greeks. To them also we owe astrology,
whereby they developed a lucrative trade through the sale
of talismans or consecrated signs, supposed to give their
possessors magical powers. The common people found
the objects of their adoration nearer at hand. They had
fish gods, like Oannes and Derceto, or bird gods, like the
doves which typified Semiramis. The worship of Mylitta,
the goddess of generation and fecundity, gave rise to
abominable disorders by sanctifying the grossest sensual
appetites.
The inhabitants, by their industry, their skilful agricul-
ture, and their commerce, which two magnificent rivers
favored, accumulated prodigious riches in this empire, so
long the rival of the empire of the Pharaohs. The carpets
of Babylon, its textile fabrics, its enamelled potteries, its
amulets and canes, and its thousand objects of the gold-
smith's art, were in great demand, even in the Koman
Empire. The Assyrian sculptures reveal a degree of skill
hardly suspected. Herodotus, visiting Egypt in the time
of its full splendor, believed that the Greeks had derived
their art and gods from the banks of the Nile. We now
know that in the depths of Asia the origin of their religious
ideas must be sought. Probably through Cilicia and Asia
Minor Assyrian art reached the Greek Asiatic colonies, and
from them awoke the genius of artists in the mother coun-
try. More than one sculpture at Athens recalls forms on
the monuments of Khorsabad. The figures of Selinus, and
even in a certain degree the marbles of Egina, seem to have
been touched by the Ninevites.
36 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500.
VI
THE PHCENICIANS
Phoenician Cities between Lebanon and the Sea. — Be-
tween the Euphrates and the western sea stretch the desert,
which belonged to the Semitic nomads, and the Lebanon,
the fertile valleys of which became the habitation of numer-
ous Canaanitish tribes who originally occupied the shores
of the Persian Gulf. The Phoenicians, near kinsmen of the
Hebrews, the most famous of all these tribes, established
themselves in the country of the Jordan, and on the farther
side of the mountain chain on the narrow strip of coast
which is bathed by the Mediterranean. The conquests of
Joshua gave the valley of the Jordan to the Hebrews.
Hemmed in between the mountains, whose venerable forests
furnished the timber for the construction of ships, and the
sea, which formed numerous harbors and invited to naviga-
tion and commerce, the Phoenicians became skilful mariners,
both from necessity and natural situation. Their shipe
ploughed the Mediterranean. Population increased with
general prosperity, and cities multiplied. Soon, both for
the interests of commerce and to relieve the congestion of
population, it became necessary to plant colonies at a dis-
tance. The most widely known of Phoenician cities were
Sidon, whose glassware and purple were celebrated; Tyre,
which held the highest rank; Aradus, Byblos, and Berytus.
We learn from Holy Writ what luxury and effeminacy and
what an impure and often sanguinary religion reigned in
Phoenicia. Mothers burned their children alive in honor
of Baal-Moloch, and the utmost license was approved by
their chief goddess, Astarte.
Phoenician Commerce and Colonies. — But the Phoenicians
offset their vices by industry and commerce, and above all
by those colonies which so contributed to the expansion and
progress of civilization. They established themselves in
the ^gean islands long before the Greeks ; founded count-
ing-houses in Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Sicily; and profited
B.C. 1500-332.] THE PHOENICIANS " 37
by the commerce of Arabia, India, and Ethiopia. In the
fifth century they still possessed in Sicily the three cities
of Motya, Seliniis and Panormus. In Gaul the traces of
their settlement vanished early, but they covered the whole
south of Spain, then so rich in silver mines, with their
colonies. On the African coast rose Leptis, Adrumetum,
Utica, and Carthage, the new Tyre, which became the most
powerful maritime state of antiquity, and forced the neigh-
boring Phoenician colonies to acknowledge its supremacy.
While Carthage thus monopolized the commerce of the
western Mediterranean, the Phoenicians of the mother
country shared with the Greeks that of the eastern Mediter-
ranean, and endeavored to form closer relations with the
countries washed by the Indian Ocean. They forced the
Jews to cede to them two ports on the Red Sea, Eliath and
Eziongeber, whence their fleets sailed to seek ivory and
gold dust in the land of Ophir, incense and spices in Arabia
Felix, the most beautiful pearls then known in the Persian
Gulf, and in India a thousand precious wares. For them
numerous caravans traversed Babylonia, Arabia, Persia,
Bactriana, and Thibet, whence they brought back the silk
of China, which sold for its weight in gold, the furs of
Tartary, and the precious stones of India. They added to
this commerce the products of their national industry in
glass, purple, and a thousand articles of attire.
Conquerors of Phoenicia. — This prosperity of Phoenicia
excited the cupidity of invaders. She was conquered by
the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty. The Assyrians
many times appeared under the walls of Tyre, which was
taken by Sennacherib, almost ruined by Nebuchadnezzar,
and destroyed by Alexander. Phoenicia found herself al-
most lost in the vast empires of the Persians, the Seleucidse,
and the Romans; but, placed between two great centres of
civilization, Egypt and Assyria, she took from them and
carried to the West whatever they had best developed. She
diffused something of the art, the industry, the science, of
those two nations. Above all she took from Babylon a
metric system, the necessary agent of commerce, and from
Memphis the idea and form of alphabetical writing, which
so many peoples have copied and modified, and which has
been the indispensable instrument of intellectual progress.
38 * ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1490.
VII
THE HEBRE"WS
Ancient Traditions. — At the head of their race, the He-
brews place Abraham, who came from Chaldaea, perhaps
two thousand years before Christ, and settled in the land of
Canaan ; Isaac, son of the patriarch ; and Jacob, the father
of twelve sons, whose posterity formed the twelve tribes of
Israel. The touching story is well known of Joseph, one
of the twelve, whom his brethren sold to Egyptian mer-
chants. By dint of wisdom and tact the Hebrew slave at-
tained the highest honors, became the minister of a Pharaoh,
and called to him his family, whom he established in the
land of Goshen between the Nile and the Red Sea.
In this fertile district the Hebrews multiplied without
mixing with the Egyptians, who eventually looked upon
this foreign race with distrust, and treated hem like the
captives brought back by the Pharaohs from their distant
conquests. They tried to compel them to abandon pastoral
life and to shut themselves up in cities. They forced them
to build the cities of Rameses, Pithon, and On; they made
them work on the canals and on the constructions of every
sort with which Egypt was being covered. The Israelite
traditions assert that, in order to diminish their numbers,
which increased in spite of every hardship, the Pharaohs
commanded that all male infants should be killed at birth.
An Israelitish woman of the tribe of Levi, after having
hidden her child for three months, exposed it on the Nile
in a basket of bulrushes at the spot where the daughter of
Pharaoh was in the habit of bathing. The princess heard
the cries of the infant and took pity on it. He was called
Moses, or the " drawn out," because he had been drawn from
the waters. He was reared by his adopted mother in the
royal palace, and instructed in all the learning of the Egyp-
tian priests. However, his own mother had revealed to
him his origin, and one day he killed an Egyptian whom
he saw beating a Hebrew. Forced to flight by this murder,
a by Coll.,,,. oi,„:,i„m;u.. n. v.
B.C. 1490.] THE HEBREWS 39
he escaped to Jetliro, in the extreme south of Arabia Petraea,
where he found again the ancient belief of his fathers, pure
and simple manners, and the patriarchal life of Abraham
and Jacob. He returned to Egypt, resolved to deliver his
people "from the house of bondage," and led the Hebrews
back to the desert with their herds.
Religious and Civil Legislation. — They wandered long in
the solitudes of Arabia, where the majesty of the one God
everywhere is revealed. Mount Sinai was consecrated by
the promulgation of the civil and religious lav/, and Moses
tried to chain his people to the precious dogma of the one-
ness of God by numerous ordinances which imparted to the
Hebrew laws an incomparable superiority over every system
of legislation. Instead of the distinction of castes, which
moreover cannot be enforced in the desert, the Hebrews
had the equality of citizens before God, before the law,
and, in a certain measure, before fortune. In the sabbatical
year, and at the jubilee which occurred, the one at the end
of every seven years, the other at the end of forty-nine
years, the slave was emancipated, debt was outlawed, and
alienated property was restored to its former owner. The
leaders of the Jews sprang from the people. If their priest-
hood became hereditary, inasmuch as always restricted to
the tribe of Levi, the priests possessed only the inheritance
of poverty. In the ancient world society reposed on slavery,
but the Jews had servants rather than slaves. Elsewhere
the legislator disregarded the poor and repelled the stranger.
Here the law distinguished in favor of the poor. It pro-
hibited usury, enjoined alms, prescribed charity, even toward
animals, and was kindly to the stranger. Thus everything
which the ancient world degraded and rejected, the Mosaic
law exalted. In this society, the stranger was no longer
an enemy, the slave was still a man, and woman took her
seat worthily beside the head of the family, enjoying the
same respect.
Moral Grandeur of Hebrew Legislation. — In the Deca-
logue, or summary of the entire moral code, human and
divine, in ten commandments, we read : " Thou shalt have
none other gods before me." "Honor thy father and thy
mother that thy days may be long." "Thou shalt not
steal." " Thou shalt not kill." " Thou shalt not bear false
witness against thy neighbor." "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbor's house . . . nor anything that is thy neighbor's."
40 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1097.
In the law we find these beautiful and touching precepts :
"Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do ev-il." " Ye shall
not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict
them in any wise, and they cry at all under me, I will
surely hear their cry." " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger :
for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt." "Six years thou shalt sow thy
land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh
year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy
people may eat : and what they leave the beasts of the field
shall eat." "When ye reap the harvest of your land, thou
shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field . . . neither*
shalt thou gather every grape of thy vineyards ; thou shalt
leave them for the poor and stranger." " The wages of him
that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the
morning." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
"Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honor the
face of the old man." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when
he treadeth out the corn." "Thou shalt not seethe a kid
in his mother's milk."
Conquest of Palestine. The Judgfes. The Kings (1097 b.c).
— Moses wished his people to return to the land which
Abraham had chosen wherein to pitch his tent. Joshua,
his successor, crossed the Jordan, destroyed Jericho, and
divided the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes of
Israel.
At his death the political bond broke which held the tribes
together, and the government of the elders was too feeble to
complete the conquest of the country or to repulse the
attacks of neighboring kings. Hence ensued periods of
servitude, from which the Hebrews were rescued by strong
and brave men, who after the victory remained their
judges, thus erecting in the midst of this patriarchal re-
public a sort of temporary monarchy. These heroes of
Israel were Othniel; Ehud, who fought with both hands;
Shamgar; the prophetess Deborah; Gideon, Avho scattered
a whole army with three hundred men; Jephthah, who
immolated his daughter in order to fulfil a rash vow; Sam-
son, celebrated for his prodigious strength ; the high priest
Eli, under whom the Philistines captured the Ark of the
Covenant, wherein was kept the book of the law; and,
lastly, Samuel, who, despite his wise and just administra-
tion, was forced by the Hebrews to give them a king.
B.C. 1019.] THE HEBREWS 41
He chose Saul, a valiant man of the tribe of Benjamin,
who seemed simple-minded and docile. He poured the holy
oil of consecration on the head of the new prince, and de-
posited in the Ark a book wherein he had written down
the rights and duties of the kingly office (1097 b.c). At first
Saul justified the prophet's choice by his moderation and
victories. But rendered proud by success, he abandoned
his rustic habits, surrounded himself by a body-guard of
three thousand men, and shook off the yoke of the high
priest. Samuel secretly anointed David, a Hebrew shep-
herd, and introduced him into the ]3alace, that some day he
might install him in the place of the unruly prince. The
young shield-bearer of the king attracted the attention of
all Israel by slaying the Philistine Goliath. Saul, consumed
by jealousy, made several attempts to slay him with his.
javelin. When he himself fell in 1058 in a battle against
the Philistines, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and a
few years later the other ten tribes, recognized David as
king of Israel.
For the time being no danger threatened from Egypt and
Assyria. The little Hebrew state was able to develop and
extend without encountering too formidable adversaries.
Palestine, which had so often been the road of the con-
querors, became a conqueror in her turn. The capture of
Sion or Jerusalem, the destruction of the Philistines and
the Moabites, numerous successes over all other neighbor-
ing peoples, territorial extension of the kingdom as far as
the Euphrates on the north and as far as the Red Sea on the
south, set forth in David the victorious prince. His regu-
lations for worship, for the public administration, for jus-
tice, for the establishment of a numerous army, one-tenth
of which was always under arms, and, lastly, tlie materials
which he collected for the building of the temple, and the
treaties of commerce concluded with Tyre, bear witness to
his solicitude during peace. But a crime, the murder of
Uriah, and the revolt of his son Absalom, saddened his last
years. The Church still sings his sublime psalms.
Solomon, a peaceful prince, fond of splendor and civiliza-
tion, governed from the recesses of his palace like the other
kings of the East. At his accession (1019) he consolidated
his power by bloody acts, reduced the high priesthood to de-
pendence upon the king, so as to emancipate the sovereign
from all equal opposing authority, and built with magnifi-
42 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 978-586.
cence the temple at Jerusalem. He proved his wisdom
by a famous decision, founded Palmyra in the heart of the
desert, created a navy, and made alliances with Tyre and
Egypt. His fame spread abroad, and the Queen of Sheba
came to visit the great king of the East. But notwith-
standing outward splendor, the provinces were being im-
poverished, and Solomon himself destroyed the foundation
of his power by introducing idolatry into his palace. The
Idumseans and' Syrians revolted. His subjects rose in re-
bellion because of the growing burdei] of taxation, and he
died in the midst of public misery (978).
The Schism and the Captivity. — His son, Eehoboam, re-
fused to lessen the exactions of the royal treasury, and ten
tribes seceded. Benjamin and Judah alone remained faith-
ful to the house of David. From that time on there existed
two nations, two kingdoms, Israel and Judah : Israel more
populous, more extensive; Judah richer and more respected.
Every year all Jews were bound to bring their offerings to
the temple at Jerusalem. To prevent his new subjects from
going to settle in the kingdom of Judah, which possessed
the national sanctuary, Jeroboam erected two altars, one at
Bethel and one at Dan. Hither his people came to sacrifice.
This violation of the religious law prepared Israel for the
introduction of idolatry, the establishment of which was
also favored by the constant relations of its kings with the
Syrians. Judah showed more respect to the Mosaic law.
But there also idolatry made its way, and for its expulsion
prophets were needed, fired by the double inspiration of
religion and patriotism. Elijah, Elisha, Amos, Micah,
Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, by turns threatened and roused
the Jews from despair by the promise of a glorious future.
The separation of the Hebrew people into two kingdoms
ruined its power. After the schism it possessed only Pales-
tine. Surrounded by enemies, the Hebrews engaged also in
bloody civil wars, and after deplorable anarchy succumbed
under the attacks of the Babylonians. The kingdom of
Israel fell in 721, when King Hoshea, captured in Samaria,
was carried by Sargon to Nineveh. Judah fell in 586, when
Zedekiah, captured by Nebuchadnezzar, was dragged to
Babylon, loaded with chains, and had his eyes put out after
he had seen all his sons and the leaders of his people slain
before his face.
The Jews under the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans.
B.C. 60G-A.D. 10.] THE HEBREWS 43
— The captivity, which dates from the first capture of
Jerusalem (606 b.c.) lasted for seventy years, until tlie
edict of Cyrus, who in ^oQ permitted the Hebrews to rebuild
their Temple. Zerubbabel was accompanied by forty-two
thousand Jews in his return to the ruins of the holy city.
The work of construction, stopped under Cambyses through
the jealousy of the Samaritans, was continued with ardor
under Darius, who is, perha^DS, the Ahasuerus of Scripture.
In 516 the Temple was finished. Under Artaxerxes Longi-
manus, Esdras conducted to Jerusalem another great com-
pany of Jews, and brought the people back to the faithful
observance of the Mosaic commands. About the same time
Nehemiah again raised the walls of the city of David.
Thus the nation had recovered its law, its Temple, its
capital, and all the energy of its religious patriotism.
Unfortunately, many persons, whom Esdras and Nehemiah
expelled for lawlessness, took refuge with the Samaritans,
and built upon Mount Gerizim a temple to rival that at
Jerusalem. Judaea was generally quiet under the Persians.
After the siege of Tyre Alexander came to Jerusalem to
offer sacrifice in the Temple, and exempted the country from
taxation during the sabbatical year. After his death the
Jews remained for nearly a century subject to the kings of
Egypt. Ptolemy II. Philadelphus even placed their sacred
books in the famous library of Alexandria, having caused
them to be translated by learned men, Avhose work has re-
mained famous as the Septuagint Version. Ptolemy Philo-
pator persecuted them ; so they passed gladly, though with
no greater security, under the rule of the kings of Syria.
Seleucus IV. sent his minister, Heliodorus, to strip the
Temple of its riches, and Antigonus IV. placed upon the
very altar the statue of Jupiter Olympius.
This attempt to install Greek polytheism in the sanctuary
of the only God brought about a formidable insurrection.
After being delivered by the heroic family of the Maccabees,
the Jews endured the most cruel vicissitudes during two
centuries, sometimes free under their own kings, sometimes
subject to the Romans, often disturbed b}^ the quarrels of
the Pharisees and Sadducees, the two rival political and
religious sects. In the time of Augustus they formed,
under the cruel Herod, a flourishing state, whose existence
Rome respected for several years. Then it was that Jesus
was born, and four years before the death of Tiberius began
44 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [a.d. 70.
to preach his holy doctrine. The Jews, who had become
Koman subjects, revolted during the last days of Nero.
Thirteen hundred thousand men perished in that supreme
struggle for fatherland and religion. Jerusalem was re-
duced to ruins, the Temple was destroyed, and the disper-
sion began (70 a.d.).
The Jews, a stiff-necked people, as their prophets de-
clared, did nothing for art, science, or industry, but their
moral laws were the most elevated and their religious doc-
trine the purest the world has seen. At the cost of cruel
sufferings they preserved the priceless doctrine of divine
unity. Their ancient law, transformed by Jesus, has be-
come the law of charity and fraternal love which should
govern mankind.
B.C. 1500.1 THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 45
VIII
THE MEDES AND PERSIANS
Mazdeism. — We have seen that Bactriana and Sogdiana
were the cradle of numerous white tribes which, under the
name of Aryans, emigrated to the southeast toward the
Indus, and under that of Iranians went toward Media and
Persia. Perhaps a religious schism caused the separation
of this great race. At all events, the Medes and Persians
carried to their new country a doctrine which differed pro-
foundly from that afterwards prevalent upon the banks of
the Ganges. They recognized as their legislator Zoroaster,
who seems to have lived fifteen centuries before Christ, and
whose teachings are contained in the Avesta, or sacred book
of the Persians.
This doctrine, which is called Mazdeism, or universal
knowledge, is the purest and mildest with which polytheis-
tic antiquity was acquainted. Zervane Akerene, the first
principle, eternal, infinite, immutable, immobile, created
Ormazd, the lord of knowledge or wisdom, the source of
light and of life like his emblem the sun, the author of all
good, all justice, and Ahriman, his euemy, the principle of
physical and moral evil. Each of them commands a hie-
rarchy of celestial and infernal spirits who labor to extend
the empire of their chief: the former by disseminating
light, life, purity, happiness; the latter by multiplying
malevolent animals and pernicious influences. But a day
w^ill come when Ahriman, finally vanquished, will recog-
nize his defeat, and reascend to Ormazd to enjoy with him
a life of blessedness, together with all the wicked who have
been enticed by him into evil and whom suffering shall
have purified. Thus the goodness of Ormazd is eternal and
boundless; the wickedness of Ahriman is limited to the
time of ordeals, which prepare for and justify redemption.
The compassion of God, therefore, exceeds his justice, and
the hell of the Persians was only a purgatory.
Man, created with a free and immortal soul, is the prize
46 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 1500.
for which the two warring principles contend. As the
devas of Ahriman ceaselessly urge him to evil, Zoroaster
has given him the law of Ormazd to preserve him for the
good. This law is humane and mild. It recognizes the
rights of life while proclaiming those of heaven. It de-
mands faith, but also works, as labor, alms, and moral and
physical purity. It rejects barren asceticism and permits
interest in earthly things, so that man, satisfying the legiti-
mate demands of his nature without excess, has the greater
merit in resisting natural temptations. "If a man eat,"
says the revealed book, " he will listen better to the sacred
word; if he do not eat, he will have no strength for pure
works." Work is a holy thing: "Plough and sow. He
who soweth with purity fulhlleth the whole law. He who
giveth good grain to the earth is as great as if he had offered
ten thousand sacrifices." The believer must pay the same
care to the earth which nourishes him and to the animals
which serve him. Common affection results from com-
munity of labor. Finally, marriage is a sacred bond, and
numerous children are a blessing.
Worship required prayers and an offering, consisting of
animal's flesh, of the sap of certain plants, and of sacred
cakes, which after the sacrifice are consumed by the priest
and attendants. The sacred fire, the vase of elevation, the
vestments of the celebrant, all the utensils of sacrifice, are
provided for by the priests, who are the interpreters of the
religious law, which they expound to the faithful. Prayer
is frequent. There is a prayer for every act in life.
Thereby the living are saved and the punishment of the
dead diminished and their deliverance secured. Prayer
must be made to Ormazd and to the celestial spirits, the
izeds, who wage incessant war with the devas of Ahriman.
One must "pray to the sun, the brilliant and vigorous
courser which never dies," the sun which purifies the earth
and the waters, and bestows abundance. "If it did not
rise, the devas would destroy everything upon the earth,
and there would be no celestial izeds." One must pray by
day and also by night, for at night Ahriman keeps watch,
and he is all-powerful. " Rise then at midnight, wash thy
hands, fetch wood and feed the fire which must always shine
as symbol of the presence of Ormazd at each hearth."
Prayer is sometimes a confession, but made to God and not
to man. " Before thee, 0 Father ! I confess the sins which
B.C. 800-595.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 47
I have committed in thought, in word, and in action. God
have pity on my body and on my soul, in tliis workl and in
the next."
Unfortunately, man too often ignores his creed to obey
his passions. The followers of this joure doctrine have
inflicted on the world as many evils as have done adherents
of other religions. Nevertheless, they never seem to have
become as brutal and depraved as the peoples who sought
their gods in physical ideas of fecundity and generation, or
in the phenomena of active and passive nature.
We know nothing of the children of this race who re-
mained on the banks of the Oxus in Sogdiana and Bactriana.
Thanks to the narratives of the Greeks and the cuneiform
inscriptions, we are better acquainted with the Medes.
Through the Persians the connection was formed between
Asia and Europe which since their wars with the Greeks
has not been broken.
The Medes. — Nevertheless, our details as to Media are
very late. They begin only in the eighth century before
our era, when Arbaces, who governed that country for the
Assyrian kings, revolted successfully against Sardanapalus
(789). From the long anarchy following their emancipa-
tion, the Medes were rescued by Dejoces. He proclaimed
himself king (710), built Ecbatana, and reigned fifty-three
years in profound peace. His son, Phraortes (657), ren-
dered the Persians tributary, but was slain by a king of
Nineveh. Cyaxares, son of Phraortes, avenged him by
attacking that city, which Avas rescued by an invasion of
the Scythians. These barbarians ravaged Western Asia for
twenty-eight years. The Median king rid himself of their
chiefs by causing their throats to be cut at a banquet, over-
threw Nineveh in 606, and subdued Asia Minor as far as the
Halys. An eclipse of the sun, predicted by Thales, pre-
vented a battle which he was on the point of engaging in
with the Lydians (602).
Under Astyages, his successor (595), this great dominion
of the Medes crumbled away. This prince had given his
daughter Mandana to a Persian chieftain, Cambyses, and
from this marriage Cyrus was born. A dream caused
Astyages, says Herodotus, to fear that his grandson would
some day dethrone him, so he ordered Harpagus to put
him to death. A herdsman saved the child and brought
him up in secret. Later on, his grandson was acknowledged
48 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 595-522.
by Astyages. Angry with Harpagus, Astyages put Har-
pagus' own son to death, and had a portion of the body
served to the father at a banquet. Tlie courtier controlled
himself, but waited for revenge.
The Persians under Cyrus. Conquest of Western Asia. —
The Persians, poor and warlike mountaineers, wished for
independence. Cyrus, on reaching manhood, offered to be
their chief, and led them against the Medes, whom Astyages
had placed under the orders of Harpagus. The treachery
of that general assured the defeat of his troops. In a
second battle Astyages himself was taken prisoner, and the
dominion of Asia passed from the Medes to the Persians
(559). The conqueror, profiting by the ardor of his fol-
lowers, overran the countries in the vicinity of the Caucasus,
and attacked the Lydians, who ruled between the Halys and
the ^gean Sea. Their king, Croesus, after defeat in the
plains of Thymbria, shut himself in Sardis, where he was
taken alive. Babylon fell eight years later (538). The
Greek colonies in Asia Minor, together with Phoenicia and
Palestine, were added to the new empire. The Scythians
were devastating its northern provinces. Cyrus attacked
them on the banks of the Araxus, gained one victory, but
perished in a second battle (529). Nevertheless, the enemy
were not strong enough to invade Persia in their turn, and
Cambyses was able to continue in another direction the
conquests of his father.
The Persians under Cambyses and Darius. — Cambyses
undertook to subdue Africa, beginning with Egypt, the last
great monarchy which Cyrus had left standing. It fell in
a single battle (527). The conqueror then wished to attack
Carthage, but for such an expedition a fleet was necessary,
which the Phoenicians refused to furnish. An army, sent
against the oasis of Ammon, perished in the desert; another,
led against the Ethiopians, suffered from famine, and re-
turned in disgrace. Cambyses revenged himself for these
reverses by cruelties of which the priests of Egypt and his
own family were the victims. He put both his brother and
sister to death. Eecalled to Asia by a revolution, he acci-
dentally injured himself while mounting his horse, and died
of the wound (522).
The rebellion which had broken out was a reaction of the
Medes against tlie Persians. A magian, Smerdis, passed
himself off as the brother of Cambyses, whom he resembled,
B.C. 522-509.] THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 49
and was the principal conspirator. Seven Persian noble-
men replied to this attempt by another conspiracy, stabbed
the magian, and proclaimed as king one of their own num-
ber, Darius, the son of Hystaspes. The usurpation of the
magian had shaken the whole empire. A cuneiform inscrip-
tion recently deciphered proves that Darius was obliged to
put down successive rebellions in all the eastern provinces.
Of all these insurrections we know in some detail only that
of Babylon, which Herodotus has narrated. It is rendered
famous by the self-sacrifice of Zo^Dyrus. He mutilated him-
self to induce the Babylonians to admit him to their city
as a victim who sought only revenge, but who afterward
betrayed them (517).
To assure the collection of the taxes and the support of
his regular troops, Darius divided into twenty satrapies
the immense country comprised between the Mediterranean,
the Ked Sea, and the deserts of Africa, Arabia, and India.
To occupy the warlike spirit of the Persians he resumed
the expedition begun by Cyrus against the Scythians, but
attacked them in Europe rather than in Asia. He crossed
the Bosphorus, passed over the Danube on a bridge of
boats which the Asiatic or Thracian Greeks had con-
structed and guarded, and pushed on far in vain pursuit of
the Scythians. As the time fixed for his returning to the
Danube had elapsed, the Athenian, Miltiades, proposed to
destroy the bridge, and thus leave the Persian army to
perish. Histiseus, tyrant of Miletus, opposed this plan,
representing to the chiefs, all of whom were tyrants of
Greek cities, that they would be overthrown if they no
longer had the support of the foreigner. Thus Darius
was saved. On his return the king left 80,000 men to
complete the conquest of Thrace and to undertake the con-
quest of Macedon. He despatched two other expeditions
to the extremities of the empire (509). The first subdued
Barca in Cyrenaica, and the second overran other lands
bathed on the west by the Indus.
The Persian Empire was then at the apogee of its great-
ness. Prom the Indus to the Mediterranean, from the
Danube and Araxes to the Indian Ocean, all owned the
sway of the great king, and he was about to throw a mill-
ion men upon Greece. But the Greco-Persian wars will
show what feebleness existed under this outward show of
strength.
50 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST [b.c. 509.
Government. — The government was despotic, tempered,
perhaps, in the case of the Medes, by the authority of the
magi, but without other check in the Persian Empire than
the exaggerated power of the satraps, whose number Darius
had imprudently reduced to twenty. Moreover, the central
power did not assume the responsibility of administration.
Provided the provinces paid their taxes in money or kind
and furnished the contingents exacted, they preserved their
independence. The great Asiatic courts have always loved
effeminacy and luxury. The Persians became corrupt, like
their predecessors, in spite of the superiority of their relig-
ion, which taught that life should be a continual struggle
against evil. They erected few monum'ents. But the
ancients vaunted the magnificence of Ecbatana, the seven-
walled city, and modern travellers have been able to admire
the imposing ruins of Persepolis, which the Arabs call
Tchil-Minar, or the Forty Columns.
CO <" z ff (1 O ' > '^-
Ci,
« c E^„j;g)^'
HISTORY OF THE GREEKS
»<Kc
PRIMITIVE TIMES
Ancient Peoples : the Pelasgi and Hellenei. — Greece is
a very small country. It occupies the extremity of one of
the three peninsulas which terminate Europe on the south.
Its territory, inclusive of the islands, does not equal that
of Portugal or of the State of Maine ; but its shores are so
indented that its coast line exceeds that of the whole Span-
ish peninsula. On the north it is attached to the prolonged
mass of the eastern Alps, which form one of the walls of the
Danube valley. On the south at three points it projects
into the Mediterranean. The sea separates it on the west
from Italy and on the east from Asia.
As far as one can pierce the obscurity of those remote
ages, apparently the first inhabitants of Greece were the
Pelasgi and the laones, or lonians, members of the great
Aryan race.
The Pelasgi covered with their tribes Asia Minor, Greece,
and Italy, and planted in those countries the first seeds of
civilization. In their monuments they have left imperish-
able proofs of their activity and power, but they themselves
have disappeared, and no trustworthy tradition concerning
them exists. At Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos the remains
of structures, called cyclopean and attributed to them, are
still seen.
By the unaided efforts of her aborigines Greece was
emerging from a savage condition, when, according to tradi-
tions now abandoned, but rendered lifelike by legend and
poetry, colonies arrived from the more civilized countries
of Asia and Africa, who brought with them knowledge of
the useful arts and a purer religion. Thus the Egyptian
51
52 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 1200.
Cecrops, disembarking in Attica, is said to have collected
the inhabitants into twelve small towns, of which Athens
became later on the capital, and to have taught them to
cultivate the olive, to extract its oil, and to till the ground.
To draw closer the bonds of this i\q\y society, he is said to
have instituted the laws of marriage and the tribunal of
the Areopagus, whose just decisions prevented injurious
quarrels.
What Cecrops did in Attica, Cadmus is reported to have
done in Boeotia, whither he brought the Phoenician alpha-
bet, and where he built the Cadmeiim around which Thebes
sprang up. At Argos Danaus introduced some of the Egyp-
tian arts. The Phrygian Pelops settled in Elis, whence his
progeny spread over almost the whole peninsula, which,
as the Peloponnesus, preserves his name. Though only
legends, these traditions hand down the memory of the
ancient relations between Greece and the opposite coasts.
For Greece the most important event of this far-distant
age was the invasion of the Hellenes. From the north of
Greece, their first halting-place, they scattered all over the
country, and effaced the Pelasgi by absorbing them.
Heroic Times. The Trojan War. — The Hellenes were
divided into four tribes : the lonians and Dorians, who at
first remained in obscurity, and the iEolians and Achseans,
who were prominent during the heroic period. History had
not yet begun. Tradition was content with legends, which
describe heroes travelling over Greece to deliver her from
the scourge of brigands, oppressors, and ferocious beasts.
They passed their lives in combating every form of evil,
and received national gratitude and the title and honors of
demi-gods, but were slaves to their own passions and abused
their strength. Such men were Hercules and Theseus. Also
popular songs celebrated the adventurous voyage of the
Argonauts to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece; the
exploits of the Seven Chiefs, who besieged Thebes, defiled
by the crimes of Oedipus and the quarrels of the Epigoni,
his sons; the wise Minos, and many other heroes of those
fabulous days, whose tragic adventures poetry and art have
consecrated.
The Trojan War, which for the first time brought Greece
into immediate conflict with Asia, is, if considered in its
general features, a historic fact. Troy was the capital of
a powerful kingdom in the northwest of Asia Minor and
B.C. 1101.] PRIMITIVE TIMES 53
the last relic of the Pelasgic power. The hostility of race
was increased by a deadly injury. Paris, one of the sons
of King Priam, was smitten by the beauty of Helen, wife
of Menelans, king of Sparta, who had shown him hos-
pitality. He carried her off, and thus enraged all Greece,
which took the part of the outraged husband. An immense
fleet, led by his brother, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae,
landed a numerous army on the shores of the Troad. No
decisive engagement took place for ten years. Troy, de-
fended by Hector, the son of Priam, seemed likely to main-
tain a prolonged resistance, even after her chieftain had
fallen under the blows of Achilles. The Greeks, then called
the Achgeans, employed stratagem. Pretending to with-
draw, they left behind as a,n offering to the gods a mam-
moth wooden horse, which the Trojans carried inside their
walls. The bravest of the Greeks were hidden in its flanks.
Thus Troy fell. Hecuba, wife of Priam, and her daughters
were carried into slavery. Priam was slain at the foot of
the altar. Those of the Achsean princes who had not
already fallen, like Patroclus, Ajax, and Achilles, set out
for their own country. Some of them perished on the way.
Some, like Ulysses, were long held back by contrary winds.
Still others, like Agamemnon, found their throne and mar-
riage-bed occupied by usurpers, whose victims they became.
Many others, like Diomedes and Idomeneus, were forced to
seek a new home in distant regions. The Iliad and the
Odyssey relate with incomparable charm these old legends
in Avhich the popular imagination delighted.
The Dorian Invasion (1104 b.c). Greek Colonies and Insti-
tutions. — The eighty years which followed the capture of
Troy were filled with domestic quarrels, which overthrew
the ancient royal families and caused the power to pass to
new hands. The Dorians, led by the Heraclidse, or descend-
ants of Hercules, invaded the Peloponnesus, surprised de-
fenceless Laconia, drove the ^olians from Messenia and
the Achaeans from Argos, took possession of Corinth and
Megara, and later on marched against Athens, whither the
fugitives had retreated. An oracle promised victory to that
party whose king should perish first. Codrus, king of
Athens, entered the hostile camp in disguise and caused him-
self to 1)6 slain. Thereupon the Dorians immediately with-
drew. On account of the troubled times many inhabitants
emigrated. On the coast of Asia Minor at Smyrna, Phocsea,
54 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 776.
Ephesus, and Miletus, of Africa at Cyrene, of Sicily at
Messina and Syracuse, and of Italy at Tarentum, Naples,
and Sybaris, something like a new Greece was formed, which
for a long time was richer and more beautiful than the
mother country. In the Asiatic colonies, at the point of
contact with Eastern society, was first established that
civilization of which Athens afterward became the resplen-
dent centre.
Despite its dispersion on so many shores and its division
into so many states, the great Hellenic family preserved its
national unity. This was brought about by community of
language and religion, by the renown of certain oracles, and
of Delphi in particular, whither people flocked from all
parts of the Greek world, and by general institutions such
as the Amphyctionic Councils and the Public Games. At
the most celebrated of the Amphyctionic Councils, convened
at Thermopylae and Delphi, the deputies of a dozen peoples
discussed common interests, and punished attacks upon the
national religion or honor. The Olympian Games, where
victory was passionately disputed, occurred every four
years. They furnished the basis for chronology because,
beginning with the year 776 e.g., the name of Corcebus,
who won the prize of the stadium, was inscribed on the
public register of the Elians, and it became customary to
take the date of his victory as the starting-point in mark-
ing events.
B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS 55
II
CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS
Spirit of Liberty in Customs and Institutions. — In that
mountainous land, where nature renders life a struggle, and
which the free waters surround, has always breathed the
spirit of independence, even in its most ancient traditions.
The kings were only military chieftains. When render-
ing justice, they were aided by the old men. Their revenues
were voluntary gifts and a larger share of the booty and of
the sacrifices. There is no trace of that servile adoration
which Eastern monarchs received. There was no separate
clergy and no holy book like the Bible, the Vedas, or the
Avesta. Consecrated doctrines were lacking, and imagina-
tion was unrestrained. Every head of a family was the
priest of his own home.
The aristocracy did not form a caste. The nobles were
the strongest, the most agile, the bravest. Because they
possessed those qualities, they were considered sons of the
gods. Between them and the people there existed no im-
passable barrier, and no one lived idly on the renown of his
ancestors. Each man made his own place, at first by force
and later on by intelligence. What a distance from the
East, with its absolute rule of deities or of kings and priests,
their representatives ! Here man commands ! All must be
movement, passion, boundless desires, audacious efforts.
Prometheus has broken his chains and stolen fire from
heaven in the form of life and thought!
Below the nobles, who constituted the king's council and
held the line of the war-chariots in battle, was the body of
freemen who* in the middle of the public square, formed
the assembly around the circle of polished stones where the
leaders sat with the prince. Though they took as yet no
part in the deliberations, they heard all important ques-
tions discussed, and by their approving or hostile murmurs
influenced the decision. Thus from most distant times
Greece had the custom of public assemblies. The necessity
56 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 750.
of convincing before commanding stimnlated the mind of
the peoi^le. The condition of the slave was mild. He was
the famil}'- servant. When the aged herdsman Eumgens
recognized his master's son, he kissed him on the brow and
eyes, and the dying Alcestis offered her hand to her women
as she bade them her last farewell.
The family Avas better constituted than among any
oriental nation, the Jews alone excepted. Polygamy was
prohibited. If Greek women were still bought, more than
one already possessed the severe dignitj^ of the Eoman
matron. They exercised care over domestic affairs. The
daughters of kings drew water at the fountain like the fair
Nausicaa, and Andromache fed the horses of Hector.
The Greek had no liking for tedious repasts or coarse
pleasures or drunkenness. Immediately after a frugal meal
he wished for games, exercise, dances, bards to chant the
glory of the heroes. A stranger at his door was received
without indiscreet curiosity, "for the guest is the mes-
senger of Zeus." His wrath was terrible. On the field of
battle he did not spare the fallen enemy. Still he might
be appeased by gifts and entreaties, "those halting but
tireless daughters of great Zeus, who follow after wrong to
heal the wounds it has made, and who know how to touch
the hearts of the valiant." Each warrior, feeling the need
of friends, had a brother-in-arms, and self-sacrifice was the
first law of those indissoluble friendships. Ten years after
his return to Lacedsemon Menelaus still shut himself up in
his palace to mourn for the friends whom he had lost under
the walls of Troy.
Later on two unpleasant traits were naturally developed
in Greek character: venality, because the Greeks were poor
and the East had gold in profusion; duplicity, because they
were surrounded by barbarians and must resist force by
cunning.
We must furthermore remark that, though the amiable
and charming qualities we have mentioned caused among
this people many instances of individual greatness through
courage, poetry, art, and thought, yet they did not result in
the durable greatness of the nation. Political sagacity,
which knows how to conciliate conflicting interests and found
great states, was not included among the gifts which this
privileged race received or acquired.
Religion. — Their religion was, at first, only the natural-
B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AND RELIGION OF THE GREEKS 57
isin brought by theiii from Asia wliicli had been their
cradle. At the side of the legends of the heroes and gods,
we find the adoration of forests, mountains, winds, and
rivers. Agamemnon invokes the latter as great divinities,
and to one of them Achilles consecrated his hair. This
nature worship outlived paganism. In modern Greece peo-
ple may still be met who believe in spirits of the waters.
Nature assumes imaginary and changing forms. When
looked at through mental darkness, these speedily become,
in the eyes of faith, realities which anthropomorphism seizes
upon and converts into personal gods. Idealized physical
forces seem to be spiritual beings, and these spiritual beings
acquire a body. "God made man in his own image," says
Genesis. The Greeks made their gods in the image of man.
The conception is the same at bottom, and yet the difference
is great, for the point of departure is, on the one hand, the
infinite perfections of the Supreme Being, and on the other,
the finiteness of humanity. Hence the scandals of Olympus,
together with its grandeurs, and the unsavory history of
those gods, who were subject to all human passions, wrath,
hatred, violence, and even human woes. "Servitude," ex-
claims a poet, "why, Demeter endured it! The smith of
Leumos, and Poseidon, and Apollo of the silver bow, and
Ares the terrible endured it also ! " In the combats before
Troy many are wounded. " Their blood flows," says Homer,
"but a blood that resembles dew, a sort of divine vapor."
When the theodicy of later times had defined with preci-
sion the functions of the immortals, those who counted the
greatest number of worshippers were the twelve great gods
of Olympus. Their chief, the enfeebled representative of
the ancient idea of a Supreme Cause, was Zeus, who still
shook the universe with his frown. But there were many
other divinities, since Greek polytheism, by raising to
divine rank the phenomena of nature, the passions of men,
good things and evil, was led to multiply the gods inces-
santly.
These gods, not always respectable, were, nevertheless,
considered the vigilant guardians of justice. The Furies,
inexorable ministers of their vengeance, attached themselves
to the guilty, whether living or dead. Their hair inter-
woven with serpents, one hand armed with a scourge of
vipers and the other brandishing a torch, they filled the
soul with terror and the heart with torture. This deifica-
58 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c.750.
tion of remorse was all the more necessary as a moral sanc-
tion because this religion was as uncertain of the future life
as was ancient Judaism. No doubt punishment awaited
the criminal in the infernal regions, and the just were re-
warded, but how empty the rewards! In the Elysian
Fields, amid groves of fruit and flowers in a perpetual
summer the souls of the blessed continued to enjoy the
pleasures which they had loved on earth. Minos still sat
in judgment as in his island of Crete ; Nestor recounted his
exploits; Tiresias uttered oracles, and Orion hunted the
wild beasts which he had formerly slain on the mountains,
all regretting their life the while. "Console me not for
my death," said the shade of Achilles. "I would rather
till the soil for some poor husbandman than reign here."
Moreover this immortality is promised only to heroes. As
for the masses, they can count only on the good and the ill
of this present life which the gods deal out to them. There
is a kinship between the members of the city as of the
family. The sons will be punished or rewarded even unto
the third generation for the faults and virtues of their
fathers; peoples likewise for those of their kings, and kings
for their peoples. Such is the blessing and the warning of
Abraham ; a precious belief in default of a more energetic
spring of action, and one which Hesiod sets forth in mag-
nificent verses.
The gods could be appeased by offerings and prayers. At
the door of the temple stood the priest, sprinkling lustral
water upon the hands and heads of the worshippers. The
sacrifice, always celebrated in the open air, was a sacred
banquet, a sort of religious communion between the god,
the priests, and the devotees. In the centre of the temple
rose the statue of the god, surrounded by the statues of
deities or heroes whom he condescended to admit within his
sanctuary. On the walls offerings and votive gifts were
suspended in gratitude for some marvellous cure or unex-
pected deliverance. Eelics of the heroes were preserved.
At Olympia tlie shoulder of Pelops by contact healed cer-
tain maladies. At Tegsea the bones of Orestes rendered
that city victorious as long as it j^ossessed them. The
statues of the gods exerted special influences; one cured
colds, another the gout. The image of Hercules at Erythrse
restored sight to a blind man. Often the images exuded
perspiration, moved their arms and eyes, and rattled their
B.C. 750.] CUSTOMS AKD HELIGIOS OF THE GREEKS 59
weapons. At Aiidros, aiiniuilly on the festival of Bacchus,
water was changed into wine. The temples possessed prop-
erty which did not belong to the priests, and, like churches
in the Middle Ages, many enjoyed the right of asylum.
Private persons or cities could be excluded from the sacri-
fices. Whole nations, placed under the ban of excommuni-
cation, were exterminated, like the Albigenses in France.
All x^jeoples have tried to wrest from the future its secrets.
All have had sorcerers or magicians or augurs, like the
Greeks who interpreted celestial signs, dreamers who beheld
the invisible, or rhapsodists, like the Pythia of Delphi, who
felt the god move within and gave forth his oracles. By a
strange misconception the philosophers accepted this super-
stition. "God," said Plato, "has bestowed divination upon
man to supply his lack of intelligence," and the generals
and politicians were obliged to reckon with it. However,
let us note Hector's indignant protest against these pre-
tended voices from on high, which may deceive. " The best
of omens," said he, "is to defend one's country."
If the Hellenic gods did not greatly influence the moral
development of their worshippers, they did much for art
and poetry, and they did not fetter philosophic thought.
"You will die," was the apostrophe to them of Prometheus
through the mouth of ^Eschylus in a century of faith, " and
some day these nations will hear a voice crying, 'The gods
are dead ! ' "
60 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 830.
Ill
LYCURGUS AND SOLON
Sparta before Lycurgus. — We know almost nothing con-
cerning the liistory of Sparta during the two centuries
which preceded Lycurgus. Only we see that the Spartans,
few in number in the midst of a people who had not emi-
grated at the time of conquest, were obliged to remain
constantly under arms, like an army encamped in a hostile
country. The Dorians concentrated around Sparta, and
alone constituted the state, since they alone could be pres-
ent at the assemblies where the laws were enacted, and alone
held public office. They had two classes of subjects: in
the open town the Laconians, who possessed civil rights ; in
the country the Helots, or serfs attached to the soil, con-
demned to plough and harvest for their masters. The
Spartans composed the ruling race, and Avere all equal to
one another.
However, this equality gradually became disturbed,
^^owerful families arose, while others lost their lands.
Hence there was disorder within the city and weakness
outside. One man attempted to stop this premature decline
by restoring the ancient customs. This man was Lycurgus.
Lycurgus : His Political Ideas. — The widow of his brother,
King Polydectes, offered him her hand and the Spartan
throne if he would put his nephew Charilaus to death. He
refused, but the nobles, irritated by his wise administration
during the minority of the young prince, forced him into
exile. He travelled for a long time, studying the laws of
other nations, and returned to Lacedsemon with Homer's
poems after an absence of eighteen years. With her relig-
ious authority the Pythia of Delphi supported the reforms
which he proposed, and which the Spartans, weary of their
dissensions, welcomed with favor. His laws maintained
the relation already established between the dominant Spar-
tans and the subject Laconians. They regulated the rights
of the two kings, Sparta being a dual monarchy; of the
B.C. 830.] LYCURGUS AND SOLON 61
senate, composed of twenty-eight members of at least sixty
years of age; of the general assembly, which could adopt
or reject propositions presented by the senate and kings;
and lastly of the Ephory, a body of magistrates appointed
annually, perhaps instituted by Lycurgus, but whose great
power dates from a later period. By hereditary right the
two kings were the high priests of the nation, commanded
the army, and were to enforce the decrees formulated by
the senate and freely accepted by the popular assembly.
Civil Laws. — His civil laws aimed at the establishment
of equality among the citizens. To effect this, he divided
the land into 39,000 plots, — 30,000 for the Laconians and
9,000 for the Spartans. This division was attended with
great difficulties, and led to a riot, in which Lycurgus was
wounded; nevertheless, it succeeded. The 9,000 lots of the
Spartans comprised the greaterpart of Laconia, and naturally
included the most fertile lands, whose value the Helots were
to increase. Forbidding the alienation to strangers of any
of these lots, Lycurgus erected them into a sort of perma-
nent military fiefs. War constantly diminished the number
of the Spartans, so that they numbered only a thousand in
the time of Aristotle. Consequently great wealth accumu-
lated in the hands of a few families. The Laconians, on
the contrary, could ally themselves with foreigners, so
their number increased; but their possessions relatively
decreased, and the time came when there was only a small
number of rich people and below them a multitude of poor.
Hence arose revolutions which disturbed the last days of
Sparta.
To maintain equality, Lycurgus prohibited luxury and
the use of gold or silver money, and instituted public re-
pasts, where the strictest frugality always reigned. At the
same time, he forbade to the Spartans commerce, arts, or
letters, and prescribed for all the citizens the same exer-
cises, setting forth as the single aim of their whole life to
provide and train robust defenders for the country. The
same principle guided the education of the children, who
belonged far more to the state than to their parents. The
child born deformed was put to death. The rest, by means
of violent exercises, which were imposed also on the girls,
acquired strength and suppleness, and all were inspired
with sentiments of respect for old age and the law, and of
contempt for pain and death.
62 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 743-594
The Messenian Wars. — Delivered from dissensions by
this rigorous legislation, Sparta completed the conquest of
Laconia, and began that of the Peloponnesus. She first
turned her arms against the Messenians, a Doric tribe settled
west of the Taygetus mountains. There were two wars;
the one lasted twenty years (743-723), the other seventeen
(685-668). The hero of the first was the fierce Aristodemus,
who immolated his daughter in obedience to an oracle, and
killed himself, that he might not witness the humiliation of
his people after the capture of Ithome, which he had de-
fended for ten years. In the second, Aristomenes per-
formed marvels. Not only did he vanquish the Spartans,
but he made his way by night into their city and hung up
a trophy in one of their temples. In vain did the poet
Tyrt?eus stimulate the courage of the Lacedaemonians.
Aristomenes, after being made prisoner, and cast alive into
the deei^ pit called Ceadas, escaped, and recommenced his
daring career. When betrayed by his ally, the king of the
Arcadians, and defeated in a great battle, he retired to
Mount Ira and there held oat for eleven years. At last
he was forced to yield, but preferred exile to servitude.
Many Messenians emigrated and founded Messina in Sicily.
Those who remained in Messenia shared the fate of the
Helots.
This conquest was followed by wars against the cities of
Tegea and Argos, but neither was completely subdued.
The Spartans, in the sixth century before our era, were
considered the leading people of Greece, and were in fact
the most formidable.
Athens until the Time of Solon. The Archonship. — After
the death of Codrus, Athens abolished the monarchy and
appointed archons. Their office until 752 was for life, then
for ten years, after 683 for only one year, and finally was
shared by nine magistrates. This divided authority could
not check the excesses of the aristocracy or the projects of
the ambitious. The stern code of Draco, which punished
every offence with death, was rejected, and troubles con-
tinued.
Solon. — In 594 the task of reforming the laws and the
constitution was intrusted to Solon, then famous for his
poetry. He began by making the payment of debt easier,
and by releasing all debtors, but he refused to allow the
partition of land which the poor demanded. His aim was
B.C. 594-514.] LTCUKGUS AND SOLON (33
to abolish an oppressive aristocracy, without, however, estab-
lishing what would be called to-day a radical democracy.
He divided the people into four classes, according to prop-
erty. To belong to the first class, one must possess an
income of 500 medimni, about eighty-live dollars; for the
second class, 400; for the third, 300. Those who had a
smaller income were the fourth class, or Thetes. Only
members of the first three classes were eligible to public
office, but all might attend the public assemblies and sit in
the tribunals. The nine archons, the supreme magistrates
of the state, could not discharge military duties. The
senate consisted of 400 members, chosen by lot from the
first three classes, and subjected to severe tests. Every
proposition, made to the public assembly, must be first dis-
cussed by it. The people confirmed the laws, nominated
to office, deliberated on state affairs, and filled the courts
in order to try great lawsuits. The Areopagus, composed
of former archons, was the supreme tribunal for capital
causes. It superintended morals and magistrates, and
could even annul the decisions of the people. Thus this
constitution was a clever mixture of aristocracy and de-
mocracy, where the management of public affairs was re-
served to the enlightened citizens. In his civil laws Solon
encouraged labor, and never, like Lycurgus, sacrificed the
man to the citizen, or the moral code to politics.
The Pisistratidae. Clisthenes. Themistocles. — After pro-
mulgating his laws, the Athenian legislator departed to
consult the wisdom of the ancient Eastern nations. AVhen
he returned in 565, he found that Athens had given itself a
master. The parties, which he had thought to stifle, had
reappeared. From these fresh struggles had sprung the
tyranny of Pisistratus, who, without abolishing the consti-
tution, managed, as the favorite of the people and the
leader of the democracy, to exercise in the city an influ-
ence which annulled that of the magistrates. His mild
tyranny, however, was friendly to letters and arts. In 560,
by pretending that an attempt had been made upon his life,
he succeeded in having guards appointed for his protection.
Twice exiled, he was twice recalled, and retained power
until his death. He had honored, if not legitimized, his
usurpation by a skilful and prosperous administration.
His two sons, Hipparchus and Hippias, succeeded (528),
and governed together; but when Hipparchus fell, in 514,
64 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 514-500.
under the dagger of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, Hippias
became a cruel tyrant. The powerful family of the Alc-
meonidse, who had fled from Athens, thought the occasion
favorable to overthrow the last of the Pisistratidse. They
bribed the Pythia of Delphi, who induced the Spartans to
support them. Aided by a Dorian army, they did in fact
return to Athens, and compel Hippias to flee to the Persians
(510). The city, thus delivered, fell at once into intestine
quarrels. Clisthenes and Isagoras, leaders of the people
and of the aristocrats, banished each other in turn. The
former finally carried the day, in spite of the succor fur-
nished his rival by the Spartans. To reward the people who
had supported him, he made the constitution more demo-
cratic, and established ostracism, a custom which consisted
in exiling, as dangerous to the city, any citizen whose name
was inscribed on at least 6000 voting shells. Athens, the
mistress of Euboea, the Thracian Chersonese, and the island
of Lemnos, which Miltiades had conquered, was already a
maritime power. To increase her strength, Themistocles
built 200 vessels with the income of the silver mines of
Larium. This fleet was destined to save Athens ^nd Greece.
B.C. 500-490.] THE PERSIAN WARS 65
IV
THE PERSIAN WARS
Revolt of the Asiatic Greeks from the Persians (500). —
Darius had undertaken his expedition against the Scythians,
and had conquered Thrace, without the Greeks paying any
heed to this formidable aggressor, who must inevitably be
tempted to lay his hand upon their country also. The
Asiatic Greeks, who were subject to Persia, struck a blow
for liberty. Miletus, a colony of Athens, was the centre of
the movement. It asked of the mother city the aid which
Sparta had refused to give. Athens furnished vessels and
a body of troops, which contributed to the capture and burn-
ing of Sardis. A defeat, sustained in their return from this
expedition, disgusted the Athenians with the war, the bur-
den of which then 'fell upon the lonians, who were crushed
in a naval battle. After Miletus was taken, and all the
Greek cities of Asia were again subdued, a Persian army
commanded by Mardonius crossed to Europe to chastise the
allies of the rebels. The Persian fleet was destroyed by a
tempest near Mount Athos, and the Thracians inflicted heavy
losses upon the land forces, so Mardonius returned to Asia.
First Persian War. Marathon and Miltiades (490). — A
second expedition, under the command of Datis and Arta-
phernes, guided by the tyrant Hippias, set out by sea through
the Cyclades, which it subdued, and disembarked 100,000
Persians at Marathon. There 10,000 Athenians and 1000
Platseans, under the command of Miltiades, by their heroic
courage saved not only their country, but the liberty and the
civilization of the world. Hippias fell upon the field of
battle. The Persian fleet, after a vain attempt to surprise
Athens, sailed away in shame to Asia. Miltiades, the hero
of that grand day, was commissioned to subdue the Cyclades,
but he failed before Paros. Being accused of treason, he
was condemned to a fine, which he could not pay, and died
in prison of his wounds. Then Themistocles became the
most influential man at Athens. He realized that the Per-
66 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 480-479.
sians would renew their attempt. Taking advantage of an
insurrection in Egypt, which forced Darius to postpone his
revenge, he devoted all the resources of Athens to increas-
ing the fleet.
Second Persian War. Salamis (480). — Xerxes succeeded
Darius. After he had reduced Egypt once more to submis-
sion, he agitated his immense empire to make a resistless
invasion of Greece with a million men and more than 1200
ships. On arriving from Susa at Abydos he threw a bridge
across the Dardanelles. To punish Athos, as he said, he
had a canal dug, which relieved his fleet of the necessity of
sailing round that dangerous promontory. Thrace, Mace-
don, and Thessaly were deluged with troops, and submitted.
He encountered resistance only at the Pass of Thermopylae.
King Leonidas, who held it with 300 Spartans and a few
Thespians, thwarted all his efforts, but a traitor showed the
Persians a path by which they could outflank the heroic
band. They still refused to retreat, and in the very camp
of Xerxes sought a glorions death. After Thermopylae had
been forced, the Greek fleet could no longer remain off
Artemisium, at the north of Euboea, where it had anchored
at first. It withdrew to Salamis, leaving Attica and cen-
tral Greece defenceless. Xerxes entered Athens, which he
burned. He believed the war was finished, but all Athens
was on board her ships. Themistocles employed a stratagem
to keep the Greeks together at a favorable point, and ex-
cited Xerxes to end all by a naval battle. From the throne
erected for him on the shore the great king beheld the de-
feat and destruction of his fleet at the battle of Salamis.
Six months after crossing the Hellespont as a conqueror,
he repassed it as a fugitive.
Platsea (479). — ^He had, liowever, left Mardonius in
Greece with 300,000 men. A hundred thousand Greeks
collected at Platsea under the orders of Pausanias, king of
Sparta. Of the barbarian host only a detachment escaped,
which had retreated before the battle. On the same day the
Greek fleet won a complete victory at Mycale on the Asiatic
coast. Thus the European continent was purged from the
barbarians, and the sea was free. Athens launched out
upon it.
Continuance of the War by Athens. — To Athens belongs
the chief honor in resisting the Persian invasion. Alone
she had conquered at Marathon with Miltiades. At Salamis
B.C. 470 448.] THE PERSIAN WARS 67
her Themistocles had again assured the victory by forcing
the allies to conquer in spite of themselves. The glory of
Mycale belonged almost wholly to her, and she had shared
that of Platsea. Sparta could cite only the immortal but
futile self-sacrifice of Leonidas. The treachery of King
Pausanias, whom the ephors had sent to Thrace to expel
the Persian garrisons, and who treated secretly with Xerxes,
completely disgusted Lacedeemon with this war. Athens,
thus left alone at the head of the allies, boldly accepted the
role of antagonist to the great king. She herself assumed
the offensive. Soon, asking vessels and money from her
allies instead of soldiers, she continued the struggle in the
name of Greece, but on her own account and for her own
advantage. She subdued Amphipolis and a part of Thrace,
whither she sent 10,000 colonists, and undertook to free the
Asiatic Greeks. Cimon in one day gained two victories, one
by land and one by sea, near the banks of the Eurymedon
(466). Thereby he secured for Athens the empire of the
seas, and, taking possession of the Thracian Chersonese, he
wrested from the Persians the key to Europe.
Last Victories of the Greeks. Cimon. — Artaxerxes Lon-
gimanus ascended the throne in 465, and beheld the shame
of his empire still further increased. Another rebellion in
Egypt threatened the Persian monarchy with dismember-
ment. The Athenians hastened to aid the rebels, who held
out for seven years. The banishment of Cimon, who was
ostracized, and the rivalry of Sparta and Athens, which led
to the first war between the two republics and their allies,
gave a little respite to the Persians. But Cimon was re-
called, and reconciled Athens and Sparta. Immediately he
began hostilities against the common enemy. One victory
near Cyprus, and another on the coast of Asia, gloriously
terminated both his military career and the Persian wars.
The great king, threatened even in his own dominions,
signed a humiliating treaty, which restored liberty to the
Asiatic Greeks (448). His fleet was prohibited from enter-
ing the ^gean Sea, and his armies from approaching within
three days' march of its coasts. Cimon died in his triumph.
68 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [3.0.460-430
THE AGE OF PERICLES
The Athenian People. — During this struggle Athens had
been admirably served by the great men who had succeeded
each other as her generals or statesmen : Miltiades, the hero
of Marathon; Themistocles, who so often mingled craft
with courage ; Aristides, more upright, more just, benefiting
Athens by his virtues equally with his valor ; and thus inspir-
ing the allies with sufficient confidence to trust to him their
vessels and treasures, a man who, after having administered
the most opulent treasury in Europe, died without leaving
enough property to defray his funeral expenses, and be-
queathed to the state the duty of paying them and of dower-
ing his daughter ; Cimon, son of Miltiades, greater than his
father, a hero whose single passion was to unite the Greek
cities in fraternal bonds, and pursue the Persians to the
death, and avenge the burning of Athens and of her temples.
With these illustrious leaders we must associate the Athe-
nian people, a populace often fickle, thankless, and violent,
but which redeemed its faults and crimes by its enthusiasm
for everything beautiful and grand, by the masterpieces
which it inspired, and by the artists and poets whom it gave
mankind, and who will forever plead its cause with pos-
terity.
Pericles. — Pericles, the son of Xanthippus, the conqueror
of Mycale, deserves special mention in this roll of honor.
From a fancied facial resemblance to Pisistratus, he long
held himself aloof from politics. Though by birth an aris-
tocrat, he attached himself to the popular party. The
powerful influence which he acquired by the dignity of his
life and his military services he employed to restrain the
evil and to develop the good impulses of the people. This
little city controlled too vast an empire. To assure its con-
tinuance, he sent out numerous colonies, which did not, like
those of preceding centuries, become cities independent of
the mother country, but rather fortresses and garrisons
B.C. 400-430.] THE AGE OF PERICLES 69
whereby the country in which they were established was
held in submission to Athens.
Great Intellects at Athens. — Pericles desired that Athens
should be not only rich and powerful, but also glorious.
He invited thither those superior men who then honored
the Hellenic race. From all directions mankind flocked to
the city of Minerva as an intellectual capital. The festi-
vals were thronged, where the loftiest pleasures of the mind
were associated with the most imposing spectacles of re-
ligious pomp, of perfect art, and of nature in her most
charming aspect. These festivals were not, like those of
the Roman populace, sanguinary games of the amphitheatre
with spectacles of death, blood, and corpses, but consisted
of pious hymns, patriotic songs, and dramatic representa-
tions of events in the history of the gods or of the heroes.
Thus this period, often called the Age of Pericles, beheld
at Athens one of the most brilliant bursts of civilization
which has ever illumined the Avorld. What a century that
was, when, in a single city, there met each other Sophocles
and Euripides, two of the greatest tragic poets of all ages ;
Lysias, the powerful orator; Herodotus, the inimitable nar-
rator; Meton, the astronomer, and Hippocrates, the father
of medicine; Aristophanes, foremost of the comic poets
of antiquity; Phidias, the most illustrious of its artists;
Apollodorus, Zeuxis Polygnotus, and Parrhasius, its most
celebrated painters ; and in conclusion, two immortal phi-
losophers, Anaxagoras and Socrates. If we remember that
this city had just lost ^schylus, and that it was soon to
possess Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle, we
shall not be surprised that it was called " the preceptress
of Greece," and that it became the teacher of the world.
The Parthenon. — We still read the works of those poets,
historians, and philosophers, but of the achievements of the
artists only fragments remain. Nevertheless when, seated
on the tribune from which Demosthenes spoke, one con-
templates the Acropolis, and beholds the exquisite grace,
the incomparable beauty, and the imposing grandeur which
those ruins of what once were the Parthenon, the Erec-
theum, and the Propylsea still preserve, he is overwhelmed
with admiration. However vivid be in his mind the memory
of vast Egyptian monuments, he says to himself that the
art eternal is here.
HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 457-i2i.
VI
RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES
Irritation of the Allies against Athens. — After the Persian
wars were finished, Athens continued to exact tribute
money from her confederates on the plea that the Greeks
must be ready to repel a fresh invasion. The money thus
collected she spent upon herself. The allies grew tired of
always paying for those monuments and festivals, which
gave such brilliancy to only one city. When their com-
plaints were harshly repressed, they addressed mute suppli-
cations to Sparta. Jealous of the glory of Athens, Sparta
labored to form a continental league which she could oppose
to that of the maritime cities and islands which were sub-
ject to the Athenians. From 457 to 431 there were several
hostile encounters, but the general war did not break out
until the Thebans, who were allies of Sparta, attacked
Platsea, which was an ally of Athens.
The Peloponnesian War to the Peace of Nicias (431-424).
— The struggle at first consisted only of pillaging expedi-
tions on both sides. The Spartans devastated Attica every
spring, while every summer the Athenian fleet ravaged the
coasts of the Peloponnesus. Unfortunately, in the third
year, a pestilence mowed down the people packed together
in Athens, and carried off Pericles. Demagogues, unable to
control the masses, took the place of the dead statesman.
Cleon, the new popular favorite, gave free rein to the pas-
sions of the crowd. After the revolt of Mitylene in 427,
the Athenian mob condemned a whole people to death,
and a thousand Mitylenean prisoners were slain. From
429 to 426 the successes were balanced. The Boeotians de-
stroyed Plataea, but Potidsea was captured by the Athenians.
In 424 Brasidas took Amphipolis, thereby apparently giv-
ing the advantage to Lacedsemon, but Demosthenes seized
Pylos, and thence called the helots to liberty, while 400
Spartans, who had allowed themselves to be shut up in
Sphacteria while attempting to reconquer Pylos, were them-
B.C. 421-408.] RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES 71
selves overpowered and made prisoners. The Lacedaemo-
nian allies, the Boeotians and Megarians, were beaten. The
Athenians in turn met a check at Delium, and Cleon was
slain at Potida^a. The Spartan, Brasidas, also fell in the
same action. The partisans of peace then regained the
upper hand (421), and Nicias caused the treaty to be signed
which bears his name.
The Sicilian Expedition. Alcibiades (425-413). — This
peace upset the calculations of the ambitious and brilliant
Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles. As he desired war that
he might win distinction, he proposed and caused to be
voted the disastrous expedition to Sicily, which might per-
haps have succeeded, had he not been accused of sacrilege
and recalled. The traitor then fled to Sparta, and from
there directed fatal blows against his own country. The
siege of Syracuse, weakly conducted by Nicias, ended in the
destruction of the Athenian fleet and army (413). The
leaders were put to death by the Syracusans, and the sol-
diers sold as slaves.
This disaster dealt the power of Athens a blow from
which she did not recover. By the advice of AlciJ^iades,
the Spartans fortified Decelea at the entrance to Attica,
which they held as though besieged, and allied themselves
with the Persians. Athens heroically braved the storm,
displayed unexpected resources, and held all her allies to
their duty. Fortunately for her, Alcibiades was compelled
to flee from Sparta. He withdrew into Asia, and Avon the
good-will of Tissaphernes, by showing him the advantage to
the great king in supporting a war so useful to the Persian
Empire. By the promise of subsidies from Persia, Alcibi-
ades seduced an Athenian army then at Samos, and brought
about a revolution at Athens. The democracy was curbed
by the establishment of a superior council, with 400 mem-
bers, which replaced the senate, and by an assembly of
, 5000 chosen citizens, which replaced the assembly of the
people (411). But the army of Alcibiades, while appoint-
ing Alcibiades as its general, repudiated the new govern-
ment, which fell at the end of four months. The Assembly
of the Five Thousand was retained, however, and the recon-
ciliation of the army and people was sealed by the recall of
Alcibiades. Two naval battles won in the Hellespont (411),
a great victory on land and sea near Cyzicus (410), and
lastly the capture of Byzantium (408), consolidated the
72 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 407-396.
dominion of Athens over Thrace and Ionia, and Alcibiades
made a triumphal return to his country (407). But the
same year several disasters which he was unable to prevent
aroused suspicion ; he was again stripped of his power and
forced into exile. He finally perished at the hands of the
Persians.
The Battle of iEgos Potamos, Capture of Athens (404). —
The younger Cyrus, who was already plotting the overthrow
of his brother, King Artaxerxes II, then held command
in Asia Minor. Por the accomplishment of his projects he
counted upon the assistance of the Spartans, whom he re-
garded as the best soldiers in Greece or in the world. So
he gave them unreserved support. By the crushing vic-
tory of ^Egos Potamos, Lysander wrested from Athens the
empire of the sea (405). Athens was unable to resist
further, and was captured the following year. Her walls
were razed, her fleet reduced to twelve galleys, and the
government intrusted to an oligarchy of thirty tyrants,
who sanctioned abominable atrocities, and even put to death
one of their colleagues, Theramenes, for having suggested
moderation. After a few months a returned exile, Thrasy-
boulos, defeated the army of the tyrants and reestablished
the former constitution (403).
Four years later Socrates was condemned to drink hem-
lock. He was one of the most illustrious victims of super-
stition and intolerance.
Power of Sparta. Expedition of the Ten Thousand. Age-
silaus. — The supremacy in the Greek world had passed from
Athens to Lacedsemon, who used it badly. She did little
for art or learning, and her chiefs displayed nothing but
brutal rapacity and greed.
The younger Cyrus was pursuing his plans. With thir-
teen thousand Greek mercenaries, he made his way as far
as the neighborhood of Babylon, and won the battle of Cu-
naxa, but he died in the moment of triumph (401). The
Greeks, surrounded on all sides, managed, under the leader-
ship of the Lacedaemonian Clearchus, and afterwards of the
Athenian Xenophon, to make their way across four hundred
leagues of country, over the pathless mountains of upper
Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Pontus, to the shores of the
Black Sea. This famous retreat, known as that of the Ten
Thousand, revealed the weakness of the great empire. There-
fore as early as the year 396 Agesilaus, king of Sparta, pro-
B.C. 396-371.] RIVALRY OF SPARTA, ATHENS, AND THEBES 73
posed its conquest. Conqueror of the satraps of Asia Minor,
ally of the Egyptians, who had again revolted, and master of
the forces of many barbarian kings, he was about to under-
take the Persian expedition, sixty years before Alexander,
when the Persians found means to incite a war against
Sparta in the very heart of Greece itself. At their instiga-
tion, Corinth, Thebes, and Argos formed a league, which
Athens and Thessaly joined. Agesilaus, thus recalled from
Asia, won the battle of Coronea, which strengthened the
dominion of Sparta on land; but the Athenian Con on, in
command of a Phoenician fleet, deprived her of the empire
of the sea, and with Persian gold rebuilt the ramparts of
Athens.
Treaty of Antalcidas. — The Spartans, disturbed by the
strength of their rivals, sent Antalcidas to treat with the
great king. The Asiatic Greeks became his subjects, Athens
retained Lemnos, Imbros, and Seyros, but the independence
of the other Greek cities was recognized (387). In Cimon's
treaty it had been Athens who imposed her conditions upon
Persia. The change had come, not because Persia was more
powerful, but Greece less virtuous. Everything was for sale,
and as the great king had much gold, he bought everything,
orators, soldiers, fleets, cities. The outcome of a war no
longer depended upon the patriotism of the citizens and the
talent of the leaders, but upon an obolus more or less in the
wages of the mercenaries which induced them to pass from
one camp to the other.
Struggle between Sparta and Thebes. Epaminondas (381-
362). — The alliance against Sparta had placed Greece at
the feet of Persia. Yet Sparta seemed strong, and believed
herself able to act as she pleased. One day she destroyed
Mantinea without cause and overthrew Olynthus. Finally
one of her generals, Phibidias, violating all justice, sur-
prised the Cadmeum, the citadel of Thebes, which was then
the ally of Lacedsemon. The Spartans retained what treach-
ery had given them (382). The Theban Pelopidas at the
head of many exiles delivered his country, and reunited in
a common alliance all the cities of Boeotia. At Leuctra
Epaminondas crushed the army the Spartans had sent
against them (371), and ventured to carry the war into the
Peloponnesus. He fought his way to the very walls of
Sparta, which however he was unable to enter. To hold
it in check he built on its flanks Megalopolis and Messene,
74 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 362.
wliicli became fortresses and camps of refuge for the Arca-
dian and Messenian fpes of Sparta (369). Against Thebes
Sparta excited Athens, Persia, and Dionysius, tyrant of
Syracuse. Then Epaminondas invaded the Peloponnesus
a second time, made an alliance with the Persian court, and
created a navy of one hundred vessels which supported
Rhodes, Chios, and Byzantium in revolt against Athens.
Unhax^pily for Thebes, Epaminondas a third time invaded
the Peloponnesus, and perished in the arms of victory at
Mantineia (362). The power of his country fell with him.
B.C. 359.] PHILIP OF HAVE I) ON, AND DEMOSTHENES 75
VII
PHILIP OP MACEDON, AND DEMOSTHENES
Philip. — Macedon, a vast region to the north of Thessaly
and of the ^gean Sea, very early had kings who, sur-
rounded by barbarous peoples and dominated by a powerful
aristocracy, had hitherto played only an insignificant part.
Before Philip, the father of Alexander, Macedon was even
in a desperate situation. She paid tribute to the lUyrians,
and the haughty intervention of Thebes and Athens in her
affairs only increased the chaos. Philip, who had been sent
to Thebes as a hostage, was brought up in the house of
Epaminondas, and saw how the genius of one man could
elevate a nation. Therefore on attaining power (359) he
was able in two years, by means of the phalanx which he
had organized in accordance with the ideas of Epaminondas,
to rid the kingdom of the barbarians and himself of two
competitors.
Capture of Amphipolis. Occupation of Thessaly. — Macedon
once set free, he wished to enlarge and make it the ruler
of Greece. The Greek colonies, established on her coasts,
cut her off from the sea and prevented her having a navy ;
so he captured them one after another. First he purchased
the neutrality of the powerful republic of Olynthus by
giving it Potidsea, which he had seized. Then he took
Amphipolis, which Athens deceived by his promises was
uuable to succor. Next he completed the conquest of the
country between the Nestos and the Strymon, where he
found building-timber for his navy, and the gold mines of
Mount Pangseus, that furnished him a revenue of a thou-
sand talents. Afterwards he penetrated into Thrace, which
he partially subdued, and attacked Byzantium, which was
delivered by Athens. Checked in that quarter, he turned
to another. He interfered in the affairs of Thessaly, where
he overthrew the tyrants of Phera3, and appointed himself
the champion of religion against the Phocians, who had just
been condemned by the Amphictyonic Council for having
76 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 352-338.
tilled a sacred field. He crushed them in a great battle
(352). The grateful Thessalians opened three of their
towns to the avenger of the gods. He put a garrison in-
side and thereby held the entire province. He wished to
go further and seize Thermopylae. But the Athenians by
their vigilance at first frustrated this project, as they had
frustrated one attempt upon Byzantium and another upon
Europe.
Demosthenes. — The Athenians alone seemed active in the
interests of Greece. They were led by a great citizen,
Demosthenes, who constantly employed his vigorous elo-
quence in unveiling the ambitious designs of the king. But
his philippics could not overcome craft supported by force.
OlynthuS; which Demosthenes tried to save, fell, and with it
the barrier that embarrassed Macedonia the most (348).
Athens, now menaced in Euboea and even in Attica, whither
Macedonian troops had come to remove the trophies of Mara-
thon and Salamis, signed a peace which Demosthenes him-
self advised and which he negotiated with the king.
Second Sacred War (346). Battle of Chaeronea (338).—
While Athens confiding in this treaty gave herself up to
festivals, Philip passed through Thermopylae, overwhelmed
the Phocians and made them give him the vote which they
had in the Amphictyonic Council (346). This was a de-
cisive step, for, once a member of the Hellenic body, the
king could make the Amphictyonic Council speak in ac-
cordance with his interests and use it as his own instrument
of oppression. Nevertheless, since he knew how to wait,
he halted almost immediately in order to avoid any dan-
gerous outbreak of despair, and turned his arms toward the
Danube, which he made the boundary of his kingdom, and
toward Thrace, where Phocion still prevented him from
seizing the Greek colonies established on the Hellespont.
While he was so far from Thermopylae, his agents worked
for him in Greece, ^schines caused the management of a
new sacred war against the Locrians to be intrusted to him.
For the second time religion was going to ruin this far
from religious people. Philip, on arriving in central Greece,
seized Elatea.
Demosthenes immediately broke silence. He reunited
Athens and Thebes for a supreme effort, but Greek liberty
was overthrown at Chaeronea (338). The victor did himself
honor by his moderation, and in order to justify the supreme
B.C. 336.] PHILIP OF MACEBON, AND DEMOSTHENES 77
authority which he had just grasped, he had himself ap-
pointed by the Amphictyonic Council general-in-chief of the
Greeks against the Persians. He was about to repeat the
expedition of Agesilaus, though with far larger forces.
Macedon was now a powerful state extending from Ther-
mopylae to the Danube, and from the Adriatic to the Black
Sea. Its government had nothing to fear from internal
troubles or pretenders to the throne. The aristocracy, the
cause of previous disorders, had been won over by the glory
of the monarch, by honors and offices, or were restrained by
the hostages which they had been compelled to give that the
royal guard might be composed entirely of young nobles.
But death arrested Philip at the age of forty-seven in the
midst of his plans. He was assassinated by a noble Pau-
sanias, probably instigated by the Persians (336).
78 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 336-332.
VIII
ALEXANDER
(336-333)
Submission of Greece to Alexander (336-334). — Great
disturbances broke out at the news that Philip had left as
his heir Alexander, a young man of twenty. However,
Alexander rapidly subdued Thrace and lUyricum, van-
quished the barbarians on both banks of the Danube, and,
learning that the Macedonian garrison had been massacred
at Thebes, arrived in Boeotia thirteen days after leaving the
Danube. " Demosthenes called me a child," he said, " when
I was in Illyricum, and a youth when I arrived in Thessaly.
Under the walls of Athens I will show him that I am a
man." He took Thebes, slew six thousand of its inhabi-
tants, and sold thirty thousand into slavery. The terrified
Greeks at Corinth conferred upon him the title, already
bestowed upon his father, of general-in-chief for the Persian
War.
Expedition against Persia (334). Conquest of the Asiatic
Coast and Egypt. — He crossed the Hellespont with 30,000
foot and 4500 horse, defeated at Granicus 110,000 Persians,
then marched along the coast so as to shut Greece from the
agents of Darius, and thus deprive them of the means of
exciting disorders there. Darius tried to arrest him at Issus
in Cilicia. Alexander vanquished him (333). Disdaining
to pursue he continued the plan which he had marked out
in the occupation of the maritime cities. Without anxiet}^
he devoted seven months to the siege of Tyre, and spent
another year in Egypt, where he sacrificed to the native
gods so as to win over the inhabitants. He founded Alex-
andria, and induced the priests of Ammon to bestow upon
him the title of Son of the Gods, which the ancient Pha-
raohs had borne (332).
Conquest of Persia. Death of Darius. Murder of Clitus
(334-327). — After conquering the maritime provinces of
the empire, Alexander traversed Palestine and Syria,
Copyiiglii, 1898, by T. V. Crowell & Co.
I
;o i
^7-
GO 05
E3IPIlii: OF
AJ^EXANDER
Engraved by Colton, Ohman i- Co.. N. V.
B.C. 332-327.] ■ ALEXANDER 79
crossed the Euphrates, where the Persians did not oppose
his passage, and the Tigris, which they defended no better,
and at last attacked and completely defeated Darivis in the
plain of Arbela (331). Sure that no army of the Persian
king could resist his Macedonians, he allowed that prince
to again flee toward his eastern provinces. He descended
to Babylon, where he sacrificed to Bel, whose temple over-
thrown by Xerxes he restored, and hurried to occupy the
other capitals of Darius : Susa, which contained immense
riches ; Pasargadse, the sanctuary of the empire ; and Persep-
olis, which he burned, thereby announcing to the whole East
that a new conqueror had seated himself upon the throne
of Cyrus. With headlong speed he subdued, or caused his
generals to subdue, the neighboring mountaineers. He en-
tered Ecbactana a week after the king had left it, continued
the pursuit and Avas on the point of again attacking him,
when three satraps, whose prisoner the unfortunate prince
had become, cut the throat of Darius and left only a corpse
for the conqueror. Bessus, one of the assassins, tried to
make Bactriana a centre of resistance. Alexander gave
him no time. He rapidly traversed Aria and Bactriana as
far as the Oxus. Bessus, who had retreated beyond that
river, was delivered into his hands, and a council of Medes
and Persians surrendered him to the brother of Darius, who
caused him to undergo a thousand tortures.
Alexander wintered in those regions. On the shores of
the laxartes he founded a new Alexandria, which he peopled
with Greek mercenaries, invalid soldiers, and barbarians.
The capture of the Sogdian Eock, the marriage of Alexan-
der with Roxana, the daughter of a Persian nobleman, and
the foundation of many cities completed the subjugation of
Sogdiana, where the conqueror left great but also terrible
memories. He tortured Philotas and his father, Parmenio,
because of a conspiracy which they had not revealed, mur-
dered Clitus during an orgy, and put to death the philoso-
pher Callisthenes for a plot to which he was a stranger.
Alexander beyond the Indus. His Return to Babylon, and
Death (327-323). — The Persian Empire no longer existed.
It was now the Macedonian Empire. Alexander did not
find it large enough, and wished to add India thereto. Upon
the banks of the Cophen he met an Indian king, Taxiles,
who entreated his aid against Porus, another Indian monarch.
His soldiers felled a whole forest to construct a fleet upon
80 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 325.
the Indus, and Porus was conquered and captured. " How
do you wish to be treated ? " Alexander asked his prisoner.
" Like a king," replied Porus. The captive was allowed to
retain his states, which were also enlarged, and was assigned
the duty of maintaining the country in submission. Alex-
ander wished to penetrate into the valley of the Ganges,
but his army refused to go farther and he was obliged to
halt. After marking the extreme limit of his triumphant
course by twelve altars around which he celebrated games,
he returned to the Indus, which he descended to the ocean,
subjugating the people along the banks, founding cities,
dockyards, and ports, and carefully exploring the mouths of
the river. He returned to Babylon through the deserts of
Gedrosia and Carmania, through which no army had ever
marched. Meanwhile his admiral, Nearchus, coasted with
the fleet along the shore and returned by the Persian Gulf
that he might indicate to commerce the road to India.
Notwithstanding the many recruits which Macedon and
Greece had sent him, Alexander could not have founded so
many cities and maintained his subjects in obedience, if he
had not pursued a wise policy toward the conquered. He
sacrificed to their gods, respected their customs, left the
civil government in the hands of the natives, and endeavored
to unite victors and vanquished by marriages, of which he
himself set the example by wedding Barsina, or Statira, the
daughter of Darius. The military forces alone remained in
the hands of his Macedonians. He counted that the benefi-
cent influence of commerce would create between East and
West, between Persia and Greece, common interests and
weld those many diverse peoples into one formidable em-
pire. Death overtook him at Babylon (323) and put an end
to his mighty plans. No one after him had sufficient
strength or authority to take them up. When about to
draw his last breath, he had given his ring to Perdiccas.
His other lieutenants asked him to whom he left his crown.
^' To the most worthy, but I fear I shall have a bloody
funeral." He was only thirty-two years of age and had
reigned twelve.
The Age of Alexander. — Great men again in the age of
Philip and Alexander added to the glorious patrimony
which their ancestors had bequeathed. Praxiteles, the most
graceful of Greek sculptors, and the painter Pamphilus, the
master of Apelles, followed Phidias, Polycletus, and Zeuxis.
B.C. 323.] ALEXANDER 81
.Nevertheless art diminished. Taste became less loure and
style less severe. Too much was yielded to form. Art
spoke to the eye rather than to the mind. Eloquence and
philosophy, however, showed no decline. The tribune of
Athens resounded with the impassioned and virile accents of
Demosthenes, Lycurgus, Hyperides, and Hegesippus. yEs-
chines, the rival of Demosthenes, contributed the movement
and splendor of his periods, and Phocion his virtue, the
most powerful weapon of oratory.
After the death of Socrates his disciples dispersed.
Plato, the most illustrious of them all, had returned to
Athens and taught in the gardens of Academus. The
Greeks, charmed by the matchless grace of his speech,
reported that his father was Apollo and that the bees of
Hymettus had deposited their honey upon his lips in the
cradle. Aristotle, his pupil and rival, the teacher of Alex-
ander, has fastened upon himself the eternal attention of
mankind by other merits. His vast and mighty genius
desired to understand all, the laws of the human mind as
well as the laws of nature. Philosophy still pursues the
double path which those preeminent intellects marked out,
idealistic with the one, rational and positive with the other.
Xenophon, a gentle spirit and amiable narrator, ranks far
below them.
82 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 323-G4.
IX
CONVERSION OP GREECE AND OF THE GREEK KING-
DOMS INTO ROMAN PROVINCES
(333-146)
Dismemberment of Alexander's Empire. — Three months
after Alexander's death, his wife Roxana gave birth to
Alexander Aigos. The conqueror left a natural son named
Hercules; a half-brother, the imbecile Arrhideus, and two
sisters, Cleopatra and Thessalonica. His imperious mother,
(Jlympias, was still alive. After long debates Arrhideus
and Alexander Aigos were both proclaimed. Antipater was
placed over the European forces, Craterus was made a sort
of guardian to Arrhideus, and Perdiccas became a general
prime minister. Continual convulsions during twenty-four
years resulted from this divided authority, and cost the lives
of all the members of the royal family and of a majority of
the generals. The empire was rent asunder along the lines
of its ancient nationalities. Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and
Macedon were reconstructed after the decisive battle of
Ipsus, where Antigonus made a last effort to restore unity
(301).
Kingdoms of Syria (201-64) and Egypt (301-30).— Seleu-
cus ISTicator, one of the victors of Ipsus, founded the dynasty
of the Seleucidse, to whom he gave for capitals Seleucia and
Antioch and for empire all the countries comprised between
the Indus and the J^gean Sea. His son could not prevent
the Gauls from settling in Galatia. Antiochus II, despite
his surname of the God, saw two kingdoms rise in his east-
ern provinces, that of the Bactrians, which did not last, and
that of the Parthians, which renewed the Persian monarchy.
Antiochus III the Great (224-187) ventured to attack the
Romans, who vanquished him at Thermopylae (191) and
Magnesia (190), wrested from him Asia on this side of the
Tarsus, and reduced Syria itself to a Roman province (64).
Egypt saw better days .under the first of the Lagidse, all
B.C. 301-30.] GREECE BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE 83
of whom bore the name of Ptolemy. It was then a power-
ful state, the centre of the world's commerce, the asylum
of letters and science, with a magnificent library at Alexan-
dria. But the clever kings were speedily succeeded by
debauched, cruel, incapable sovereigns, and after them by
foreign intervention.
Thus Ptolemy Soter (301) added to his kingdom Cyre-
naica, Cyprus, Ooele-Syria, and Phoenicia. Philadelphus
(285) developed the navy and maintained two successful
wars, one against his brother Magas, governor of Cyrene,
and the other against the king of Syria, who was unable to
conquer Egypt. Euergetes (247) penetrated in Asia as far
as Bactriana and in Africa to the interior of Ethiopia, while
his lieutenants subjugated the coasts of Arabia Felix to
secure the trade-route to India. Philopator (222) began the
decline, which Epiphanes (205) hastened by placing himself
under the tutelage of the Romans, who thenceforth con-
stantly intermeddled in Egyptian affairs till the days of Csesar
and Cleopatra. The latter was a dangerous siren, to whom
Antony sacrificed his honor, his fortune, and his life. Octa-
vius resisted her, and the queen, threatened with adorning a
Roman triumph, died from the poison of an asp. Egypt
became a Roman province (30), as the kingdom of Perga-
mos in Asia Minor had done (129) by virtue of the testa-
ment of its last king.
Kingdom of Macedon (301-146). Cynocephalse and Pydna.
— Macedon did not exist so long, but fell with greater honor,
for her last two kings dared withstand Rome, who had
become through her triumph over Carthage the greatest
military power in the world. The descendants of Antigo-
nus, who was vanquished at Ipsus, had secured for themselves
the throne of Macedon, and like Philip and Alexander tried
to obtain the supreme power over Greece. During the
second Punic War, the Romans by the conquest of lUyri-
cum gained a footing on the Greek peninsula. Philip of
Macedon tried to drive them into the sea, and made with
Hannibal (215) a treaty which was to assure him the posses-
sion of Greece ; but a defeat on the banks of the Aoiis forced
him to beat a rapid retreat to his kingdom. The Roman
senate, taking advantage of the enmities which his ambition
had aroused, announced itself the protector of the nations
threatened by him. He had the impudence to provoke
Rome, now rid of Hannibal. The reply was prompt and
84 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS [b.c. 322-221.
terrible. The legions crushed at Cynocephalae the phalanx,
which had conquered G-reece and Asia (197). His son
Perseus was no more fortunate at Pydna (168). In 146
Macedon was effaced from the list of nations and the king-
dom of Alexander was henceforth nothing but a Roman
province.
Death of Demosthenes (322). The Achaean League (251-
146). — While the successors of Alexander were disputing
the fragments of his purple robe in Asia, Greece made an
effort to recover her liberty. Demosthenes, who had re-
mained the soul of the national party, and Athens, who
hoped to be able to break once more the dominion of the
stranger, stirred up the Lanian war. It began well but
ended in disaster. Demosthenes was banished and took
poison (522). On the base of the statue which, later on,
his fellow-countrymen erected to his memory, these words
were inscribed : ''If thy power had equalled thy eloquence,
Greece would not to-day be captive." Phocion perished five
years later by the order of the Macedonians. However, the
Greek cities profiting by the disorders in Macedon regained
their liberty; but the foreign rule when it withdrew left
behind, like an impure deposit, tyrants in every town. Sup-
ported by mercenaries, these men terrorized over the citizens
and extorted from their cowardice the gold which served to
rivet their bonds. One man, Aratus, undertook to overthrow
these detestable rulers. First he reconstituted the ancient
federation of the twelve Achaean cities. Then he delivered
Sicyon (251), Corinth, Megara, Trezene, Argos, Mantineia,
Epidaurus, and Megalopolis from their tyrants, and made
alliance with the ^tolian league in order to raise a barrier
against the ambition of Macedon. To extend his patriotic
work to central Greece, he aided in the deliverance of Athens
and Orchomenus. A few efforts more and the Achaean league
would have embraced the whole of Hellas.
Unfortunately, Sparta revived with a spasm of reform.
Cleomenes made all property common, reestablished the pub-
lic meals and reconstituted with foreigners a new Spartan
people which immediately contended with the Achaeans, and
disputed their preponderance in the Peloponnesus. Aratus
was constrained to implore assistance from the Macedoni-
ans, who defeated Cleomenes at Sellasia (221). This defeat
crushed new Sparta, but placed the Achaeans in depen-
dence upon Macedon, who made everything bend before
B.C. 221-146.] GREECE BECOMES A ROMAN PROVINCE 85
her. The Romans becoming disqnietecl at this reviving
strength prepared to intervene so as to destroy it. The
violent deeds of Philip and the murder of Aratus gave
them numerous allies, and the ^Etolians helped win the bat-
tle of Cynocephalse. Victorious Rome took nothing for
herself, but divided everything in order to weaken all. She
destroyed the leagues in Thessaly and central Greece by
declaring that every city should be free. The Greeks
applauded, not without perceiving that this liberty would
lead them to servitude. Philopoemen of Megalopolis, the
worthy successor of Aratus, at the head of the Achaean
league tried to delay the moment of inevitable ruin. Lace-
dsemon, which had fallen into the hands of the tyrants, was
a hotbed of intrigue. Philopoemen slew with his own hand
in battle the tyrant Machanidas, and forced his successor
Nabis to raise the siege of Messene. Entering Sparta as a
victor, he united it to the Achaean league. It was not the
policy of Rome that the whole Peloponnesus should form a
single state. Her envoys urged Messene to revolt. Philo-
poemen in an expedition against her fell from his horse, was
captured and condemned to drink hemlock (183).
During the war against Perseus, the Acheeans secretly
but fervently desired his success, and for this Rome called
them to account after the victory of Pydna. A thousand of
their best citizens were deported to Italy (168). Released
seventeen years afterwards, they brought back to their coiui-
try an imprudent hatred of Rome. When the senate an-
nounced that Corinth, Sparta, and Argos must cease to form
part of the league, the Achseans flew to arms and fought the
last battle for liberty (146) at Leucopetra, near Corinth.
Corinth was burned by Mummius, Greece reduced to a prov-
ince, and this people, who had held so great a place in the
world, were lost in the ocean of the Roman power.
86 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS
SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY
Services Rendered by the Greeks to General Civilization.
— Epicharines, the creator of Greek comedy, said twenty-
four centuries ago : " All blessings are bought from the
gods by labor." What the poet said, Greece proved. By
dint of an activity, of which no other people had until
then ever furnished an example, did the Greeks succeed in
taking so high a rank among the nations. They covered
the coasts of the Mediterannean with flourishing cities.
They raised a poor and petty country to mastery of the
world by arms and commerce, but, above all, by civiliza-
tion.
Among the sciences by establishing the methods or pro-
cesses they also created mathematics, geometry, mechanics,
and astronomy, which Egypt and Chaldaea had only out-
lined. They laid the foundations of botany and medicine.
In the sciences indeed we have advanced much farther
than they by following the path of patient investigation and
pure reasoning which Hippocrates, Archimedes, and Aris-
totle opened up, but in letters, arts, and philosophy the
Greeks have remained the eternal masters. The Romans
and the moderns have been only their pupils.
They carried to perfection the epic poem with Homer;
the elegy with Simonides; the ode with Pindar; tragedy
with ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who succeeded in
making it grandly religious, patriotic and moral; comedy
with Aristophanes and Menander ; history with Herodotus
and Thucydides ; forensic and legal eloquence with Demos-
thenes, ^schines, Isocrates, and Lysias.
In the arts the world still follows their impulse and imi-
tates their models. While varying their three orders, we
copy their architecture. Their mutilated statues are the
pride of our museums. Our decorative arts draw inspira-
tion from the graceful designs of their vases or from the
ornaments of their temples and tombs. The moderns have
SUMMARY OF GREEK HISTORY 87
created only one new art, music, and developed one ancient
art, painting.
In philosophy, as they had no holy books and conse-
quently no body of hxed doctrines, no sacerdotal class
jealously guarding for itself both dogma and learning, no
social aristocracy limiting the field of thought, they allowed
the utmost freedom to the mind. Thus they created moral
and political philosophy in entire independence. They
made it the domain of all and assigned as its only aim the
quest of truth. Thereby they threw open to the human
intellect an immense horizon. That which feeling only
vaguely attained, reason proceeded to grasp, and with un-
equalled power. What have twenty centuries added to the
philosophical discoveries of the Hellenes ?
In short, such was the fruitfulness of their prolific nature,
that on the very ruins of Greek society sprang forth that
elevated moral doctrine of stoicism which, combined with
and modified by the Christian spirit, is still capable of
developing great characters.
The East, earlier than the Hellenes, gave birth to sages,
but the people below them were only herds, docile to the
voice of the master. In Greece, humanity became conscious
of itself. There man assumed full possession of the facul-
ties planted in him by the Creator, and of the sentiment
of his own personal dignity. Slavery, preserved in the
cities by the politicians and justified in books by the phi-
losophers, was a relic of that past from which the emanci-
pation of the freest nations is always slow.
Defects of the Political and Religious Spirit among the
Greeks. — Still, this picture has its shadows. Admirable
political theorists, with Aristotle at their head, they were
able to organize nothing but cities. The idea of a great
state was unwelcome to them. Never, except partially
and for a brief space during the Persian wars, or too late
at the time of the Achaean league, did they consent to join
their forces and destinies in fraternal union. Thus they
lost their independence on that day when the half-barbaric,
half-Hellenic, wholly military Macedonian monarchy was
formed at their gates. To Kome their subjugation was
still more easy.
The Greek religion, so favorable to art and poetry, was
less so to virtue. By representing the gods, personifica-
tions of natural forces, as enslaved by the most shameful
88 HISTORY OF THE GREEKS
passions, committing theft, incest, and adultery, breathing
hatred and revenge, it obscured the idea of uprightness,
and rendered evil legitimate by the example of those who
should have been the incarnation of good. Then when
human reason contradicted the divine legends, Greek poly-
theism at last found itself in that fatal condition wherein
religion and the moral code are opposed to each other.
The latter attacked the former and won the battle. The
gods fell from Olympus. Grass grew in the courtyards
of the temples. This would have been a gain, if the de-
throned deities had been replaced by such a virile system
of instruction as would enlighten and purify human reason.
That virile instruction was found here and there on the
lips of the poets and philosophers, but the masses did not
listen. Delivered to the grovelling superstitions in which
among the weak the great beliefs end, Greek religion was
without defence when assailed by the Asiatic corruption
introduced by the conquests of Alexander. Gold depraved
alike men and institutions. The mercenaries of the Seleu-
cidae and of the Ptolemies, men without a country inas-
much as without liberty, lost together with their manly
virtues the generous self-devotion which had made them
so great at Marathon and Thermopylse, and the self-respect
and reverence for the true and the beautiful which had
formed so many good citizens and created so many master-
pieces. Greece from time to time did still produce some
superior men, but only as a long-time fertile but exhausted
soil yields at intervals a scanty fruit.
HISTORY OF THE ROMANS
oXKc
ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION
(753-366)
The Royal Period (753-510).— The fertile plains of
Latiuni and Etruria meet under the Sabine mountains on
the banks of the Tiber, the largest stream of the Italian
peninsula. At some distance from its junction with the
Anio, this river flows between nine hills, two of which, Ja-
niculus and A^aticanus, dominate the right bank, while the
other seven distinguish the left. It was there that Rome
arose.
Legend, which explains every beginning and delights in
the marvellous, recognizes seven kings of Eome : Eomulus,
the son of Mars, nursed by a she-wolf, the founder upon the
Palatine of the present city ; Numa, the religious king,
whom the nymph Egeria inspired; Tullus Hostilius, who
overthrew Alba Longa after the combat between the Ho-
ratii and Curiatii; Ancus Martins, the founder of Ostia;
Tarquinius Priscus, who perhaps owed his crown to an
Etruscan conquest of Rome ; Servius Tullius, the legislator ;
and lastly Tarquinius Superbus, the abominable tyrant
Avhom the Romans expelled.
History, more sedate, has many doubts concerning this
royal period of Avhich the only glimpse is afforded by
charming tales. Nevertheless it credits the foundation
upon the Palatine of Roma Quadrata, a city whose walls
have recently been discovered. This city exercised its
robust youth against its Latin, Sabine and Etruscan neigh-
bors, and grew so rapidly that Servius was obliged to erect
those extensive walls which sufficed during the whole period
89
90 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 510-493.
of the republic. It had customs, institutions and a political
organization such as would require much time to develop.
We must admit that under her last king E-ome was already
the capital of Latium, the strongest power in Italy. Her
inhabitants constituted two peoples, as it were the patri-
cians and the plebeians. The patricians consisted of fami-
lies, each of which formed a clan with its own gods, its
common property and its chief. The latter was at once
high priest of the domestic altar, judge without appeal over
his wife and children, patron whom his clients obeyed,
absolute master of his slaves, and in the forum and at the
curia a member of the sovereign people who elected the
prince, enacted the laws and decided questions of peace and
war. The plebeians were a confused mass of conquered
captives, transported to the city, of foreigners settled there,
and perhaps of natives dispossessed by the original con-
quest. They had nothing in common with the patricians,
neither gods nor marriage nor political rights. Nevertheless
to Servius is attributed the division : of the city into four
quarters or urban tribes; of the territory into twenty-six
cantons or rural tribes; of the people, patricians and ple-
beians, into live classes accoi-ding to wealth, and into 193
hundreds or centuries. The first class alone had ninety-
eight centuries. After the kings were expelled, as each
century represented one vote, it had ninety-eight votes,
while all the other classes combined had only ninety-five.
The Republic. Consuls. Tribunes (510-493). — The patri-
cians overthrew Tarquin and replaced the king by two con-
suls, chosen annually by them from among themselves. This
was therefore an aristocratic revolution. Brutus, one of the
consuls, discovered that his sons were implicated in a con-
spiracy to recall the king. He ordered that they should be
put to death and stoically witnessed their execution. Tar-
quin sought revenge by rousing all the neighboring peoples
against Rome. The bloody victory of Lake Regillus saved
the city, but her strength was undermined by debts incurred
by the losses and expenses of the recent wars. The Roman
law favored the creditors, who abused their rights, and the
poor in resentment would not allow themselves to be en-
rolled. Then the senate created the dictatorship, an abso-
lute magistracy from which there was no appeal. Its power,
more arbitrary than that of the kings had ever been, was to
last six months. The people were terrified and yielded, but
B.C. 4<»:3^48.] ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION 91
the violence of the creditors increased. At last the poor
abandoned the city and retired to Mons Sacer. They came
back only after tribunes had been promised them, who
should be annually elected from the plebeians and by their
veto could reverse the decisions of the consuls and senate.
At first the tribunes employed their power as a shield
wherewith to defend the people. Later on they used it to
attack the nobles and make themselves masters of the republic.
The Decemvirate and the Twelve Tables. — The years
which elapsed between the establishment of the tribuneship
and that of the decemvirate were filled by petty wars and
internal troubles. The tribune Terentillus Arsa in 461
demanded that a code, written and known to the citizens,
should be drawn up. For a long time the patricians re-
sisted. At last the proposition was passed, and decemvirs
were elected with unlimited powers to draw up the new
laws. One of them, Appius Claudius, tried to usurp the
authority. He fell in consequence of an outrage, which
forced a father to kill his daughter to save her from dis-
honor (449).
In the legislation of the Twelve Tables, published by the
decemvirs (448), attacks upon property were cruelly pun-
ished. The thief might be killed with impunity at night
and even during the day if he defended himself. " Who-
ever sets fire to a lot of grain shall be bound, beaten with
rods and burned." " The insolvent debtor shall be sold or
cut in pieces." For offences regarded as less grave, we find
two systems of penalties in use among all barbarous peo-
ples, the talion or corporal reprisals, and settlement by,
agreement. " Whoever breaks a limb shall pay three hun-
dred Roman pounds to the injured person. If he does not
settle with him, let him be subjected to the lex talionis."
However some provisions favored the plebeians. The
rate of interest was diminished and guaranties for individ-
ual liberty were provided. " Let the false witness and the
corrupt judge be hurled from the rock," said the law.
"The people shall always have the right of appeal from the
sentence of the magistrates. The people alone in their
assemblies by centuries shall have the power to pronounce
sentence of death." Thus criminal jurisdiction was be-
stowed upon the people. Thus the power passed to the
comitia centuriata, where according to their property patri-
cians and plebeians were mingled without distinction.
92 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN'S [b.c. 448-444.
The general character of the law was another advantage
for the plebeians. "No more personal laws." The civil
legislation of the Twelve Tables recognized only Roman
citizens. Its provisions were not made for one order or one
class. Its formula was always " If any one," inasmuch as
patrician and plebeian, senator and priest and laborer, were
equal in its eyes. Thus, by ignoring differences formerly
so profound, was proclaimed the definite union of the two
peoples. It was a new people, all the citizens in a body,
which now held sovereign authority and was the source of
all power and all right. " Whatever the people shall ordain
shall constitute the final law." Thus the people had at-
tained through the Twelve Tables several material benefits,
which may be summed up as civil equality. Not yet eligi-
ble to many offices, their political equality was still in the
future.
The Plebeians attain Admission to All Offices (448-286). —
The revolution of 510, instituted by the patricians, had ben-
efited only the aristocracy. That of 448, instituted by the
people, benefited only the people. The new consuls, Hora-
tius and Valerius, forbade under pain of death that any
magistracy without appeal should ever be created, gave the
force of law to the plebiscites or votes passed in the
assembly of the tribes, and repeated the anathema pro-
nounced against any one who should attack the inviolability
of the tribuneship. Nevertheless the prohibition of inter-
marriage and the occupation of all offices by the patricians
still maintained an insulting distinction between the two
orders. In 445 the tribune Canuleius demanded the aboli-
tion of the prohibition regarding marriage, and his col-
leagues demanded that plebeians should be eligible to the
consulship. This was equivalent to demanding political
equality. The patricians were indignant, but the people
withdrew to the Janiculine Hill. The senate, thinking
that custom would be stronger than law, accepted the prop-
osition concerning intermarriage. Instead of granting the
consulship to the plebeians, they diminished its functions.
Two new magistrates, called censors, were appointed in 444,
at first for five years and later for eighteen months. These
officers were to take the census, administer the public do-
mains and finances, regulate the classes, draw up the list of
the senate and of the equestrian order, and have control of
the city police. The other consular duties — military and
B.c.444-2S(>.] ROME. THE ANCIENT ROMAN CONSTITUTION 93
judicial admiuistvation, presidency of the assemblies and of
the senate, and protection of the city and laws — were
divided and intrusted to three, four, and sometimes six
generals under the name of military tribunes.
The constitution of 444 made plebeians eligible to the
military tribuneship, yet until the year 400 no plebeian at-
tained it. Meanwhile Rome was carrying on a five years'
siege of Veil, which the patrician Camillus finally captured.
The Gallic invasion interrupted the political strife, that
burst forth more fiercely after the danger was past. The
tribunes, Licinius Stolo and Sextius, in 376, renewed the
demand for division of the consulship, and j)i'oposed an
agrarian law limiting to 500 acres the amount of land Avhich
a citizen could own. The crisis of the struggle had arrived.
The same two tribunes were reelected for ten successive
years. In vain did the senate persuade their colleagues to
interpose their veto. Twice did they have recourse to the
dictatorship. The dictator, Camillus, abdicated when threat-
ened with a fine of 500 pounds. Against the tribunes the
patricians invoked the sanctity of religion, for not a single
plebeian was a priest. At last the patricians agreed that
" instead of two custodians of the Sibylline books, ten shall
be appointed, five of whom shall be plebeians." The year
366 beheld for the first time a plebeian consul. Then the
patricians created the prsetorship, an office exercising the
judicial functions of the consuls. To this the plebeians be=
came eligible in 337. The dictatorship Avas opened to them
in 355, the censorship in 350, the proconsulship in 326, and
the augurship in 302. Two additional laws assured political
equality and founded that union at home and that strength
abroad which enabled Rome to triumph over every obsta-
cle. The one imposed the plebiscite equally on the two
orders, and declared that both consuls might be plebeians.
The other summarized and confirmed all the rights the
plebeians had acquired.
94 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 390-343.
II
THE CONQUEST OF ITALY
(343 265)
Capture of Rome by the Gauls (390). — The capture of
Veil, a great Etruscan city, made Eorae preponderant in
central Italy. The Gauls, established for two centuries in
the valley of the Po, threatened to destroy the growing state
at its centre. They besieged Clusium, which had refused
them lands, and marched upon Rome. They defeated her
armies on the banks of the Allia, and made their way to the
foot of the Capitol, where the senate and the young men
had shut themselves up. They maintained a close siege,
until an invasion of the Veneti called them back to their
own country, whereupon they consented to accept a ransom.
As Camillus, on being appointed dictator, had destroyed
some of their detachments, Roman vanity represented these
petty successes as a complete victory.
It took Rome nearly half a century to recover. Mean-
while Camillus, Manlius Torquatus, and Valerius Corvus
defeated several rebellious Latin tribes and their Gallic
allies, and captured some of the Etrusean cities. They
subjugated southern Etruria and most of Latium, and ap-
proached the Samnite borders. Then burst out the Samnite
war, or the war of Italian independence. All the nations
of the peninsula entered the lists in turn, always commit-
ting the fatal mistake of not attacking together. This war
lasted seventy-eight years, desolated all central Italy, and
placed the entire peninsula under the heel of Rome.
The Samnite Wars. — The wealthy city of Capua, being
threatened by the Samnites, submitted to the Romans, Avho
defeated her adversaries, but the hostile attitude of the
Latins prevented them from following up their successes.
The Latins demanded full political equality with the
Romans. On the senate's refusal a difficult war began.
In deference to discipline, Manlius Torquatus condemned
AEGATES IS ''\7\jvO ^ " . rT "'■ft,,, 1
'£T 'I
'JPf. Pachyn
"Ix-tn
U M
& MELITA
ITALY
DIVIDED By AUGUSTUS
IXTO ELEVEN KEOIO.VS
ROMAN MILES
10 50 KKI l.-)0
Coi.yriglit, 18;)K. t,)' T. V. Cr,.wc-ll i Co
iiniU.... N. V.
B.C. 3i0-295.] THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 95
to death his own sou wlio luid fought without orders, and
Decius sacrificed himself to save the legions. Varying con-
ditions, imposed on the Latin cities after the victory,
assured their obedience.
In 327 the Samnites, to expel the Eomans from Cam-
pania, incited the city of Paloepolis to revolt. Defeated by
Papirius Cursor and Fabius Maximus, who commanded the
Eomans, the Samnites took their revenge at the Caudine
Forks, where they surrounded the whole army, forced it to
pass under the yoke, and to sign a humiliating treaty of
peace. The senate repudiated the treaty and surrendered
the consuls to the Samnites who were unwilling to receive
them. Finally Publilius Philo penetrated victoriously into
Samnium, while Papirius subdued Apulia on the farther
side of the Samnite mountains. The senate endeavored to
confine its formidable foes in the Apennines by a line of
fortresses or military colonies.
The northern peoples of the peninsula now came to the
aid of the Samnifces. Fifty or sixty thousand Etruscans fell
upon the Roman colony of Sutrium but were defeated by
Fabius near Perusia. He systematically devastated Sam-
nium till its exhausted tribes begged for an end of a war
which had already lasted more than a generation. They
retained their territory and the externals of independence,
but agreed to recognize "the majesty of the Roman people."
Circumstances were soon to show what the senate meant by
this term.
The Samnites with the Sabines, Etruscans, Umbrians
and Gauls rose in general revolt. At Rome the tribunals
were closed. All able-bodied citizens were enrolled, and
an army was raised, at least 90,000 strong. The massacre
of a whole legion near Camerinum opened to the Senones
the passage of the Apennines. Should they effect their
junction with the Umbrians and Etruscans, the consular
army was doomed. Fabius by a diversion recalled the
Etruscans to the defence of their homes, and then hastened
to encounter the Gauls in the plains of Sentinum. The
shock was terrible. Seven thousand Romans had already
perished on the left wing which was commanded by Decius,
when the consul sacrificed himself, imitating the example
of his father. The barbarians retreated in disorder and
returned to their country. The destruction of a Samnite
legion and the defeat of Pontius Herennius, the victor of the
96 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 290-275.
Caudine Forks, finally wrung from this obstinate nation
the confession of its defeat. A treaty, whose clauses are
unknown, ranged them among the allies of Eome. To hold
them in check Venusia was occupied by a powerful colony.
The centre of Italy thus submitted to the Eoman suprem-
acy or the Eoman alliance. In the north the Etruscans
were still hostile and the Gauls had forgotten their defeat
at Sentinum. In the south Samnite bands wandered among
the mountains of Calabria. The Lucanians were uneasy,
and the Greeks with apprehension beheld the approach of
the Eoman rule. Tarentum especially manifested dissatis-
faction. Still the union of so many peoples was impossible.
The only real moment of serious danger was when, the
Etruscans once destroyed a Eoman army. The senate re-
plied by the utter extermination of the Senones. The Boii,
another Gallic tribe, when endeavoring to avenge their
brethren, were themselves crushed together with the Etrus-
cans near Lake Vadimo (283). Northern like Central Italy
then acknowledged the Eoman sway.
Pyrrhus. — Tarentum alone held out in arms but realized
her weakness too late. She summoned to her assistance
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus. On arriving in that wealthy and
luxurious city, Pyrrhus closed the baths and theatres and
compelled the citizens to arm themselves. At the first
battle near Heraclea the elephants, with which the Eomans
were unacquainted, threw their ranks into disorder. They
left 15,000 men on the field, but Pyrrhus had lost 13,000.
"Another such victory," he exclaimed, "and I shall return
to Epirus without an army." He sent his minister Cineas
to Eome to propose peace. " Let Pyrrhus first leave Italy,"
replied the aged Appius, " and then we will see about treat-
ing with him." Cineas was ordered to quit Eome that
very day. "The senate," he said on his return, "seemed
to me an assembly of kings."
Pyrrhus tried to surprise the city, but all its citizens
were soldiers. He could only gaze at the walls from a dis-
tance. A second battle near Asculum, where a third Decius
sacrificed himself, proved that he was only wearing out his
forces in vain against this determined people. He crossed
to Sicily to fight the Carthaginians who were besieging
Syracuse. Though he raised the siege and drove the Afri-
cans back to Lilybseum, he soon wearied of this expedition
and returned to Italy. A defeat at Beneventum drove the
B.C. 275-202.] THE CONQUEST OF ITALY 97
royal adventurer back to Greece. Undertaking to conquer
Macedon, he was proclaimed its king but perished miser-
ably at the siege of Argos. Tarentum, thus abandoned,
opened its gates (272), Greecia Magna, like northern and
central Italy, was subdued.
The Gauls. — The Cisalpine Gauls still inspired a legiti-
mate fear. Keceiving the news that they had called for an
army of their transalpine compatriots, the senate declared
"emergency" and put on foot 700,000 soldiers, 500,000 of
whom were furnished by the Italians. The victory of
Telamon averted all danger and Marcellus slew their king
with his own hand. Roman colonies, sent to the banks of
the Po, overawed Cisalpine Gaul. The barbarians then
implored the help of Hannibal but, satisfied to be delivered
by his victories, did not themselves rise en masse to help
him crush Rome. After the battle of Zama the senate
again took measures against them. All the Boii emigrated,
going in search of other habitations on the banks of the
Danube, and thus delivered their rich country and the bar-
riers of the Alps to the Romans.
98 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 264-255.
Ill
THE PUNIC WARS
(364-146)
First Punic War (264-241). Conquest of Sicily. —Car-
thage, a colony of Tyre, Ijacl extended lier sway from
Niimidia to the frontiers of Cyrenai'ca, organized an im-
mense caravan traffic in the interior of Africa and seized
the control of the western Mediterranean. While Eome
was contending with the Etruscans and the Italian Greeks,
the Carthaginians had applauded her successes and had
signed friendly treaties. The absolute victory of Eome
filled them with consternation. With alarm they beheld
a single power ruling over the beautiful country which was
bathed by the Tuscan, the Adriatic and the Ionian seas.
Sicily speedily became the cause of war between the two
republics. ISTeither could abandon to a rival that splen-
did island Avhich lies in the centre of the Mediterranean,
touches Italy and looks out upon Africa. Carthage had
been there long. Rome was invited thither by Mamertine
mercenaries who had mastered Messina, which Hiero of
Syracuse and the Carthaginians were besieging. The
Romans delivered the city, defeated Hiero and imposed
upon him a treaty to which he remained faithful for fifty
years. Finally they expelled the Carthaginians from the
interior of the island. The latter retained their seaports
inasmuch as they were masters at sea. One fleet, con-
structed by the Romans and armed with powerful grap-
pling irons, defeated the Carthaginian vessels in the first
encounter. Another naval battle gained by Regulus at
Ecnomos decided Rome to make a descent upon Africa.
In a few months Carthage found herself reduced to her
walls. The Lacedoemonian Xanthippus changed the aspect
of affairs. After weakening Regulus by successive skir-
mishes, he defeated him in one great battle and destroyed
his army. The war was again transferred to Sicily and
B.C. 251-210.] THE PUNIC WARS 99
languished there for years. The victory of Metellus. at
Paiiormus revived the hopes of the Romans. Regulus was
sent by Carthage to demand peace, wliich he exhorted the
senate to refuse, and on his return is said to have been put
to death with torture. But a great general had just arrived
in Sicily, Hamilcar, the father of Hannibal. Fortifying
himself at Eryx, he held the Romans in check for six
years. Under these conditions the war might have dragged
on many years longer, had not patriotism given to the
senate a new fleet, that rendered the Romans supreme at
sea. Hamilcar could not be provisioned. Carthage was
compelled to end a ruinous war. She abandoned Sicily,
restored all her prisoners without ransom and in the course
of ten years paid 3200 Euboean talents.
War of the Mercenaries against Carthage (241-238). —
The soldiers of Carthage were not citizens but mercenaries.
These mercenaries rebelled and for three years Cartha-
ginian Africa was desolated by the Libyan war. Hamilcar
delivered his country from this scourge, but fell under sus-
picion and was exiled to Spain, whose conquest he under-
took. In a few years the whole country as far as the Ebro
was subdued by him and his son-in-law Hasdrubal. Rome
in alarm stopped their progress by a treaty which stipulated
the liberty of Saguntum, a Graeco-Latin city, south of the
Ebro.
Second Punic War (218-201). —Hannibal, the son of
Hamilcar, wishing at any cost to renew the war against
the Romans, attacked and destroyed this town without
waiting for orders from Carthage. With a carefully
equipped army he crossed the Pyrenees, the Rhone and
the Alps. This audacious expedition consumed half of his
forces but brought him into the midst of his allies, the
Cisalpine Gauls. The consul Scipio was first beaten near
the Ticinus in a cavalry engagement. A more serious
affair on the banks of the Trebia drove the Romans from
Cisalpine Gaul. In the following year they lost in Etruria,
near Lake Thrasymenus, another sanguinary battle, and
Hannibal was able to reach the centre and south of Italy.
Thanks to the wise delay of the dictator Eabius several
months passed without any fresh disaster. The awful bat-
tle of Cannae, in 216, cost the legions 50,000 men. Capua
with a part of southern Italy believed that the Romans were
lost and renounced their allegiance. Rom.e was a marvel
100 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 215-205.
of constancy. She abandoned offensive warfare, fortified
the strongholds, and tried by a line of intrenched places to
hem in the general who thus far had been so fortunate in
battle. Before this circle "was complete Hannibal quitted
Campania.
Since Carthage sent him no assistance, he sought to rouse
Sardinia, Sicily and Macedon. He summoned from Spain
his brother Hasdrubal with a new army of Spaniards over
the route which he himself had traced. But Sardinia was
checked, rebellious Syracuse was taken by Marcellus de-
spite the machines of Archimedes, and Philip of Macedon,
vanquished on the banks of the Aoiis and threatened through
the wiles of K-ome by many Greek peoples, could not bring
his phalanxes to assist Hannibal.
While her enemy made these fruitless efforts, Kome
armed twenty legions, pressed Hannibal harder every day
in Apulia and Lucania and waged a fierce war against
Capua, to make a terrible example of that city which had
been the first to give the signal of defection. To save it
Hannibal forced his way to the very walls of Eome, but as
vainly as Pyrrhus. Capua fell and its entire population
was sold into slavery. Only one hope was left to Hannibal.
His brother Hasdrubal was bringing him 60,000 men. Met
on the banks of the Metaurus by the two consuls, Hasdrubal
perished there with his whole army. Nevertheless Han-
nibal held out five years longer in the recesses of Brutium,
until Scipio forced him from Italy by besieging Carthage.
The two Scipios, Cneus and Cornelius, had been fighting
for years in Spain. After brilliant successes they were
overcome by superior forces and perished, Marcius, a
young knight, saved the few survivors and confidence was
already returning, when Publius Scipio, barely twenty-four
years of age, the son of Cornelius, arrived to take command.
At the very beginning he distinguished himself by a daring
stroke in the surprise of Carthagena, the arsenal of the
Carthaginians in the peninsula. Aided by the Spaniards,
whom his gentleness had won over, he defeated Hasdrubal,
but allowed him to escape. Then he crossed to Africa
where he persuaded the Numidian king, Syphax, to sign
an alliance with Eome.
Being rewarded for his successes by the consulship, he
resolved to attack Carthage itself. Despite the opposition
of Fabius, whom such rashness appalled, he landed his
B.C. 205-149.] THE PUNIC WARS 101
army in Africa. Thougli the Numiclians on whom he
counted failed him he routed all the armies sent against
him and left Carthage, which he threatened with a siege,
no other alternative than the recall of Hannibal. That
unequalled general was himself defeated at his last battle
at Zama. To his honor Scipio did not demand the extradi-
tion of Hannibal but imposed the following conditions:
Carthage might retain her laws and her African possessions,
but must give up the prisoners and deserters, must surrender
all her ships except ten, also all her elephants, and was to
tame no more elephants in future; she must make no war,
even in Africa, without the consent of Rome, and must
raise no foreign mercenary troops; she must pay 10,000
talents in fifty years, must indemnify Massinissa and
recognize him as an ally. To Scipio were delivered 4000
prisoners, a large number of fugitives whom he crucified
or beheaded, and 500 ships which he burned on the open
sea. Carthage was disarmed. That she might never re-
cover, Scipio placed at her side a relentless enemy in
Massinissa whom he recognized as king of Numidia.
Returning to Eome Scipio received a magnificent triumph.
He gained the name of Africanus and was offered the con-
sulship and dictatorship for life. Thus Eome forgot her
laws to honor her fortunate general. She offered Scipio
what she was afterwards to allow Caesar to take. Zama was
not only the end of the second Punic War but also the begin-
ning of universal conquest.
Third Punic War (149-146). Destruction of Carthage. —
After Zama the existence of Carthage was only one long
death agony. In 193 Massinissa robbed her of the rich
territory of Emporia, a few years afterward of other large
tracts of land, and finally of the whole province of Tysca
with sixty -three cities. The Carthaginians complained to
Rome, and the Romans promised justice; but Massinissa
retained the disputed territory. Cato was sent as arbi-
trator. He- was astonished and indignant at finding Car-
thage wealthy, populous and prosperous. Returning Avith
hatred in his heart, he henceforth closed his speeches with
the invariable words, " Furthermore, I think Carthage must
be destroyed " (Delencla est Carthago) .
One day Carthage resisted an attack of Massinissa. The
senate denounced this violation of the treaty. The two
consuls immediately disembarked in Africa with 80,000
102 HISTORY OF THE E03IANS [b.c. 146.
men. They demanded the surrender of all the weapons
and machines of war. Then, after receiving everything,
they ordered the Carthaginians to abandon their city and
settle ten miles inland. Grief and indignation inflamed
the tumultuous people. Day and night they spent in mak-
ing arms. Hasdrubal collected in his camp at Nepheris as
many as 70,000 men. The Koman operations being unsuc-
cessful, the consulate was given to Scipio ^Emilianus, the
second Africanus, though he had asked only the sedileship.
He restored discipline to the army and increased the courage
of the soldiers.
Carthage was built upon an isthmus. Cutting off this
isthmus by a trench and wall he prevented sorties. To
starve out the 700,000 inhabitants he closed the port by
an immense dike. The Carthaginians cut a new passage
through the rock toward the open sea. A fleet, built from
the wreck of their houses, came near surprising the Roman
galleys but was repulsed by Scipio. When the ravages of
famine had weakened the defence, he forced a part of the
walls and took the city. The citadel, Byrsa, still held out.
Situated at the centre, it could be reached only through
long, narrow streets, where the Carthaginians intrenched
in their houses offered desperate resistance. It took six
days and six nights for the army to reach the foot of the
citadel. The garrison of 50,000 men surrendered on condi-
tion of saving their lives. At their head was Hasdrubal.
His wife, after taunting her husband from the top of the
wall for his cowardice, cut the throats of her two children
and threw herself into the flames. Scipio abandoned the
smoking ruins to pillage. Commissioners sent by the
senate reduced the Carthaginian territory to a Roman
province called Africa (146).
B.C. 229-183.] FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME 103
IV
FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME
(339 129)
Partial Conquest of Illyricum (229) and of Istria (221). —
Between the first and second Punic wars, Rome had ob-
tained a foothokl upon the Greek continent. The Adriatic
was then infested by Illyrian pirates, and Teuta, the widow
of their last king, had butchered two insolent Eoman envoys.
The senate despatched 200 ships and 20,000 legionaries
under the two consuls, who forced Teuta to pay tribute and
to cede a large part of Illyricum. On occupying Istria the
Romans became masters of one of the gates of Italy and
also planted themselves at the north of Macedon which
they threatened from Illyricum.
The Conquerors of Asia Minor, Macedon and Greece. —
The wars against Antiochus, Philip, Perseus and the Achae-
ans have been already mentioned. Here we will merely
make brief reference to the generals in command.
Scipio Asiaticus, the conqueror of Antiochus at Magnesia,
was the brother of Scipio Africanus, who accompanied him
as his lieutenant. On their return to Pome, the tribunes
accused the two brothers of accepting bribes to grant peace
to the king of Syria. Scipio Africanus indignantly refused
to answer, and quitted Rome. Scipio Asiaticus, degraded
by Cato from the equestrian order, was condemned to pay
the sum he was accused of receiving. His poverty proved
his innocence.
Titus Quintus Flaminius was the conqueror of Philip at
Cynocephalse and the founder of the Roman policy in
Greece. He remained there a long time after his command
expired, so as to organize a Roman party in all the cities
and to expel the enemies of the senate. Thus he thwarted
the patriotic plans of Philopoemen and brought about the
rebellion of Messene which cost that great citizen his
life. He also demanded from Prusias, king of Bithynia,
104 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 183-13:.
the head of Hannibal, who had taken refuge in his states.
The hero poisoned himself rather than fall into the hands
of Rome.
Paulus J^milius, who overthrew Perseus at Pydna, had
won renown in the Lnsitanian and Ligurian wars. His tri-
umph, adorned with the spoils of Macedon, was the richest
thus far seen. But of his two sons, who were to ride with
him in his chariot, one had just died and the other expired
three days later. Paulus J^milius in his manly grief re-
joiced that he was the one chosen to expiate the public
prosperity. " My triumph," said he, " placed between the
two funerals of my children, will satisfy the cruel sport of
Fate. At the age of sixty years I find my hearth solitary,
but the prosperity of the state consoles me."
Mummius, the destroyer of Corinth and of the Achaean
league, was famous for his roughness. From the pillage
of that opulent city he kept nothing for himself, but he
made the persons who were to transport to Eome the mas-
terpieces of Grecian art promise to replace whatever was
lost or injured on the way.
Conquest of Spain (197-133). Viriathus. Numantia. —
In Spain the war was longer and more difficult. The Span-
iards, through hatred of Carthage, had supported the E-o-
mans during the second Punic War, but Rome did not grant
them liberty. They revolted and Rome had to begin a
reconquest of the whole country. Sixty-four years were
required for the task. They slew 9000 men in the army of
the Roman Galba. He pretended to treat, offered them
fertile lands and then massacred 30,000 of them. Such
perfidy bore its natural fruit. A herdsman, Viriathus,
escaped from the massacre and carried on a guerilla war in
which the Romans lost their best soldiers. During five
years he defeated all the generals sent against him. One
day he surrounded the Consul Fabius in a narrow pass and
forced him to sign a treaty, that declared '' There shall be
peace between the Roman people and Viriathus." Cepio,
the brother of Fabius, avenged him by fraud. He hired
two officers of Viriathus to assassinate their chief. There-
upon his followers surrendered and were removed by Cepio
to the shores of the Mediterranean where they built Va-
lencia.
The Spanish war in the north toward Numantia was
tedious and obstinate. Consul after consul was baffled or
B.C. 133-30.] FOREIGN CONQUESTS OF ROME 105
defeated until the general arrived who had conquered Car-
thage. Gradually Scipio forced the Numantines back into
their city, and surrounded it by four lines of intreneh-
ments. Hard pressed by horrible famine, the inhabitants
demanded battle but Scipio refused. Then they slew
each other. Only fifty Numantines followed his triumphal
chariot in Eome. Even then the northern mountaineers
were not subdued. Spain was completely pacified only
under Augustus. In 124 Metellus toot possession of the
Balearic Islands after nearly exterminating their inhab-
itants, and in 133 Attains ceded his kingdom of Pergamiis
to the Romans.
Thus thirty years before Christ, the city which we have
seen rise upon the Palatine Hill ruled from the Spanish
coast on the Western Ocean to the centre of Asia Minor.
She possessed the three peninsulas of southern Europe,
Spain, Italy and Greece. Between Italy and Greece,
through the subjection of the Illyrians, she had secured
herself a road around the Adriatic, and Marseilles lent her
its vessels and its pilots from the Var to the Ebro. Thus
her conquest of the ancient world was far advanced. Her
success was due to three forces which in politics generate
other forces also. These were an astute senate, where the
traditions of government were long preserved, a sagacious
people, amenable to the laws which they had made for
themselves, and that organized discipline in the legions
which formed the most perfect military engine the world
had yet known.
106 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 150.
V
FIRST CIVIL WARS. THE GRACCHI, MARIUS. SULLA
(133-79)
Results of Roman Conquests on Roman Manners and Con-
stitution. — Yet the conquest of so many wealthy provinces
had upon the manners and likewise upon the constitution
of the Romans disastrous effects, which were already felt,
and which on development were to destroy both the re-
public and liberty. Ancient simplicity M^as gradually aban-
doned. The descendant^ of Fabricius, Curius Dentatus and
Regulus displayed a ruinous luxury. To replace the sums
squandered in debauch or in empty display, they robbed
their allies and the public treasury. The censors, guardians
of the public manners, had already been forced to expel
certain high-born personages from the senate. If the great
became greedy, the people became venal. The middle class
had disappeared, decimated by continuous wars, ruined by
the decay of agriculture and by the competition of the
slaves and free laborers.
In place of that robust, proud, energetic population which
had founded liberty and conquered Italy, there began to be
seen in Rome only an idle, hungry crowd of beggars, con-
tinually recruited by the emancipation of slaves, inheriting
neither the ideas nor the blood of the ancient plebeians.
" There are not two thousand property-holders," said one of
the tribunes. Such then was the situation. Two or three
hundred families possessed millions, and below, very far
below, were 300,000 beggars. Nothing between these two
extremes of an arrogant aristocracy and a feeble and servile
mob. The Gracchi undertook two things : to restore respect
for the laws among those nobles who no longer respected
anything ; and to reawaken the sentiments of citizenship
among men who were still called the sovereign people, but
whom Scipio ..^milianus knowing their origin dubbed coun-
terfeit sons of Italy.
B.C. 133-119.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 107
The Gracchi (133-121). — Tiberius Gracchus, elected trib-
une in 133, began with the people. To regain their former
virtues, they must resume their former habits. He wished to
convert the poor into landowners, and to regenerate them
by means of work. The republic owned immense territory,
which had been encroached upon by the nobles. His project
was to reclaim these appropriated lands and distribute them
among the poor in small, inalienable lots. The reaffirmed
Licinian law forbade any person to possess more than 500
jugera of public lands. However, he promised an in-
demnity for any outlay wdiich occupants had made upon
the property restored by them. The nobles resisted stub-
bornly. Tiberius, to break the veto of one of his colleagues,
Octavius, caused him to be deposed. By thus trampling under
foot the inviolable tribuneship, he provided a dangerous ex-
ample, of which advantage w^as taken against himself. The
nobles armed their slaves, attacked his partisans and slew
him on the steps of the Capitol (133).
In 123 Caius Gracchus was elected tribune, and openly
resumed his brother's plans. He caused the agrarian law
to be confirmed, established distributions of corn to the
people, founded colonies for the poor citizens and dealt a
fatal blow to the authority of the senate by taking from it
the administration of justice and giving it to the knights.
During two years he w^as all-powerful in the city. But the
senate to ruin his credit caused, for every measure he pro-
posed, some more popular measure to be brought forward
by one of their creatures, and Caius was unable to obtain
reelection for a third term. This check was a signal for
which the Consul Opimius had been waiting. Caius suf-
fered the fate of his brother, and 3000 of his partisans
perished with him (121). The tribunes were dumb with
terror during the next twelve years, and only recovered
their voice at the scandals of the Numidian war, which
brought into prominence Marius, the avenger of the Gracchi.
Marius. Conquest of Numidia (118-104). — He was a
rough, illiterate citizen of Arpinum, an intrepid soldier and
good general. Scipio had noticed him at the siege of Nu-
mantia. The support of Metellus, who had always protected
his family, gave him the tribuneship in 119. At once he
introduced a decree against intrigue. All the nobility
denounced this audacity on the part of an unknown young
man; but in the senate Marius threatened the consul with
108 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 119-107.
prison and summoned his viator to arrest Metellus. The
populace applauded. A few days later, the tribune forbade
a gratuitous distribution of grain. This assumption of
the right to read a lesson to both parties turned every one
against him. His zeal diminished with difficulty of pro-
motion. He served obscurely as a praetor in K-ome and
a propraetor in Spain. On his return, the peasant of
Arpinum sealed his peace with the nobles by a great mar-
riage. He wedded the patrician Julia, great-aunt of Caesar ;
and Metellus, forgetting his conduct as tribune in consider-
ation of his military talents, took him to ISTumidia.
Micipsa, son of Massinissa and king of Numidia, had at
his death (118) divided his states between his two sons and
his nephew Jugurtha. The latter rid himself of one rival
by assassination. Unable to surprise the other, he attacked
him with open force in spite of Roman protection, and put
him to death with torture, when famine had compelled his
victim to open the gates of Cirtha, his last refuge (112).
The senate had in vain sent two embassies to save him.
Such audacity called for chastisement, but the first general
sent against Jugurtha accepted bribes (111). A tribune
summoned the king to Eome. Jugurtha had the hardihood
to appear, but when one tribune ordered him to answer,
another, whom he had bought, prohibited his replying.
A comx3etitor for the Numidian throne was in the city.
He had him killed (110). The senate ordered him to
leave E-ome at once. '' City for sale ! " he cried, as he
passed through the gates ; " thou only lackest a purchaser ! "
A consul followed him to Africa. The legions, cut off by
the Numidians, repeated the disgrace endured before ISTu-
mantia and passed under the yoke.
This war, which they had played with at first, soon
became alarming, for the Cimbrians were threatening Italy
with one more terrible. The honest but severe Metellus
was sent to Numidia. He restored discipline and pursued
his tireless enemy without truce or relaxation. He defeated
him near Muthul (109), and took from him Vacca, his
capital, Sicca, Cirtha and all the coast cities. When about
to destroy the usurper, his lieutenant was appointed consul
(107), and robbed him of the honor of finishing this war.
The new general came near killing Jugurtha in battle with
his own hand and made him fall back upon Mauritania.
Jugurtha fled as a suppliant to his father-in-law Bocchus,
B.C. 106-101.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 109
who delivered him to the Romans. The captive monarch
in chains (106) traversed his whole kingdom, followed
Marius to Rome, and after the triumph was thrown into
the Tullianum, a prison excavated in the Capitoline mount.
" By the gods," he exclaimed with a laugh, " how cold your
baths are." He died there six days after from hunger (104).
Part of Numidia was added to the province of Africa.
Invasion of the Cimbri and the Teutones (113-102). —
This success arrived at a fortunate time to reassure Rome,
then threatened by a great peril. Three hundred thou-
sand Cimbri and Teutones, retreating before an overflow
of the Baltic, had crossed the Danube, defeated a consul
(113), and for three years had been devastating Noricum,
Pannonia and Illyricum. When there was nothing left
to take, the horde fought its way into Gaul and crushed
five Roman armies (110-105). Italy was uncovered but,
instead of crossing the Alps, tlie barbarians turned toward
Spain, and Rome had time to recall Marius from Africa.
In order to harden his soldiers, he subjected them to the
severest labors. When a part of the horde reappeared,
he refused for a long time to fight, that his army might
become accustomed to seeing the barbarians close at hand.
The action took place near Aix, and the Romans made a
horrible carnage among the Teutones (102).
Meanwhile the Cimbri, who had flanked the Alps, entered
the peninsula through the valley of the Adige. Marius
returned in all haste to the banks of the Po to the succor
of his colleague Caculus. The barbarians were a^vaiting
the arrival of the Teutones before fighting. They eVen
asked Marius for lands for themselves and their brethren.
"Do not trouble yourselves about your brethren," the con-
sul replied; "they have the land which we have given
them, and which they will keep forever." The Cimbri
allowed him to choose the day and place of battle. At
Vercellae, as at Aix, there was an immense massacre, Nev-
ertheless more than 60,000 were made prisoners, but twice
as many were massacred. The barbarian women, rather
than be taken captive, slew their children and then killed
themselves (101).
Renewal of Civil Troubles. Saturninus (106-98). — Marius
had been continued four successive years in the consulship
in reward of his services. His ambition was not satisfied.
On reentering Rome, he intrigued for the fasces of the
110 HISTORY OF THE ROMAXS [b.c. 100-91.
magistracy. The nobles tliouglit that the peasant of
Arpinum had been honored enough. They put up Metelhis
Numidicus, his personal enemy, against him and reduced
him to buying votes. Marius could not pardon this insult,
and had them attacked by Saturninus, a low demagogue.
Saturninus aspired to the tribunate. A partisan of the
nobles was elected but the demagogue slew him and seized
his place. For the benefit of Marius' veterans he immedi-
ately proposed an agrarian law, opposition to which caused
the exile of Metellus.
Soon afterwards Metellus was recalled. That he might
not witness his triumphant return, Marius betook himself
to Asia in the secret hope of bringing about a rupture be-
tween Mithridates and the republic (98). He needed a
war to restore his credit in the eyes of his fellow-citizens.
" They look upon me," he said, " as a sword which rusts
in peace."
Sulla. The Italian Revolt (91-88). — The wars with Ju-
gurtha and the Cimbri had made the fortune of the plebeian
Marius. Three other wars made the fortune of the patrician
Sulla, Avho has left a sanguinary name. Descendant of the
illustrious Cornelian house, he was Marius' first qusestor
in the Numidian war. Ambitious, brave, eloquent, zealous
and energetic, Sulla soon became dear to the soldiers and
their officers. Marius himself loved this young noble who
did not rely upon his ancestors, and confided to him the
dangerous mission of treating with Bocchus. It was into
Sulla's hands that Jugurtha was betrayed. Marius associ-
ated him with his triumph, and employed him again in the
war Avith the Cimbri. A misunderstanding having arisen,
Sulla joined the army of Catulus. Later on, he commanded
in Asia. The Social War brought his talents into promi-
nence.
It was a period of general ferment. In the city, the
people were rising against the nobles ; in Sicily, the slaves
were rebelling against their masters. Her allies were turn-
ing against Rome, whom they brought to the brink of the
abyss. The Italians, after long sharing all the dangers of
the Romans, wished to enjoy equal privileges and claimed
the right of citizenship. Scipio ^Emilianus, Tiberius Grac-
chus, Saturninus and finally the tribune Drusus encouraged
them to hope for this title of citizen, which would have
relieved them from the exactions and violence of the Roman
B.C.91-S8.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 111
magistrates. But the knights assassinated Drusns, and the
allies, wearied by their long patience, resolved to obtain
justice by force of arms.
Eight peoples of central and southern Italy exchanged
hostages and arranged a general rising. They were to-
gether to form but one republic, organized after the pat-
tern of Kome, with a senate of 500 members, two consuls
and twelve praetors. Their capital was to be the stronghold
Corfinium, which they called by the significant name of
Italica. The Latins, the Etruscans, the Umbrians and
the Uauls remained faithful to their allegiance. The sig-
nal was given from Asculmn, where the consul Servilius
was massacred together with all the Romans who were in
the town; even the women were not spared (90). At first
the allies had the advantage. Campania was invaded, one
consul routed, another killed. Marius, who held a command,
accomplished nothing worthy of his reputation. He con-
tented himself with acting on the defensive, and soon he
even withdrew, alleging his infirmities. His former relations
with the Italians did not permit him to play a more active
part. Sulla, who was hampered by nothing, was on the
contrary energetic and deserved all the honor of this brief
and terrible war. The prudence of the senate aided the
skill of the generals. The Julian and Plautia-Papirian
laws, which accorded the right of citizenship to the allies
who had remained loyal, led to desertions, and at the end of
the second year only the Samnites and Lucanians remained
under arms. Erom the new citizens eight tribes were formed.
In this way Sulla had gained the consulship and the com-
mand of the war against Mithridates which Marius solicited
in vain. This was the beginning of their rivalry and of the
civil wars Avhich led to military rule.
Proscriptions in Rome. Sulpicius and Cinna (88-84). — In
order to annul the last-mentioned decree Marius made an
agreement' with the tribune Sulpicius, and a riot forced the
new consul to leave Eome (88) ; but he came back at the
head of his troops. Marius in turn fled before a sentence
which put a price on his lile. Dragged from the marshes
of Minturnse, where he had taken refuge, and covered with
mire, he was thrown into the city prison. A Cimbrian, sent
to kill him, Avas terrified by his glance and words and dared
not strike. The inhabitants, who cherished no anger against
the friend of the Italians, employed as a pretext the reli-
112 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 88-82.
gious dread which he had inspired and furnished him the
means to cross over into Africa.
However in Rome Sulla had diminished by several laws the
power of the tribunes of the people. Hardly had he departed
for Asia, when the consul Cinna demanded that their dan-
gerous power be restored. On being driven out of Rome
he began a war against the senate. Marius hastened to
return and join him. With an army of fugitive slaves and
Italians they routed the troops of the senate, forced the gates
of the city and put to death the friends of Sulla. For five
days and five nights they slew without cessation, even on the
altars of the gods. From Rome the proscription spread over
Italy. They murdered in the cities and on the highways.
It was forbidden under pain of death to bury the dead, who
lay where they had fallen- until devoured by dogs and birds
of prey.
On January 1, 86, Marius and Cinna seized the consul-
ship without election ; but debauch hastened the end of the
former. Twelve days afterward he expired. He had set a
price on Sulla's head. Valerius Flaccus undertook to get it,
but was himself killed by one of his lieutenants. Cinna,
thus left alone, continued himself in the consulship during
the two following years, and fell under the blows of his
soldiers.
Victory of Sulla. His Proscriptions and Dictatorship (84-
79). — At that moment Sulla was returning from Asia to
avenge his friends and himself. His 40,000 veterans
were so devoted to his person that they offered him
their savings to fill his military chest. Unopposed he made
his way into Campania (83), defeated one army, corrupted
another and vanquished the son of Marius in the great
battle of Sacriportus (82). This success opened the road to
Rome. He arrived there too late to prevent fresh murders.
The most illustrious senators had been massacred in the
curia itself. Sulla rapidly passed through Rome on his way
to fight the other consul, Carbo, in Etruria. One desperate
battle which lasted all day had no result ; but desertions
decided Carbo to flee to Africa. Sertorius, another leader
of the popular party, had already set out for Spain ; only
the young Marius, who was shut up in Praeneste, remained
in Italy. The Italians tried by a bold stroke to save him.
A Samnite chief, Pontus Telesinus, who had not laid down
his arms since the Socinl Wnr. tried to surprise Rome and
B.C. 82-81.] FIRST CIVIL WARS 113
destroy it. Sulla had time to arrive. The battle near the
Colline Gate lasted one whole day and night. The left wing
commanded by Sulla was routed; but Crassus with the right
wing dispersed the enemy. The field of battle was strewn
with 50,000 corpses, half of which were Roman.
The next day Sulla harangued the senate in the temple
of Bellona. Suddenly cries of despair were heard and
the senators became uneasy. " It is nothing," said he,
"except the punishment of a few seditious persons," and
he continued his discourse. Meanwhile 8000 Sanmite
and Lucanian prisoners were being slain. When he re-
turned from Prseneste, which had surrendered and all of
whose population had been massacred, the butchery began
in E/Ome. Every day a list of the outlawed was drawn up.
From the first of December, 82, to the first of June, 81,
during six long months, men could murder with impunity.
There were assassinations afterward also, for Sulla's inti-
mates sold the right to place a name on the fatal list. " One
man's splendid villa, or the marble baths of another, or the
magnificent gardens of a third caused him to perish." The
property of the proscribed was confiscated, and sold at
auction. The estate of Roscius was valued at six million
sesterces, and Chrysogonus got it for two thousand. What
was the number of the victims ? Appian inentions ninety
senators, fifteen former consuls and 2600 knights. Valerius
Maximus speaks of 4700 proscribed. " But who could
reckon," says another, " all those who were sacrificed to pri-
vate grudge ? " The proscription did not stop with the vic-
tims. The sons and grandsons of the proscribed were
declared forever ineligible to a public office. In Italy
entire peoples were outlawed. The richest cities, Spoietum,
Interamna, Prseneste, Terni, Florence, were, so to speak, sold
at auction. In Samnium, Beneventum alone remained
standing.
• After having slain men by the sword, Sulla tried to destroy
the popular party by laws. To issue these laws he had
himself proclaimed dictator, and took all the measures which
he thought calculated to assure the power in Rome to the
aristocracy. To the senate he restored the right of decision
and of preliminary discussion, or in other words the legis-
lative veto. He deprived the tribunes of the right to pre-
sent a rogation to the people. Their veto was restricted
to civil affairs, and the tribune could hold no other office.
114 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 76-72.
Thus the people and the nobles moved backward four cen-
turies ; the former to the obscurity of the time when they
withdrew to Mons Sacer, the latter to the brilliancy and
power of the early days of the republic.
When Sulla had accomplished his purposes, he abdicated.
This abdication (76) seemed a defiance of his enemies and
an audacious confidence in his own fortunes. He lived a
year longer in the retirement of his villa at Cumse. The
epita]3h he had written for himself was veracious : '' No one
has ever done more good to his friends, or more evil to his
enemies."
The Popular Party ruined by the Defeat of Sertorius (72).
— The popular party was crushed at Rome. Sertorius tried
to revive it in Spain. Driven out at first by one of Sulla's
lieutenants before he had had time to organize anything,
and then recalled by the Lusitanians, he gained over the
Spaniards who thought that they were fighting for their
independence. Successfully he resisted for ten years the
best generals of the senate (82-72). He wore out Metellus,
his first adversary, by a war of skirmishes and surprises,
and defeated Pompey in many encounters. Unfortunately
the clever leader was badly seconded. Whenever he was
absent his lieutenants were worsted. He was assassinated
in his tent by Perpenna, one of his officers, who, unable to
carry on the war which his victim had conducted, fell into
the hands of Pompey. The conqueror boasted that he had
captured 800 cities and ended the' Civil Wars. The latter
had in fact been averted but only for twenty years.
B.C. 90 85.] FROM HULL A TO C.EiSAR 115
VI
FROM SULLA TO C^SAR. POMPEY AND CICERO
(79-60)
War against Mithridates under Sulla (90-84). — The shock
which the empire had undergone from the popular turmoils
in the times of the Gracchi and Marias, from the revolt
of the slaves in Sicily, and the Social War in Italy, had
affected the provinces. The provincials, horribly oppressed
by the governors, wished to escape from that Roman domi-
nation in which the Italians merely had demanded a share.
The Western provincials had joined Sertorius. Those in
the East followed Mithridates.
Mithridates, king of Pontus, had subdued many Scythian
nations beyond the Caucasus, also the kingdom of the Cim-
merian Bosphorus, and in Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Phrygia
and Bithynia. The senate, alarmed at this great power
which was forming in the neighborhood of its provinces,
ordered the prsetor of Asia to restore the Bithynian and
Cappadocian kings to their thrones (90). Mithridates
silently made immense preparations. When he learned
that Italy was on fire, through the insurrection of the Sam-
nite peoples, he deluged Asia with his armies. Such hatred
had the greed of the Eoman publicans everywhere excited,
that 80,000 Italians were assassinated in Asiatic cities
at the order of Mithridates. Having subdued Asia, the
king of Pontus invaded Greece and captured Athens (88).
At any cost this conqueror who dared approach Italy
must be stopped. Portunately the Social War was nearing
its end. In the spring of 87 Sulla arrived in Greece with
five legions, and began the siege of Athens which lasted
ten months. The city was bathed in blood. The Pontic
army encountered Sulla near Chseronea. His soldiers were
appalled at the hosts of the enemy. Like Marius he
exhausted them with work until they themselves demanded
battle. Of the 120,000 Asiatics only 10,000 escaped.
Sulla was still at Thebes, celebrating his victory, when he
116 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 85-71.
learned that the consul Valerius Flaccus was crossing the
Adriatic with an army to rob him of the honor of termi-
nating this war, and to execute the decree of proscription
issued against him at Rome. At the same time Dorylaos,
a general of Mithridates, arrived from Asia with 80,000
men. Thus placed between two perils Sulla chose the
more glorious. He marched against Dorylaos whom he
met in Boeotia near Orchomenus. This time the enga]:e-
ment was fierce ; Sulla was wounded but the Asiatic hordes
were again dispersed. Thebes and three other cities of
Boeotia met the fate of Athens.
While he was winning this second victory, Flaccus had
preceded him into Asia. Mithridates, threatened by two
armies, secretly sued for peace from Sulla, intimating that
he could obtain very mild terms from Fimbria, who had
killed Flaccus and was making war on his own account.
Mithridates vainly hoped to profit by the rivalry of the two
chiefs. Finally the king humbly asked for an interview.
It took place at Dardanus in the Troad. Mithridates made
full submission, restored his conquests, delivered up the
captives and deserters with 2000 talents and seventy
galleys. Fimbria was then in Lydia. Sulla marched
upon him, won over his army and reduced him to suicide
(84). With the soldiers trained in this war he returned
to Italy to overthrow the party of Marius.
War against Mithridates under LucuUus and Pompey
(74-63). — When six years later the king of Pontus heard
of the dictator's death (78), he secretly incited the king of
Armenia, Tigranes, to invade Cappadocia, and he himself
prepared to enter the arena. All the barbaric tribes from
the Caucasus to the Balkans furnished auxiliaries. Roman
exiles drilled his troops and Sertorius sent him officers
from Spain (74).
Lucullus, proconsul of Cilicia, having received orders to
oppose him, was marching on Pontus, when he learned that
his colleague Cotta had been twice defeated and blocked in
Macedon (74). Hastening to his help, he drove Mithridates
into Cyzicus, where that prince would have been captured
had not a subordinate officer been negligent. Then he pen-
etrated into Pontus and took the stronghold of Amisus (72).
In the following year he surrounded the enemy again. The
king escaped by scattering his treasures along the road so
as to delay pursuit, He found refuge with Tigranes, who
B.C. 71-63.] FROM SULLA TO C^SAR 117
was then the most powerful monarch of the East, being
master of Armenia and Syria, conqueror of the Parthians,
and bearing the title of King of kings. Mithridates in his
former prosperity had refused to recognize his supremacy.
Therefore he was coldly received, but when Lucullus de-
manded that he should be surrendered, Tigranes in anger
dismissed the envoy of the Koman general. The latter
immediately began hostilities against his new enemy. He
crossed the Tigris and with 11,000 foot aud a few horse
marched to encounter 250,000 Armenians. He dispersed
the immense army of Tigranes and captured his capital,
Tigranocerta.
Lucullus wintered in Gordyene, where he invited the king
of the Parthians to join him. As that prince hesitated, he
resolved to attack him, for he held in profound contempt
those mobs which their princes mistook for armies. But
his officers and soldiers, content with the immense booty
they had already captured, refused, like those of Alexander,
to follow him further. In 67 Ponipey came to replace
him. Mithridates had collected another army, which was
destroyed at the first encounter, and Tigranes, threatened
by a treacherous and rebellious son who fled to the Romans,
was forced to humble himself. Reassured in this direction,
Pompey pursued Mithridates to the Caucasus and con-
quered the Albanians and the Iberians. As the king still
fled before him, he abandoned this fruitless pursuit. In
the spring of 64, after having organized the Roman admin-
istration in Pontus, he descended into Syria, reduced that
country and Phoenicia to provinces and captured Jerusalem,
where he reestablished Hyrcanus who promised an annual
tribute.
During these operations, Mithridates, who was reputed
dead, reappeared with an army on the Bosphorus and forced
his son Machares to kill himself. Then, despite his sixty
years, this indomitable enemy wished to penetrate Thrace,
attach the barbarians to his cause and descend upon Italy
at the head of their innumerable hordes. His soldiers,
alarmed at the magnitude of his plans, revolted at the insti-
gation of his son Pharnaces. In order to escape being de-
livered alive to the Romans, he had himself killed by a
Gaul (63). Pompey had only to finish in Asia "the splen-
did work of the Roman empire," distributing principalities
and kingdoms to the friends of the senate.
118 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 71-67.
Revival of the Popular Party at Rome. The Gladiators
(71). — After the death of Sulla and during the recent
war against Mithridates, events of considerable importance
had been taking place in Italy. The consul Lepidus had
aroused a tempest by merely uttering the words : " Re-
establishment of the authority of the tribuneship." The
whole party, which Sulla thought he had drowned in blood,
had at once raised its head. The governor of Cisalpine
Gaul joined Lepidus. The senate and the patricians trem-
bled when Pompey, still at the head of the army which he
had himself raised against the followers of Marius, offered
to hght the new chiefs of the people. He vanquished one
at the Milvian Bridge close to the gates of Rome and the
other in Cisalpine Gaul. We have seen his success in paci-
fying Spain.
Seventy-eight gladiators escaped from Capua, where they
were being trained in great numbers, and seized upon a
natural stronghold under the guidance of a Thracian slave
Spartacus. There they repulsed troops sent against them.
This success attracted to their ranks many herdsmen of the
neighborhood. A second general was beaten. Spartacus
wished to lead his army toward the Alps, cross those moun-
tains and restore each slave to his native country. His
men, greedy for booty and vengeance, refused to follow and
dispersed all over Italy for pillage. Then two consuls
were defeated. Crassus finally succeeded in shutting up the
gladiators in the extreme end of Brutium, whither their
chief had conducted them with the intention of leading them
across into Sicily. Before the investment was complete
Spartacus took advantage of a snowy night to escape. Dis-
sension arose among his men and several detached corps
were destroyed. Spartacus alone seemed invincible. The
confidence which his successes inspired among the gladiators
ended in his ruin. They forced him to fight a decisive
battle, in which he succumbed after having displayed heroic
courage (71). Shortly afterward Pompey arrived from
Spain. He met several bands of these unfortunate men and
cut them in pieces. Prom this paltry victory he attributed
to himself the honor of having terminated this war.
Pompey turns toward the People. War with the Pirates
(67). — The nobles began to think that the vainglorious gen-
eral had held commands enough and received him coldly.
The people on the contrary to win him to their side greeted
B.C. 67-^3.] FltOM SULLA TO C^SAR 119
him with applause, so Ponipey incliaed toward the popular
party. He proposed a law which restored to the tribunate
its ancient prerogatives. This was the overthrow of Sulla's
constitution. The grateful populace committed to him the
charge of an easy but brilliant expedition against the pirates
who infested the seas (67), and the command of the war
against Mithridates whom Lucullus had already reduced.
While accomplishing these enterprises, a memorable con-
spiracy was on the point of overturning the republic itself.
Cicero. Conspiracy of Catiline (63). — Cicero, like Marius,
came from Arpinum. His fluent and flowery speech early
revealed in him the ready orator. After a few successes
at the bar he had the wisdom to continue his studies in
Greece. He began his public career as a quaestor, and in
the name of the Sicilians arraigned Verres, their former
governor, the most shameless and greedy plunderer that
Eome had ever seen. This trial, which had immense celeb-
rity, raised to the highest pitch the renown of the prose-
cutor, whose speeches against Verres we still admire at the
present day. Cicero being a new man needed support.
He sought that of Pompey and helped to confer extraordi-
nary powers upon him. Eventually recognizing the goal
whither that ambitious general was tending, he labored to
form a party of honest men who assumed the mission of
defending the republic. His consulship appears to have
been the realization of this plan.
The government was then menaced by a vast conspiracy.
Catiline during the proscriptions had signalized himself
among the most bloodthirsty. He had killed his brother-
in-law, and murdered his wife and son to secure another
woman in marriage. While propraetor in Africa he had
committed terrible extortions. On his return he solicited
the consulship, but a deputation from his province brought
accusations against him, and the senate struck his name
from the list of candidates. He had long been in league
with the criminal classes at Rome. His plot to kill the
consuls twice failed, and the enterprise was postponed to
the year 63. Cicero was then consul, and realized how im-
minent was the danger. Catiline had collected forces in
several places. The veterans of Umbria, Etruria and Sam-
nium were arming in his cause. The fleet at Ostia was
apparently won over : Sittius in Africa promised to stir up
that province and perhaps Spain also to rebellion. In Rome
120 HISTORY OF THE BOMANS [b.c. G3.
itself, Catiline believed he could count upon the consul An-
tonius. One of the conspirators was a tribune elect, an-
other a praetor. In a full senate Catiline had dared to say,
" The Roman people is a robust body without a head : I will
be that head." It soon became known that troops were
mustering in Picenum and Apulia, and that Manlius, one
of Sulla's former officers, was threatening Fsesulse with an
army. The consuls were invested by the senate with dis-
cretionary power, but Catiline remained in Rome. Cicero
drove him out by a vehement oration, in which he disclosed
the conspirator's plans. Having thus expelled the leader,
who joined Manlius and thereby proclaimed himself a public
enemy, he seized his accomplices, caused their condemna-
tion by the senate and had them executed at once. This
energy disheartened the rest of the conspirators. Antonius
himself marched against Catiline, who was slain near Pis-
toia, after having fought valiantly.
On quitting office, when Cicero wished to harangue the
people, a factious tribune ordered that he should confine
himself to the customary oath of having done nothing con-
trary to the laws. "I swear," exclaimed Cicero, "T swear
that I have saved the republic ! " To this eloquent out-
burst Cato and the senators responded by saluting him with
the title, " Father of his country," which the whole people
confirmed by their applause.
B.C. 65-29.] CJESAR 121
VII
C^SAR
(60-44)
CaBsar, Leader of the Popular Party. His Consulship (60).
— Caesar, of the illustrious Julian family which claimed de-
scent from Venus through lulus, the son of Anchises, had
braved Sulla when only seventeen years old. Nominated
curule aedile in 65, he had won the people by magnificent
games, and in spite of the senate had restored to the Capitol
the trophies of his great-uncle Marius. The grateful people
had nominated him sovereign pontiff. In 62 he already
was in debt 850 talents. The wealthy Crassus, who owned
a whole quarter in Rome, had to become his bondsman.
Otherwise his debtors would not allow him to depart and
take possession of his province of Farther Spain.
When he returned in 60, he found Pompey and Crassus
at variance with the senate; the first because it did not
ratify his acts in Asia, the second because it left him no
influence in the state. Csesar brought them together, and
induced them to form a secret union which has been desig-
nated as the triumvirate. All three swore to unite their
resources and influence, and in every matter to act only in
accordance with their common interest. Caesar reaped the
first and the surest profits from the alliance. His two col-
leagues agreed to support him for the consulship. In office
he secured popularity by proposing and carrying an agrarian
law in spite of the senate and of his colleague Bibulus. He
won over the equestrian order by diminishing by a third
the rents which the knights paid the state. He caused the
acts of Pompey in Asia to be confirmed, and obtained for
himself the government of Cisalpine Gaul and of Illyricum
with three legions for a term of five years. In vain did
Cato cry with prophetic voice : " You are arming tyranny
and setting it in a fortress above your heads ! " The trem-
bling senate added as an earnest of reconciliation a fourth
122 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 59-52.
legion and a third province, Transalpine Gaul, where war
was imminent (59) . Before his departure Caesar took great
care to have Clodius, one of his creatures, appointed tribune.
Thus he could hold both the senate and Pompey in check
during his absence. Clodius soon delivered him from two
obnoxious persons, Cato and Cicero, accusing the great
orator of illegally putting to death Catiline's accomplices.
Clodius secured against him a sentence of exile to a dis-
tance of 400 miles from Kome. Cato was ordered to reduce
Cyprus to a province.
The Gallic War. Victories over the Helvetii, Ariovistus, and
the Belgae (58-57). — Since 125 the Eomans had held Nar-
bonensis, a province in Gaul, and were on friendly terms
with the ^dui, a tribe in central Gaul. Their neighbors,
the Sequani, were attacked by Ariovistus, a German chief.
He had crossed the Rhine with 120,000 Suevi, overthrown
the Sequani and ^dui, and harshly oppressed eastern Gaul.
This was the beginning of the Germanic invasion. Another
fact directed Caesar's attention to this quarter. The Hel-
vetii, constantly attacked by the Suevi, wished to abandon
their mountains and seek on the shores of the ocean a milder
climate and an easier existence. Caesar resolved to oppose
these changes as unfavorable to Roman supremacy. The
Helvetii having crossed the Jura in spite of his prohibition,
he exterminated many of them on the banks of the Saone,
and forced the rest to return to their mountains. Then in
a sanguinary encounter he drove Ariovistus back beyond
the Rhine (58). Gaul was delivered. As the legions estab-
lished their camps at the very frontiers of Belgium, the
Belgic tribes grew alarmed at seeing the Romans so near
them. They formed a vast league, which was broken by
the treachery of the Remi, and the tribes, attacked sepa-
rately, were forced to submit.
Submission of Armoricum and Aquitaine. Expeditions to
Britain and beyond the Rhine (56-53) . — The third cam-
paign subdued Armoricum and the Aquitani. In the fourth
and fifth, two expeditions beyond the Rhine deprived the
barbarians of all desire of crossing that river or of aiding
the Gauls in their resistance. Two descents upon Britain
cut off Gaul from that island, the centre of the druidic
religion. The whole of Gaul was apparently resigned to
the yoke.
General Insurrection. Vercingetorix. — Nevertheless a
B.C. 53-52.] CJESAR 123
general insurrection was preparing from the Garonne to
the Seine. A young chieftain of the Arverni, Vercin-
getorix, directed the movement (52). The legions were
dispersed but Caesar acted with great celerity and skill.
With his lieutenant, Labienus, who had won a battle near
Paris, Caesar attacked 200,000 Gauls, who were trying to
cut him off from the Alps. He gained a decisive victory,
crowded his enemy into Alesia, and surrounded it with
formidable earthworks. Vercingetorix was forced to sur-
render.
Defeat of Crassus by the Parthians. — While Caesar was
conquering Gaul by his activity and genius, one of the
triumvirs, Crassus, undertook an expedition against the
Parthians. After pillaging the temples of Syria and Jeru-
salem, he crossed the Euphrates with seven legions, plunged
into the immense plains of Mesopotamia and soon encoun-
tered the innumerable cavalry of the Parthians. When these
horsemen hurled themselves upon the legions, the Koman
arms and courage proved of no avail against the tactics of
the enemy. When they advanced, the Parthians fled ; when
they halted, the squadrons hovered around the stationary
host and slew them with arrows from a distance. Dis-
heartened, the legions retreated to Carrhae, leaving 4000
wounded. The very next day the Koman army was over-
taken by the Parthians, and the terrified soldiers forced
Crassus to accept an interview with the surena, or Par-
thian general-in-chief. The interview was an ambuscade.
Crassus and his escort were killed. Only a few feeble
remnants recrossed the Euphrates (53).
Civil War between Caesar and Pompey (49-48). — Between
the two surviving triumvirs peace could not long endure.
While Crassus was fighting in Syria and Caesar in Gaul,
Pompey had remained in Rome. Daily insulted by Clodius,
he soon recalled Cicero, the personal enemy of that dema-
gogue, and then stirred up the tribune Milo, who opposed
Clodius with a band of gladiators and finally killed him.
The senate won Pompey to its side by causing his election
as sole consul with absolute power (52). This was mon-
archy in disguise; but the senate desired a general and an
army to oppose Caesar, whose glory daily became more
menacing. Cato approved these concessions. Though
Pompey was a usurper, his usurpation was acquired by
legal means; but how was he to defend himself against his
124 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 51-47.
former associate in the triumvirate? Then began attacks
upon Caesar, for the purpose of taking away his command.
In vain did the tribune Curio declare that Pompey must
abdicate to save liberty, if Caesar were dispossessed. On
January 1, 49, a decree of the senate declared Caesar a pub-
lic enemy if by a certain day he did not abandon his troops
and his provinces. Two tribunes who opposed were threat-
ened by the followers of Pompey and fled to Caesar's camp.
He no longer hesitated, crossed the Eubicon, the boundary
of his government, and in sixty days drove from Italy Pom-
pey and the senators who wished to follow him (49). Then
he attacked the Pompeian party in Spain and forced it to
lay down its arms. On his way back he captured Marseilles
and returned to Rome where the people had conferred upon
him the title of dictator.
Pompey had retired toward Dyrrachium in Epirus and
thence called to him all the forces of the East. In January,
48, Caesar crossed the Adriatic, and although his army was
greatly inferior in numbers tried to surround his adversary.
Being repulsed in an attack against positions which were
too strong, and in need of food, he marched to Thessaly
whither Pompey imprudently followed. The battle of
Pharsalia, the defeat and flight of Pompey to Egypt, where
he was treacherously murdered at the moment of his disem-
barkation in a supposed friendly land, left Caesar without
a rival.
War of Alexandria. Caesar Dictator (48-44). — With his
usual activity, he had followed on the heels of Pompey and
had arrived in Egypt a few days after him. The ministers
of the young Ptolemy expected a reward for their treachery.
He showed only horror. Eascinated by the charms of Cleo-
patra, the sister of the king, he wished her to reign jointly
with her brother. Then the ministers stirred up the im-
mense population of Alexandria, and the victor of Pharsalia
beheld himself with 7000 legionaries besieged for seven
months in the palace of the Lagidae. Reinforcements came
to him from Asia. He assumed the offensive and defeated
the royal army. The fleeing king was drowned in the
Nile, and Cleopatra remained sole mistress of Egypt (48).
Caesar returned to Rome by way of Asia, where he routed
Pharnaces. Veni, vidi, vici, he wrote to the senate (47).
Another war awaited him. The survivors of Pharsalia,
who had taken refuge in Africa, now formed a formidable
B.C. 46-44.] C^SAR 125
army supported by Jubca, king of the Nimiidians. He con-
quered it at Thapsus and captured Utica, where Cato had
just committed suicide rather than survive liberty (46).
The sons of Pompey roused Spain to revolt in the fol-
lowing year. This last was a difficult struggle. At Munda
Caesar was obliged to fight for his life, but his enemies were
crushed. All the honors which flattery could invent were
bestowed upon the conqueror. He was declared almost a
god. All the prerogatives of authority were surrendered
to him. However no man ever made a nobler use of his
power. There were no proscriptions. All injuries were
forgotten. Discipline was sternly maintained in the army.
The people, while surfeited with festivals and games, were
firmly ruled and Italian agriculture was encouraged as the
Gracchi had wished that it should be. No new names were
invented for this new authority. The senate, the comitia,
the magistracies, existed as in the past. Only Csesar con-
centrated in himself all i^ublic action by uniting in his own
hands all the offices of the republic. As dictator for life
and consul for live years, he had the executive power with
the right to draw upon the treasury; as imperator, the
military power; as tribune, the veto on the legislative
power. Chief of the senate, he directed the debates of that
assembly; prefect of customs, he decided them according
to his pleasure; grand pontiff, he made religion speak in
accordance with his interests and watched over his minis-
ters. The finances, the army, religion, the executive power,
a part of the judicial p)Ower, and indirectly nearly all the
legislative power were thus at his discretion.
Caesar had conceived grand projects. He wished to crush
the Daci and Getae, avenge Crassus, penetrate even to the
Indus, and, returning through conquered Scythia and Ger-
many, in the Babylon of the West place on his brow the
crown of Alexander. Then, master of the world, he would
cut the Corinthian isthmus, drain the Pontine marshes,
pierce Lake Fucinus and throw across the Apennines a
great road from the Adriatic to the Tuscan sea. Then he
would extend the rights of citizenship in order to cement
the unity of the empire ; would collect in one code the laws,
the decrees of the senate, the plebiscites and the edicts ; and
would gather in a public library all the products of human
thought.
But for many months a conspiracy had been forming.
^2Q HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c.44.
Cassius was its head. He carried with him Brutus, nephew
and son-in-law of Cato, a man of many virtues but egotistic
and a blind partisan of former institutions. On the ides ot
March (March 15), 44, the conspirators assassinated Osesar
in the senate house.
B.C. 44-43.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 127
VIII
THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE
Octavius. — With Caesar dead the conspirators supposed
liberty would return unaided; bat Antony, then consul,
stirred up the people against them at the dictator's funeral
and drove them from the city. Caesar had left no son, only
a nephew, Octavius, whom he had adopted. When this
young man, eighteen years of age, came to Rome, Antony,
expecting to inherit the power of his former chief, dis-
dained the friendless aspirant; but the name of Caesar ral-
lied round Octavius all the veterans. As he agreed to
discharge the legacy bequeathed by Caesar to the people
and the soldiers, he created for himself by that declaration
alone a numerous faction. The senate, where Cicero tried
once more to rescue liberty from the furious hands which
sought to stifle it, needed an army wherewith to oppose
Antony. This army Octavius alone could give. Cicero
flattered tlie youth, whom he hoped to lead, and caused
some empty honors to be conferred upon him. He was sent
with two consuls to the relief of Decimus Brutus, one of
Caesar's murderers, whom Antony was besieging in Modena.
The campaign was short and sanguinary (43). Antony
was defeated, but the two consuls perished, and Octavius
demanded for himself one of the vacant offices. The senate,
which thought it needed him no longer, disdainfully rejected
his demand. He immediately led eight legions to the very
gates of Rome, made his entry amid the plaudits of the
people, who declared him consul, had his election ratified,
and distributed to his troops at the expense of the public
treasury the promised rewards.
Second Triumvirate. Proscription. Battle of Philippi. —
He could now treat with Antony without fear of suffering
eclipse. He was consul. He had an army. He was mas-
ter of Rome, and around him all those Caesarians had ral-
lied whom the violence of his rival had estranged. The
negotiations made rapid progress. Antony, Lepidus, the
128 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.o. 43-42.
former general of Caesar's cavalry, and Octavius met near
Bologna on an island of the little river Reno. There they
spent three days in forming the plan of the second trium-
virate. A new magistracy was created under the title of
" triumviri reipublicse constituendse. " Lepidus, Antony and
Octavius conferred upon themselves the consular power for
five years, with the right to dispose for the same period of
all the offices. Their decrees were to have the force of law,
and each reserved to himself two provinces on the outskirts
of Italy: Lepidus, Narbonensis and Spain; Antony, the two
Gauls; Octavius, Africa, Sicily and Sardinia. To make
sure of their soldiers, the triumvirs promised them 5000
drachmse apiece and the lands of eighteen of the finest
cities in Italy.
Before returning to Rome they issued an order to put to
death seventeen of the most prominent persons of the state.
Cicero was among the number. On their arrival they pro-
mulgated the following edict : " Let no one conceal any of
those whose names are hereinafter given. Whoever shall
assist a proscribed person to escape shall himself be pro-
scribed. Let the heads be brought to us. In recompense,
the freeman shall receive 25,000 drachmae, the slave 10,000
together with free liberty and citizenship." Then followed
a list of 130 names. A second list of 150 appeared almost
immediately afterward, soon followed by others. At the
head of the first stood the names of a brother of Lepidus,
of an uncle of Antony and of a tutor of Octavius. Each
leader had given up a kinsman, thus purchasing the privi-
lege of not being hampered in his vengeance. The ill-
omened days of Marius and Sulla began anew and again
were seen hideous trophies of bleeding heads. One was
presented to Antony: "I do not recognize it," said he;
"carry it to my wife." In fact it was that of a wealthy
private person who had once refused to sell Fulvia one of
his villas. Many escaped on the ships of Sextus Pompey,
who had just seized Sicily, or made their way to Africa,
Syria and Macedon. Cicero, whom Octavius had aban-
doned to the rancor of his colleague, was less fortunate.
He was killed in his villa at Gaeta. His head and hand
were cut off and brought to Antony while he was at table.
At the spectacle he manifested a ferocious joy. Fulvia,
taking in her hands that bleeding head, with a bodkin
pierced the tongue which had pursued her with so many
B.C. 42-41.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 129
deserved sarcasms. The pitiable remains were then attached
to the rostrum.
On leaving Italy Brutus had gone to Athens. The gov-
ernor of Macedon resigned his command to him. From the
Adriatic to Thrace in a few days everything obeyed the
republican general. Cassius for his part had seduced
the eastern legions.
■ To raise money, he made the provinces pay in one instal-
ment the taxes of the next ten years. The republican army,
loaded down with the plunder of Asia, reentered Europe
and advanced as far as Philippi in Macedon to meet the
triumvirs. Antony posted himself opposite Cassius; Oc-
tavius opposed Brutus. The two armies were nearly equal
in numbers, but the republicans had a formidable fleet,
which cut off communication by sea. Thus Antony, threat-
ened with famine, was anxious for battle, but Cassius for
the contrary reason wished to defer it. Brutus, eager to
end the civil war, desired action. Octavius, who was ill,
had been removed from his camp when Messala, attacking
with impetuosity, penetrated his lines. Brutus thought
the victory was won. But on the other wing Antony had
dispersed his antagonists, and Cassius regarding his party
as ruined had committed suicide.
Twenty days after this action, another took place, in
which the troops of Brutus were surrounded and put to
rout. Their leader, who escaped with difficulty, halted on
an eminence to accomplish what he called his deliverance.
He threw himself on his sword, exclaiming: "Virtue, thou
art only a word ! " Antony showed some mildness toward
the captives, but Octavius was pitiless. The republican
fleet proceeded to join Sextus Pompey (42).
Antony in the East. The Perusian War. Treaty of Mise-
num (39). — The two conquerors made a new partition of
the world between them, regardless of Lepidus, who was
supposed to have an understanding with Pompey. The
share of the leaders having been arranged, it remained to
settle that of the soldiers. Octavius, ill as he was, under-
took the apparently difficult task of distributing lands in
Italy to the veterans. Antony was to go to Asia and obtain
the 200, 000 talents required. He traversed Greece and Asia
in a continual festival, horribly oppressing the people to
provide the means for extravagance. In Asia he demanded
the imposts for the next ten years on the spot. For a
130 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 41-35.
savory dish he rewarded his cook with the house of a
wealthy citizen of Magnesia. Cleopatra had furnished
money and troops to Cassius. Antony demanded an ex-
planation of her conduct. To Tarsus in Cilicia, where he
was, she came in person hoping to conquer him as she had
conquered Caesar by her charms.
Antony was an easy prey. When he beheld this elegar.^
and accomplished Avoman, who spoke six languages, holding
her own with him in his orgies, he forgot Rome and Fulvia
his wife to follow her, tamed and docile, to Alexandria
(41). While he was wasting precious time in shameful de-
bauchery, Octavius in Italy was attempting the impossible
task of satisfactorily dividing the lands. The dispossessed
proprietors, who unlike Virgil could not buy back their
property with fine verses, hastened to Rome, lamented their
misfortunes and excited the people to revolt. The brother
of Antony thought this an opportunity to overthrow Oc-
tavius and collected seventeen legions, with which he
seized Rome, announcing the speedy restoration of the re-
public. But Agrippa, the best officer of Octavius, drove
him from the city and forced him to take refuge in Perusia,
where famine compelled his surrender (40). Fulvia fled to
Greece with all Antony's friends and Octavius remained
sole master of Italy. The news roused the triumvir from
his unmanly torpor but his soldiers ordered peace, and the
two adversaries made a new partition, which gave Antony
the east as far as the Adriatic with the obligation to fight
the Parthians, and the west to Octavius with the war
against Sextus Pompey. The latter however a few days
later signed the treaty of Misenum. He was to retain
Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Achsea. Lepidus received
Africa (39).
Wise Administration of Octavius. Expedition of Antony
against the Parthians. — The peace of Misenum was only a
truce. Octavius could not consent to leave the provisioning
of Rome and of his legions at the mercy of Pompey. The
struggle broke out in 38. The victory of Naulochus assured
the success of Octavius (36). Sextus, who had taken refuge
in Asia, was put to death in Miletus by one of Antony's
officers (35). Octavius rid himself at the same time of
Lepidus, whom he banished to Circeii where he lived some
twenty-three years longer. When Octavius returned to
Rome the people, who beheld prosperity suddenly revived,
B.C. 37-32.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 131
accompanied him to the Capitol and crowned him with
flowers. They wished to lavish honors upon him. Already
beginning his role of self-abnegation and modesty, he sup-
pressed several taxes, and declared his intention of abdi-
cating as soon as Antony terminated the war against the
Parthians. Meanwhile his energetic administration rees-
tablished order in the peninsula. Bandits were hunted
down and fugitive slaves restored to their masters or put
to death when not reclaimed. In less than a year security
reigned at the capital and in the country. Kome was gov-
erned.
In 37 Antony came to Tarentum to renew the triumvirate
for five years. Excited by the victories of his lieutenants,
he decided to assume in person the command of the Par-
thian War. Scarcely had he touched Asiatic soil when his
passion for Cleopatra revived more madly than ever. He
had her come to Laodicea, recognized the children she had
borne him, and added to her dominions almost the whole
coast from the Nile as far as Mount Taurus. Though those
countries were for the most part Roman provinces, the
caprice of the all-powerful triumvir had more influence
than senate or laws.
At last Antony decided to march against the Parthians
with 60,000 men, 10,000 horsemen and 30,000 auxiliaries.
He marched through Armenia, whose king Artavasdes
was his ally, and penetrated as far as Phraata near the
Caspian Sea; but he had not brought his siege machines,
and was obliged to retreat. After twenty-seven days' march,
during which they fought eighteen battles, the Romans
reached the Araxes, the frontier of Armenia. Their road
from Phraata was marked by the corpses of 24,000 legion-
aries. Fortune offered Antony a last opportunity to re-
pair his reverses. A quarrel had arisen between the king
of the Parthians and the king of the Medes as to division of
the spoils. The angry Mede intimated that he was ready
to join the Romans. Cleopatra prevented Antony from
replying to this appeal, and carried him off in her train to
Alexandria.
While Antony was disgracing himself in the East, Oc-
tavius was giving to Italy that repose for which she hun-
gered. He conquered the pirates of the Adriatic and the
turbulent tribes, the Liburni and Dalmati, at the north.
At the siege of Metulum, he himself mounted to the assault
132 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 32-30.
and received three wounds. He penetrated as far as the
Sava, and subdued a part of Pannonia. Thus, of the two
triumvirs, the one was bestowing Roman countries upon a
barbarous queen, and the other was increasing the territory
of the empire. However Antony complained and demanded
a share in the spoils of Sextus and Lepidus. Octavius re-
plied with bitter criticisms of his conduct in the East, and
read to the senate the will of Antony, which bequeathed to
Cleopatra and her children the greater part of the provinces
which he had in his power. Octavius wished by this means
to strengthen the rumor that Antony, should he become
the master, would make a gift to Cleopatra of Rome itself.
A decree of the senate declared war against the queen of
Egypt.
Actium. Death of Antony and Reduction of Egypt to a
Province. — Antony had collected 100,000 foot, 12,000 horse
and 500 great ships of war. Octavius had only 80,000
foot, 12,000 horse and 250 vessels of inferior size. His
galleys however were lighter and swifter and were manned
by the veteran sailors and soldiers who had defeated Sextus
Pompey. The battle was fought oft" Actium on the coast of
Acarnania (31). Cleopatra took to flight in the middle of
the action with sixty Egyptian ships, and Antony cowardly
followed her. The abandoned fleet surrendered. The
army for seven days resisted all solicitation. This time
Octavius did not stain his victory by acts of revenge. No
suppliant for life was refused. The victor, recalled to Italy
to quiet troubles there, could not pursue his rival until the
following year. Antony tried to defend Alexandria but
was betrayed by Cleopatra and committed suicide. The
queen herself, having vainly sought to move the conqueror,
had herself stung by an asp. Octavius reduced Egypt to a
Roman province (30).
Rome belonged to a master. Two centuries of war, pil-
lage and conquests had destroyed equality in the city of
Fabricius, had taught insolence to the nobles, servility to
men of low degree, and replaced the citizen army by a mer-
cenary rabble, who cared nothing for the state, its laws or
liberty, and recognized only the leader whose hand offered
them booty and gold. The establishment of the empire was
certainly a military revolution. But, since Rome had not
been able to halt at the popular reforms of the Gracchi or
the aristocratic reform of Sulla, this revolution had be-
B.C. 30.] THE SECOND TRIUMVIRATE 133
come inevitable. It was impossible tliat the institu-
tions, adequate for a city of a few thousand inhabitants,
should be adequate for a society of 80,000,000 souls; that
the city, now become the capital of the world, should con-
tinue to be disturbed by sterile and bloody rivalries; that
the kings, the allied nations and the provinces should re-
main the prey of the 200 families which composed the
Roman aristocracy.
But in place of the citizens who were despoiled and
who merited their fate, could men be formed, capable by
their voluntary discipline and political intelligence of win-
ning new rights, higher perhaps than those which they had
lost?
If liberty was destined not to return, could any one under-
stand how to organize those multitudes, ignorant henceforth
of any will save that of the prince, into a vigorous body
capable of a long existence? Since there is to be an empire
instead of a city, shall we see a great nation take the place
of the oligarchy which had just been overthrown, and of
the populace which regarded the victory of Caesar and of
Octavius as its triumph? The history of Augustus and
of his successors will be the answer.
134 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [b.c. 30.
IX
AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS
(B.C. 31-A.D. 68)
Constitution of the Imperial Power (30-12). — Antony was
dead and Egypt attached to the imperial domain. Octa-
vius returned to Asia Minor. There he spent the winter
in regulating the affairs of the East, while Msecenas and
Agrippa kept watch for him in Eome. Their task was
easy, for the only sounds were the adulatory decrees of the
senate. When at last he returned to his capital after his
triumph, he distributed to the soldiers 1000 sesterces apiece,
to the citizens four hundred, and shut the temple of Janus
to announce the new era of peace and order that had begun.
As consul he was legally to retain for six years almost
the entire executive power. Yet above all he had need of
the army. In order to remain at its head he caused the
senate to bestow upon him the title of imperator with the
supreme command of all the military forces. The generals
were henceforth only his lieutenants, and the soldiers took
the oath of loyalty to him.
He preserved the senate and resolved to make of it the
pivot of his government. First however with Agrippa as
his colleague he was proclaimed censor; this enabled him
to expel from the senatorial body unworthy members or
opponents of the new order. AVhen the former censors
completed the census, the man whose name they had placed
at the head of the list, generally one of themselves, was
called chief of the senate. This purely honorary post Octa-
vius retained during the remainder of his life. Agrippa
had given his colleague this republican title, and thus
placed the deliberations of the senate under his direction ;
for, in accordance with ancient usage, the chief always
expressed his opinion first and this first opinion exercised
an influence now destined to be decisive.
The senators had placed nearly all the provinces under
B.C. 30-12.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 136
his authority by investing him with the proconsulship.
Octavius wished that they shoukl at least share this office
with him. He left them the tranquil and prosi^erous regions
of the interior, and took for himself those still in turmoil
or threatened by the barbarians, and where in consequence the
troops were stationed. In the fervor of its gratitude, the
senate called him Augustus, a title which had been applied
only to the gods. It is by this title he is commonly known.
Three years later it bestowed upon him the tribuneship for
life or inviolability in office. In the year 19 he was de-
creed consul for life. He had formerly accepted the com-
mand of the provinces and the armies for ten years only.
In the year 18 he caused his powers to be renewed, each
time protesting against the violence done his preferences in
the name of the public interest. Finally he caused him-
self to be named sovereign pontiff. There was nothing
else left worth the taking (12). Thus centring in himself
every high office, conferred in accordance with all the
forms of law, he was absolute master of Rome and the
empire. His reign of forty-four years was emploj^ed in
tranquil organization of the monarchy. The emasculated
senate still existed as the council of state. He even in-
creased its attributes by intrusting to it the decision in all
political cases and important suits. The people also retained
the form of their assemblies, but the public elections were
merely to confirm the choice made by the prince.
Military and Financial Organization. — As the real power
rested upon the soldiers, he made the army a permanent
organization, and stationed it along the frontiers in in-
trenched camps ready to resist the barbarians. Regula-
tions determined the duration of service, the treatment
of veterans and the pay of the three or four hundred thou-
sand men. Fleets at Frejus, Misenum and Ravenna acted
as the police of the Mediterranean. Flotillas were sta-
tioned on the Danube and Euxine. As he was chief of all
the legions and as the generals were only his lieutenants
fighting under the auspices of the imperator, none of them,
according to Roman ideas, could enjoy a triumph.
The civil was patterned after the military administration.
Annually the senate continued to send proconsuls to the
interior provinces which the emperor left it. The frontier
provinces Avere governed by imperial legates who retained
office as long as the sovereign saw fit. This was a salutary
136 HISTORY OF THE ROMAICS [b.c. 12,
innovation, because now the officers remained long at their
posts, and hence became acquainted with the needs of those
under their administration.
As there were apparently two kinds of provinces, there
were two financial administrations, the public treasury
or serarium, and the treasury of the prince or the fiscus.
The gerarium, which received the tributes of the senatorial
provinces, was moreover put by the senate at the sover-
eign's disposition, so he disposed of all the financial re-
sources of the empire just as he disposed of all its military
forces. These resources were insufficient to defray the new
expenses. It became necessary to reestablish customs
duties and create new taxes, such as a twentieth on inheri-
tances, a hundredth on commodities and fines for celibacy.
All these revenues, joined to the tributes of the provinces,
yielded perhaps eighty or a hundred million dollars.
Administration of Augustus in the Provinces and at Rome.
— If everything belonged to Augustus, his time, his ser-
vices, and even his fortune belonged to all. During his
long journeys through the provinces, he relieved cities in
debt and rebuilt those which some calamity had destroyed.
Tralles, Laodicea, Paphos, overthrown by earthquake, arose
from their ruins more beautiful than before. One year he
even defrayed from his own revenues all the taxes of the
province of Asia. The measures of the imperial adminis-
tration in general accorded with the conduct of the prince,
who was an example and a lesson to his officers. In re-
ligious matters no violence was allowed save in Gaul,
where druidism with its human sacrifices was vigorously
assailed. That the taxes might be justly apportioned a
general register of valuation was needed. Augustus had
this drawn up.
Three geometers travelled throughout the empire and
measured distances. This work served also another end.
The empire once surveyed and measured, it was easy to
make roads. Augustus repaired those of Italy, constructed
those of Cisalpine Gaul and covered all Gaul and the Ibe-
rian peninsula with highways. Then upon these roads a
regular service of posts was organized. The messengers
of the prince and the armies could be rapidly transported
from one province to another. Commerce and civilization
gained thereby. New life circulated in this empire, so
admirably planted all around the Mediterranean Sea.
A.D. 9.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 137
Augustus devoted particular attention to contenting the
people of Rome with games and distribution of corn. He
adorned the city with numerous monuments, appointed a
prefect and city cohorts to preserve public tranquillity, and
night watches to prevent or extinguish fires. He could
boast of leaving a city of marble where he had found one
of brick. In the still barbarous Western provinces, by
making new territorial divisions, he effaced their former
independent habits, and founded numerous colonies to mul-
tiply the Roman element in the midst of these populations.
During the triumvirate Octavius had often exhibited
cruelty, but Augustus almost always pardoned. He lived
less like a prince than like a plain private person, simply
andAvith dignity with his friends, jNIsecenas, Horace, Virgil,
Agrippa, who were not always courtiers.
Foreign Policy. Defeat of Varus (9 a.d.). — After
Actium he thought the wars were finished, and by closing
the doors of the temple of Janus he had declared that the
new monarchy renounced the spirit of conquest which had
animated the republic. In fact, there were no. serious wars
in the East, where the mere threat of an expedition decided
the Parthians to restore the flags of Crassus. But in
Europe the empire had not yet found its natural limits.
In order to place Italy, Greece and Macedon beyond the
danger of invasion, it was necessary to control the course
of the Danube. To avoid apprehension on the left bank of
the Rhine the German tribes must be expelled from the
right bank. This was the object of a series of expeditions,
all of which succeeded with one exception. In the year
16, Drusus and Tiberius subdued the tribes in Rheetia, Vin-
delicia and Noricum on the northern slope of the Alps,
thereby extending the Roman frontier to the upper Danube.
Seven years later Drusus crossed the lower Rhine and
penetrated to the banks of the Elbe. After his death his
tjrother Tiberius took up his winter quarters in the very
heart of Germany, and the Roman influence spread by
degrees from his camp. Meanwhile the Marcoman Marbod
was founding in Bohemia a kingdom defended by 70,000
foot and 4000 horse, all disciplined in the Roman manner.
Augustus became alarmed at these neighbors, and was pre-
paring a formidable army to destroy this rising state beyond
the Danube, when the Pannoni and Dalmati rebelled in its
rear. Tiberius induced Marbod to treat, and thus was able
138 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 9-M.
to fall upon the rebels with fifteen legions. However
three campaigns were necessary to overcome their desperate
resistance.
Only five days after the definite submission of the Pannoni
and Dalmati, Rome learned with consternation that three
legions had been drawn into an ambush by Hermann, a
young chieftain of the Cherusci, and had been utterly
destroyed together with their general Varus. Northern
Germany was rising in revolt, and was pushing the Roman
domination back upon the Rhine. "Varus, Varus! Give
me back my legions," Augustus cried in sorrow. Marbod,
jealous of Hermann, made no movement, and Augustus,
reassured on the score of the Danube, was able to send
Tiberius into Gaul. He fortified the strongholds along the
Rhine, reestablished discipline and for the sake of restor-
ing a little confidence even risked the eagles on the other
side of the river. Germanicus took his place in command
of the eight legions which garrisoned the left bank of the
Rhine. The enemy content with their victory were not
yet desirous to attack. The empire was saved, but the
glory of a long and pacific reign was tarnished by this
disaster. Augustus died five years afterwards (14 a.d.).
Augustus gave his name to a great literary epoch. Pos-
terity pictures him surrounded by Titus Livius, Horace
and Virgil, whom the other illustrious writers, Lucretius,
Catullus, Cicero, Sallust and CcBsar, had preceded by a few
years. We possess nothing of Varius, a tragic poet much
lauded at the time, but many elegies are left us of Tibullus,
Gallus and Propertius, and almost all the works of Ovid.
Trogus Pompeius compiled a universal history which un-
happily is lost; Celsus, a sort of encyclopaidia, of which
only the books relating t^ medicine remain ; and the Greek
Strabo composed his geography.
Tiberius (14-37). — Augustus had adopted Tiberius, a
son of his wife Livia by a former husband. He succeeded
without difficulty. To occupy the turbulent legions on the
frontier, Tiberius ordered Germanicus, who was both his
nephew and his adopted son, to lead the army beyond the
Rhine. They marched as far as the forest of Teutoberg,
where the three legions of Varus had perished. At first
the Germans nowhere made a stand. Growing bolder in
the following campaign they ventured to meet the Roman
army, and were defeated in the great battle of Idistavisus. ;
A.D. 14-26.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 139
A second battle was a second massacre, and Varus was
avenged. German icus then returned to Gaul, where he
found letters from Tiberius recalling him to Rome to
receive the consulship, and to undertake an important mis-
sion in Asia.
In Rome Tiberius governed mildly, refusing the honors
and temples offered to him. He disdained the base flattery
of the senate as one who knew its value. To the prov-
inces he sent able governors, did- not increase taxation, and
relieved the frequent distress. Twelve Asiatic cities,
ruined by an earthquake, were exempted for Ave years
from all dues. Tiberius practised his maxim, "A good
shepherd shears his sheep, but does not flay them."
In the East, Germanicus without drawing his sword
humbled the Parthians, who allowed him to give the Arme-
nian crown to a faithful vassal of the empire, and to reduce
Cappadocia and the Comagene to provinces. On returning
from a journey to Egypt he had violent disputes with Piso,
governor of Syria. His death, which occurred some time
afterward, was attributed to poison, and Piso's indecent joy
seemed to designate him as the criminal. Piso to regain
the government, which he had resigned rather than obey
Germanicus, did not shrink from civil war. Defeated, he
committed suicide. Tacitus intimates, without direct as-
sertion, that Tiberius poisoned Germanicus and then caused
Piso to disappear.
The first nine years of Tiberius' reign Vv^ere prosperous.
After the death of his son Drusus, everything changed.
He had a favorite, Sejanus, who had once saved his life
when a vault fell in upon him, and whom he made prefect
of the praetorian guard. Dazzled by success, Sejanus wished
to mount higher still. He believed that he might reach
the supreme power by overthrowing the sovereign and his
children. His first victim was the emperor's own son,
Drusus, whom he secretly poisoned. This death was a
mortal blow* to Tiberius. He felt himself alone and friend-
less. Naturally suspicious, he now everywhere beheld
plots and intrigues. To foil real or imaginary conspira-
tors he employed his power mercilessly. About this
time, Tiberius, then sixty-nine years of age, quitted Rome
never to return and withdrew to the delicious island of
Caprese, at the entrance of the Gulf of Naples (26). Se-
janus had become the intermediary between him and the
140 HISTORY OF THE ROMAN'S [a.d. 26-41.
empire. Inflaming the suspicions of the old man, he per-
suaded him to become the executioner of all his relatives
whom he represented as impatient heirs coveting their in-
heritance. Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus, was shut
up in the island of Pandataria, where four years later she
died of starvation. Of her three sons, Nero was put to
death or killed himself; Drusus was thrown into prison,
where he perished of hunger; the youth of Caius protected
him against the fears of Tiberius.
The whole family of Germanicus being practically de-
stroyed, Sejanus, drawing more closely to his goal, dared
solicit the hand of Drusus' widow. This was almost
equivalent to asking to be made the emperor's heir. His
suit was refused. Hence he resolved to strike at the em-
peror himself and gained accomplices even. in the palace.
But Tiberius understood him. Craftily depriving him of
his guard, he had him suddenly arrested in the open senate.
The people tore his body to pieces, and numerous executions
followed his death.
"The cruelty of Tiberius," says Suetonius, "knew no
bounds when he learned that his son Drusus had died of
poison. The place of execution is still shown at Capreae.
It is a rock, Avhence the condemned at a given signal were
hurled into the sea." Close beside it rose the palaces, scenes
of infamous orgies, as Tacitus asserts. Tiberius maintained
peace along the frontiers, which were seldom disturbed.
He died at the age of seventy-eight.
Caligula (37-41). — With acclamations Kome hailed the
accession of Caligula, son of Germanicus, and the new
emperor at first justified all her hopes. Soon however, in
consequence of an illness which seemed to have unsettled
his reason, he entered upon a Avar against the gods, Avhom
he blasphemed; against nature, whose laws he wished to
violate, as in spanning the sea between Baiae and Puteoli
by a bridge ; against the nobility of Eome, whom he deci-
mated; and against the provinces, which he drained by his
exactions. In less than two years he had squandered in
mad extravagance sixty million dollars, the savings of
Tiberius. To replenish his treasury he appropriated the
lives and fortunes of the rich. One day in Gaul he lost
while playing at dice. He ordered the registers of the
province to be brought, and marked for death those citizens
who paid the heaviest taxes. " You play for a few miser-
A.D. 41-54.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 141
able drachmas," he said afterward to his courtiers, "but I
have just won millions at a throw!" For four years the
world endured this raving madman, who wished the Roman
people had but one head that he might strike it off at a
blow. At last he was killed by Chserea, a tribune of the
prsetorian cohorts.
Claudius (41-54). — Chaerea was a republican. The occa-
sion seemed favorable for the senate to again grasp the
power. It made the attempt, and for three days one could
imagine that he was in a republic. This did not suit the
soldiers. In a recess of the palace they found Claudius,
the brother of Germanicus, and carried him to their camp.
He was then fifty years of age, a man of learning who wrote
the history of the Etruscans and Carthaginians, but sickly
and timid. His lack of resolution had the most deplorable
results. The real masters of the empire were his wife,
Messalina, and his freedmen, Polybius, Narcissus and
Pallas. Nevertheless they effected some wise reforms,
made a seaport at Ostia, and drained Lake Fucinus. Clau-
dius f>ersecuted the Druids, whose worship he sought to
abolish.
Abroad, Mauritania and half of Britain were conquered,
the Germans repressed, the Bosphorus held to its allegiance,
Thrace, Lydia, and Judaea reduced to provinces, and the
divisions among the Parthians encouraged. But nine or
ten plots formed against the life of Claudius brought on
terrible vengeance. Thirty-live senators and three hundred
knights perished. Many were the victims of the hatred of
Messalina, who in defiance of the emperor, the laws and
public decency contracted a second marriage before death
or divorce had dissolved the first, and with the usual cere-
monies espoused the senator Silius. The freedmen, alarmed
for their own safety, wrested from Claudius an order of
death, and replaced Messalina by Agrippina, a niece of the
emperor, who acquired for herself hardly less notoriety.
The new em2:)ress, desirous to secure for her son Nero, then
eleven years of age, the heritage which rightfully belonged
to the young Britannicus, the son of Claudius, surrounded
the emperor with her creatures, appointed Burrus prefect
of the prsetorian guard, and Seneca tutor to Nero. Then
b}^ way of finishing the affair she poisoned Claudius.
Nero (54-G8). — -At his accession Claudius to assure the
fidelity of the soldiers had given a donative of nearly eight
142 HISTORY OF THE ROMAXS [a.d. 54-66.
hundred dollars to each prsetorian and a proportionate sum
to each legionary. This unfortunate innovation the army
established as a law, and eventually it put the empire at
auction to the highest bidder. Thus revolutions became
more frequent. It was the interest of the soldiers to have
the throne often vacant that they might receive the dona-
tive the oftener.
Nero began well. The first five years of his reign de-
served praise. " How I wish that I did not know how to
write ! " he said one day, when a death sentence was pre-
sented for his signature. Seneca and Burrus worked in
concert to restrain the fiery passions of their pupil, but
Agrippina's ambition brought about the explosion. In
league with the freedman Pallas, she intended that nothing
should be done in the palace without her. Seneca and
Burrus, in order to remove a domination Avhich had debased
Claudius, had the freedman disgraced. On Agrippina's
threat to lead Britannicus to the praetorian camp, Nero poi-
soned his adopted brother (55). A little later he robbed
Otho of his wife Poppsea, and, irritated by the reproaches
of his mother, caused a vessel upon which she had embarked
to sink on the open sea. As she saved herself by swim-
ming, he sent soldiers to kill her. His wife Octavia and
perhaps Burrus also suffered the same fate. The Romans
beheld their emperor, the heir of Caesar, drive chariots in
the arena and on the stage recite verses to the accom-
paniment of the lyre ! The burning of Rome in the year
64 cannot be imputed to him. But he made use of it as a
pretext to persecute the Christians. Some of them, envel-
oped in the skins of beasts, were torn by dogs; others,
smeared with pitch, were set on fire alive, and like torches
lit up the gardens of Nero during a festival which he gave
the populace. To pay for his extravagance he dealt exile
and confiscation. At last a conspiracy of senators and
knights was found out. Seneca, his nephew, the poet
Lucan and the virtuous Thrasea were forced to open their
own veins. This raving madman had the sickly vanity of
inferior artists. To find more worthy appreciation of his
talents he made a journey to Greece, where he took part in
all the games and collected many crowns, even at Olympia,
although he fell in the middle of the stadium; but he paid
for these plaudits by proclaiming the liberty of Greece {^Q>).
Nevertheless the empire began to weary of obeying a bad
A.D.68.] AUGUSTUS AND THE JULIAN EMPERORS 143
singer, as he was called by Vindex, propraetor of Gaul,
who offered the empire to Galba. Despite the death of
Vindex the rebellion was successful and extended to Eome,
whence Nero abandoned by all was forced to flee. He
took refuge at the farm of one of his freedmen. When he
saw himself about to be captured, he thrust a dagger into
his throat, exclaiming, " What an artist the world is about
to lose ! " With him the race of the Caesars became extinct.
Since the time of the great Julius, however, it had been
continued only through adoption.
Under Xero, Queen Boadicea in Britain rose against the
Komans. Corbulo won victories over the Germans and
Parthians. The reward of the skilful general was an order
to commit suicide.
144 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 09.
THE FLAVIANS
(69-96)
Galba, Otho and Vitellius (68-69). — The praetorians de-
manded the rich donative which had been promised them
in the name of Galba. " I choose my sokliers," he replied,
"bnt I do not bny them." This hanghty speech was not
borne out by vigorous acts. Otho, a former friend of Nero,
an ambitions man overwhelmed with debts, had no difficulty
in stirring up the praetorians to massacre Galba.
But already the legions of the Rhine had at Cologne
proclaimed their commander, Vitellius, emperor. They
marched upon Italy, and near Cremona won a great battle
in consequence of which Otho killed himself.
Vitellius was famous above all for his voracity. He per-
mitted the soldiers to do everything and troubled himself
about nothing except his pleasures, never dreaming that the
Eastern legions might feel tempted to imitate what the
Gallic legions had done for Galba, the pratorians for Otho,
and the legions of the Rhine for himself. The profits of a
revolution were now so certain that each army desired to
secure them. Vespasian was then at the head of powerful
forces, charged with subduing the rebellious Jews. His
troops proclaimed him emperor. Leaving to his son Titus
the task of besieging Jerusalem, he marched to take posses-
sion of Egypt and despatched Mucianus to Italy. The latter
Avas forestalled by Antonius Primus, who defeated the troops
of Vitellius near Cremona and a few days later captured Rome.
Vitellius, after suffering many outrages, was put to death.
Vespasian (69-79). — Flavins Vespasianus, the son of a
tax collector, was of plain manners and had made his way
by merit. He learned in Egypt of the successes of his gen-
erals and the death of his rival. But two wars were still
going on. Titus conducted that against the Jews which
though fierce was not dangerous to the empire. The other,
of far more serious nature, sprang from the rebellion of the
A.D. 70-79.] THE FLAVIANS 145
Batavian Civilis. This man, a member of the Batavian
royal family, had resolved to free his nation. He sum-
moned the Gauls to independence and the Germans to the
pillage of the provinces. The Gauls could not agree among
themselves. Cerealis, one of Vespasian's generals, van-
quished Civilis, who retired to his island, organized there
a vigorous resistance and finally obtained an honorable
peace for the Batavi. They remained, not the tributaries
Wt the allies of Eome, on condition of furnishing soldiers.
While these events were taking place, Titus was repress-
ing the revolt of the Jews. Roused to sedition by the
extortions of their last governors, they had heroically re-
commenced the struggle of the Maccabees against foreign
domination. They believed that the time was come for
that Messiah whom their sacred books foretold. Refusing
to recognize him in the holy victim of Golgotha, they
thought that he was about to manifest himself, glorious and
mighty, amid the crash of arms. The insurrection had in-
vaded Galilee, where the historian Josephus organized the
rebellion. Vespasian and Titus confined it in the capital
of Judaea. After a memorable siege Jerusalem fell. The
Temple was burned, the ploughshare passed over its ruins
and the dispersion of the Hebrew people began (70).
Eleven hundred thousand Jews fell in this war.
AVhile Vespasian's generals were rendering his arms tri-
umphant, he himself at Rome was degrading unworthy sen-
ators and knights, improving the finances that Nero had
left in a wretched state, restoring the Capitol which had
been destroyed in a conflagration, constructing the immense
Coliseum and the temple of peace, founding a library, and
appointing teachers of rhetoric whom the state paid.
Nevertheless Vespasian felt obliged to expel from Rome
the Stoics, who ostentatiously displayed republican senti-
ments. Because of his too great freedom of speech the
most respected of the senators, Helvidius Prisons, was
exiled and afterward put to death, though contrary to the
intention of Vespasian. Of serious mind, a man of business
and method, Vespasian laughed at flatteries as at apotheosis.
" I feel myself becoming a god," he said when he beheld
his last hour approaching. But he tried to rise, saying,
" An emperor should die on his feet."
Titus (79-81). — He was succeeded by Titus, who had
distinguished himself in the German and British wars and
146 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a. d. 79-96.
especially in Judaea. Though his dissoluteness and violence
had been feared, he surprised all by his self-control, and
his gentle and affable manners Avon for him the surname of
'^ Delight of the human race." He considered a day lost in
which he had done no good action.
Frightful calamities attended his brief reign. A confla-
gration lasting three days devastated a part of Rome.
Pestilence ravaged Italy. On November 1, 79, Vesuvius
suddenly vomited forth masses of ashes and lava which
buried Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae. Pliny the nat-
uralist, then commanding the fleet of Misenum, wished to
behold this terrible phenomenon close by, and was either
stifled by the ashes or crushed by the stones shot forth from
the volcano. Titus reigned only seventeen months.
Domitian (81-96). — Domitian, his brother, was immedi-
ately proclaimed. In his first acts he showed firmness and
justice, repressed all the abuses of which he could obtain
information, and by his active watchfulness assured to the
provinces an almost paternal government. The frontiers,
were well guarded and the barbarians held in check, includ-
ing the Dacians who were becoming formidable. But as
his thirst for money grew with his fears, he soon became
grasping and cruel. Informers multiplied and Avere followed
by executions. His cousin Sabinus Avas put to death, be-
cause the crier who Avas to name him consul by mistake had
called him emperor. Many rich persons on account of their
Avealth Avere accused of high treason.
A revolt of the governor of upper Germany increased his
tyranny, because Domitian believed himself to be surrounded
even in Rome by the accomplices of the rebel. Many sena-
tors perished. Some Avere accused of the ncAV crime of
judaizing. Under this pretext his cousin Flavins Clemens
and his own niece Domitilla were condemned. At last a
plot Avas formed among the people of the palace, by Avhom
he Avas murdered.
It Avas Domitian hoAvever Avho completed the conquest
of the greater part of Britain. Vespasian had sent thither
Agricola, the father-in-laAV of Tacitus, Avho pacified the
island Avithout hoAvever subduing the mountaineers of
Caledonia. Only the south of Scotland Avas united to the
province. To protect it against incursions from the north,
Agricola raised a line of fortified posts between the firths
of the Clyde and the Forth, and Roman civilization aided
by numerous colonists speedily took possession of Britain.
Cotyriglil, ISHS, by T. Y. Crowell «.• Co.
Ei,g.;,ieJ by Ouhuii, Ul.niuu i Cu., N. y..
A.D. y()-100.] THE ANTONINES 147
XI
THE ANTONINES
(96-193)
Nerva (96-98). — The Flavian family was extinct. The
senate made haste to proclaim Nerva, a former consul.
With this prince began a period of eighty years which has
been called the golden age of humanity. It is the epoch of
the Antonines. Though Nerva displayed good intentions,
he had neither the strength nor the time to realize them.
He adopted the Spanish Trajan, the best general of the
empire.
Trajan (98-117). — When Nerva died, Trajan was at
Cologne. Recognized as emperor by the senate, the people
and the armies, he remained one year more on the banks
of the Rhine to pacify the frontiers and restore discipline.
He wished to enter Rome on foot. The Empress Plotina
followed his example. As she ascended the palace steps,
she turned toward the crowd to say, " What I am on enter-
ing, I wish to be on departing." Trajan banished informers,
diminished the taxes and sold the numerous palaces which
his predecessors had acquired by confiscations. In order to
encourage the free population, he distributed among the
cities of Italy revenues intended for the support of poor
children. The senate could almost believe itself transported
to the days of its ancient power, for it deliberated on seri-
ous affairs and really assigned the offices. Trajan even
restored the elections to the comitia. At least the candi-
dates presented themselves to solicit as in former days the
votes of the people. He himself in Campus Martins can-
vassed in the midst of the crowd. The monuments which
he raised had as their object public utility or the adornment
of Rome, like the Trajan column which still recounts his
exploits. Among his works the most important were the
completion of a highway which traversed the whole Roman
empire from the Pontus Euxinus to Gaul, and the restora-
148 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 100-117.
tion of the road thrown across the Pontine marshes. He
caused the seaports of Ancona and Civita-Vecchia to be
excavated at his expense, established colonies in differ-
ent places, either as military or commercial stations, and
founded the Ulpian library, which became the richest in
Rome. Only two reproaches can be brought against him;
he had not the sobriety of Cato and he persecuted the
Christians. He forbade their being hunted, but ordered
that such as made themselves prominent should be beaten.
He himself condemned Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, to be
cast to the lions.
His reign was the most warlike which the empire had
beheld. He directed in person an expedition against the
Dacians (101), crossed the Danube at the head of 60,000
men, vanquished the barbarians in three battles,- capt-
ured their capital, Sarmizegethusa, and forced them to
sue for peace (103). The following year they rebelled
again. Trajan threw over the river a stone bridge, the
remains of which are still to be seen, several times entered
Dacia, vanquished Decebalus, who killed himself, and re-
duced the country to a province. Numerous colonists were
sent thither and Nourishing cities rose. In consequence the
Roumanian nation still speaks on the banks of the Danube a
dialect which is almost the language of the contemporaries
of Trajan.
In the East he reduced Armenia to a province. The
kings of Colchis and Iberia promised entire obedience, and
the Albanians of the Caspian accepted the ruler whom he
gave them. One of his lieutenants, Cornelius Palma, had
already subjugated some of the Arabs. Trajan penetrated
into Mesopotamia, captured Ctesiphon, Seleucia and Susa,
and descended as far as the Persian Gulf. "If I were
younger," said he, "I would go and subdue the Indies."
Such rapid conquests could not be durable. The vanquished
rose as soon as the emperor departed and the Jews again
revolted everywhere. Blood flowed in streams. Trajan
had not even the consolation of seeing the end of this for-
midable insurrection. He died at Selinus in Cilicia.
Hadrian (117-138). — Hadrian abandoned the useless con-
quests of his predecessors in the East. To prevent the
inroads of the Caledonian mountaineers into Britain, he
constructed from the mouth of the Tyne to the Solway
Firth the wall of the Picts, numerous remains of which
A.D. 117-138.] THE ANTONINES 149
are still to be seen. His only war was a fierce one against
the Jews. He changed the name of the city of David to
^lia Capitolina, erected there altars to all the gods and for-
bade the Jews to observe the bloody rite of circumcision.
Thus they were now threatened with the loss of their re-
ligious, as they had lost already their political, existence.
At the call of the doctor Akiba they once more appealed to
the verdict of arms under the leadership of Barkochba,
the Son of the Star, who claimed to be the long-expected
Messiah. Nearly 600,000 Jews perished and the survivors
v/ere sold. •
Hadrian's internal administration was sagacious. He
relieved the provinces from those arrears of debt which
had accumulated during sixteen years, and did away with
the republican forms which since the time of Augustus had
perpetuated the false image of Eonian liberty. He divided
the offices into those of the state, palace and army, the
civil magistracies holding the highest rank and the military
the lowest. For the transaction of business he established
four chanceries, and invested the praetorian prefects w^ith
both civil and military authority. So they formed a sort of
upper ministry. And lastly Salvius Julianus by command
of the emperor formed a sort of code from existing edicts
which, under the name of perpetual edict, acquired the
force of law (131).
The army, like the palace and the higher administration
of the government, was subjected to a severe reform. Ha-
drian made many regulations which have survived him, touch-
ing discipline, drill and the age at which a man became eligible
to the different grades. He visited all the provinces one after
the other, most of the time on foot, accompanied only by a
few lawyers and artists. A number of cities were enriched
by him with splendid monuments, as Nimes, where he prob-
al3ly erected the amphitheatre in honor of Plotina ; Athens,
where he passed two winters ; Alexandria ; and Eome, which
owes to him the castle of San Angelo (Moles Hadriani) and
the bridge which connects the two banks. He encouraged
commerce and industry, and rendered the slaves amenable
to the courts alone, and not to the caprice of their masters.
The good deeds of this prince make us forget his shameful
morals, which however were those of his age, the influence
exercised over him by Antinous, of whom he eventually
made a god, and certain acts of excessive severity. In
150 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 138-180.
the early days of his reign, the senate executed four
men of consular rank accused of conspiracy without even
awaiting his orders. Toward the end of his life, after
his successive adoption of Verus and Antoninus, plots real
or imaginary began again and many senators were sacrificed.
He died at Baiae.
Antoninus (138-161). — Antoninus, a native of Nimes, had
been adopted by Hadrian on condition that he in turn would
adopt Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. He reigned twenty-
three years in profound peace, and received from his grateful
contemporaries the surname of " Bather of the human race."
A wise economy in the administration of the finances enabled
him to found useful institutions and to assist cities afflicted
with some calamity, like Rome, Antioch, Narbonne and
Rhodes, which had been ruined by fire and earthquake.
" The wealth of a prince," he said, " is public happiness."
Two conspiracies against him were discovered. Only their
chiefs perished. A defence of Christianity composed by
the philosopher Justinus obtained for the Christians, who
were already numerous in Rome and in the provinces, tolera-
tion from the emperor and the magistrates. Antoninus car-
ried on no important war, nothing more than petty expeditions
for the maintenance of order on the frontiers.
Marcus Aurelius (161-180). — Marcus Aurelius, surnamed
the Philosopher, undertook to continue the administration
of his three predecessors. He had shared the title of Augus-
tus with Verus, his son-in-law and adopted brother. He
sent him to the East during a crisis, but Verus concerned
himself at Antioch only with his debauches, and left the
skilful Avidius Cassius to capture Ctesiphon and Seleucia.
A terrible pestilence raged at Rome ; earthquakes devastated
the empire ; the German tribes on the Danube rose in revolt.
The Stoic philosopher who occupied the throne did not allow
himself to be alarmed, and amid the perils of the war against
the Marcomanni wrote the admirable maxims of Stoic wisdom
contained in the twelve books of his work entitled Medita-
ti07lS.
Almost all the barbarian v/orld was in commotion. The
Sarmatian Roxolani, the Vandals and other tribes of whom
we know only the names, crossed the Danube and penetrated
even to the neighborhood of Aquileia. The two emperors
marched against them, and the barbarians retreated without
giving battle so as to secure their booty. A certain number
A.D. 180-192.] THE ANTONINES 151
even accepted the lands which Marcus Aurelius gave them,
or enrolled among the auxiliaries of the legions. Verus
died on his return from this expedition. The as yet uncon-
quered Germans appeared once more under the walls of
Aquileia. In order to obtain the money required for this
war, Marcus Aurelius sold the treasures and jewels of the
imperial palace. He was obliged to arm the slaves and
gladiators and enroll the barbarians (172). The enemy
retreated. The emperor pursued the Quadi even to their
own country, where on the banks of the Gran he incurred
a serious danger. A storm accompanied by thunder and
lightning saved him, and gave rise to the tradition of the
Christian legion that hurled thunderbolts. A treaty of
peace with many nations apparently gave a glorious termina-
tion to this war. From the banks of the Danube, Marcus
Aurelius hurried to Syria to suppress the revolt of Cassius,
who was killed by his soldiers. Almost immediately the
Marcomanni, the Bastarnse and the Goths resumed their
incursions. The unhappy emperor, whom fate condemned
to pass his life in the camp, hastened to march against them
with his son Commodus. He died without having finished
the war at Vindobona, now Vienna.
Commodus (180-192). — Commodus, aged nineteen years,
concluded a hasty peace with the Marcomanni and the Quadi,
took 20,000 of those barbarians into the service of the em-
pire, and returned to Rome to contend more than 700 times
in the arena, to drive chariots and play the part of Hercules.
Perennis, the prefect of the guards on whom at first de-
volved the cares of government, was massacred in 186. He
was replaced, both as praetorian prefect and imperial favor-
ite, by the freedman Cleander, a Phrygian, who made money
out of the life and honor of the citizens. Three years later
the cruel and avaricious favorite was killed in a popular
sedition which plague and famine had excited. Then Com-
modus launched sentences of death against the most virtu-
ous citizens, against his relatives, against the senate, even
against the great jurisconsult Salvius Julianus and allowed
the praetorians the utmost license. As those nearest to him
were the most endangered, it was their hand which smote
him. His concubine Marcia, the chamberlain Electus, and
the prefect of the guards Lsetus, whom he intended to put
to death, had him strangled by an athlete.
152 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 192-197.
XII
MILITARY ANARCHY
(193-385)
Pertinax and Didius Julianus (192-193). —Pertinax, pre-
fect of tlie city, proclaimed emperor by the murderers of
Commodus, was recognized by the senate and the praeto-
rians, but, when he tried to restore order in the state and
the iinances, he displeased the soldiers, who murdered him
in his palace. Then began scenes without a name, and
happily without example. The soldiers literally put the
empire up at auction. Two purchasers presented them-
selves, who rivalled each other in promises. The mon-
archy of Augustus was adjudged to the aged ex-consul,
Didius Julianus, at 6250 drachmas for each soldier. The
sale finished, the praetorians in battle array conducted Didius
to the palace, and the senators accepted the man whom the
soldiers had elected. He had promised more than he could
perform. The creditors, implacable toward their imprudent
debtor, would no doubt have overthrown him themselves,
had they not been forestalled by the legions of the frontiers,
who also wished to bestow the empire. The British legions
proclaimed their chief Albinus; the Syrians, Pescennius
Niger ; the Albanians, the African Septimius Severus. The
latter being the nearest to E-ome immediately set out for the
capital. The senate, encouraged by his approach, declared
Didius a public enemy, had him slain, punished the murder-
ers of Pertinax and recognized Severus as emperor.
Septimius Severus (193-211). — He broke the power of
the praetorians ; but, instead of abolishing that turbulent
guard, he contented himself with certain changes and even
rendered it more numerous. In Asia Minor he defeated
Niger, who was killed while about to flee to the Parthians
(194). Near Lyons he overthrew Albinus (197), whose head
he sent to the sena-te with a threatening letter. On his
return to Rome, he multiplied the executions. Forty-one
A.D. 197-217.] MILITARY ANARCHY 153
senatorial families became extinct under the headsman's
axe.
To extenuate his cruelties by a little glory, he endeavored
to seize Seleucia and Ctesiphon from the Parthians, who
had made an alliance with Niger. On his return he ordered
a persecution against the Christians, in spite of the elo-
quent apologies of Tertullian and Minutius Felix. Severus
administered the finances with economy. After his death
corn sufficient for seven years was found in the granaries
at Rome. "Keep the soldiers contented," he said to his
children, ^'and do not trouble yourselves about the rest.
With them you can repulse the barbarians and repress the
people." Military discipline was strictly maintained, but
at the same time the soldiers obtained privileges and in-
crease of pay. After a few quiet years Severus was called
to Britain by a revolt which he had no difficulty in quelling.
He penetrated a great distance into the Caledonian moun-
tains, but incessantly harassed and worn out by continual
attacks which cost him as many as 50,000 men, he returned
to the policy of Antoninus, and constructed a wall from one
shore to the other along the line traced by Agricola.
During this expedition he had been constantly ill. Never-
theless his son Bassianus, called Caracalla from the name
of a Gallic garment which he was fond of wearing, could
not wait for his approaching end, and tried to assassinate
him. From that time the emperor's malady increased.
He expired with the words : " I have been everything, and
everything is nothing." His last countersign had been
"laboremus." He left two sons, Caracalla and Geta.
Caracalla (211-217). — The two princes had already dis-
turbed the palace by their quarrels. On his retriirn to Rome
Caracalla stabbed his brother in the arms of their mother.
Papinianus, refusing to make a public defence of the fratri-
cide, was put to death and with him perished 20,000 parti-
sans of Geta. Caracalla made his cruelty felt in all the
provinces, particularly at Alexandria, where in order to
avenge himself for some epigrams he ordered a massacre of
the unarmed people. A centurion, who had an injury to
revenge, killed him.
Macrinus (217). — The army elected the prefect of the
guards Macrinus, who, after a sanguinary battle with the
Parthians in Mesopotamia, purchased peace at the price of
50,000,000 denarii ; but the severe measures which he took
154 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 218-244
for the restoration of discipline destroyed his popularity.
The soldiers mutinied in their camp, proclaimed Bassianus,
the young and handsome high priest of Emesa, and massa-
cred Macrinus.
Heliogabalus (218-222). — Bassianus, better known as
Heliogabalus from the Syrian god whose priest he was,
brought to Eome the most shameful passions of the East.
His luxury and depravity would have made Nero blush.
He formed for himself a senate of women and, like the
great king, wished to be adored. His palace was strewed
with gold and silver dust, and his fish ponds filled with
rose water in which to bathe. The soldiers were soon hor-
rified at this unnatural emperor, who attired himself in
women's clothes. They killed him, together with his mother
Soemis, and saluted as emperor his cousin Alexander, aged
fourteen, who remained under the guidance of his grand-
mother Msesa and his mother Mamaea.
Alexander Severus (222-235). — The two empresses devoted
themselves to developing the natural virtues of the young
prince. They gave him as ministers the lawyers Paulus
and Ulpianus and formed for him a council of twelve sena-
tors. The empire passed many peaceful years under his
reign. On the front of his palace these words, the founda-
tion of all social morality, were carved : " Do unto others
as thou wouldest have them do unto thee." Nevertheless,
his hand was not firm enough to maintain discipline among
the soldiers. One day they slew their prefect Ulpianus
under his very eyes.
The ruin of the Parthian kingdom and the foundation of
a second Persian empire by the Sassanide Artaxerxes in
226 occasioned a war on the Euphrates. The new monarch,
who restored to the Persian mountaineers the domination
which the Parthians had wrested from them, declared him-
self of the ancient royal race, and claimed all the provinces
which Darius had formerly possessed. Alexander replied
by attacking the Persians. The expedition was fully suc-
cessful. The news that the Germans had invaded Gaul
and Illyricum hastened his return. He hurried to the Ehine
and was there killed in a sedition.
Six Emperors in Nine Years (235-244). — The soldiers
proclaimed Maximinus, a Thracian Goth, who in his youth
had been a shepherd. He was a giant, eight feet tall. He
is said to have eaten daily thirty pounds of meat and to
A.D. 244-253.] MILITARY ANARCHY 155
have drunk an amphora of wine. This barbarian, who did
not dare even once to come to Kome, treated the empire like
a conquered country, pillaging cities and temples alike.
Mankind soon tired of him. Despite their entreaties, the
proconsul of Africa, Gordianus I, and his son, Gordianus II,
who boasted their descent from the Gracchi and Trajan,
were proclaimed emperors. E-ecognized by the senate but
overthrown, the senate afterwards itself proclaimed Pu-
l^ienus and Balbinus. The people demanded that a son of
the younger Gordianus should be declared emperor. As for
Maximinus, he and his son were assassinated before Aqui-
leia which he was besieging, and a little later the senate's
two emperors were massacred in their palaces. Then the
prcetorians proclaimed Gordianus III. He was only thir-
teen years of age. Misitheus, his tutor and father-in-law,
governed wisely in his name, but the death of the clever
counsellor enabled the Arab Philip to become prefect of the
praetorian guard. He slew the emperor and took his place.
During the reign of Gordianus the Pranks are mentioned
for the first time. They were a confederation of Germanic
tribes on the lower Khine, like that of the Alemanni on the
upper Khine. The latter constantly threatened Phaetia and
even Gaul itself, whose northern provinces the former in-
vaded. At the other extremity of Germany, the Goths had
gradually descended from Scandinavia upon the lower
Danube and the Black Sea. They were for the time being
the empire's most dangerous neighbors.
Philip (244-249). Decius (249-251). The Thirty Tyrants
(251-268). — At the end of live years the soldiers decided
that Philip had reigned long enough and revolts broke out
everywhere. Meanwhile the Goths crossed the Danube, and
the senator Decius, whom he sent against them, was pro-
claimed by the troops. A battle was fought near Verona
and Philip was killed. The quiet enjoyed by the Church
during Philip's reign has led to the erroneous belief that
he was a Christian. Decius on the contrary persecuted it
cruelly. However he reigned only two years and perished
in a great battle with the Goths in Moesia (251).
The army acknowledged Galbus, one of its generals, who
promised the barbarians an annual tribute. This had the
effect of inducing them to return, ^milianus, who routed
them, assumed the purple. Both were killed by their sol-
diers (253). Valerian, saluted as emj^eror, named his son
156 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 258-270.
Gallienus as Csesar and endeavored to arrest the imminent
dissolution of the empire. In 258 he recaptured from the
Parthians the great city of Antioch and penetrated into
Mesopotamia; but near Edessa he was vanquished and
made prisoner by King Sapor (260), who retained him in
captivity exposed to insults until he died. Sapor had re-
entered Syria. He was forced back across the Euphrates
by the praetorian prefect Balista and the Arab chief Ode-
nath. The latter grew powerful enough to secure recogni-
tion as Augustus by Gallienus (264). Palmyra his capital,
situated in an oasis at three days' distance from the Eu-
phrates, had become rich and powerful through its immense
commerce. Imposing ruins still testify to its past greatness.
After the captivity of his father Gallienus ruled alone
for eight years. His reign was one ceaseless struggle
against the usurpers, barbarians and calamities of all sorts
that descended upon the empire. This period is called that
of the Thirty Tyrants. There were in reality only nineteen
or twenty, all of whom died violent deaths like Saturnus,
who said to his soldiers, " Comrades, you are losing a good
general and making a wretched emperor," and who was slain
because of his severity. Odenath, a valiant prince, delivered
the East from the Persians and the Goths, who had disem-
barked in Asia Minor, but was himself assassinated in 267
by his nephew. Zenobia, his wife, slew the murderer and
succeeded to her husband's power. Gaul was independent
for fourteen years under five Gallic emperors. To internal
disorder had been added barbarian invasions. The Goths
and the Heruli had ravaged Greece and Asia Minor. One
Goth wished to burn the library at Athens, but another pre-
vented him. " Leave to our enemies," said he, " these books
which deprive them of the love of arms." The Athenians
however, led by the historian Dexippus, had the honor of
defeating these brigands.
Claudius (268). Aurelian (270). Tacitus (275). Probus
(275). Carus (282). — Gallienus, who alone appeared legiti-
mate among all these usurpers, was mortally wounded by
traitors while besieging one of his competitors in Milan. As
he expired, he chose for his successor a Dalmatian, Claudius,
who was then the most renowned general of the empire.
Claudius had only the time for a hurried march to Macedon,
where he defeated 300,000 Goths near Naissus, and there
died of the pest. Aurelian took his i^lace (270). He had
A.D. 271-275.] MILITARY ANARCHY 157
first to check an invasion of the Alemanni, who pene-
trated through Rhsetia as far as Placentia where they
destroyed a Roman army and thence as far as the shores
of the Adriatic^ Kome was terror-stricken. The senate
consulted the Sibylline books and in obedience to their
responses sacrificed human victims. A victory gained on
the banks of Metaurus delivered Italy; but the danger
which Rome had incurred determined the emperor to
surround it with a strong wall. He was less fortunate
against the Goths. A treaty abandoned to them Dacia,
whose inhabitants he transported into Moesia. The Danube
again became the boundary of the empire.
Tranquillity reestablished on that frontier, he marched
to the East (273) to encounter Zenobia, queen of PpJmyra.
This x^rincess, celebrated for her courage and her rare intel-
ligence, dreamed of forming a vast Oriental empire. He
wrested from her Syria, Egypt and a part of Asia Minor,
defeated her near Antioch and Emesa and besieged her in
Palmyra, her capital, where she had taken refuge. When
the resources of the city were exhausted, Zenobia fled on a
dromedary toward the Euphrates but was captured and
taken to Aurelian. Her principal minister, the sophist
Longinus, whose treatise on the Siiblime we still possess,
was suspected of being the author of an offensive letter sent
by Zenobia to Aurelian and was put to death. The emperor
reserved the queen to adorn his triumph and afterward
assigned her a splendid villa at Tibur. In the West, Tetri-
cus, who had usurped Gaul, Spain and Britain, himself
betrayed his army and passed over to the side of Aurelian,
who appointed him governor of Lucania.
Delivered from foreign troubles Aurelian tried to restore
order in the administration and discipline in the army.
Desirous of occupying the restless minds of the legions he
was preparing an expedition against the Persians, when his
secretary, accused of extortion and afraid of punishment,
had him assassinated (275). The soldiers, ashamed of hav-
ing permitted the murder of their glorious chieftain, forced
the senate to choose an emperor. It appointed the aged
Tacitus, who died after six months.
The soldiers then proclaimed Probus, who immediately
hastened to Gaul, which had been invaded by the Alemanni.
He recaptured sixty towns, followed the enemy across the
Rhine and pursued them beyond the I^eckar. The Germans
158 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 276-285.
delivered to him 16,000 of their young warriors, whom
he enrolled, though dispersing them among his troops.
In Illyricum he routed the Sarmatse ; in Thrace the Getse ;
in Asia Minor the brigands of Isauria and Pamphylia;
in Egypt the Blemyes, who had seized Coptos. Narses,
king of Persia, alarmed by these successes, sued for peace.
On his return through Thrace Probus established on the
lands of the empire 100,000 Bastarnse, just as he had
already established Germans in Britain and Franks on
the shores of the Pontus Euxinus. He was preparing to
march against the Persians when the hard labor which he
imposed upon his soldiers, compelling them to plant vine-
yards and drain marshes, caused a revolt in which he
perished (282). The next day the soldiers mourned him.
They chose the prefect of the guards. Cams, who bestowed
the title of Caesar on his two sons, Carinus and Numerianus.
The elder received the government of the West. The
younger after a victory over the Goths and Sarmatse fol-
lowed his father to the East. Carus captured Seleucia and
Ctesiphon but died suddenly, and Numerianus hastened to
treat with the Persians. As he was leading the legions back
to the Bosphorus, he was killed by his father-in-law Arrius
Aper (284). Five days later under the walls of Chalcedon
the soldiers proclaimed the Dalmatian Diocletian, who slew
Aper with his own hand before the eyes of the whole army.
Carinus endeavored to overthrow the new emperor, but he
was slain in battle near Margus in Moesia (285).
A.D. 285-2-J3.] DIOCLETIAN AND VONSTANTINE 159
XIII
DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE. CHRISTIANITY
(385-337)
Diocletian (285-305). The Tetrarchy. — Forty-five em-
perors had already worn the purple. Of this number
twenty-nine, not to mention the thirty tyrants, had been
assassinated. Four or five others had perished by violence.
Only eleven or twelve had met natural deaths. Such was
the organization of supreme power in the Koman Empire!
Diocletian imposed upon himself the double task of rees-
tablishing order at home and security on the frontiers.
While the tyranny of the governors of Gaul drove the
peasants of that province to revolt, the Alemanni crossed
the Danube and ravaged Ilha^tia; the Saxons pillaged the
coasts of Britain and Gaul 5 the Franks went as far as Sicily
to plunder Syracuse, and Carausius, on being ordered to
arrest those pirates, caused himself to be proclaimed em-
peror in Britain (287). Alarmed at this critical situation
Diocletian took as colleague Maximianus, one of his former
comrades in arms (285), who assumed the surname of Her-
culius as Diocletian had assumed that of Jovius. Disorder
and invasion threatening everywhere, the two August! as-
sociated Avith themselves two inferior rulers, the Caesars
Galerius and Constantius Chlorus (293).
In the partition of the empire Diocletian kept the East
and Thrace; Galerius had the Danubian provinces; Max-
imianus Italy, Africa and Spain, with Mauritania; Con-
stantius Gaul and Britain. The ordinances issued by each
prince were valid in the provinces of his colleagues. Dio-
cletian remained the supreme head of the state and by his
skill and conciliatory spirit maintained harmony among
princes who were already rivals. He was the first Eoman
emperor to surround the throne with all the pomp of an
Asiatic court. He adopted a diadem, clothed himself in
silk and gold, and compelled all, who obtained permission to
160 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 294-303.
approach, to adore on their knees the imperial divinity and
majesty. He began to establish that regulated hierarchy
so necessary in a monarchical administration to protect the
prince from military revolutions, and also that despotism
of the court, that seraglio government, which slays public
spirit and makes service rendered to the person of the prince
more esteemed than service rendered to the state. But suc-
cessful wars justified the measures of Diocletian.
In the East, the Persians had driven a partisan of the
Romans from the Armenian throne and were threatening
Syria. Galerius marched against them. A defeat \v!il ',h
he suffered was gloriously redeemed, and Narses ced^d
Mesopotamia, five provinces beyond the Tigris and the su-
zerainty of Armenia and Iberia at the foot of the Caucasus
(297). This was the most glorious treaty which the empire
had yet signed. Diocletian erected numerous fortifications
there to preserve the conquest. At the other extremity of
the Roman world, Gonstantius, after having expelled the
Franks from Gaul and Batavia, made a descent on Britain
and vanquished the usurper Alectus (296) who had suc-
ceeded Carausius.
Tranquillity having been everywhere restored, Diocletian
sowed discord among the barbarians. He armed Goths and
Vandals, Gepidae and Burgundiones, against each other.
Then he repaired all the fortifications on the frontiers and
constructed new posts. In these few years the empire re-
gained a formidable footing. These successes were cele-
brated by a splendid triumph, the last which Rome beheld
(303).
Unfortunately Diocletian was persuaded by Galerius to
order a cruel persecution of the church. A conflagration,
which burst out in the imperial palace and with which the
Christians were charged, increased his wrath. Through-
out the empire, except in the provinces where Constantius
Clilorus reigned, the victims were hunted down and tortured.
Shortly afterward Diocletian grew weary of power and
abdicated at Kicomedia. Maximianus unwillingly followed
his example and laid down the diadem the same day at
Milan. The former chief of the Roman world retired to a
magnificent villa, which he had built near Salona on the
Dalmatian coast, and passed his old age in peaceful pursuits.
One day when Maximianus was urging him to reascend the
throne, he replied: "If you could only see the splendid
A.D. 303-313.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 161
vegetables which I raise myself, you would not talk to me
of such worries." He died there in 313. The ruins of his
palace are still to be seen.
New Emperors and New Civil Wars (303-323). — Galerius
and Constantius assumed the title of Augustus and chose
two new Csesars. These were Maximinus, who received
the government of Syria and Egypt, and Severus, who had
Italy and Africa and who became Augustus after the death
of Constantius. Constantine, the son of this last prince,
whom a brilliant destiny awaited, succeeded his father with
the title of Csesar.
The scheme of Diocletian, apparently so cleverly con-
trived to prevent usurpation by sharing the power in advance
with a few ambitious men and rendering the supreme au-
thority almost everywhere present, was in reality imprac-
ticable. This empire, so vast and now so menaced, could
be held together for a moment by a firm and experienced
hand like that of Constantine or Diocletian, but ultimate
dismemberment was sure. Eome herself gave the signal
for new wars. Incensed at the desertion in which the new
emperors left her, she bestowed the title of Augustus upon
Maxentius, son of Maximianus (306), who took his father
as his colleague. Thus the empire had six masters at once :
the two Augusti, Galerius and Severus; the two Caesars,
Constantine and Maximinus ; and the two usurpers, Maxen-
tius and Maximianus. Severus was the first to fall, van-
quished and slain by Maximianus. The latter was the next
to disappear, banished by his son and put to death by his
son-in-law Constantine, whom he was attempting to over-
throw (310). In the following year Galerius died in con-
sequence of his debauches. Maxentius succumbed in turn
to the blows of his brother-in-law, Constantine, near the
Milvian Bridge which sx3ans the Tiber. For this expedi-
tion Constantine had gained the support of Christianity by
placing the cross upon his standards (312).
Licinius, the successor of Galerius, had at the same time
vanquished Maximinus who took poison (313). Thus the
empire had now only two masters, Licinius in the East and
Constantine in the West. This was one too many for these
ambitious and perfidious princes, who sought each other's
destruction. Licinius fomented a conspiracy against his
rival. The latter in reply declared war, defeated his enemy
and imposed upon him an onerous peace.
162 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 323.
This peace lasted nine years, during which Constantine
introduced order into the administration and gained glory
and power by a victory over the Goths, 40,000 of whom en-
tered his service under the name of Foederati. Under pre-
text of protecting the Christians, Constantine attacked his
colleague and took him prisoner after two victories. He
stripped him of the purple promising that he would respect
his life, but some time afterward put him to death (323).
Christianity. — Pagan morality had risen to a great height
with Seneca, Lucan, Persius, Epictetus and Marcus Aure-
lius. The activity of the philosophers had some effect
upon the intellect. But the brilliancy with which certain
intellects still shine in our eyes prevents our seeing the
state of spiritual infancy m which the greater part of the
human race then lay. For it the fairest doctrines wrought
by human reason remained without effect, because they
were not sustained by creeds born of faith alone. The phi-
losophers talked grandly of their scorn for fortune, pain
and death; but they knew little concerning the life to come
or the pains and rewards in store. Their haughty virtue
suited hopeless wise men, like some of those Roman nobles
who, having lost the dignity of the citizen, had taken refuge
in the dignity of the man. For the masses such marvels
were required as impress the imagination and impose cer-
tainty without being understood.
Credo quia absurdum, Tertullian says. Religion alone
can provide those beliefs with which reason has nothing to
do. Placed between Egypt and Persia, that is to say, be-
tween the two countries which have professed the most
ardent faith in a life to come, Judsea had finally added to
the grand Semitic idea of divine unity the idea of the
resurrection and of the judgment of the dead. The simple
purity of the parables of Jesus, his invincible faith in God
and in his justice, his teaching, which devoted itself to
ardent charity for all the suffering and wretched, went to
the heart of the lower classes. Meanwhile the Fathers and
the Doctors, constructing with Platonic ideas the most
rational and hence the most philosophical system of meta-
physics which the world had ever known, won gifted minds
to the cause of the new Gospel.
Jesus was born five years before our era in the town of
Bethlehem in the midst of Jews who, overwhelmed with
misery, awaited the advent of the Messiah promised by their
A.D. 323.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 163
prophets. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius he began to
journey throughout Judsea, teaching love of God and man,
purity and justice, the reward of the good and the punish-
ment of the bad. The Pharisees, the strict sectaries of the
Mosaic law, caused the holy victim of humanity to be con-
demned and nailed to the cross. After the Passion the
apostles dispersed among the provinces where many Jewish
colonies had been established. The Church welcomed a mul-
titude of pagans who were disgusted with their marble
gods and many slaves and miserable people, who at last
heard a human voice whisper in their ears words of con-
solation and hope. In the time of Nero there were already
enough Christians in Rome to excite persecution. Some
suffered under Domitian. A larger number were con-
demned under Trajan. That emperor forbade search being
made after them but, applying the ancient decrees of the
senate, he punished whoever were convicted of holding
secret meetings or of showing contempt for imperial au-
thority by refusing to sacrifice to the gods, the worship of
whom the emperor as pontif ex maximus was bound to protect.
Nevertheless as the Church grew her doctrines became
better known. The pagans set up in opposition the pre-
tended miracles of Vespasian and of Apollonius of Tyana,
philosopher and wonder-worker. They also tried to purify
paganism, thereby rendering it less unworthy of contending
with the religion of Christ. They introduced into their wor-
ship mysterious forms, such as initiations and expiations,
calculated to impress the popular imagination. These inno-
vations did not succeed in preventing men from embracing
a doctrine which was both more simple and mild. Chris-
tianity encountered another danger. Like philosophy it
had its different schools or heresies. The four Gospels, the
Epistles, the Apostles' Creed, maintained union, and Aris-
tides and Justin presented to Hadrian and Antoninus two
Apologies, which gained for the believers a little repose.
But the sophists induced Marcus Aurelius to decree fresh
persecutions in which Justin, Polycarp and many others
were martyred. The Christians were generally tranquil
until Severus, a rude disciplinarian, took alarm at their
secret assemblies and ordered a persecution (199-204) to
which the sympathetic tolerance of Alexander Severus put
a stop. Under Decius the calamities of the empire were
attributed to the wrath of the gods on account of Christian-
164 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 323.
ity, and the last persecution, that of Diocletian or rather
of G-alerius, deserved to be called the era of martyrclom
(303-312). It was all the more severe because the Chris-
tians were then very numerous in the empire. Constantine
determined to make himself the head of this increasing
party, and to this resolution owed his victory.
In his expedition against Maxentius (312) he declared
himself the protector of the new faith. The following year
he published at Milan an edict of toleration. As long as
Licinius lived Constantine used discretion with the pagans.
Beginning with the year 321 he granted the Church the
right to receive donations and legacies. He repaid the
assistance which it had afforded him against his last rival
by lavishing upon it at the expense of the state property
which he guaranteed to it in perpetual possession. He
transferred to the Christian priests all the privileges which
the pontiffs of paganism enjoyed, that is to say, the right
of asylum for their temples, and for themselves exemption
from public service, statute labor and imposts. Even the
humblest ecclesiastic could not be put to torture, and rest
on Sunday was prescribed, a great boon to the slaves.
To multiply conversions he made it plain in what quarter
imperial favors were to be found, bestowing offices on Chris-
tians and privileges on the cities which overturned the pagan
altars. On the other hand he tried to destroy paganism by
frequent exhortations to his peoples, and afterward when
triumphant Christianity no longer feared dangerous tumults,
by severe ordinances which in many places closed the tem-
ples and overthrew the idols, without however shedding
the blood of those who remained attached to the ancient
worship. The Council of Nicsea, convoked by Constantine
in 323, finally drew up the creed of Christianity. When
it had dispersed, the emperor wrote to all the churches
" that they were to conform to the will of God as expressed
by the Council."
Reorganization of the Imperial Administration. — The
revolution had been accomplished in the religious order.
He completed it in the political order. Diocletian had
only outlined the organization which was destined to put
an end to military revolutions. Constantine resumed this
enterprise. The first thing he did was to abandon Kome,
still filled with her gods with whom he- wished nothing to
do, and to found another capital on the banks of the Bos-
A.D. 330.] DIOCLETIAN AND COiYSTANTINE 165
phorus between Europe and Asia. Constantinople rose
upon the site of Byzantium, far enough from the eastern
frontiers to have small fear of hostile attack, while suffi-
ciently near them to assure their being better watched and
defended. The site was so well chosen that for ten cen-
turies every invasion passed her by. In 330 Constantine
inaugurated the new city as capital of the empire. He es-
tablished a senate, tribes and curiae. He erected a Capitol,
consecrated not to the Olympian gods, now dethroned and
dead, but to learning. He built palaces, aqueducts, baths,
porticoes and eleven churches. It was like Eome a seven-
hilled city and divided into fourteen regions. Gratuitous
distributions of corn were made. Egypt sent thither her
grain and the provinces their statues and finest monu-
ments. Rome abandoned by her emperor and by her
wealthiest families, who went away to establish themselves
near the court, " gradually became isolated in the centre of
the empire; and, while hghting went on around her, sat
in the shadow of her name awaiting her ruin."
The empire was divided into four prefectures and these
again into thirteen dioceses. The enormous size of the
provinces had often inspired their governors with the idea
of mounting higher, even to the imperial power. So the
twenty provinces of Augustus were cut up into the 116
provinces of Constantine. A numerous body of adminis-
trators, graded in a lengthy hierarchy, was interposed be-
tween the people and the emperor, whose will, transmitted
by the ministers to the praetorian prefects, passed from
the latter to the presidents of the dioceses and descended
through the provincial governors to the cities. At the
head of this hierarchy seven great officers formed the im-
perial ministry: the Count of the Sacred Chamber or
Grand Chamberlain; the Master of Offices or Minister of
State, who directed the household of the emperor and the
police of the empire ; the Quaestor of the Palace, a sort of
Chancellor; the Count of the Sacred Largesses or Minister
of Einance; the Count of the Private Domain; the Count
of the Domestic Cavalry; and the Count of the Domestic
Infantry. The two latter were chiefs of the emperor's
guards. Add to these officials the throng of inferior agents
who encumbered the palace and were more numerous, says
Libanius, than the swarming flies in summer.
The four praetorian prefects of the East, Illyricum, Italy
166 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 330.
and Gaul had no longer any military command, but tliey
published the emperor's decrees, made assessments, super-
intended the collection of taxes and sat as appellate judges
over the chiefs of the diocese. Their rich appointments
and their numerous staff made them resemble four kings of
secondary rank commanding the governors of the dioceses
and of the provinces.
The Masters of Cavalry and Infantry had under their
orders the Military Counts of the provinces.
Diocletian had already surrounded himself with the
splendor of the Asiatic courts in order to exalt the majesty
of the prince. Constantine imitated his example. The
posts of the imperial court conferred upon those invested
with them titles of personal but not transmissible nobility.
Tlie consuls, the prefects and the seven ministers were
called the illustres; the proconsuls, the vicars, the counts
and the dukes were spectabiles; the former consuls and the
presidents were clarissimi. There were also perfectissimi
and egregii. The princes of the imperial house bore the
title of nobilissimi.
This divine hierarchy, as in official language the army of
functionaries surrounding and concealing the sacred person
of the emperor was called, added to the brilliancy of the
court without increasing the strength of the government.
Salaries Avere required for this immense staff, who took
much greater pains to please the prince than to labor for
the public good. The expenses of administration increased
and taxes increased with them while poverty was already
draining the richest provinces. Then between the treasury
and the taxpayer began a war of ruse and violence, which
fretted the people and extinguished the last remnants of
patriotism.
The free institutions of former days still lived in the
municipal system of government. Each city had its own
senate or curia, composed of curiales or proprietors of at
least fifteen acres of land, who deliberated on municipal
matters and from their own number elected magistrates to
administer affairs. It had also its duumvirs who presided
over the curia, watched over the interests of the city and
judged law cases of minor importance; an sedile; a curator
or steward; a tax collector; irenarchs or police commis-
sioners ; scribes and notaries. Beginning with the Emperor
Valentinian I each had a defensor, or sort of tribune,
A.D. 3^50.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 167
elected by the city to defend its interests with the gov-
ernor or prince.
But the curiales, charged with collecting the tax, guaran-
teed its payment with their own property. Thus their
condition became more and more wretched. They sought
escape by taking refuge in the privileged bodies of the
clergy or army, but were thrust back by force into the
curia, where at their death their sons were to take their
place. Their exemption from torture and from certain
ignominious penalties was only slight compensation. Thus
the number of the curiales was already diminishing in the
cities.
The imposts for which they were resx^onsible were very
heavy. In the first place there was the indiction or land-
tax, which was assessed according to the fortune of each
person as indicated in the register drawn up every fifteen
years or cycle of indictions ; then the twentieth of inheri-
tances ; the hundredth of the proceeds of auction sales ; the
poll-tax, paid by non-landholders and for slaves ; the customs
dues; and lastly the chrysargyron, levied every four years
on petty commerce and petty industry. The aurum coro-
narium, formerly voluntary when the cities sent crowns of
gold to consuls or emperors, had become an obligatory tax.
These charges pressed all the heavier on small or moder-
ate fortunes since they fell upon the rich lightly or not at
all. The nobilissimi, the patricii, the illustres, the spec-
tabiles, the clarissimi, the egregii, all the staff of the palace,
all the courtiers and the clergy, were exempt from the
heaviest of the imposts, which fell wholly upon the curiales.
The third class, that of simple freemen comprising those
who owned less than fifteen acres, the merchants and arti-
sans, were no less unfortunate. The corporations which
the artisans of the cities had formed had, especially since
the time of Alexander Severus, become prisons from which
exit was prohibited. AVhile destroying industry, the gov-
ernment supposed it could in this way force men to labor.
In the rural districts the petty proprietors, despoiled by
the violence and craft of the great or by the invasions of
the barbarians, were reduced to becoming the dependents
of the rich. Thus attached to the soil, they were deprived
of the greater part of the rights though not of the name of
freemen. The slaves alone gained in the midst of all these
miseries. Stoic philosophy and afterwards Christianity had
168 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 330.
somewhat liumanized ideas and laws concerning tliem.
At last tliey were regarded as men. They were authorized
to dispose more freely of their savings, and it was forbidden
to kill or torture them or to separate families when they
were sold. As freemen were abased and slaves exalted, a
new condition began to take form in serfdom of the soil.
This was preferable to slavery, but the discouraged freeman
ceased to work. Population diminished, and it became
necessary to repopulate with barbarians the abandoned
provinces.
The real army whose duty it was to repel invasion was
now composed only of barbarians, mainly Germans, to whom
the guardianship of the frontiers was imprudently confided.
The legions, reduced from 6000 to 1500 men each so that
their commanders might be less ambitious, garrisoned the
cities of the interior. The palatines, who formed the em-
peror's private guard, were the best paid and most honored.
Otherwise there was the same system in the army as in
civil life, of servitude and privilege, which repelled every
man of value from the profession of arms. The recruits
were obtained from the dregs of society or among the vaga-
bonds of those barbarian nations who were soon to dictate
the law. Sense of military honor did not exist. The sol-
diers were branded like galley slaves. Thus in spite of its
133 legions, its arsenals, its magazines, its magnificent
belt of fortifications along the Khine, the Main, the Dan-
ube, the Euphrates and the desert of Arabia, the empire
was about to be assailed by despised enemies.
If then the new state of things elevated the classes
formerly humble as the slave, tlie woman, the child, it
on the other hand degraded whatever had been strong and
proud as the freeman or citizen. As soldiers were want-
ing, so were writers and artists. Nothing great could issue
from the schools, which Valentinian was to reorganize.
They had only sophists and rhetoricians like Libanius, or
scribblers of light verses and of epithalamia like Claudian.
Literature and art, still closely linked with paganism, fell
with the creed whose followers were soon to be found only
in rural districts.
Faith and life, withdrawing from the old worship and
the old society, passed to those that were new. Christian-
ity had developed and received form in the fires of perse-
cution. It haa ascended the throne with Constantine, who
A.D. 323-337.] DIOCLETIAN AND CONSTANTINE 169
heaped privileges, immunities and wealth upon the Church.
Thus an influence was added to that which it already pos-
sessed through its young and ardent faith, its proselyting
spirit and the genius of its leaders. Even heresy had
served to strengthen it. From its bosom sprang forth a
lofty, passionate, active literature, represented by Ter-
tullian, Saint Athanasius, Saint Ambrose, Saint Augustine,
Saint Gregory of Nazianzen, Lactantius, Salvian and many
more. Fifteen great councils held in the fourth century
bore witness to its activity, and were already regulating its
doctrine, its discipline and its ecclesiastical hierarchy.
Though empire and ancient social order crumble away, the
Church will survive. It will welcome the barbarians to its
embrace, sending to the Dacian Goths an Arian bishop
Ulphilas, to translate the Bible into their dialect, and
other missionaries to convert the Burgundians.
Last Years of Constantine (323-337). — These three mighty
facts — the establishment of Christianity as the dominant
religion of the empire, the foundation of Constantinople
and the administrative reorganization — All the reign of
Constantine. From his defeat of Licinius in 323 to his
death in 337, we find nothing in his personal history except
the bloody tragedies of the imperial palace, in which by his
orders his son Crispus, his empress Fausta and the son of
Licinius, a child of twelve, were put to death. Embassies
of Blemmyes, Ethiopians and Indians, a treaty with Sapor
II, who promised to ameliorate the condition of the Chris-
tians in Persia, and two successful expeditions against the
Goths and the Sarmatse (332), caused all these domestic mis-
fortunes to be forgotten. A few days before expiring Con-
stantine was baptized.
170 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 337-361.
XIV
CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS
Constantius (337). — Constantine committed the mistake
of dividing the empire between his three sons and several
of his nephews, without deciding upon a definitive dismem-
berment. This procedure caused fresh wars and fresh
crimes. First of all the soldiers massacred his nephews
with the exception of Gallus and Julian. The eldest of his
sons, Constantine II, perished in battle against one of his
brothers (340) who himself was killed (350) by the Frank
Magnentius. Constantius, who had to check the Persians
in the East and to combat a usurper in the West, appointed
his cousin Gallus as Caesar and intrusted to him the war
against Sapor. Magnentius killed himself on being de-
feated in Pannonia (351), whereupon Gaul, Spain and Brit-
ain submitted. Thus all the provinces were once more
united under one master, but they were no better governed.
The palace was distracted by the intrigues of women, eu-
nuchs and courtiers, and the empire by the quarrels of
Arianism and by the continued inroads of barbarians.
From false reports Constantius believed that Gallus, the
Caesar of the East, was preparing to revolt. The young
prince, recalled from Asia by flattering promises, was taken
to Pola in Istria and beheaded. His brother Julian was
spared. Exiled to Athens, he was able to fully gratify his
taste for study and to become initiated into the Platonic
doctrines. But imperial authority must be present on all
the menaced frontiers. So after fourteen months it became
necessary to recall Julian and intrust to him, as Csesar, the
defence of Gaul, now invaded by the Franks and the Ale-
manni. He vanquished the barbarians in the battle of
Strasburg (357), expelled them from all the country com-
prised between Basle and Cologne, crossed the Rhine and
brought back a great number of captive Gauls and legiona-
ries as prisoners. His skilful administration rendered him
as popular with the citizens as his victories had done with
the soldiers. Constantius grew uneasy and wished to take
A.D. 361-363,] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 111
away his troops, but they mutinied and proclaimed him
Augustus. This was a declaration of war. A bold and
rapid march had already brought Julian to the heart of
Illyricum, when Constantius died (361).
Julian (361). — Julian, a conqueror without a combat,
abjured Christianity and received the surname of the Apos-
tate. He publicly professed the ancient faith and reopened
the temples. He strangely misunderstood the society which
he was called to rule by attempting to restore life to the
dead. Had he lived longer, he would doubtless have cruelly
expiated this unintelligent return to the past. Neverthe-
less he did not summon the aid of violence to effect the
triumph of reaction. He promulgated an edict of toleration,
which permitted the sacrifices forbidden by Constantius,
and recalled the exiled members of all religious parties ;
but he must be reproached for one astute order which for-
bade Christians to teach belles-lettres. The reign of Con-
stantius had been incessantly troubled by the contentions
of the Arians and the Orthodox. Alexandria and Constanti-
nople were the principal theatres of this struggle. These
quarrels assisted Julian in his attempted restoration of
paganism. Also the sect of the Donatists was devastating
Africa at the same time. The Circumcelliones, separating
from the Donatists, wished to establish social equality. They
liberated debtors, broke the chains of the slaves and divided
the property of the masters. Hence arose a savage war.
Austere himself, he lay claim to the simplicity of a rigid
stoic. He was sometimes harsh toward others. Thus to
judge faithless officers, after .his accession he established a
tribunal which was charged with revising unjust decisions.
Once when severity would have been justified he displayed
a patience which does him honor. Anxious to avenge upon
the Persians the long injuries of the empire, he had reached
Syria with his army. At Antioch the inhabitants, zealous
Christians, loudly ridiculed him for his untrimmed beard
and shabby clothing and even proceeded to insult. The
emperor could xmnish, but the philosopher contented him-
self with replying by the Misopogon, a satire on their effem-
inate habits. At the head of 60,000 men he penetrated
to Ctesiphon, where he crossed the Tigris and burned
his fleet that his soldiers might have no other hope than
victory. But misled by traitors and in need of provisions,
he was obliged to fall back upon Gordyene to which a vie-
172 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 363-378.
tory opened the road. In a second combat lie fell severely
wounded, and died conversing with his friends concerning
the immortality promised to the just. Only thirty -two
years of age, he had sat upon the throne less than twenty-
three months (363).
Jovian (363). Valentinian and Valens (364). — The army
proclaimed Jovian. By a disgraceful treaty he abandoned
to Sapor the supremacy in Armenia and the five provinces
beyond the Tigris with many strongholds which served as
bulwarks to the empire. He died seven months afterward
(364). The generals agreed to proclaim Valentinian, who
gave the East to his brother Valens, and established himself
at Paris whence he could observe the Germans. He sowed
discord among the barbarians, set the Burgundians against
the Alemanni and after conquering several of those turbu-
lent tribes rebuilt the fortresses which guarded the pas-
sages of the Ehine. In his internal government, he was
stern even to cruelty. Death was the punishment for all
offences. But he showed himself tolerant in religious af-
fairs. Unfortunately for the empire this valiant chief died
in an expedition against the Quadi (375). His son Gratian
who succeeded abandoned to his younger brother, Valenti-
nian II, the prefectures of Italy and Illyricum.
In the East Valens less wise had entered into religious
quarrels instead of reorganizing the army. A great peril
threatened. A horde of Huns, belonging to the Mongol
race of Eastern Asia, had crossed the Ural, subjugated the
Alani and driven back upon the Danube the Goths, who
stretched out supplicating hands to the emperor (375).
Valens, whose pride was flattered, forgot his prudence
and welcomed this host of 200,000 fighting men. After-
ward they rose against him, and Valens near Adrianople
experienced a defeat more disastrous than that of Cannae
(378). Barely a third of the Roman army escaped. The
wounded emperor perished in a hut to which the barbarians
set fire. The whole country was horribly ravaged. Some
bands of Saracens, summoned from Asia, saved Constanti-
nople. Those children of the southern deserts found them-
selves for the first time in hand-to-hand combat with the
men of the north whom they were destined to encounter
three and a half centuries later at the other extremity of
the Mediterranean.
Theodosius (378). — At this very time Gratian was fight-
A.P. 378-304.] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 173
ing the Alemamii near Colmar, while the empire of the
East was without a head. To replace his uncle he chose a
skilful general, Theodosius, who reorganized the army and
restored the soldiers' courage by affording them the oppor-
tunity of fighting petty engagements in which he took care
that they should have the advantage. He allowed no for-
tress to fall into the hands of the enemy and diminished their
numbers by provoking desertions. At last without having
won a victory he forced the Goths to make a treaty (382).
In reality Theodosius gave them what they wished. He
established them in Thrace and Moesia with the duty of
defending the passage of the Danube. Forty thousand of
their warriors were admitted to the imperial ranks.
In Gaul Gratian had been overthrown by the usurper
Maximus (383) who, taking advantage of the Arian troubles
in Italy, crossed the Alps and forced Valentinian II to take
refuge with Theodosius. This prince brought him back to
Italy after a victory over Maximus, who was put to death
by his own soldiers in Aquileia. He gave him as his prin-
cipal minister the Frank Arbogast, who had just freed Gaul
from the Germans, but who filled all the civil and military
offices with barbarians. After the departure of Theodosius,
Valentinian wished delivery from this tutelage, but a few
days later he was found strangled in his bed (392).
Arbogast threw the purple over the shoulders of a depend-
ent of his own, the pagan orator Eugenius, and tried to
rally to his cause what pagans remained. This imprudent
conduct roused the Christians against him. A single battle
near Aquileia ended his ephemeral domination. Eugenius
was made prisoner and put to death. Arbogast killed him-
self (394). This time the victor retained his conquest.
This victory was also the triumph of orthodoxy. Theodo-
sius forbade under severe penalties the worship of the pagan
gods. He forbade the bestowal of honors on heretics, nor
could they dispose of their property by will. On the other
hand he made wise regulations in the effort to heal some of
the evils infesting this moribund society. He honored the
last days of the empire by exhibiting upon the throne those
virtues which the people had rarely beheld there.
The inhabitants of Thessalonica during a riot had killed
the governor and several imperial officers. Theodosius
gave orders which cost 7000 persons their lives. This
massacre excited a sentiment of horror throughout the em-
174 HISTORY OF THE ROMANS [a.d. 395-476.
pire. When he presented himself some time later at the
doors of the cathedral of Milan, Saint Ambrose in the pres-
ence of all the people reproached him with his crime and
forbade him to enter the church. The emperor accepted the
public penance which the saintly bishop thus imposed in
the name of God and outraged humanity. At his death he
divided the empire between his two sons, Arcadius and
Honorius (395). This final partition corresx3onded with the
real state of affairs, for the Adriatic separated two languages
and almost two religions. Constantinople, Greek-Orthodox
though so often Arian, and Eome, Latin and Catholic, had
each desired its own emperor. This separation still exists
in the different creeds and civilizations of those two halves
of the ancient world.
End of the Western Empire (476). — The barbarians who
for four centuries had remained on the defensive were now
beginning incessant attacks. Thanks to her situation, Con-
stantinople was almost impregnable to assault. Rome, on
the contrary, was speedily captured. The empire of the
West writhed for eighty years in a painful death agony, the
chief features of which we shall find in the subsequent his-
tory of Alaric, Attila and Genseric. Honorius died in 423.
His nephew Valentinian III reigned miserably until 455
and perished by assassination. Majorian, worthy of a better
epoch, was killed by the Sueve Eicimer who bestowed the
crown on three senators in succession. Finally a chieftain
of the Heruli, Odoacer, put an end to the Western Empire
(476) by deposing the last emperor Eomulus Augustus.
Proclaimed king of Italy by his barbarians, he assigned
them one-third of the territory of the country, and re-
quested at Constantinople the title of patrician, thereby
recognizing the rights of the Eastern Emperor as suzerain
of the new kingdom.
Summary. — The Eoman Empire fell because it had at its
origin detestable political principles, and in its latter days a
deplorable military organization. Taxes, constantly becom-
ing more burdensome, and a merciless fiscal system alien-
ated the affection of subjects whom the army no longer
defended. A new religion, which tended to detach attention
from the earth, did not strengthen the devotion for the pub-
lic cause. Thus the empire was not thrown down headlong
by a violent and unexpected blow. It collapsed because it
could no longer live.
A.D. 476.] CONSTANTIUS. JULIAN. THEODOSIUS 175
The Eoman people added nothing to the heritage Greece
had bequeathed. ISTevertheless it also left behind great
deeds and great lessons, though belonging to another order
of facts and ideas. Its language has been and still in a
measure is the bond of the learned world. Its laws have
inspired modern legislation. Its military roads, its bridges,
its aqueducts, have made men understand the necessity of
public works. Its administration has taught how to control
multitudes of men. Its government has served as a model
to the absolute monarchies which have succeeded the feudal
system. Its municipal institutions are the source of our
own and could still offer useful examples. Lastly it began
the transformation of ancient slavery into serfdom.
The barbaric kings, dazzled at the splendor shed by this
dying empire, had at first no other idea than to continue it.
Clovis will be a patrician of Eome. Theodoric will count
himself the colleague of the emperor of the East. Charle-
magne, Otho, Frederick Barbarossa, will call themselves the
successors of Constantine. The Christianity of Jerusalem,
become Catholicism at Eome, will be the most powerful
government of the soul. The spiritual monarchy of the
popes will copy and strive to replace the temporal monarchy
of the emperors. The intellectual heirs of Ulpian and of
Papinian will attach to feudal royalty the powers bestowed
upon the Caesars by the lex regia. When -those royalties
shall all have perished in their turn, ISTapoleon will assume
a Eoman title as representative of an idea both new and old,
the idea of the protectorate of popular interests exercised at
Eome by the tribunes of the people, whose power, tribunicia
potestas, the emperors had absorbed.
Thus the history of Eome will long remain the training-
school of the lawyer and the statesman, even as artists,
thinkers and poets will always turn toward Greece.
Copyright. 189B, by T. Y. Crowell ic Co.
Engraved by Collon, Olunai. & Co., N. Y.
HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
^XXc
THE BARBARIAN WORLD IN THE FOURTH AND FIFTH
CENTURIES
Definition of the Middle Ages. — The term Middle Ages
indicates the period which elapsed between the ruin of the
Roman Empire and the establishment of the great modern
monarchies. It extends from the German invasion at the
beginning of the fifth century to the capture of Constanti-
nople by the Ottoman Turks ten centuries later in 1453.
In this period, situated between ancient and modern
times, the cultivation of arts and letters was suspended,
although a new and magnificent architecture was developed.
In place of the republics of antiquity and the monarchies
of our day there grew up a special organization called
feudalism. This domination of the feudal lords, the product
of many centuries, was finally overthrown by Louis XI, the
Tudors and the princes contemporary with them. Although
there were kings in all countries, the military and ecclesias-
tical chiefs were the real sovereigns from the ninth to the
twelfth century. The central power* had no force, local
powers had no overseer or guide, the frontiers had no fixed
limits. The sovereign and owner parcelled out the territory
into a multitude of petty states where the sentiment of
nationality could not exist. Nevertheless above this condi-
tion of many lords hovered the idea of Christianity repre-
sented by the pope, and of a certain political unity represented
by the emperor in comparison with whom all the kings of
Europe were provincial. Thus the great wars of those times
were religious wars, as were the crusades against the Mussul-
mans of Palestine, the Moors of Spain, the Albigensian here-
tics or the pagans of the Baltic, or were a struggle between
N 177
178 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 395.
the two powers which aspired to rule the world, a quarrel
between Papacy and the Empire. Hence there is a wide dif-
ference between this period and those periods which preceded
or followed. Hence of necessity it has a name and a place
apart in universal history.
The Northern Barbarians : their Habits and Religion. —
During the military anarchy which drained the last re-
sources of the Roman Empire, peoples, hitherto concealed
in the depths of the north, south and east, were setting
themselves in motion beyond its boundaries, to which they
daily drew nearer. In the north were three layers of
humanity, placed at intervals in the following order:
Germans, Slavs and Turanian tribes. On the east were
the Persians, a settled and stationary people, who had
often made war on the empire but had no thought of
invading it. On the south in the deserts of their great
peninsula were the Arabs, who as yet caused no fear; and in
the wastes of Africa the Moorish populations, who had been
touched rather than permeated by Roman civilization.
At the death of Theodosius (395) there was no serious
danger except from the north. Driven forward by the
Asiatic hordes from the banks of the Volga, the Germans
were pressing upon the frontiers of the empire. The Suevi
or Suabians, Alemanni and Bavarians were in the south
between the Main and Lake Constance. The Marcomanni,
Quadi, Heruli and the great Gothic nation controlled the
left bank of the Danube. In the west along the Rhine
extended the confederation of the Franks, formed as early
as the middle of the third century, and toward the mouth
of the Ems, the Erisii, a remnant of the Batavi. In the
north were the Vandals, Burgundi, Rugii, Longobardi or
Lombards; between the Elbe and the Eyder, the Angles
and Saxons ; farther north, the Scandinavians, Jutes and
Danes in Sweden and Denmark, whence they emerged to
join the second invasion; and lastly in the immense plains
of the east and at many points of the Danubian valley, the
Slavs, who were to follow the Germanic invasion but only
to enter into history later on, first through the Poles and
then through the Russians.
A spirit totally different from that of the inhabitants
of the Roman Empire animated these barbarians. Among
them reigned the love of individual independence, the devo-
tion of the warrior to his chieftain and a passion for wars
A.D. 395.] THE BARBAKIAN WORLD 179
of adventure. As soon as the young man had received in
the public assembly his buckler and lance, he was a warrior
and a citizen. He immediately attached himself to some
famous chieftain, whom he followed to battle with other
warriors, his leudes or henchmen, ahvays ready to die in
his behalf. The government of the Germans was simple.
The affairs of the tribe were administered in an assembly
in which all took part. The warriors gathered there to-
gether in arms. The clash of shields denoted applause;
a violent murmur, disapproval. The same assembly exer-
cised judicial power. Each canton had its magistrate, the
graf, and the whole nation had a konig, or king, elected
from among the members of one special family which held
hereditary possession of that title. For combat the war-
riors chose the leader, or herzog, whom they wished to follow.
The Olympus or heaven of these peoples presented a
mixture of terrible and graceful conceptions. At the side
of Odin, who gave victory and who by night rode through
the air with the dead warriors ; of Donar, the Hercules of
the Germans; and of the fierce joys of Walhalla, — ap-
peared the goddesses Ereja and Hoi da, the Venus and the
Diana of the north, who everywhere diffused peace and
the arts. The Germans also adored Herta, the earth, Sunna,
the sun, and her brother Mani, the moon, who was pursued
by two wolves. The bards were their poets and encouraged
them to brave death. It was their glory to die with a laugh.
The Germans cultivated the soil but little. They pos-
sessed no domain as private property, and every year the
magistrates distributed to each village and each family the
plot which they were to cultivate. They had no towns
laut scattered earthen huts far distant from each other,
each surrounded by the plot which the proprietor cultivated.
Their habits were tolerably pure. Polygamy was author-
ized only for the kings and the nobles. But drunkenness
and bloody quarrels generally terminated their Homeric
feasts, and they had a passion for gambling.
Arrival of the Huns in Europe. — Behind this Germanic
family which was destined to occupy the greater part of
the empire, pressed two other barbarous races: the Slavs
whose turn did not come until later, and the Huns who
were an object of fear to the people of the west. Their
lives were passed in enormous chariots or in the saddle.
Their bony faces, pierced with little eyes, their broad flat
180 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 3T5-403.
noses, their enormous wide-spread ears and swarthy tat-
tooed skins made them seem hardly human. At the end
of the fourth century they had convulsed the whole bar-
baric world and precipitated the Germans upon the Empire
of the West. In consequence of intestine discords a part
of the nation of the Huns, driven on toward Europe, crossed
the Volga, carrying with them the Alani. They dashed
themselves against the great Gothic empire in which Her-
manric had united the three branches of the nation: the
Ostrogoths or Oriental Goths east of the Dnieper ; the Visi-
goths or western Goths; the Gepidae or Laggards farther
to the north. The Ostrogoths submitted. The Visigoths
fled toward the Danube and obtained from the Emperor
Valens an asylum on the lands of the empire. They re-
volted soon after against their benefactor and slew him at
the battle of Adrianople (378). But they were arrested
by Theodosius who established many of them in Thrace,
where at first they faithfully defended that frontier against
the Huns.
Invasion of the Visigoths. Alaric. The Great Invasion
of 406. — When at the death of Theodosius his two sons
divided their heritage (395), Honorins received the West.
His provinces bore the full brunt of the invasion from the
north. In the course of half a century this empire endured
the four terrible assaults of Alaric, Radagaisus, Genseric
and Attila. Hardly had it fallen, when the Franks of
Clovis wrested the finest portion from its invaders, which
they still retain. The Visigoths under the lead of their
king Alaric first tried their forces against the Empire of
the East. They ravaged Thrace and Macedonia, passed
Thermopylae where there was no longer a Leonidas,
devastated Attica, but respected Athens, and penetrated
into the Peloponnesus. The Vandal Stilicho, general of
Honorins, surrounded them on Mount Pholoe, but they
escaped. Arcadius, who reigned at Constantinople, only
rid himself of their dangerous presence by pointing out the
Empire of the West. They hastened thither, but found at
Polentia in Liguria (403) the same Stilicho, who defeated
them and forced them to evacuate Italy. Honorins, to
celebrate this victory of his lieutenant, enjoyed a triumph
at Rome and offered the people the last sanguinary games
of the circus. Then he hid himself at Ravenna behind the
marshes ^t the south of the Po, disdaining his ancient capi-
A.D. 403-435.] THE BARBARIAN WORLD 181
tal, and no longer daring to reside in Milan where Alaric
had nearly surprised him.
The ostensible consent of the empire had admitted upon
its territory the Visigoths, who rewarded it badly. But
now four peoples, the Suevi, Alani, Vandals and Burgundi-
ans, at two points forced their way across the frontier. One
of their divisions passed the Alps under Radagaisus, but
was annihilated at Fiesole by Stilicho. Another crossed
the Rhine (406) and for two years laid waste the whole of
Gaul. Afterward the Burgundians founded on the banks
of the Rhone a kingdom which Honorius recognized in 413,
and the Alani, the Suevi and the Vandals proceeded to
inundate Spain. The great invasion had begun.
Capture of Rome by Alaric (410). Kingdoms of the
Visigoths, Suevi and Vandals. — But Alaric returned to the
charge. No longer was he confronted by Stilicho, who had
been sacrificed to the jealousy of Honorius. He captured
Rome, delivered it over to the fury of his barbarians who
respected the Christian churches, and died some time later
in Calabria at Cosenza (410). The Visigoths hollowed out
a tomb for him in the bed of a river whose waters had been
diverted, and then restored the natural course of the stream
after having slain the prisoners who had done the work.
The power of the Visigoths did not expire with Alaric.
Notwithstanding their sack of Rome this people, who had
been so long in contact with the empire, were specially dis-
posed to yield to the paramount influence of Roman civiliza-
tion. Ataulf, the brother-in-law of Alaric, and after him
Wallia, entered the service of Honorius. In his interest
they rescued Gaul from three usurpers who had there
assumed the purple, and Spain from the three barbarian
tribes which had invaded it. For his reward Wallia
obtained a portion of Aquitania, and founded the kingdom
of the Visigoths (419) which was to cross the Alps. Dur-
ing the same year Hermanric organized with the remnants
of the Suevi a kingdom in the mountains of the Asturias.
A little later the Vandals, who had been crowded into the
south of Spain, crossed into Africa, which was opened to
them by the treachery of Count Boniface. They captured
Hippo despite its long resistance, which the exhortations
of the Bishop Saint Augustine sustained, and forced the
Emperor Valentinian to recognize their occupancy (435).
Genseric who made this conquest also seized Carthage
182 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 439-486.
(439), founded a maritime power on those shores which had
formerly acknowledged the Carthaginian sway, and until
his death (477) ravaged all the coasts of the Mediterranean
with his ships. In 453 he captured Eome and for the space
of fourteen days gave it over to pillage.
Attila. — Four barbaric kingdoms had already risen in
the West when Attila made his appearance. This is the
great e^jisode in the invasion of the fifth century. What
would have become of Europe under the Tartar domination
of Attila, the scourge of God, who wished the grass not to
grow where his horse's hoof had fallen ! Having put to
death his brother Bleda, he reigned alone over the nation of
the Huns, and held under his yoke all the peoples estab-
lished on the banks of the Danube. He inhabited a wooden
palace in a city in the plains of Pannonia, whence he had
dictated laws and imposed tribute on Theodosius II,
emperor of the East. When Genseric invited him to create
a diversion favorable to his own designs he poured upon the
West the immense hosts of his peoples. He traversed
northeastern Gaul, overthrowing everything in his path,
and laid siege to Orleans. The patrician Aetius hastened
thither with a mixed army, in which Visigoths, Burgundi-
ans, Franks and Saxons fought beside the Eomans against
the new invaders. The decisive battle of Chalons (451)
drove Attila to the other side of the Ehine. He retreated
toward Italy. There he destroyed many cities, and among
others Aquileia, whose inhabitants escaped to the lagoons
of the Adriatic where they laid the foundations of Venice.
On his return to Pannonia he died of apoplexy (453) and
the great power of the Huns wasted away in the quarrels of
his sons.
The Western emperors were hardly more than playthings
in the hands of the barbarian chiefs who commanded their
troops. One of them, the Herule Odoacer, ended this death
agony by assuming the title of king of Italy (476). Thus
fell the great name of the Western Empire, an event more
important in subsequent than in contemporary eyes, which
had been accustomed through more than half a century to
see the barbarian masters dispose of everything. Neverthe-
less a remnant of the empire still existed under the patri-
cian Syagrius at the centre of Gaul, between the Loire and
the Somme. Ten years later that too disappeared before
the sword of the Franks.
A.D. 400-455.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 183
II
PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS. THE EASTERN
EMPIRE
Barbarian Kingdoms of Gaul, Spain and Africa. — We
have just seen how from the Loire to the Strait of Gibral-
tar Alaric and his successors founded the kingdom of the
Visigoths in Gaul and Spain, how Genseric built that of the
Vandals in Africa, and lastly how Attila ravaged every-
thing but constructed nothing. Other barbarian domina-
tions established were those of the Burgundians, the Suevi,
the Anglo-Saxons, the Ostrogoths and the Lombards which
speedily passed away.
The Burgundian kingdom, established in 413 in the val-
leys of the Saone and Rhone with Geneva and Vienne for
its principal cities, had eight kings of little distinction.
Clovis rendered it tributary in 500 and his sons conquered
it in 534.
The kingdom of the Suevi, born at the same time, ex-
pired a few years later. In 409 this people invaded Spain
and seized the northwest region or Galicia. Under its
kings Rechila and Rechiarius it seemed about to conquer
the whole of Spain, but the Goths arrested its growth and
reduced it to subjection (585).
Saxon Kingdoms in England. — Britain, separated from
the continent by the sea, had her invasion apart. Under
the Romans three distinct peoples existed there. These
were: in the north, in the Scotland of to-day, the Cale-
donians or Picts and Scots whom the emperors had been
unable to subdue ; in the east and south, the Loegrians who
were affected by Roman civilization; on the west, beyond
the Severn, the Cambrians or Welsh who seemed invinci-
ble in their mountains. Abandoned by the legions (428)
and left defenceless to the incursions of the Picts, the
Loegrians (455) entreated assistance from the Saxons, Jutes
and Angles, who were incessantly setting out from their
German and Scandinavian shores to plough the seas. Two
184 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 455-510.
Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa, routed the Picts and
received in payment the isle of Thanet on the coast of
Kent. But Hengist, despoiling those who had summoned
him, took possession of the country from the Thames to
the Channel and assumed the title of king of Kent (455).
Thenceforth the ambition of all these pirates was to con-
quer a settlement in Britain. The kingdom of Sussex or
South Saxons was founded in 491 ; that of Wessex or West
Saxons in 516; and that of Essex or East Saxons in 526.
In 547 began the invasion of the Angles, who founded the
kingdoms of Northumberland or the kingdom north of the
Humber ; on the eastern British coast, of East Anglia (577)
and Mercia (584). These three kingdoms of the Angles
being reckoned with the four Saxon kingdoms, there were
in Britain seven little monarchies or the Anglo-Saxon
Heptarchy which later on formed a single state. The
Saxons formed the basis of the present population of the
country and to them England owes her language.
Kingdom of the Ostrogoths in Italy. Theodoric (489-526).
— The conquest of Italy by the Ostrogoths took place later
and nearly coincided with the conquest of Gaul by the
Franks. Emancipated from the yoke of the Huns by the
death of Attila, the Ostrogoths in 475 had taken as their
chief Theodoric, the son of one of their princes, who had
been reared as a hostage at Constantinople. At the invita-
tion of Zeno, emperor of the East, Theodoric conquered
Italy from the Heruli (439-493), and showed himself the
most truly great of the barbarian sovereigns prior to Charle-
magne. To his kingdom of Italy by skilful negotiations
he added Illyricum, Pannonia, Noricum and Rhaetia. A
war against the Burgundians gave him the province of Mar-
seilles and he routed a Prankish army near Aries in 507.
The Bavarians paid him tribute. The Alemanni appealed
to him for aid against Clovis. Finally at the death of
Alaric II he became the guardian of his grandson Amal-
ric and reigned in fact over the two great branches of the
Gothic nation, whose possessions touched each other toward
the Rhone and who occupied the shores of the Mediterranean
in Spain, Gaul and Italy. Family alliances united him to
almost all the barbarian kings.
He made an admirable use of peace. The newcomers
needed land. Each city gave up one-third of its territory
for distribution to the Goths. This preliminary assignment
A.D. 510-527.] PRINCIPAL BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 185
once made, a common law was established for the two peo-
ples, though the Goths retained some of their peculiar
customs. In other respects he aimed at separating the van-
quished from the victors, reserving arms for the barbarians
and civil dignities for the Romans. He possessed a great
veneration for ancient imperial institutions. He consulted
the senate of Rome and maintained the municipal system
of government, himself appointing the decurions. Thus a
barbarian restored to Italy a prosperity which she had lost
under her emperors. The public edifices, aqueducts, thea-
tres and baths were repaired, palaces and churches were
built and the waste lands were cultivated. Companies
were formed to drain the Pontine Marshes and those of
Spoleto. The population increased. Theodoric, who did
not know how to write, gathered around him the finest liter-
ary geniuses of the time, Cassiodorus, Boethius and Bishop
Ennodius. Himself an Arian, he respected the Catholics
and confirmed the immunities of the churches. Yet the
close of his reign was saddened by threats of persecution in
reprisal for what the Eastern emperor was inflicting on the
Arians, and by the torture of Boethius and of the prefect
Symmachns, unjustly accused of conspiracy. He died in
526 and his kingdom survived him only a few years.
Thus too passed rapidly away the Vandals and the Heruli,
the Suevi and the Burgundians, the western and eastern
Goths. They all formed part of the barbarian guard which
first entered the empire. Roman society, incapable of de-
fending itself, seems to have been strong enough to com-
municate to those who came in contact with it that death
which it bore in its own breast.
Revival of the Eastern Empire. Justinian (527-565). —
The ruined Empire of the West had been replaced by thir-
teen Germanic kingdoms; those of the Burgundians, Visi-
goths, Suevi, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths and of the seven
Anglo-Saxon states. The Greek Empire alone had escaped
invasion and remained erect in spite of its religious dis-
cords and the general weakness of its government. The
reign of Theodosius II, the longest which the fifth century
presents (418-450), was really that of Pulcheria, the sister
of the incapable emperor. It was signalized by the publi-
cation of the Theodosian Code. Under Zeno and Anasta-
sius Constantinople was racked by quarrels and riots on
questions of religion.
186 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 527-568.
Justinian restored vigor and brilliancy to this empire.
He preserved intact the eastern frontier and forced the
Persians to conclude in 562, after thirty-four years of war,
an honorable treaty. He repulsed (559) an invasion of
Bulgarians which threatened Constantinople. In the west
he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals by the victories
of Belisarius and that of the Ostrogoths by the successes
of the eunuch Narses. While his generals were winning
battles, his lawyers were drawing up the Code, the Digest
or Pandects, the Institutes and the Novellce, which have
transmitted to posterity the substance of ancient jurispru-
dence. This reign was the glorious protest of the Eastern
Empire and of civilization against invasion and barbarism.
The splendor was of brief continuance. In 568 Italy was
lost. Conquered by the Lombards, a fourteenth Germanic
kingdom was founded, which lasted more than 200 years
and was to fall under the blows of Charlemagne. From her
geographic position Constantinople could not be the heir of
Rome. The inheritance of the Western Empire was to
belong to the Germanic race.
As for the Eastern Empire, after that brilliant period it
passed many gloomy days despite the talent of princes like
Maurice and Heraclius. Thanks to her strategic situation
Constantinople, the daughter of aged Rome, who bore on
her brow from her very birth the wrinkles of her mother,
alone remained standing like an isolated rock. For ten
centuries she braved victoriously the assaults of the Mus-
sulmans in the south and of the Slavic and Turanian tribes
on the north.
' T. V. Ccawell ,V Co
EMer''«dby Cullo.,, 01....;ll. i Co., N. Y.
A.D. 241-448.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 187
III
CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS
(481-753)
The Franks. — In the third century before Christ the
Germans had formed on the right bank of the Rhine two
confederations : on the south, that of the Suevic tribes,
who called themselves the Alemanni or men; on the
north, that of the Salii, the Sicambri, the Bructeri, the
Cherusci and the Catti, who took the name of Franks or
the brave. They are first mentioned by Eoman writers in
241 when Aurelian, then legionary tribune, defeated a body
of Franks on the lower Rhine. Probus recaptured from
them the Gallic cities which they had attacked on the
death of Aurelian, and transported a colony of them to the
Black Sea (277). A little later others crossed the Rhine,
devastated Belgium and received from Julian authority to
establish themselves on the banks of the Meuse which they
had ravaged. Several of the Frankish chiefs rose to high
positions in the empire. Thus Arbogast was the prime
minister of Valentinian II and disposed of the purple.
Twelve years after his death the Franks, already estab-
lished in northern Gaul, tried to arrest the great invasion
of 406. Failing in this they wished to obtain their share
of these provinces which the emperor himself was aban-
doning, and their tribes advanced into the interior of the
country, each one under its own chieftain or king. At that
time there were Frankish kings at Cologne, Tournay, Cam-
brai and Therouanne. Of these kings, Clodion, chief of
the Salian Franks of the country of Tongres or Limburg,
is the first whose existence has been well authenticated.
Pharamond, his reputed predecessor, is mentioned only in
later chronicles. He captured Tournay and Cambrai, put
to death all the Romans whom he found and advanced
toward the Somme which he crossed ; but in the neighbor-
hood of Sens was vanquished by the Roman general Aetius
(448).
188 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 448-496.
He did not survive his defeat, Merovig his kinsman
succeeded. He joined three years later with all the bar-
barians quartered in Gaul and with the rest of the Romans
in resisting the Huns. The battle of Chalons (451) against
Attila cost the lives, it is said, of 300,000 men and rescued
the barbarian nations encamped between the Rhine and the
Pyrenees.
Childeric, the son of Merovig, was expelled by the Franks
who were disgusted at his excesses. He was replaced by
the Roman general ^Egidius. Recalled at the end of eight
years, he reigned over the Franks until his death and was
interred in Tournay, where his tomb was discovered in
1633. His son Chlodowig or Clovis was the real founder
of the Frankish monarchy.
Clovis. — In 481 Clovis possessed only a few districts of
Belgium with the title of king of the Salian Franks, who
had settled in the neighborhood of Tournay. He com-
manded 4000 or 5000 warriors. Five years later he
defeated near Soissons Syagrius, the son of ^gidius, who
governed in the name of the empire the country between the
Somme and the Loire. He forced the Visigoths among whom
the vanquished general had taken refuge to give him up, put
him to death and subdued the country as far as the Loire.
In 493 he married Clotilde, daughter of a Burgundian
king, herself an Orthodox Christian. This union had the
happiest results for Clotilde soon converted her husband.
As all the barbarians established in Gaul were Arians and
hence in orthodox eyes equivalent to heretics, Clovis be-
came the hope of the orthodox Gauls. Even before his
conversion, Amiens, Beauvais, Paris and Rouen had opened
their gates, thanks to the influence of their bishops. The
Alemanni having crossed the Rhine, Clovis marched against
them. He was on the point of being vanquished, when he
invoked the God of Clotilde. Success seemed granted to
his prayer, and the Alemanni were thrust back beyond that
river and pursued into Suabia. On his return Clovis was
bajjtized with 3000 of his men by Saint Remi, archbishop of
Reims. As the archbishop sprinkled the holy water on the
head of the neophyte he said to him, " Bow thy head, soft-
ened Sicambrian. Adore what thou hast burned ; burn what
thou hast adored." An Arian sister of Clovis was baptized
at the same time (496). The Gallo-Roman inhabitants,
oppressed by the Arian Burgundian s and Visigoths, thence-
A.D. 496-511.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 189
forth centred their affections and hopes in the converted
chieftain of the Franks. All the episcopate was on his
side. " When thou lightest," wrote to him Avitus, bishop
of Vienne, '' we share the victory." So they aided him in
all his enterprises. Some of his liegemen deserted, but his
successes and above all the booty they could gain under so
skilful a leader brought them back.
The country between the Loire and the Somme was sub-
jugated and Armoricum won over to his alliance. Then he
attacked the Burgiindians (500), defeated their king Gundo-
bad and made him pay tribute. Then one day he said to
his soldiers, "It causes me great grief that those Arian
Visigoths possess a part of this Gaul. Let us march with
the help of God and after vanquishing them let us reduce
their country to our power." The army crossed the Loire,
by the express order of the king religiously respecting on
its passage all the property of the churches. The Visi-
gothic king Alaric II was beaten and slain at Vouille
near Poitiers. That city, Saintes, Bordeaux, Toulouse,
opened their gates and Septimania with Nimes, Beziers
and Narbonne would have been conquered if Theodoric,
the great head of the Ostrogoths, had not sent succor to his
brethren of the West. On his return from this expedition
Clovis found the ambassadors of the Emperor Anastasius
who brought him the titles of consul and patrician with the
purple tunic and robe. His last years were bloody. He
slew Sigebert and Chloderic kings of Cologne, Chararic
another petty Frankish king, Eagnachairus king of Cam-
brai, and Benomer king of the Mans, that he might seize
their kingdoms and treasures. He died in 511 and was
interred in the basilica of the Holy Apostles or Saint
Genevieve which he himself had built. His reign had
lasted thirty years, and his life forty-five. •
At his death the state which he founded comprised all
Gaul except Gascogne where no Frankish troop had made
its apj)earance, and Brittany which was controlled by
counts or military chiefs. The Alemanni in Alsace and
Suabia were associates in the fortunes of the Franks rather
than subject to the authority of their king. The Burgun-
dians after paying tribute for a time fully intended to
refuse it in future ; and the cities of Aquitaine, feebly re-
strained by Frankish garrisons at Bordeaux and Saintes,
remained almost independent.
190 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 511-571.
As to the victorious nation united only for conquest and
pillage it had contented itself with expelling the Visigoths
from Aquitaine without replacing them. The war ended
the Franks had returned with their booty to their former
abodes between the Rhine and the Loire. Clovis himself
had settled at Paris, a central position between the two
rivers, whence he could more easily watch the provinces
and his enemies.
The Sons of Clovis (511-561). — The four sons of Clovis
shared his territories and followers, so that each one had a
nearly equal portion of the land to the north of the Loire
where the Frankish nation had settled, and also a part of
the Roman cities of Aquitaine which paid rich tributes.
Childebert was king of Paris ; Clotaire, king of Soissons ;
Clodimir, king of Orleans ; Thierry, king of Metz or Aus-
trasia.
The impulse imparted by Clovis lasted for some time.
His sons carried their arms to Thuringia, Burgundy, Italy
and Spain. The Alemanni and the Bavarians had recog-
nized them as suzerains, and the Saxons paid them trib-
ute.
Fredegonde and Brunehaut. — Clotaire, one of the sons of
Clovis, had reunited his father's kingdom in 558, but upon
his death three years afterward the Frankish monarchy be-
came again a tetrarchy by the partition of its states among
his four sons : Caribert, king of Paris ; Grontram, of Orleans
and Burgundy; Sigebert, of Austrasia, and Chilperic, of
Soissons. From that time rivalry began, destined to increase
between the eastern Franks or Austrasians and the western
Franks or Neustrians. The former were more faithful to the
rude manners of Germany of which they were the neigh-
bors. The latter were more accessible to the influence of
that Roman civilization in the midst of which they had
settled.
This opposition finds its first expression in the hatred of
two women. Sigebert had married Brunehaut, the daughter
of Athanagild king of the Visigoths, beautiful, learned and
ambitious. Chilperic, desirous also of a royal wife, ob-
tained the hand of Galswinthe, the sister of Brunehaut.
Soon however he returned to his imperious concubine Fre-
degonde, who caused her rival to be strangled and took
her place. Brunehaut burning to avenge her sister stirred
up Sigebert to attack Neustria. Her husband, victorious,
A.D. 571-028.] CLOVIS AND THE MEROVINGIANS 191
was about to proclaim himself king of the Neustrians,
when two servants of Fredegonde, "bewitched by her,"
stabbed him at the same time in the side with poisoned
knives (575). As his son Childebert II was still a minor,
the Austrians were governed by a mayor of the palace.
That official was originally a mere steward of the king's
household, chosen from among his vassals. Supported by
other vassals, the mayors of the palace were to acquire an
important influence to the advantage of the barbarous aris-
tocracy, already very hostile to royalty, and were to hold
the feeble kings in tutelage until the moment came when
they could take their place.
The years that followed are confused and bloody, filled
with the turbulence of the leudes or liegemen, and above all
with the fierce struggle between Brunehaut and Fredegonde.
The former in the name of her children and grandchildren
seized the power in both Austrasia and Burgundy. Her
stern and orderly rule alienated her subjects, who proposed
to Clotaire II, the son of Chilperic and Fredegonde, to make
him their king if he would rid them of Brunehaut. Aban-
doned by her troops, she and her four grandsons were capt-
ured by Clotaire. He cut the throats of the young princes
and had the aged queen fastened to the tail of a wild horse
(613) which dashed her body to pieces.
Clotaire II (584) and Dagobert (628). — Clotaire II for the
third time established the unity of the Frankish monarchy.
Under his reign seventy-nine bishops and many laymen took
part in the Council of Paris, which promulgated a so-called
perpetual constitution whereby the power of the ecclesiastical
and secular aristocracy was greatly increased. The taxes
imposed were abolished, the fiefs granted were declared in-
alienable and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction was extended.
The reign of Dagobert was the most brilliant of the Mero-
vingian line and gave to the Franks preponderance in West-
ern Europe,. He stopped the incursions of the Venedi over
whom a Frankish merchant had become king, opposed the
incursions of the Slavonians into Thuringia and delivered
Bavaria from a Bulgarian invasion. In Gaul he compelled
the submission of the Vascons and the alliance of the Bre-
tons whose chief had assumed the title of king. He chose
clever ministers and won a legitimate popularity by travel-
ling about his kingdom to administer justice in behalf of the
small as the great. He revised the laws of the Salii, the
192 HISTOEY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. (338-687.
Riparii, the Alemanni and the Bavarians, encouraged com-
merce and industry and built the Abbey of Saint Denis.
The Sluggard Kings. The Mayors of the Palace (638-687).
— But Dagobert carried the power of the Merovingians with
him to the tomb. After him came the sluggard kings.
Nevertheless royalty found a formidable champion in
Ebroin, mayor of the palace in Neustria, who with increased
energy resumed the struggle of Brunehaut and Dagobert
against the leudes and their chief, Saint Leger, bishop of
Autun. In a document he wrote, " Those men have appar-
ently forfeited their fiefs who are convicted of infidelity to
those from whom they hold them." Many vassals who
seemed too independent were put to death, deprived of their
property or banished. The Austrasian vassals made com-
mon cause with the exiles. They deposed their Merovingian
king and confided the power to the two mayors, Martin and
Pepin d'Heristal, with the title of princes of the Franks.
After the death of Ebroin they gained the battle of Testry
and all Neustria in consequence (687). From that day
forth Pepin d'Heristal reigned in reality though without
assuming the title of king. His successors were to erect
the Frankish Empire in which all the Germanic invasion
is summed up.
A.D. 570-610.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 193
IV
MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION
Arabia. Mohammed and the Koran. — After the German
invasion which came from the north followed the Arab
invasion from the south. Arabia, whose peoples then ap-
peared for the first time on the scene of history, is a vast
peninsula covering more than a million square miles.
Northward it opens upon Asia through extensive deserts
and is attached on the northwest to Africa by the Isthmus of
Suez. Elsewhere it is surrounded by the Ked Sea, the Strait
of Bab-el-Mandeb, the Indian Ocean, the Strait of Ormus and
the Persian Gulf. The ancients, who had small acquaintance
with it, divided it into three parts : Arabia Petrsea or the
peninsula of Sinai; Arabia Deserta or Nedjed, comprising
the deserts which extend from the Red Sea to the Euphrates ;
and Arabia Eelix or Yemen. Its religion was a mixture of
Christianity, introduced by the Abyssinians and Greeks ; of
Sabeism, taught by the Persians ; of Judaism, which had
filtered in everywhere in the track of the Jews ; and above
all of idolatry. The temple of the Kaaba in the holy city
of Mecca contained 360 idols, the custody of which was in-
trusted to the illustrious family of the Koreish. There was
much religious indifference in the presence of so many faiths.
The masses of population were kept together by the poets,
who were already develoj^ing the language of Islam in those
poetical tournaments, wherein the idea of Allah, the Su-
preme Being, a belief natural to such a country, frequently
occurs.
Mohammed was born of Koreish parents in 570. Early
an orphan and without fortune, he became a camel-driver
and travelled in Syria where he became intimate with a
monk of Bostra. His integrity and intelligence won the
hand of a rich widow named Khadijah. Thenceforth he
could give himself up to his meditations. At the age of
forty his ideas were fixed.
To Khadijah, to his cousin Ali, to his freedman Seid and
194 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 610-632.
to his friend Abou-Bekr he disclosed his purpose of restoring
to the religion of Abraham its primitive purity. He told
them that he was receiving from God through the Angel
Gabriel the verses of a book which was to be the book of all
others, or the Koran. He designated his new religion as
Islam or entire resignation to the divine will. His hearers
believed in him and Abou-Bekr won over Othman and the
fiery Omar to the new faith. The proselytes increased
daily. Persecuted by the Koreish, he lied to Yatreb (622).
With the year of the Hegira or Flight the Mussulman era
begins.
Yatreb now became Medinat-al-Nabi, the city of the
Prophet, commonly called Medina. At the battle of Bedr
300 of his followers defeated 1000 Koreish (624). After-
wards he was worsted at Mount Ohud, but gained a
decisive advantage in the War of the Nations or of the
Trench. Finally he reentered Mecca (630) where he
destroyed all the idols, saying : " The truth has come. Let
the falsehood disappear ! " From that moment he was the
religious leader of Arabia. He wrote threatening letters to
Chosroes, king of Persia, and to Heraclius, emperor of the
East, and was on the point of undertaking a holy war against
them when he died (632).
The Koran is the collection of all the revelations which
according to the occasion fell from the mouth of the Prophet,
and which were collected in a first edition by the orders
of the Caliph Abou-Bekr, and in a second by those of the
Caliph Othman. Composed of one hundred and fourteen
chapters or surates subdivided into verses, it contains both
the religious and civil law of the Mussulmans. The basis
of its dogma is fully summed up in these words, " There is
no God but God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God."
In Allah, the sole and jealous God, the Koran admits no plu-
rality of persons and it places no inferior divinity beside
him. It rejects all idea of God made man ; but it teaches
that God has revealed himself by a series of prophets,
of whom Mohammed is the last and the most complete.
Those who preceded him are : Adam, ISToah, Abraham,
Moses and Christ, with whom God communicated through
angels, his messengers. Mohammed acknowledged that
Christ possessed the gift of miracles which he himself had
not. He preached the immortality of the soul, the resur-
rection of the body and its participation in the joys or
A.D. 632-644.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 195
sufferings of a future life. A delightful but sensual para-
dise was in store for the good, a burning hell for the bad.
Nevertheless in this paxadise which appealed to the vulgar
crowd there are also spiritual joys. "The most favored of
God will be he who shall behold his face evening and morn-
ing, a felicity which will surpass all the pleasures of the
senses as the ocean surpasses a drop of dew."
He elevated the condition of Arab women. " A son," he
said, " wins paradise at the feet of his mother." Before his
day the daughters inherited nothing. He assigned to them
one-half the portion of their brothers. While enforcing the
authority of the husband, he bade him be a tender protector
to his wife. Though he tolerated polygamy so as not to
shock Eastern customs, he allowed a man only four legiti-
mate wives, and advised that as a praiseworthy act a man
should confine himself to one. The Koran prescribes severe
penalties for theft, usury, fraud and false Avitness and
enjoins alms. It minutely regulates the ritual of worship ;
the fast of Ramazan ; the observance of the four sacred
months, an ancient custom which like the truce of God
suspended hostilities among the faithful ; the great annual
pilgrimage to Mecca where Mohammed had installed the
seat of this new religion ; the five daily prayers ; the abso-
lutions, either with water or sand ; circumcision ; abstinence
from wine and many other detailed observances. Never-
theless so far as Christians and Jews were concerned, it is
sufficient not to ally oneself with thein by blood and one
must not fight against them unless they give provocation.
As for other people, it is the duty of every good Mussulmarf
to attack, pursue and slay them if they do not embrace the
religion of the Prophet.
These doctrines, these hopes and these threats were power-
ful springs of action which launched the Arabs, sword in
hand, in every direction.
The Caliphate. The Sunnites and Shiites. Arab Conquests.
(637-661). — Mohammed did not designate his successor, but
Abou-Bekr, whom he had charged with pronouncing the for-
mal prayer in his place, was recognized as caliph or religious,
civil, and military chief (632). Abou-Bekr in turn desig-
nated Omar (634) and after Omar, Othman was elected (644),
who was succeeded by Ali. The latter was the husband of
Fatima, daughter of the Prophet, and chief of the Fati-
mite party which gave birth to the great Mussulman sect
196 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 644-732.
of the Shiites or Separatists. They regard Ali as having
been unjustly excluded from the succession after the death
of Mohammed. The Sunnites, or followers of tradition, rec-
ognize Abou-Bekr, Omar and Othman as legitimate. After
Ali the hereditary system begins with the Ommiades (661).
This period is that of the great conquests. Khaled and
Amrou by the victories of Aiznadin and the Yermouk wrested
Syria from Heraclius, emperor of the East, who had just
returned victorious from expeditions against Persia. In ten
years' time the conquest of Persia was assured by the vic-
tories of Kadesiah, Jalula and Nehavend. Yezdegerd, the
last of the Sassanides, in vain besought succor from the
emperor of China. In 639 Amrou entered Egypt and made
himself master of the country after besieging Alexandria
fourteen months.
The Ommiades. — The usurpation of Moaviah, chief of the
Ommiades, who rendered the government a despotism and
made Damascus his capital, was followed by civil dissensions.
Blood flowed in streams for thirty years. The almost sus-
pended movement of conquest began again about 691 under
Abd-el-Malek. In the east, Transoxiana and Sogdiana were
conquered and India was threatened. Though in the north
Constantinople successfully resisted a seven years' siege
(672-679), the Arab power was established in the west
along the entire northern coast of Africa. Kairowan was
founded, Carthage . captured, a revolt of the Moors stifled
and the Columns of Hercules passed by Tarik who gave
them his name as the mountain of Tarik or Gibraltar. The
Spanish Visigothic kingdom, weakened by ecclesiastical in-
fluence and given up to discord by its elective system of
monarchy, succumbed at the battle of Xeres (711). Of all
the peninsula the Christians retained only a corner of land
in the Asturian mountains where Pelayo took refuge with
his comrades. Carried on by their ardor the rapid con-
querors crossed the Pyrenees, occupied Septimania, ravaged
Aquitaine and were already marching upon Tours when
Charles Martel arrested them by the victory of Poitiers or
Tours (732).
Division of the Caliphate. — Thus the Arabs at a bound
reached the Pyrenees and the Himalayas. Their faith was
supreme over two thousand leagues of country. Neverthe-
less geography, the greatest of forces to support or destroy
newborn states, condemned their empire to speedy partition
A.D. 732-1058.] MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 197
among many masters, because it was too extensive to have
one centre and contained too many different peoples to pos-
sess unity. The diverse influences of locality and race soon
began to manifest themselves and then to enter into conflict.
The dynasties, representing this or that nationality, which
geography and history had produced, began to dispute the
throne with one another and as a natural result the empire
fell to pieces.
In 750 the Syrian dynasty of the Ommiades was over-
thrown by Abul-Abbas, who founded the dynasty of the
Abbassides, sprung from an uncle of Mohammed. A sin-
gle Ommiad escaping proscription fled to Spain and there
erected the Caliphate of the West or of Cordova (755).
Thus the Abbassides now reigned only over the Caliphate
of the East or of Bagdad, a new capital built upon the
Tigris in 762 near the ancient Seleucia. There they fur-
nished a succession of great men : Almanzor (754), Haroun-
al-Easchid or the Just (786), Al-Mamoun (813) ; all of them
patrons of letters, arts and science, which they had borrowed
from the Greeks. But in those places which had always
witnessed despotism and where the shade of the great kings
still seemed to wander, the caliphs soon came to consider
themselves the image of God on earth. A splendid court
separated them from their people, immense wealth replaced
the poverty of Omar and military ardor became extinct in
the midst of an effeminate life. Then these men, ignorant
how to fight, bought slaves to make soldiers of them, and the
slaves became their masters. A guard of Seldjuk Turks was
introduced into the palace. They filled it with disorder and
violence and at their pleasure made or unmade sovereigns.
The Abbassides fell into the condition of the French Sluggard
Kings. Togrul Beg left to the caliph only an empty reli-
gious authority (1058) and founded the power of the Seldjuk
Turks. In the ninth century Africa was detached from the
Caliphate of Bagdad and divided up among three dynasties :
the Edrissites at Fez, the Aglabites at Kairowan and the
Fatimites at Cairo. The latter claimed descent from Fatima,
the daughter of Mohammed.
As for the Caliphate of Cordova, like that of Cairo, it
had its brilliant days. Many Christians being treated
mildly mingled with the Mussulmans and formed the
active population of the Mozarabis. The ever-skilful Jews
were relieved from the rigors of the Visigothic law. Com-
198 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 755-1031.
nierce, industry and agriculture flourished and afforded
the caliplis great riches. Convulsed by the conquests of
Charlemagne's lieutenants north of the Ebro, the Caliphate
of Cordova was again shaken by the revolts of the valis,
or provincial governors, and by the insurrection of the
bandits, Beni-Hafsoun, which lasted for eighty years. The
reigns of Abderrahman I (755), Hescham I (787), Al-Hakam
I and Abderrahman II were very fortunate. That of
Abderrahman III surpassed all the rest (912-961). The
successes of this caliph and of Almanzor, the chief minister
of Hescham II, arrested on the Douro and the Ebro the
progress of the Christian kingdoms founded in the north.
But after Almanzor everything fell to pieces. An African
guard delivered the palace over to a sanguinary anarchy
which favored the efforts of the valis at independence. In
1010 Murcia, Badajoz, Grenada, Saragossa, Valentia, Seville,
Toledo, Carmona, Algesiras, were so many independent
principalities. In 1031 Hescham, the descendant of the
Ommiades, was deposed and retired with joy into obscurity.
Shortly after the very title of caliph disappeared.
Arabic Civilization. — Such was the fate of the empire of
the Arabs in the three continents, Asia, Africa and Europe ;
a sudden and irresistible expansion, then division and a
rapid general enfeeblement. But they had established
their religion, their language and the laws of their Koran
over a great number of peoples, and transmitted to the
Europe of the Middle Ages industries and sciences of which
they were, if not the inventors, at least the diffusers.
While Europe was plunged in thick shades of barbarism,
Bagdad, Bassorah, Samarcand, Damascus, Cairo, Kairowan,
Fez, Grenada, Cordova, were so many great intellectual
centres.
The Koran had determined the literary Arab language
and it is preserved to our day just as Mohammed spoke it.
Time and local influences have caused the vulgar tongue to
undergo marked transformations. This Arabic, prodig-
iously rich in words which express the objects and impres-
sions of the desert, nevertheless adapted itself to all the
usages of literature and science. From the moribund school
of Alexandria the Arabs had received Aristotle whom they
zealously commented. More than once the commentators
were themselves philosophers worthy of consideration.
Such were in the East, Avicenna; in the West, Averroes,
MOHAMMED AND THE ARAB INVASION 199
who enjoyed fame in the Middle Ages because he had
transmitted to the Christians of Europe the knowledge of
the Stagirite.
The exact sciences received from Almanzor, the second of
the Abbassides, a lively impulse, thanks to the learned men
whom the caliphs attracted from Constantinople. As early
as the first half of the ninth century two astronomers of
Bagdad measured in the plain of Sennaar a degree of
the meridian. Soon afterwards Euclid was expounded,
Ptolemy's tables corrected, the obliquity of the ecliptic
more exactly calculated, the precision of the equinoxes and
the difference between the solar year and the common year
better determined, new instruments of precision invented
and at Samarcand an admirable observatory was founded.
Still it is an error, though common, to attribute to the
Arabs the invention of algebra and of the so-called Arabic
figures which Ave use. Probably they only transmitted to
Europe what they found in the learned school of Alexandria.
We have from them in the same degree the compass and
gunpowder. They excelled in medicine where again they
were the pupils of the ancients, as was Averroes of Galen.
In architecture also they borrowed much from the Greeks.
Their horseshoe arch belongs to the Byzantine style. They
cultivated neither painting nor sculpture, because their
religion forbade the representation of the human figure,
but their arabesques are a form of ornamentation peculiar
to themselves. The magnificent remains of this architect-
ure can be seen at Cordova, Grenada and Cairo.
In agriculture and industry we have devised nothing
superior to their system of irrigation, which the peasants of
Valencia and Granada still practise. The reputation of the
sword blades of Toledo, the silk of Grenada, the blue
and green cloths of Cuenca, the harnesses, saddles and
leather of Cordova, were celebrated throughout Europe.
But this civilization like the empire in whose bosom it had
blossomed disappeared almost as quickly as it was formed.
200 HISTORY OF THE mBDLE AGES
THE EMPIRE OF THE PRANKS. EPPORTS TO INTRODUCE
UNITY IN CHURCH AND STATE
Difference between the Arab and German Invasions. — The
Arab invasion began with unity of faith, command and
direction. It was ruined by scliism, division and weakness.
The German invasion, made at random and solely for the
sake of pillage under leaders united by no common idea, at
lirst gave rise to a number of little kingdoms. It had how-
ever taken place in countries where the memory of the
Roman Empire still lingered, and where a new principle of
unity, that of the Church, had arisen. Thus after wander-
ing for two centuries in confusion and amid the ruins which
they had made, nearly all of those adventurers finally
gathered under the sceptre of one family, that of the Car-
lovingians, who tried to reconstitute the state and the
government, while the Pope with his monks and bishops
organized the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The harmony of
these two powers caused the brilliancy of Charlemagne's
reign. Their rivalry brought about the great struggle of the
Middle Ages, or that between the priesthood and the empire.
Ecclesiastical Society. — The Roman Empire had perished,
but so far the barbarians had erected upon its ruins only
fragile structures. A single institution, the Church, trav-
ersed the centuries, developing regularly in accordance with
the spirit of its life, constantly gaining in power and forti-
fying itself by the unity of its government. This society
had in the beginning been thoroughly democratic with
elected leaders. It emerged, mutilated but radiant, from
the catacombs and the amphitheatres. Constantine bestowed
upon it the Roman world. In the Councils it determined
its dogmas and discipline. Thus it found itself possessed
of a strictly regulated hierarchy, where only the highest
dignities like the episcopacy and papacy were elective^
while the inferior grades were conferred by the bishop.
If we consider territorial boundaries, the bishop governed
Copyright, 189S. by T. Y. Crowell & Co.
A.D. 350-723.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 201
the diocese which was divided somewhat later into parishes.
Many dioceses united formed the ecclesiastical province of
the archbishop or metropolitan, above whom rose the bishops
of the great capitals Avith the title of patriarchs or primates.
In this picture we recognize the entire civil organization
of the empire. Thus the authority, in which the whole mass
of believers originally shared, was gradually withdrawn from
the lower classes, handed over to the bishops and ended in
the West by becoming concentrated at the summit in the
Pope. This ascent of religious authority, terminated only
in our day by the proclamation of the dogma of papal infal-
libility, sums up the entire internal history of the Roman
Catholic Church. But in the eighth century the sacerdotal
monarchy had only traversed half the rdUd, toward the end
of Avhich Boniface VIII was destined to lead it.
The bishop of Rome possessed great estates in Italy. He
occupied in the most famous city of the universe that large
place in the municipal system of government, which at the
fall of the empire had been conferred upon the bishops.
Thus the Pope, in addition to his spiritual authority, had
means of action through the income of the property be-
stowed upon his Church, and an aruthority which was nat-
urally increased at the fall of the Western Empire and of
Theodoric. In temporal affairs he still remained subject to
the emperor of Constantinople and to his representative in
Italy, the exarch of Ravenna ; but the yoke was light, thanks
to distance and to the embarrassment of the exarch whom
the Lombards threatened and finally expelled.
Gregory the Great (690-704) did much for the develop-
ment of the papal power. In the first place he saved Rome
from an attack by the Lombards. Then he took an energetic
part in the conversion of heretics and pagans which before
his time had gone on at random. He brought the Visigoths
back into the pale of the Catholic Church, won to the faith
England, Helvetia and Bavaria, multiplied monasteries,
where dwelt a faithful army under the rule of Saint Bene-
dict, and drew closer around the bishops the bond of disci-
pline. His successors continued the work of missions. The
new churches, daughters of Rome, showed for the mother
church a respectful attachment. Holland and Friesland
were evangelized. Saint Boniface, in 723 appointed by the
Pope bishop of Germany, was about to give to Rome those
vast provinces.
202 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 715-741.
Thus new Rome was again becoming a conqueror and
dominant. Its chief still remained the subject of the
emperor but a rupture was inevitable. When Justinian II
wished to remove Pope Sergius, who rejected the canons of
the Council in Trullo, the soldiers refused to obey. AVhen
Leo the Iconoclast ordered the images in Rome to be
broken, the people drove the imperial prefect from the city
and the Pope excited the Italians to revolt against the heretic
prince (726). The Lombards took advantage of this con-
troversy to seize the exarchy of Ravenna and tried to lay
hands on Rome. Then it was that Gregory III had recourse
to the chief of the Austrasian Franks.
Charles Martel q,nd Pepin the Short (715-768). — After
the death of Pepin d'Heristal (715), Charles, his natural
son, took possession of the mayorship with the consent of
the vassals. He was a valiant man. At the battle of Tours
(732) he forced the Arab invasion to retreat beyond the
Pyrenees, and at one blow saved Christianity and G-erman
supremacy. On the east he defeated the Saxons and
Bavarians, though leaving much to be done in that direction
by his successors. In the south he undertook to subjugate
Aquitaine, still restive Under the authority of the chiefs of
northern Gaul. His renown equalled his power. In 741
two nuncios from Gregory III brought him magnificent
presents, the keys of the tomb of Saint Peter, the titles of
consul and patrician, and a suppliant letter. The Pope was
disposing of what did not belong to him; for the pontiff
offered the conqueror of the Saracens the sovereignty of
Rome together with the protectorate over the Roman Church.
In his letter Gregory implored the aid of Charles Martel
against an energetic and ambitious prince, Luitprand king
of the Lombards, who wished to unite the whole Italian
peninsula under his sway. Although Luitprand was a
Catholic, he was too near Rome. Gregory desired a more
distant and hence a less exacting protector ; and he granted
a stranger what he refused to the Italian prince. This policy,
which has remained that of his successors, was perfectly
natural, because despite the precept, "Render unto Csesar
the things which are Caesar's," the Holy See aimed at com-
plete independence. Yet in such attempts, what evils it
has drawn down upon Italy without ever gaining a long-
continued success !
Charles had not time to reply to this appeal. He died
A.D. 741-774.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 203
in 741, and his sons, Carloman and Pepin, who succeeded
him as mayors of the palace in Austrasia and Neustria, were
at first too much occupied along their frontiers to think of
Italy. But in 747, when Carloman had retired to the convent
of Monte Cassino, Pepin despoiled his nephews and then
decided to place upon his own brow the crown, that was
only a mockery on the head of the Sluggard Kings. He
consulted Pope Zacharias, and the latter replied that the
title belonged to him who held the power. Saint Boniface
revived for his benefit the Hebrew solemnity of consecration
by Holy Unction (752). The last of the Merovingians was
shut up in a convent. Two years later Pope Stephen II
came to France to consecrate for the second time the mayor
jf Austrasia. Pepin repaid the Pope by giving him Pen-
tapolis and the exarchate of Kavenna, which he took from
the Lombards. Thus two important revolutions were effected
simultaneously. The first was, that among the peoples, who
had always practised election to the royal power, the Church
cleverly introduced the contrary doctrine of divine right, of
which naturally she was the dispenser. The second was,
that in exchange for this divine legitimacy, which suppressed
the ancient legitimacy of election, the king prepared by his
donations the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. Here were
seen two new principles which dominated society for ten cen-
turies, and which by a logical connection of things happened
at the same time.
The other wars of Pepin the Short were directed against
the Saxons, whom he vanquished ; against the Saracens, from
whom he Avrested Septimania, and against the Aquitanians,
whom he subdued after eight years of rapine and fighting.
Charlemagne, King^ of the Lombards and Patrician of
Rome (774). — The second Frank monarchy, founded by
Pepin the Short, reached its apogee under Charlemagne, who
completed the work of his two predecessors and presented
the greatest reign which the history of the German invasion
records. Wherever his grandfather and father had fought, he
carried on greater wars. The eastern frontier was threatened
by the Saxons, Danes, Slavs, Bavarians and Avars. He
made eighteen expeditions against the Saxons, three against
the Danes, one against the Bavarians, four against the Slavs
and four against the Avars. He made seven against the
Saracens of Spain, five against the Saracens of Italy, five
against the Lombards and two against the Greeks. If to
204 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 768-790.
these we add those which he directed against several rebel-
lious peoples already comprised in the Frankish Empire,
as one against the Thuringians, one against the Aquitanians
and two against the Bretons, we have a total of hfty-three
expeditions which Charlemagne conducted for the most part
in person.
He had at first shared the inheritance of Pepin with his
brother Carloman (768). When that prince died three years
afterward Charlemagne seized Austrasia, to the detriment
of his nephews who took refuge at the court of Didier, king
of the Lombards. Thus he remained sole master. While
winning his first victory over the Saxons, Pope Adrian I
besought aid against Didier, who had invaded the exarchate.
Charlemagne crossed the Alps, vanquished the Lombards
whose king became a monk, threw the sons of Carloman
into a convent and made a triumphal entry into Kome where
he confirmed Pepin's donation to the Pope. To the title
of king of the Franks he added that of king of the Lom-
bards and of patrician, to which the sovereignty over Kome
and over all the domains of the Holy See entitled him (774).
Conquest of Germany (771-804). Spanish Expedition. —
The war against the Saxons was begun in 771 and lasted
thirty-three years. This still barbarous people occupied the
lower course of the Weser and Elbe. Still pagans, they
adored the idol called Irminsul or Hermann-Saul, conse-
crated to the vanquisher of Varus. When Saint Libuin
undertook to convert them, they butchered his companions.
Charlemagne supported his missionaries, who as spiritual
conqiierors were prej^aring the way for conquerors of another
sort. He captured Ehresburg and broke Irminsul to pieces.
Then appeared Witikind, the Hermann of another age.
Against this valiant chieftain the most formidable expedi-
tions long proved of no avail. When his countrymen were
forced to swear allegiance to the victor at Paderborn (777),
he fled to the depths of Germany and returned later on to
rekindle the war. After the great victory of Buckholz,
Charlemagne transported 10,000 Saxon families to Belgium
and Helvetia. He deprived the Saxons who remained in
their own country of their assemblies and their judges, put
them under Frankish counts and divided their territory
" among the bishops, abbots and priests, on condition that
they should preach and baptize there." Many bishoprics
were established. But Witikind, who had taken refuge
A.D. 790-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 205
among the Danes, again returned and defeated several
Frankish generals. The massacre of 4000 Saxon prisoners
excited a desperate insurrection. It required the two vic-
tories of Detmold and Osnabriick and a winter passed under
arms in the snows of Saxony, to triumph over the obstinate
Witikind, who at last consented to receive baptism. Saxony,
deluged in blood, was obliged to accept the harsh laws which
the victor imposed.
The submission of Bavaria had preceded that of Saxony.
Its provinces were divided into counties and its last duke
shut up in a monastery. Behind the Hungarians were the
Avars, a Hunnic people, who had settled in Ancient Pan-
nonia, and in an immense camp called the Ring guarded
the spoils of the world. After fierce conflicts a son of
Charlemagne succeeded in getting possession of the King
and imposed tribute on the remnants of this people.
On the south the Franks were less fortunate. The dis-
aster of Roncesvaux, the resistance of the Vascons and of
the Mussulmans of Spain allowed the Franks only outposts
beyond the Pyrenees in the valley of the Ebro. Not until
812 could Louis, king of Aquitaine, the oldest son of Char-
lemagne, quarter his margraves south of the mountains.
By those wars the whole German race, excepting the
Anglo-Saxons of Britain and the Northmen of Scandinavia,
was united into a single group. The foreign and hostile
peoples which touched its frontiers, the Slavs, Avars and
Arabs, were driven back or repressed. On the map of the
world, instead of the confusion of preceding centuries, four
great states were to be seen between the Indus and the
Atlantic. These were the German and Greek Empires, and
the Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova.
Limits of the Empire. — The empire of Charlemagne had
as its boundaries : on the north and west, the ocean from the
mouth of the Elbe to the Spanish coast along the Bay of
Biscay ; on the south, the Pyrenees and in Spain a part of
the Ebro with, in Italy the Garigliano and Pescara, not
including Gaeta which the Greeks retained, and in Illyricum
the Cettina or Narenta, without including the cities of Trau,
Zara and Spalatro ; on the east, the Bosna and the Sava to
its junction with the Danube, the Theiss, the mountains of
Bohemia, the Saale, the Elbe and the Eyder.
Within this vast circle everything was subject. Around
the Carlovingian empire tributary nations formed a pro-
206 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812.
tecting zone. Such were the Navarrese, the Beneventines,
the North Elbe Saxons and the Wiltzen, all held in check
by the counts of the frontiers. Brittany and Bohemia had
been ravaged but not conquered.
Charlemagne Emperor (800). — Beginning with 800 the
master of this vast dominion was an emperor. During the
Christmas festivals of that year, Pope Leo III placed upon
his head the crown of the Cc^sars. Thus was consummated
the alliance between the supreme chief of German society
and the supreme chief of the Church.
In assuming this title Charlemagne also reassumed all the
rights of the emperors over Rome and over its bishops.
Apparently therefore unity, concord and peace were at last
to be reestablished in the western world. But on the con-
trary this resuscitation of the empire was to be fatal to all
who brought it about or who rejoiced at it : to the emperor,
who will not have the support of a wise administration and
will consequently be unable to carry this mighty burden ;
to Italy, who will lose thereby its independence for ten
centuries. As to the two allies of 800, the Pope and the
emperor, they will soon be bitter enemies and engage in the
quarrel of investiture and the wars of the Guelphs and
Ghibellines.
Government. — In spite of his Roman title, Charlemagne
continued the chief of the German race and especially of the
victorious Austrasian nation, whose language he spoke, whose
costume he wore and whose country he inhabited. Aix-la-
Chapelle was his favorite residence. But he showed a wisdom
which had nothing of the barbarian. Twice every year the
national assembly met around him. The bishops, the leudes,
the freemen, the imperial agents, betook themselves there
from the ends of the empire to inform the sovereign of all
that took place in their provinces. The nobles met apart
from the crowd of freemen to discuss and draw up the capit-
ularies, of which sixty-five still exist comprising 1151 arti-
cles on every subject of civil and ecclesiastical government.
Missi dominici, or imperial envoys, traversed four times
annually the districts submitted to their inspection. They
went in couples, always a count and a bishop together, so
as to supplement each other and to provide for all the needs
of both secular and religious society. On their return they
were to give the emperor a report of the state of the prov-
inces.
A.D. 800-812.] THE EMPIRE OF THE FRANKS 207
Justice was rendered by the provincial assemblies, no
longer by all the freemen but by a certain number of pro-
vosts. A jury consisted of at least seven persons under the
presidency of a count and with right of appeal to the missi
dominici. Beginning with the seventh century there were
no more public imposts. The monarch received only what
was due him as a landed proprietor from his numerous
dependants. His revenues thus included the harvests
and other income of his domains, the personal and active
service of the counts and royal beneficiaries, the gratuitous
gifts of the nobles and the tributes of conquered countries.
The expenses of the prince and of his agents were defrayed
by the proprietors over whose estates they passed. More-
over the proprietors were to maintain the roads and bridges.
The army furnished its own equipment and lived at its own
cost without pay. The land, which the soldier had received,
was his recompense.
Charlemagne tried to dissipate the darkness which the
invasions had brought upon the world. All literature had
taken refuge in the monasteries, especially among those of
the Benedictines. Their order was founded by Saint Bene-
dict at the beginning of the sixth century. His rule
required the copying of ancient manuscripts by the monks.
To disseminate letters among his people, Charlemagne
founded schools and compelled his officers to send their
children to them. In his palace he himself established an
academy of which he was a member. He commenced a
Teutonic grammar and composed Latin poems. The prin-
cipal literary persons of the period are Alcuin, an English
monk whom he made Abbot of Saint Martin's of Tours,
and Eginhard, his secretary and perhaps his son-in-law,
who wrote his life.
Thus Charlemagne sought to bring order out of chaos
and light out of darkness by organizing the German and
Christian society, which he collected around the proud
throne of the emperors of the West. This effort has caused
his name to be placed among those before which the world
bows down. Nevertheless the attempt was futile, because
all the moral forces of the time and all the instincts and
interests of the peoples were opposed to its success. Even
in ancient Gaul, political unity could be preserved only by
an able and resolute hand. Beyond the Rhine he had built
the disorderly, fermenting tribes into a living barrier against
208 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 800-812.
the Slavs. It was much that modern Germany was to
succeed old Germania. But the day when he received at
Rome the crown of the emperors was an evil day for Italy.
Thenceforth that beautiful land had a foreign and distant
master, who visited her only with his barbarous and greedy
hordes. Torrents of blood were shed and piles of ruins
were heaped up for centuries in the attempt to carry on this
part of Charlemagne's work. Saddest ruin of all, so long
irreparable, was that of the people itself and of Italian
patriotism.
Charlemagne himself felt that his political edifice could
not last. The partition of his estates among his sons
showed that even in his eyes the empire lacked real unity.
Already the apparition of the Northmen pirates foretold
the calamities which were to ensue.
A.D. 812-825.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 209
VI
THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS AND THE NORTHMEN
Weakness of the Carlovingian Empire. Louis the De-
bonair. — We have seen two immense empires formed in the
seventh and eighth centuries by the side and at the expense
of the Eastern Eoman Empire. In the ninth the ancient
continent changes its aspect. In place of the great blocks
which formerly covered the face of Europe, Asia and Africa,
we no longer hnd anything but grains of sand.
The Gallo-Eomans and the Italians spoke with slight
differences a similar language, derived from the Latin.
But the Germans retained their Teutonic idiom. Charle-
magne left to the Lombards and Saxons their own laws.
The Salian and Ripuarian Franks, the Alemanni and Bava-
ians, preserved theirs. Thus these peoples were not fused
and welded in one. The will of Charlemagne was the only
bond that held them together. After his death the efforts
of the tributaries to obtain freedom and the attempt of
their neighbors, l^orthmen, Slavs, Bretons, to begin again
their invasions, showed that the whole prestige of the new
empire depended upon its founder.
Furthermore the numerous partitions made among the
sons and grandsons of the Debonair attested not only the
ambition of those princes but also the tendency of the
various peoples to separate. The first of these partitions
took place in 817. It created two inferior kingdoms, Aqui-
taine and Bavaria, for Pepin and Louis, the second and
third sons of the emperor. The eldest, Lothaire, was to
inherit the empire. His brothers without his consent
could neither make war nor conclude a treaty. Bernard,
king of Italy, nephew of the emperor, rebelled against
this partition. Defeated, his eyes were put out and he died
from the torture. His kingdom was given to Lothaire.
Louis had married as his second wife the beautiful and
accomplished Judith, daughter of a Bavarian chief. She
bore him a son and thenceforth exercised great influence.
210 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 825-843.
For this child Louis formed a kingdom composed of Ale-
mannia, Rhsetia, a part of Burgundy, Provence and Septi-
mania. His other sons took up arms against their father
through anger at this partition. They made him prisoner
and reaffirmed the division of 817. They could not agree
among themselves and the Debonair was set free. Again
his sons rebelled, and before a battle the emperor was de-
serted by his soldiers. He was declared by the bishops to
have forfeited his crown, was shut up in a monastery at
Soissons and clad in the garb of a penitent. In the follow-
ing year he was restored to the throne and made a final
partition in 839 favorable to his youngest son, Charles the
Bald. His other sons were again resorting to arms when
he died (840).
The Treaty of Verdun (843). — These shameful wars were
partly due to the feebleness and partiality of the Debonair,
but also to the unwillingness of his second and third sons
to recognize the authority of their elder brother, who
claimed for himself the imperial prerogatives of which the
people wished to be rid. Lothaire demanded that even in
the states of his brothers the oath of the freemen should
be made to him. Pepin was dead, but the former adver-
saries, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, combined
to resist this claim. A great battle took place at Fontanet
near Auxerre. Almost all the peoples of the Carlovingian
Empire took part in this grand encounter. Lothaire com-
manded the Italians, Aquitanians and Austrasians; Louis,
the G-ermans; Charles, the Neustrians and Burgundians.
In the army of Lothaire 40,000 men are said to have been
slain. He was defeated but refused to accept this "judg-
ment of God." To compel his submission the two victors
formed a closer alliance and confirmed it by an oath, which
Louis the German swore in the Roman language before the
soldiers of Charles the Bald, and Charles swore in German
before those of Louis (842). These two oaths, the "Oath
of Strasburg," are the two most ancient monuments we
possess of the French and German languages.
Lothaire yielded. The treaty of Verdun (843) divided
the Carlovingian Empire into three parts. Lothaire, with
the title of e'mperor, secured all Italy as far as the Duchy
of Beneventum and from the Alps to the North Sea a long
strip of land separating the states of his brothers. This
share included the Netherlands, Lorraine, Burgundy, Swit-
A.D. 843-870.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 211
zerland, Dauphine and Provence. All which, lay to the
west of this track, called Lotharingia, fell to Charles the
Bald. All which lay to the east, to Louis the German.
This partition differed greatly from any made by the Me-
rovingians. We see in it the first demarcations of the
modern nations of France and Germany. The part of
Lothaire alone was ephemeral. The other two were des-
tined to aggrandize themselves from its fragments.
Charles the Bald (840-877). — He did not really reign
over the whole of Gaul. The Bretons kept their indepen-
dence and Aquitaine for a long time would not submit.
When Lothaire died his estates were divided among his
three sons. Louis II had Italy, with the title of emperor ;
Charles, the country between the Alps and the Rhone
under the name of Provence ; Lothaire II, the country
between the Meuse and the Rhine called Lotharingia. All
three died without issue. Louis the German survived
them only a few years. Charles the Bald endeavored to
place all their crowns upon his head, but was unable to
defend his cities against the Northmen and his authority
against the nobles.
Progress of Feudalism. — The possessors of fiefs, or lands
ceded for a time, and of crown offices, claimed that their
fiefs and offices were hereditary. This assumption was
always opposed by Charlemagne, but tolerated and even
approved by Charles. He also allowed possessors of allo-
dial lands to seek the protection of the holders of great
fiefs. At the same time the immunities, or exemptions
from payments and from the king's jurisdiction, were
multiplied. Thus the royal authority was recognized by
neither the powerful nor the weak.
The Northmen took advantage of these disorders. They
landed along the coasts, ascended the rivers and sacked the
cities. In 845 they pillaged the Abbey of Saint Germain
des Pres at the very gates of Paris. Yearly they became
more rapacious. Charles the Bald paid them money to go
away, thereby insuring their speedy return. Only Robert
the Strong, who as duke of France held the country be-
tween the Seine and the Loire, offered energetic resistance.
This Robert, ancestor of the Capetian dynasty, many times
defeated the invaders and died fighting these pirates.
Deposition of Charles the Fat. Seven Kingdoms. — Louis
II the Stammerer, son of Charles the Bald, and his sons.
212 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 870-987.
Louis III and Carloman, had miserable reigns. They died
childless and the crown was offered to Charles the Fat, the
son of Louis the German. He had united Germany and
bore the title of emperor. The empire of Charlemagne
was thus reconstituted for a brief time. But it was only
the shadow of a great past. Emperor though he was,
Charles could not repulse the Northmen who besieged
Paris. The city Avas saved by Eudes, a reputed son of
Robert the Strong.
Disgusted at the cowardice of the king, the Germans
deposed him at the diet of Tribur (887). Seven king-
doms were formed from the fragments of the empire :
Italy, Germany, Lorraine, France, Navarre and two Burgun-
dies. Besides, Brittany and Aquitaine were independent
in fact if not in law. The imperial crown remained in
Italy, where petty sovereigns wrangled over it among them-
selves.
Eudes and the last Carlovingians (887-987). — Despite
the opposition of the nobles, the brave Count Eudes occu-
pied the throne. His premature death in 898 caused the
accession of Charles III the Simple, a posthumous son of
Louis the Stammerer.
Under this prince the incursions of the Northmen ceased,
because, after having seized booty so long, they now seized
the country itself. The treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte ceded
to Eollo, their terrible chief, the country between the An-
delle and the ocean with the hand of the king's daughter
and the title of duke. In return he paid homage and be-
came a Christian (911). Neustria, henceforth called Bur-
gundy, became prosperous under the rule of this active
prince. Charles, whose surname indicates his feebleness,
was deposed in 922 and died in captivity in the tower of
Peronne. The nobles elected in his stead Robert, Duke of
France, and afterwards his son-in-laAV Raoul, Duke of Bur-
gundy. In 935 another Carlovingian king appeared in
Louis IV d'Outremer, son of Charles the Simple, whom
Hugh the Great, Duke of France, twice seated on the
throne and twice overthrew. His son, Lothaire, succeeded
him (954), but was reduced to the possession of the single
city of Laon. On his deathbed he entreated Hugh Capet,
Duke of France, to protect his son Louis V. The latter
reigned only one year. Hugh Capet was proclaimed king
in an assembly of the principal bishops and nobles of north-
A.D. 987.] THE LAST CARLOVINGIANS 213
ern France. Two important factors of this enthronement
must be noted. They are, that the Capetians had the
Church for an ally from the very beginning, and that the
crown, now united to a great fief, could thenceforth defend
itself unaided.
214 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 800-850.
VII
THE THIRD INVASION
The Wew Invasion. — The invasion which assailed the
second Western Empire four centuries after the Germans
had destroyed the first or Western Koman Empire, was a
powerful cause in the dissolution of the Carlovingian mon-
archy. The movement of attack proceeded from three
points, from the north, south and east, and was so pro-
longed toward the west as to envelop the whole empire.
The Northmen were the first to appear.
The Northmen in France. — The Franks, after attaining
the western limits of Gaul, had voltefaced and swept back
from west to east the floods of men who had poured upon
the Roman provinces. Then they undertook to subjugate
Thuringia, Bavaria and Saxony. Their foes retreated tow-
ard the north to the Cimbrian and Scandinavian penin-
sulas, where dwelt populations of their own blood. The
Northmen, restrained by the military organization which
Charlemagne had given his eastern frontier, and by the
Slavs who occupied the country of the Oder, found every-
thing before them shut up except the sea. So they launched
upon the water, ''the path of the Swans." Familiar with
its tempests, the vikings or children of the fiords were
daunted by no peril. " The hurricane bears us on," they
said, " wherever we wish to go." At first coasting along
the shores for pillage and slaughter, they gradually estab-
lished themselves at favorable points and thence roamed all
over the country.
In this way they took possession of the Walcheren
Islands at the mouth of the Scheldt, and of other places
at the mouths of the Ehine, Seine and Loire. In 840 they
burned Rouen. Three years later they pillaged Nantes,
Saintes and Bordeaux. Repeatedly they ravaged the out-
skirts of Paris, sacked Tours, Orleans and Toulouse, and
reached the Mediterranean. A royal edict ordered the
counts and vassals to repair the castles and build new ones.
A.D. SoO-lOGG.] THE THIRD INVASION 215
Soon the country was well fortified. The invaders, checked
at every step, b(\2:an to wish to settle in some safe and fer-
tile spot. In 911 Xeustria was assigned them. Their dev-
astations, continued almost a century, had prepared the
way for feudalism.
The Northmen Danes in England. — The Northmen had
robbed France and the Netherlands of both security and
property. From England they took her independence be-
sides. In 827 the Saxon Heptarchy formed but one mon-
archy under Egbert the Great. He repulsed the first Danes
who landed upon his shores. After his death they occupied
Northumberland, East Anglia and Mercia. Alfred the
Great (871) arrested their progress and gave his kingdom
an organization, the main features of which have been pre-
served. These are : division of the country into counties ;
dispensation of justice by twelve freeholders as a jury ;
decision of general affairs by the wittenagemot or assembly
of the wise, aided by a half-elective, half-hereditary mon-
archy. Athelstane, one of his successors, vanquished the
Danes '^ on the day of the great fight " and drove them from
England. But they soon reappeared led by Olaf, king of
Norway, and Swein or Sueno, king of Denmark, who
carried off enormous booty. Gold not proving an effectual
means of getting rid of them, Ethelred devised a vast plot.
All the Danes who were settled in Eu gland were massacred
on Saint Brice's day in 1002. Swein avenged his country-
men by expelling Ethelred and assuming the title of king
of England in 1013. Edmund II Ironsides fought heroi-
cally but in vain against Canute, wdio succeeded Swein, and
the whole country recognized the Danish sway. Canute
was at first cruel, but grew milder. By wedding Emma, the
widow of Ethelred, he paved the way for the union of the
victors and the vanquished. He made wise laAvs or enforced
those of Alfred the Great and prevented the Danes from
oppressing the Saxons. To Scandinavia he sent Saxon
missionaries Avho hastened the fall of expiring paganism.
In 1027 he made a pilgrimage to Eome, where in behalf
of all England he assumed the obligation of paying each
year one penny per hearth to the Pope. This contribution
was called Peter's Pence.
Thus in France the Northmen took only a province. In
England they seized a kingdom. On both sides of the
Channel these robbers showed the same aptitude for civili-
216 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-950.
zation, and the fierce lieathen became excellent Christians.
Rollo in Normandy was a stern judicial officer and Canute
deserved the name of the Great.
The Northmen in the Polar Regions and in Eussia. — The
larger number of these hardy adventurers descended toward
the south where they found wine and gold. Others worked
their way through the Baltic to the very end of the Gulf of
Finland, or climbed above the North Cape, for the joy of
seeing the unknown and doing the impossible. In 861 they
made their appearance in the Faroe Islands ; in 870 in Ice-
land, and a century later in Greenland whence they reached
Labrador and Vinland, the country of the Vine. Thus they
were in America four or five centuries before Columbus !
Their exiles, the Varangians, penetrated at the same time
by way of the Baltic to the centre of the Slavs, and sold
their services to the powerful city of Novgorod, which their
leader, Rurik, subjugated (862). He assumed the title of
grand prince, and began the state which has become the
Russian Empire.
As the Arabs, when they emerged eastward and westward
from their parched peninsula, had spread from India to
Spain Avithout quitting their native southern regions, so the
Northmen, starting from their sterile peninsulas, reached
America and the Volga and still remained in northern
latitudes. The former had in certain respects an original
civilization. The latter, mastered by Christianity, were in
no way different from the rest of the Christian nations.
The Saracens and the Hungarians. — The Saracens were
the Arabs of Africa who, leaving their brethren to conquer
provinces, took the sea for their domain and ravaged all
the shores of the western Mediterranean. Tunis, or the
ancient province of Carthage, was their point of departure.
As early as 831 they subdued Sicily and passed over to the
Great Land, as they called Italy. They seized Brindisi,
Bari and Tarentum, repeatedly laid waste southern Italy
and even ravaged the outskirts of Rome. Malta, Sardinia,
Corsica and the Balearic Isles belonged to them. They
settled permanently in Provence at Fraxinet, which they
retained until toward the close of the tenth century. They
had posts in the defiles of the Alps to exact toll from com-
merce and pilgrimage. Thence their raids extended into the
valleys of the Rhone and Po. This piracy was more terrible
and more audacious than that organized in the sixteenth can-
A.D. 950-1000.] THE THIRD INVASION 217
tury by Khaireddin Barbarossa, which France suppressed
only in 1830.
In the valley of the Danube, through which came the
Hungarians, the invasion had not ceased since the time of
Attila. There the human streams had pressed upon each
other like successive waves of the sea, driven on by the
tempest. After the Huns came the Slavs who still remain
there; then the Bulgarians, the Avars whom Charlemagne
exterminated, the Khazars, the Petchenegs who have dis-
appeared, and lastly a mixture of Hunnic and Ugrian tribes,
which the Latins and the Greeks called Hungarii or Hunga-
rians and who gave themselves the name of Magyars. Sum-
moned by Arnulf, king of Germania, against the Slavs of
Moravia, they quickly subjected the plains of the Theiss
and of Dannonia. In 899 they ravaged Carinthia and
Friuli. The following year they launched their bold horse-
men on both sides of the Alps into the basin of the Po, the
upper valley of the Danube, and even to the other side of
the E-hine. Alsace, Lorraine and Burgundy were devas-
tated. The hordes of the third invasion, the Northmen,
Saracens and Hungarians, seemed to have ap^jointed a
meeting-ground in the heart of France and they left there
an awful memory. Germany at last made mighty efforts to
rid herself of these invaders. Henry the Fowler defeated
them on the field of Merseburg (934), and his son Otto I
slew, it is said, 100,000 at the battle of Augsburg (955).
This disaster hurled them back into the country which
they still inhabit. ,
The ruinous expeditions of the Magyars had the same
result as those of the Northmen. In Italy the cities sur-
rounded themselves with walls for the purpose of defence,
just as the country districts of France bristled with castles,
and the Italians reorganized their military forces, which
enabled them to regain their municipal independence.
Austria was in the beginning a margrave's fief, formed for
military jourposes against the Hungarians. The margravate
of Brandenburg, in which Prussia originated, played the
same part against the Slavs. These two immense territorial
fortresses at last arrested the Eastern hordes in that west-
ward march which had begun in the early periods of history.
The Mongols in the thirteenth century and the Ottoman
Turks in the fifteenth, still obeying this primitive impulse,
will make mere temporary inroads upon the Slavic world
218 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000.
and will be forced to halt at the frontiers of the Teutonic
race. No more new peoples are to be received into the
countries which formed the Western Eoman Empire.
The invasion of the ninth century had as a consequence
the foundation of new governing forces in Eussia, Pannonia,
Normandy and England. All these countries were situated
on the outer verge of the ancient world. Within that
ancient world its attacks had disturbed the states founded
by the Germans, produced confusion and hastened the
progress of feudal anarchy.
.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 219
VIII
FEUDALISM
Feudalism, or the Heredity of Offices and Fiefs. —We have
just seen how the empire was divided into kingdoms. The
kingdoms are about to dissolve into seigniories. The great
political masses are crumbling into dust.
The officers of the king, of whatever rank, under the last
Carlovingians asserted the heredity of their offices or pub-
lic duties as well as of their fiefs or land-grants. Hence
was formed a hierarchy of possessors, peculiar in this
respect that every parcel of land was a fief of some lord
above the tenant and that every lord was a vassal recogniz-
ing some suzerain. Naturally in this hierachy the pos-
sessors or proprietors were unequal. Moreover, various
concessions or exemptions had given these landed pro-
prietors control of the public taxes and administration of
the royal justice. Hence the king no longer was master
of either lands or money or judicial rights. This system
was called feudalism. It was first recognized by the edict
of Kierry-sur-Oise (877), whereby Charles the Bald recog-
nized the right of a son to inherit the fief or the office of his
father.
One man became the vassal of another by the ceremony
of homage and faith. That is to say, he declared himself
the man of the new lord to whom he swore fidelity. The
lord granted him the fief by investiture, often accompanied
by some symbolic rite such as gift of a sod, a stone, or staff.
Without mentioning the moral obligations of the vassal to
defend and respect his 1-ord, insure him deference from
others and aid him by good counsel, he was bound by cer-
tain material obligations. These were: (1) Military ser-
vice, a fundamental principle of this society which was
unacquainted with permanent salaried armies. The number
of men to be furnished on requisition of the lord and the
length of service varied according to the fief, here sixty
days, there forty, elsewhere twenty. (2) Obligation to
220 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 850-1100.
serve the suzerain in his court of justice and attend his
sessions. (3) The aids or assistance, in some forms legal
and obligatory, in others benevolent or voluntary. The
legal assistance was due, when the lord was a prisoner and
a ransom must be provided, when knighthood was conferred
upon his eldest son, and when he gave his eldest daughter
in marriage. Such assistance took the place of public taxes.
Certain other services were required. These duties once
rendered, the vassal became almost the master of his fief.
He could enfeoff or let the whole or a part of it to vassals
of inferior rank.
The suzerain also had his obligations. He could not
arbitrarily and without sufficient cause deprive a vassal of
his fief. He was bound to defend him if attacked and to
treat him justly. Judgment by one's peers was the princi-
ple of feudal justice. The vassals of the same suzerain
were equal among themselves. If the lord refused justice
to his vassal, the latter could appeal to the superior suze-
rain. He even exercised at need the right of private war,
a right of which the lords were very tenacious and which
rendered feudalism a violent system, opposed to all pacific
development of human society and injurious to commerce,
agriculture and industry. This same principle caused the
admission into legal procedure of the judicial combat in
closed lists. The Truce of God, which forbade private
wars between Wednesday evening and Monday morning,
was an effort on the part of the Church to moderate the
violence which it could not entirely prevent.
Jurisdiction did not appertain to all lords in the same
measure. In France three degrees were recognized, high,
low aiid intermediate. The first alone conferred the right
of life and death. In general the largest fiefs possessed
the most extensive jurisdiction. Among seigniorial rights
we must note that of coining money, exercised at the advent
of Hugh Capet by not less than 150 lords. Moreover,
within the limits of his own fief each made the law. The
capitularies of Charles the Bald are the last manifestations
of public legislative power. Thenceforward to the time
of Philip Augustus general laws no longer existed in
France, being superseded by local customs. The clergy
itself entered this system. The bishop, formerly the
"defender of the city," often became its count and hence
the suzerain of all the lords of his diocese. Moreover the
A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 221
bishop or abbot, througli donations made to his church or
convent, received great possessions which he enfeoffed.
This ecclesiastical feudalism became so powerful that in
France and England it held more than one-fifth, and in
Germany nearly one-third of all the land.
Below the warlike society of the lords was the toiling
society of the villeins and serfs. The freemen had disap-
peared. The villeins, or free tenants, and the serfs culti-
vated the land for the lord under the shadow of the feudal
keep around which they clustered, and which sometimes de-
fended but more often oppressed them. The villein had
only to pay his fixed rents like a farmer and to perform
the least onerous forced labor. He could not be detached
from the land which had been assigned him to cultivate,
but he had the right to hold it as his own. As for the serfs,
"The sire," says Pierre de Fontaine, "can take all that
they have, can hold their bodies in prison whenever he
pleases, and is forced to answer therefor only to God alone."
In spite of this the condition of the serf was better than
that of the slave in antiquity. He was regarded as a man.
He had a family. The Church, which declared him a son
of Adam, made him, before God at least, the equal of the
proudest lords.
To sum up : the abandonment of everj^ right to the lord,
— such is the principle of feudal society. As royalty no
longer fulfilled the office for which it was founded, protec-
tion could no longer be expected from either the law or
the nominal head of the state, and was now demanded
from the bisho]3s, the barons and powerful persons. It
was the sword which afforded this protection. Hence arose
those interminable wars which broke out everywhere in
feudal Europe, and which through their inevitable results
of murder and pillage were the scourge of the period.
Nevertheless many persons admire those days which
pressed so heavily upon the poor. They admit that com-
merce and industry had fallen very low, that social life
seemed to have returned to elementary conditions, that
there was much outrage and little security, that, despite the
exhortations of the Church, in this miserable intellectual
state passions were more brutal than in our age and vices
as numerous. But, they say, the serf of the soil was
happier than the serf of modern industry ; competition did
not rob him of his meagre pittance 5 setting aside the
222 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100.
chances of private war and brigandage, he was more
assured of the morrow than are our laborers ; his needs
were limited, like his desires ; he lived and died under the
shadow of his bell-tower, full of faith and resignation.
All this is true. Yet nature has not made man a plant
to vegetate in the forest or an animal to be led by his appe-
tites.
On many points the Middle Ages Avere inferior to antiq-
uity. As to a few they were in advance. They made many
men miserable, but they provided many asylums in the
monasteries. Under the beneficent influence of Christian-
ity the family was reconstituted. Through the necessity of
depending upon one's self the soul gained vigor. Those
lovers of battle recovered the sentiments of courage and
honor which the Eomans of the decline no longer knew.
Though the state was badly organized, there existed for
the vassal strong legal maxims, which through a thousand
violations liave come down to us : no tax can be exacted
without the consent of the taxpayers ; no law is valid unless
accepted by those who have to obey it ; no sentence is legit-
imate unless rendered by the peers of the accused. Lastly,
in the midst of this society which recognized no claims but
those of blood, the Church by the system of election as-
serted those of intelligence. Furthermore, by its God-man
upon the cross and its doctrine of human equality, it was
to the great inequalities of earth a constant intimation of
what shall be carried into effect when the principle of reli-
gious law passes into civil law.
Great French, German and Italian Fiefs. — The feudal
organization, which was complete only at the end of the
eleventh century, reigned in all the provinces of the Car-
lovingian empire. Yet the great names of France, Germany
and Italy survived, and great titles were borne by the so-
called kings of those countries. Yet these were show kings,
not real kings. They were mere symbols of the territorial
unity which had vanished, and not genuine, active, powerful
heads of nations. The Italian royalty disappeared early. •
The royalty of France fell very low. The crown of Ger-
many, however, shed a brilliant light for two centuries after
Otto I had restored the empire of Charlemagne. Yet the
copy shrank in proportion as tlie model became more remote.
Charlemagne reigned over fewer peoples than Constantine
and Theodosius. The Ottos, the Henrys, the Fredericks,
A.D. .snO-llOO.] FEUDALISM 223
reigned over less territory than Charlemagne and their
authority was less unquestioned.
The king of France possessed the duchy of France, which
had become a royal domain. Enclosing this territory on every
side between the Loire, the ocean, the Scheldt, the upper Meuse
and the Saone stretched vast principalities, whose princes
rivalled him in wealth and power. These were the counties of
Flanders, Anjou and Champagne, and the duchies of Nor-
mandy and Burgundy. Between the Loire and the Pyrenees
lay the ancient kingdom of Aquitaine, divided into the four
dominant hefs of the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony
and the counties of Toulouse and Barcelona. These great
feudatories, immediate vassals of the crown, were called
peers of the king. To these lay peers, six ecclesiastical
peers were added : the archbishop-duke of Reims, the bishop-
dukes of Laon and Langres, and the three bishop-counts
of Beauvais, Chalons and Noyon. Among the secondary
fiefs were reckoned not less than 100 counties and a still
greater number of fiefs of inferior order. The kingdom
of Aries included the three valleys of the Saone, Rhone and
Aar.
The nominal boundaries of the kingdom of Germany
were : on the west, the Meuse and Scheldt ; on the north-
west, the North Sea; on the north, the Eyder, the Baltic
and the little kingdom of Slavonia ; on the east, the Oder
and the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary ; on the south,
the Alps. It comprised nine main territorial divisions : the
vast duchy of Saxony, Thuringia, Bohemia, Moravia, the
duchies of Bavaria and Carinthia, Alemannia or Suabia,
Franconia and lastly Friesland on the shores of the North
Sea.
The kingdom of Italy comprehended Lombardy, or the
basin of the Po, with its great republics of Milan, Pavia,
Venice and Genoa; the duchy or marquisate of Tuscany,
the States of the Church ; also the four Norman states, the
principalities of Capua .and Aversa and of Tarentum, the
duchy of Pouille and Calabria, and the grand county of
Sicily.
In Christian Spain we find in the centre the kingdom of
Castile and Leon ; in the west, the county of Portugal,
dependent upon the crown of Castile ; on the north and
northeast, the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon. In Great
Britain are the kingdoms of England and Scotland and the
224 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 850-1100.
principality of Wales. . Between the North Sea and the
Baltic are the three Scandinavian states of Sweden, Nor-
way and Denmark. Among the Slavs are the kingdoms of
Slavonia on the Baltic, of Poland on the Vistula, the grand
duchy of Russia with its multitude of divisions, and the
duchy of Lithuania. In the year 1000 Pope Sylvester II
sent a royal crown to Saint Stephen who had just con-
verted the Hungarians. Soon Christian Europe is to rush
in the direction of the Eastern Empire, from which the Arabs
have stripped Africa and Egypt and on whose provinces of
Syria and Asia Minor the Turks are encamped.
Civilization from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century. — The
revival of letters under Charlemagne did not survive him.
Hincmar, the great bishop of Eeims, the monk Gottschalk,
advocate of predestination, and his adversary, Joannes
Scotus Erigena, still agitated burning questions. After
them silence and thick darkness covered the tenth century.
The physical like the moral wretchedness was extreme. So
miserable was the world that mankind believed it would
end in the year 1000. The future seeming so brief, build-
ings were no longer erected, and those existing were allowed
to fall in ruin. After that fatal year was past, men began
again to hope and live. Human activity awoke. Numerous
churches were constructed. Sylvester II cast abroad in
Europe the first intimation of the Crusade which was about
to set the world in motion.
A literary movement awoke more powerful than that
under Charlemagne. The vulgar tongues were already
assuming their place at the side of the learned and universal
ecclesiastical- Latin. The latter was still employed in the
convents, which rapidly multiplied. It continued as the
medium of theology and of the grave discussions which
began to resound. Lanfranc, abbot of Bee and afterwards
archbishop of Canterbury, and his successor. Saint Anselm
who composed the famous treatise of the Moyiologium,
imparted fresh animation to the movement of ideas. The
eleventh century had not closed when the fierce battle com-
menced between the realists and the nominalists in which
Abelard took such brilliant part.
The vulgar tongues were as numerous as the newly
formed nations. Teutonic idioms prevailed in Germany, the
Scandinavian states and England. In Italy arose Italian,
destined to attain perfection before the others. In France
A.D. 850-1100.] FEUDALISM 225
was fashioned the Romance, already distinguished as the
northern Eomance or Walloon or language of oil, and the
southern Romance or Provencal or language of oc, which
was also spoken in the valley of the Ebro.
The first literary use of the Romance was made by the
poets of the time, the trouveres in the north, the troubadours
in the south, and the jongleurs. The trouvere and troubadour
invented and composed the poem which the jongleur recited.
Sometimes the same person was both composer and reciter.
They roamed from castle to castle, relieving by their songs
the ennui of the manor. The trouveres generally composed
chansons de gestes, epics of twenty, thirty or fifty thousand
verses. They treated the subjects in cycles according to the
period represented. First was the Carlovingian cycle with
Charlemagne and his twelve peers as the heroes and the
Chanson de Roland as its masterpiece. Then came the
Amorican cycle with King Arthur, the champion of Breton
independence, and the exploits of the knights of the Round
Table. The principal poet of this theme is Robert Wace,
with his Roman de Brut. To the third cycle belong all
those ancient subjects which now take their place in popular
poetry like a distant and confused prophecy of the Re-
naissance. These heroic lays are the poetry of feudalism
and also of the chivalry which followed it.
The lords delighted in gathering their vassals around
them. To some they confided services of honor as constable,
marshal, seneschal, or chamberlain. The vassal brought his
sons to the court of his suzerain, where as pages and es-
quires they were trained for knighthood. Into that exalted
rank they were initiated by a ceremony, partly religious and
partly military. The fast for twenty-four hours, the vigil,
the bath, the accolade, the assumption of sword and spurs,
were among its rites. To pray, to flee from sin, to defend
the Church, the widow, the orphan, to protect the people,
to make war honorably, to do battle for one's lady, to love
one's lord, to pay heed to the wise, — such w^ere the duties of
the knight. The tournament was his diversion.
This new and original society not only produced scholasti-
cism, the vulgar tongues, feudalism and chivalry, but also
made innovations in art. To the Roman architecture, indif-
ferently called Byzantine or Lombard and distinguished by
a rounded arch supported on columns, succeeded a pointed
architecture, wrongly termed gothic. The pointed arch, an
226 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 850-1100.
elementary and easier style than the rounded arch, belongs
to all times and countries, but it was monopolized in the
twelfth century and became the essential element in that
new architecture which has imparted to mediaeval cathe-
drals their imposing grandeur.
A. D. 887-1000.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 227
IX
THE GERMAN EMPIRE. STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE
PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE
Germany from 887 to 1056. — While France was calling
to the throne her native lords, Eudes and Hugh Capet,
Germany, on the deposition of Charles the Fat (887), elected
Arniilf, the bastard son of Carloman and a descendant of
Charlemagne. As heir of the Carlovingian claims this
prince received the homage of the kings of France, Trans-
Jurane Burgundy, Aries and Italy. Finally he caused him-
self to be crowned king of Italy and emperor. Thereby he
only gained an additional title. He repulsed several bands
of Northmen and set against the Moravians the Hungarians,
who were beginning to make as devastating raids through
Europe as those of the northern pirates. With his son,
Louis the Child, the German Carlovingian branch became
extinct. Hence Germany began to choose sovereigns from
different families, and election took root among German
political customs at the very time when French royalty was
becoming hereditary like the possession of a fief. There-
fore the two royalties had a different experience in store.
Conrad I was elected in 911. Under him began that con-
flict, which filled all the German Middle Ages, between the
great feudatories and the Franconian emperor. He wished
to weaken Saxony, the rival of Franconia, and to deprive it
of Thuringia. Vanquished at Ehresburg by Duke Henry,
he gained an advantage over the Duke of Lorraine whom
he despoiled of Alsace, and over the governors of Suabia
whom he beheaded.
After him the crown passed to the house of Saxony, where
it remained for more than 100 years. Conrad on his death-
bed had designated for his successor his former conqueror
as the man most capable of defending Germany against the
Hungarians. So Duke Henry was elected.
He brought order out of disorder and gave Germany
definite boundaries. He forced every man above sixteen to
228 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [ a. d. 934-1050.
bear arms and founded fortresses on the frontiers. The great
victory won by him near Merseburg (934) announced that the
depredations of the Hungarians were near their end. His
son, Otto I the Great, inflicted on them a decisive defeat at
Augsburg (955), which compelled them to remain quiet in
the country they still inhabit. The dukes of Franconia and
Bavaria had rebelled and were supported by the French
king, Louis IV. Otto defeated the rebels and penetrated
France as far as Paris.
The restoration of the empire is the most important
achievement of his reign. The last titular emperor, Be-
ranger, had been assassinated. Otto wedded his queen,
was proclaimed king of Italy at Milan and crowned em-
peror at Rome (962). He undertook to maintain the dona-
tions made the Holy See by Charlemagne, the Romans
promising not to elect a Pope except in the presence of the
emperor's envoys. By a single blow he thus restored the
empire to the benefit of the kings of Germany, and founded
a German domination over Italy. The southern part of the
Italian peninsula remained in the possession of the Greeks.
To obtain this territory without combat he secured the hand
of the Princess Theophania for his son Otto. His succes-
sors. Otto II, Otto III and Henry II, were unable to retain
the predominance which he had exercised. Under Otto III
the tribune Crescentius tried to overturn the papal authority
and restore the Roman republic. Under Henry II Italy
gave to herself for a moment a national king.
In 1024 the imperial crown departed from the house of
Saxony and entered that of Franconia. Conrad II compelled
the king of Poland to recognize him as his suzerain, made
prisoner the king of Bohemia and reunited to the empire
the two Burgundies. The convention which he signed with
the aged king of Aries is invoked by German writers to-day,
as a claim on behalf of the present German Empire to the
two valleys of the Saone and Rhone. In Italy Conrad
ruined the Italian system of feudalism by his edict of 1037,
which declared that all fiefs depended directly from the
prince. His son, Henry III (1039), was the one emperor
whose authority was best assured in Germany and Italy.
He forced the king of Bohemia to pay tribute, restored to
Alba, Royale, the banished king of Hungary, and received
his homage. In Italy he dominated even the papacy.
The Monk Hildebrand. — A monk, the counsellor of many
A.D. 1050-1073.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 229
Popes before he himself succeeded to the Holy See, pro-
posed to deliver the papacy and Italy from German control.
In 1059 Hildebrand caused a decree to be issued by Nicho-
las II, Avhich announced that the election of the Popes
should be made by the cardinal priests and cardinal
bishops of the Roman territory ; that the other clergy and
the Roman people should then give their assent ; that the
emperor should retain the right of confirmation ; and lastly,
that in election a member of the Roman clergy should be
preferred. Another decree forbade any ecclesiastic to re-
ceive the investiture of an ecclesiastical benefice from a
layman. These decrees freed the Pope from dependence
upon the emperor and placed all the temporal power of the
Church in the hand of the pontiff thus emancipated.
Greg^ory VII and Henry IV (1073-1085). — In 1073 Hilde-
brand was elected Pope under the name of Gregory VII. The
Pope was about to complete the work of the monk. His plans
enlarged with his opportunity. Charlemagne and Otto the
Great had rendered the Pope subordinate to themselves,
and had placed the church within the state as the Greeks
and Romans had done. But royalty, the central power,
was declining throughout Europe because of the invading pro-
gress of the feudal system or the increasing local powers of
the dukes, counts and barons. The clergy, on the other
hand, had beheld popular faith and confidence in the Church
increase in that same century. Its leader decided that the
moment had come for restoring to those charged with the
salvation of the soul the influence necessary for imparting
the best direction to civil society, and for repressing moral
disorders, violations of justice and all the causes of perdition.
In a priest, such an ambition was great and legitimate.
But had this attempt succeeded, the state in consequence
would have been placed within the church. A sacerdotal
autocracy would have formed to prevent all movement in
the world, in thought, science and art.
Gregory VII desired four things. He wished to deliver
the papal throne from German suzerainty ; to reform the
Church in its manners and discipline ; to render it every-
where independent of the temporal power ; and, lastly, to
govern the laity, both peoples and kings, in the name and
interest of their salvation. The first point was attained by
the decree of Nicholas II and the refusal to submit the
election of Popes to the imperial sanction. The second
230 HISTOIRY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a/d 1073-1122.
object was favored by many acts of Gregory VII for the
ret'ormation of the clergy and the abolition of simony. To
accomplish the third, the non-clerical princes had been
forbidden to bestow, and the clergy to receive from their
hands, the investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice. The
last was to be brought about by the pontiff's haughty
interference in the government of kingdoms.
In the attempt to render the Church independent of the
empire, there arose between the two the famous so-called
quarrel of investitures.
During the minority of Henry IV, all sorts of disorders
had invaded the German priesthood. Gregory, imputing
these scandals to the unhappy selection of prelates, called
upon Henry to renounce the bestowal of ecclesiastical digni-
ties and to appear at Rome to justify himself for his pri-
vate conduct. The emperor retorted by having Gregory
deposed by twenty-four bishops in the Synod of Worms
(1076). Thereupon the Pope launched against him a bull
of excommunication and forfeiture. The Saxons and Sua-
bians, traditional enemies of the Franconian house, executed
this sentence in the Diet of Tribur, which suspended the
emperor from his functions, and threatened him with depo-
sition if he did not become reconciled to Eome. Henry
yielded. He hurried to Italy and sought the Pope in the
castle of Canossa on the lands of the Countess Matilda, who
was an adherent of the Holy See. Barefoot in the snow he
waited three days for an audience with the pontiff. He
retired, absolved but furious, and opened war. The battle
of Volkshein, where his rival, Rodolph of Suabia, was slain
by Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and
bearer of the imperial standard, made him master of Ger-
many (1080). He could then return to Italy in triumph.
The Countess Matilda was desj^oiled of part of her posses-
sions, Rome was captured and the bishop of Ravenna was
appointed Pope as Clement III. Gregory himself would
have fallen into the hands of the man he had so contemned,
if the Normans who had just conquered southern Italy had
not come to his aid. He died among them, saying, " Because
I have loved justice and chastised iniquity, therefore I die
in exile " (1085).
Concordat of Worms (1122). — Henry IV was victor, but
the Church roused his own son against him and he perished
miserably. Nevertheless it was this parricidal son, Henry V,
A.D, 1122-1150.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 231
who put an end to the quarrel of investitures. The Con-
cordat of Worms equably settled the dispute (1122). It as-
signed to the temporal sovereign, the emperor, the temporal
investiture by the sceptre, and to the spiritual sovereign,
the Pope, the spiritual investiture by the cross and ring.
The plan of Gregory VII had only half succeeded, for the
bond of vassalage was still unbroken which bound the clergy
to the prince. But in its members, if not in its head, the
church remained within the state.
As chief of the empire this same Henry inherited the
fiefs of Countess Matilda and as her nearest relative her
allodial property. Thus he became possessor of all her
rich estates. The nearest approach to feudal power in the
peninsula was thus annihilated. But the Franconian dy-
nasty became extinct with this emperor (1125). Despite
all the efforts of this house to weaken the general feudal
system in Germany by conceding direct dependence on the
crown to a host of petty seigniories and by raising many
towns to the rank of imperial cities, it had tolerated the
existence of several powerful vassals, and above all of the
Welfs, dukes of Bavaria, and of the Hohenstaufens, dukes
of Suabia. Thus Lothaire II (1125-1138) bore himself hum-
bly in the presence of these princes. He was no less humble
before the Pope who, when placing upon his head the
imperial crown, claimed to confer it as a benefice.
The Hohenstaufens. — The house of Suabia ascended the
throne with Conrad III. He obtained a firm footing by de-
stroying the power of the Welfs through • the spoliation of
Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria. His unfor-
tunate part in the second crusade and his death soon after
his return prevented the completion of his w^ork. But his
son, Frederick I, Barbarossa, caused the imperial power once
more to appear with brilliancy in Italy. Instead of the
feudal system which no longer existed there, had arisen a
medley of petty lordships and of cities organized into repub-
lics with their senates, consuls and general assemblies. This
political system extended even to Rome, whence Arnaldo
de Brescia expelled Pope Innocent II (1141). Frederick
speedily destroyed this beginning of Italian independence
and burned Arnaldo at the stake. But by making his author-
ity too evident he alienated the republics and the Pope
himself whom he had just restored. His despotic principles,
enunciated at the Diet of Roncalia by the legists of the
232 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1150-1200.
Bolognese school, caused alarm. Milan revolted against his
magistrates. He razed it to the ground and abandoned its
ruins to the neighboring rival cities. Hardly had he re-
turned to Germany, when the Lombard League was formed
behind him. It was joined by Pope Alexander III, the
Defender of Italian Liberty. Frederick, who marched has-
tily to destroy the coalition, was completely overthrown at
Legnano (1176).
Seven years later the Treaty of Constance definitely reg-
ulated the quarrel between the empire and Italy, as the
Concordat of Worms had regulated that between the empire
and the papacy. The cities retained the rights which they
had usurped. They could levy armies, protect themselves
with fortifications, exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction
within their boundaries and form confederations with one
another. The emperor retained only the right of confirm-
ing their consuls by his legates and of placing a judge of
appeals for certain causes in each city.
Barbarossa had not everywhere been so unsuccessful. The
kings of Denmark and Poland acknowledged his suzerainty.
Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, was deprived
of his dominions. Forei.Qfn ambassadors attended the splen-
did diets convoked by the emperor, at the most celebrated
of which, in Mayence, 40,000 knights appeared.
His son Henry succeeded (1190). As the husband of Con-
stance, daughter and heiress of Roger II, king of Sicily, he
established the house of Suabia in southern Italy. Thus
an equivalent was gained for loss of authority in the north,
and the Holy See was enveloped on all sides. Innocent III
(1198-1216) resolved to avert this new danger. He had
excommunicated the kings of France, Aragon and Norway
for transgression of the moral code, and had set another
portion of Christendom again in motion by preaching the
fourth crusade. When he beheld kings abase themselves
before him and nations rise at his voice, the Pope naturally
believed himself strong enough to humble the ambitious
house which persistently cherished the memory of imperial
supremacy over Rome. In Germany he supported Otto of
Brunswick against Philip of Suabia, and the fierce struggle
of the Guelphs, or partisans of the Church, against the
Ghibellines, or partisans of the empire, began. Displeased
with Otto, who when rid of his rival made the same claims
upon Italy, Innocent turned again to the house of Suabia
A.D. 1200-1240.] THE GERMAN EMPIRE 233
and caused the young Frederick II, son of Henry VI, to
be recognized as emperor on condition of his abandoning
the Two Sicilies. But this prince, a lover of art and letters
and a man of easy character, retained those provinces where
was his favorite residence. In his palaces at Naples, Mes-
sina and Palermo, he and his chancellor, Pierre des Vignes,
vigorously organized his Italian kingdom. To possess a
constant defence against the thunders of the Church, he en-
gaged an army of Saracens in his service.
The Pope beheld with affright the firm grip of this Ger-
man upon Italy. In the south, Frederick held his Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies. In the centre he enjoyed the posses-
sions of the Countess Matilda. In the north his title of
emperor conferred both influence and rights. To remove
the obnoxious ruler to a distance, the Pope ordered him to
take the cross. When Frederick hesitated, he threatened
him with an anathema if he did not fulfil the vow he had
taken. Frederick set out on the crusade, but he did not
fight. A treaty with the sultan of Egypt threw open to
him the gates of the Holy City (1228). He crowned him-
self king of Jerusalem and then hastened to return. His
absence had afforded Gregory IX, the energetic old man
who then occupied the throne of Saint Peter, time to re-
organize the Lombard League, to persuade the young prince
Henry to rebel against his father and to hurl an adventurer
with an army upon the kingdom of Naples. Frederick
overcame all his adversaries. The defeat of the Lombards
at Corte Nuova seemed to place Italy at his feet.
The Pope alone did not yield. He issued a sentence of
excommunication and deposition against him, and offered
the imperial crown to Eobert of Artois, brother to the king
of France. Louis IX refused this proffer to his family, and
reproached the Pope with wishing "to trample all sover-
eigns together with the emperor under his feet." Gregory
then sought the support of a council which he convoked in
the church of Saint John Lateran. At Melloria the vessels
of Frederick defeated the Genoese fleet, which was carry-
ing the Fathers to the council, and two cardinals together
with bishops and abbots were captured. Gregory died of
grief. His successor. Innocent IV, escaped from Rome in
disguise, assembled at Lyons a council which excommuni-
cated Frederick II, and caused a crusade against him to be
preached. When the tidings was told the emperor, he
234 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1240-1250.
seized his crown, planted it more firmly on his head and
exclaimed, " It shall not fall until rivers of blood have
flowed." He appealed to the sovereigns of Europe : " If I
perish, you all perish." He hurled his Saracens upon cen-
tral Italy while his ally, Eccelino de Eoraano, the tyrant of
Padua, fought and butchered in the north. But the cities
everywhere rose at the call of the priests and monks.
From one end of the peninsula to the other, the G-uelphs
flew to arms in behalf of the Holy Father who for his own
freedom needed that Italy also be free. In vain did Fred-
erick humble himself. . He offered to abdicate, to go and
die in the Holy Land, to divide his heritage on condition
that it should be left to his children. Innocent remained
immovable, and pursued the annihilation of ''that race of
vipers." The struggle was becoming still more envenomed
when the emperor died suddenly (1250). His death
heralded the fall of German domination in Italy and the
beginning in the peninsula of a new period, that of inde-
pendence.
lic/-
Uopyriji.t. mi. I,) T. y.
A.D. 1059-1095.1 CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 235
THE CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND IN THE WEST
The First Crusade in the East (1096-1099): — During the
Middle Ages there were two worlds, that of the Gospel and
that of the Koran, the one in the north and the other in the
.south. At their points of contact in Spain and toward
Constantinople they had long been engaged in conflict. At
the end of the eleventh century the two religions grappled,
and their encounter is called the crusades.
Mussulman Asia had passed from the power of the
Arabs into that of the Seldjuk Turks. Under Alp Arslan
(1063) and Malek Shah (1075) they had conquered Syria,
Palestine and Asia Minor. At the death of Malek Shah
his empire was divided into the sultanates of Syria, Persia
and Kerman, to which must be added that of Roum in Asia
Minor. The empire of Constantinople, the bulwark of
Christendom, had wavered at this new invasion. For a
time it seemed hardly able to resist its enemies, despite the
vigor it manifested under several emperors of the Macedo-
nian and Comnenan dynasties and the victories it had
gained over the Persians, Bulgarians, Russians and Arabs.
At the very beginning of the century, Pope Sylvester II
had suggested to the Western peoples the idea of delivering
the Holy Sepulchre (1002). Pilgrimages became more fre-
quent. Pilgrims by thousands visited the sacred places and
on their return inflamed Europe with stories of outrages
and cruelties endured from the Mussulmans. Gregory VII
took up the project of Sylvester, and Urban II put it into
execution. At Piacenza he convened a council where am-
bassadors appeared from Constantinople. At a second
council at Clermont in Auvergne, an innumerable multitude
assembled. Supporting his own majestic eloquence by the
popular eloquence of Peter the Hermit, who had just re-
turned from the Holy Land, Urban carried the immense
host captive. With the cry " God wills it ! " each man
fastened to his garments the red cross, the emblem of the
236 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a. d. 1095-1099.
crusade (1095). Feasants, villagers, old men, women and
children set out, pell-mell, under the lead of Peter the
Hermit and of a petty noble, Walter the Penniless.
Almost the whole multitude perished in Hungary, and
those who reached Constantinople fell under the cimeter
in Asia Minor.
In the following year the crusade of the nobles started, —
more prudent, better organized, more military. Four great
armies, composed chiefly of Frenchmen, departed by three
different routes. Those nnder Godfrey of Bouillon, Bald-
win of Bourg and Baldwin of Flanders followed the track
of Peter the Hermit. Those under Raymond, Count of
Toulouse, passed through Lombardy and Slavonia. The
rest, commanded by Bobert Duke of JSTormancly, son of
William I of England, Stephen of Blois and Hugh the
Great of Vermandois went to Brindisi to join the Italian
Normans, and thence crossed the Adriatic, Macedonia and
Thrace. These 600,000 men were to meet at Constantinople.
With distrust the Emperor Alexis received into his
capital guests so uncouth as the warriors of the W^est. As
soon as possible he had them transported beyond the Bos-
phorus. They first laid siege to Nica^a at the entrance to
Asia Minor, but allowed the Greeks to plant their banner
on the walls when the city had been forced to surrender.
Kilidj Arslan, the sultan of Roum, tried to arrest their
march, but was vanquished at Dorylaeum (1097). On enter-
ing arid Phrygia hunger and thirst decimated the invaders.
Nearly all the horses perished. Bitter dissensions already
divided the leaders. Nevertheless Baldwin who led the
vanguard took possession of Edessa on the upper Eu-
phrates, and the bulk of the army captured Tarsus and
arrived before Antioch. The siege was long and the suffer-
ings of the invaders were cruel. At last the city opened
its gates to the intrigues of Bohemond, who caused himself
to be appointed its prince ; but the besiegers were besieged
in their turn by 200,000 men who had been brought up by
Kerboga, the lieutenant of the caliph of Bagdad. By a
marvellous victory the Christians cut their way out and
marched at last upon Jerusalem, which they entered on
July 15, 1099, after a siege no less distressing than that of
Antioch.
Godfrey was elected king, but would accept only the
title of defender and baron of the Holy Sepulchre, " refus-
A.D. 1099-1147.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 237
ing to wear a crown of gold on the spot where the King of
kings had worn a crown of thorns." The conquest was
assured by the victory of Ascalon over an Egyptian army
which had come to recapture Jerusalem.
The majority of the crusaders returned home. The little
kingdom of Jerusalem organized for defence and gave itself
a constitution in accordance with feudal principles, which
were thus transported ready made into Asia. Godfrey of
Bouillon caused the Assizes of Jerusalem to be drawn up,
a code which gives a complete picture of the feudal system.
There were established as fiefs the principalities of Edessa
and Antioch, afterward increased by the county of Tripoli
and the marquisate of Tyre, and the lordships of Nablous,
Jaffa, Ramleh and Tiberias. The country was subjected to
three judicial authorities : the court of the king, of the
viscount of Jerusalem, and the Syrian tribunal for natives.
The defence of the state was committed to two great mili-
tary institutions : the Order of the Hospitallers of Saint
John of Jerusalem, founded by Gerard de Martigues in
1100, and that of the Templars, founded in 1148 by Hugues
de Payens. Through the influence of these institutions the
kingdom of Jerusalem continued its conquests under the
first two successors of Godfrey, Baldwin I (1100-1118) and
Baldwin II (1118-1131). Caesarea, Ptolemais, Byblos,
Beyrout, Sidon and Tyre were captured. But after these
two reigns discord brought about decline and Noureddin,
sultan of Syria, seized Edessa whose inhabitants he put to
the sword (1144).
Second and Third Crusades (1147-1189). —This bloody
disaster induced Europe to renew the crusade. Saint Ber-
nard roused Christendom by his eloquent appeals. In the
great assembly of Vezelay Louis VII, who wished to
expiate the death of 1300 persons burned by him in
the church of Vitry, his wife, Eleanor of Guyenne
and a throng of great vassals and barons assumed the
cross. The emperor of Germany, Conrad III, was the
first to set out. He reached the heart of Asia Minor, but
losing his whole army in the defiles of the Taurus
returned almost alone to Constantinople, where Louis VII
had just arrived. The latter was no more fortunate, though
following the coast-line so as to avoid the dangerous soli-
tudes of the interior. In Cilicia he abandoned the mass of
pilgrims, who fell under the arrows of the Turks, and with
238 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1147-1202.
his nobles embarked on Greek ships, arrived at Antioch,
and then at Damascus which the crusaders besieged in
vain. He brought back from this expedition only his fatal
divorce.
The capture of Jerusalem (1187) by Saladin, who had
united Egypt and Syria under his sceptre, provoked the
third crusade. The Pope imposed on all lands, including
even those which belonged to the Church, a tax called
Saladin's tithe. The Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, Philip
Augustus of France and Richard CcBur de Lion of England,
the three most powerful sovereigns of Europe, set out with
large armies (1189). Barbarossa reached Asia by way of
Hungary and Constantinople and had arrived in Cilicia,
when he was drowned in the Selef. Nearly the whole of
his army was destroyed. Philip and Richard made a more
prosperous journey by a new route, the sea. The former
embarked at Genoa, the latter at Marseilles. They put
into port in Sicily and began to quarrel. Richard halted
again at Cyprus to depose a usurper, Isaac Comnenus, and
rejoined Philip under the walls of Saint Jean d'Acre,
which the crusaders besieged. They wasted there more
than two years, wholly engrossed in feats of chivalry
against the Saracens and in quarrels with each other.
Philip found these discords a pretext to return to France.
Richard, who remained in Palestine, was unable to recapt-
ure Jerusalem. On his way back a tempest wrecked his
ship on the Dalmatian coast. He wished to cross Germany
and regain England overland. Leopold, Duke of Austria,
whose banner he had caused to be contemptuously cast into
the trenches of Saint Jean d'Acre, kept him in prison until
he paid an enormous ransom.
Fourth Crusade (1202). Latin Empire of Constantinople
(1204-1261). — Innocent III could not resign himself to
leaving Jerusalem in the hands of the infidels. He caused
a fourth crusade to be preached by Foulques, cure of
Neuilly, who persuaded many nobles of Flanders and Cham-
pagne to assume the cross. Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders,
and Boniface II, Marquis of Montferrat, were the leaders.
The crusaders sent envoys to Venice to ask for ships. Of
this embassy Geoffroy de Villehardouin, the historian of
that crusade, was a member. Venice first secured payment
in hard cash, and then exacted of the crusaders that they
should capture for her the stronghold of Zara, which be-
A.D. 1202-1248.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 239
longed to the king of Hungary, Already once diverted
from its religious purpose, the crusade was again turned
aside by Alexis, the son of a deposed Greek emperor, who
oifered them immense rewards if they would reinstate his
father. They placed him and his father for a time upon
the throne. The great capital was then a prey to anarchy.
Forgetting Jerusalem, the original object of their march,
they seized Constantinople for themselves and parcelled out
the whole empire as booty. Baldwin was appointed em-
peror. The Venetians, seizing one quarter of Constan-
tinople, most of the islands of the Archipelago and the
best harbors, dubbed themselves "lords of a quarter and
half a quarter" of the Greek Empire. The Marquis of
Montferrat became king of Thessalonica. The Asiatic
provinces were given to the Count of Blois. A lord of
Corinth, a duke of Athens and a prince of Achaia were
created. Some Greek princes of the Comnenan family re-
tained a few fragments of the empire, such as the princi-
palities of Trebizond, Napoli of Argolis, Epirus and Mcsea.
The Latin Empire of Constantinople lasted fifty-seven
years, and was then overthrown by the Greeks, and the
Latins expelled.
Last Crusades (1229-1270). Saint Louis. — Jerusalem had
not been delivered. The barons of the Holy Land con-
stantly implored the aid of Christendom. Andrew II of
Hungary led a fifth but fruitless crusade against Egypt.
The sixth was commanded by Frederick II, who took ad-
vantage of the terror with which the approach of Tartar
hordes inspired Malek Kamel, and obtained from him with-
out combat a truce for ten years, together with the restitu-
tion of the Holy City, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Sidon. He
even crowned himself king of Jerusalem (1229). Hardly
had he taken his departure when the Turkomans, fleeing be-
fore the Mongols of Genghis Khan, hurled themselves upon
Syria, at Gaza cut in pieces an army of crusaders and seized
the Holy City. At this news Pope Innocent IV tried to
arouse Europe and launch it against the infidels. But the
crusading spirit, waxing weaker day by day, found no echo
save in the soul of Saint Louis, king of France. During an
illness he made a vow to go and deliver Jerusalem. Despite
the entreaties of his whole court and even of his mother, the
devout Blanche of Castile, he embarked at Aigues Mortes
with a powerful army (1248). He wintered at Cyprus. The
240 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1248-1270.
crusaders had comprehended that the keys of Jerusalem
were in Cairo. When spring came they set sail for Egypt
and mastered Damietta. But their sluggishness ruined
everything. Insubordination burst out in the army. De-
bauches produced epidemics. Delayed a month at the canal
of Aschmoum, after crossing it they suffered the disaster of
Mansourah through the imprudence of Robert of Artois.
During the retreat they were decimated by the pest and
harassed by the Mussulmans who captured their king,
Saint Louis. He paid a million gold besants as ransom,
then crossed over to Palestine and remained there three
years, employing his influence in maintaining harmony and
his resources in fortifying the cities. *
He had managed this great expedition very badly. Six-
teen years later he attempted another. In 1270 his brother
Charles of Anjou, king of the Two Sicilies, persuaded him
that the Tunisian Mussulmans must be attacked, whose
threats made him anxious as to the fate of the Sicilian
kingdom. Under the walls of Tunis the Christians en-
countered famine and pestilence from which Saint Louis
died. The princes who had accompanied him were paid
to withdraw, and Charles of Anjou made a treaty advan-
tageous to his Sicilian subjects. This crusade was the
last.
Results of the Crusades in the East. — Those great expedi-
tions, in which France played the principal part, devoured
uncounted multitudes and failed in their object. The Holy
Land remained in the hands of the infidels. Still Europe
and Asia were brought closer together. In Europe itself,
the Christian nations formed relations, and in each country
all classes of the population became somewhat united. The
crusades developed commerce and enlarged the horizon of
thought. They opened the East to Christian travellers and
to the merchants of Marseilles, Barcelona, Pisa, Genoa and
Venice. To manufactures they revealed new processes and to
the soil new plants such as the mulberry, maize and sugar-
cane. Feudalism was shaken by the gaps made in its ranks,
and by the forced sale of lands to which many crusaders had
recourse to obtain the money requisite for the journey. The
communal movement derived greater strength, and the en-
franchisement of the serfs received a broader interpretation.
Finally, the crusades gave birth to the Knights Templars
and to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem who de-
A.D. 10i»5-r2a0.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 241
fended the Holy Land, as well as to the Knights of the
Teutonic Order, who soon quitted the East to subdue and
convert the pagans on the shores of the Baltic. Heraldry
as a means of distinguishing individuals and companies was
a product of the crusades.
The new religious orders which arose were an effect of
the religious movement of which the crusades were them-
selves the consequence, and the mendicant friars are to be
placed beside the soldier monks. The Franciscans who
gave rise to the Recollets, the Cordeliers, and the Capucins,
date from 1215; the Dominicans, or Jacobins, from 1216.
Removed from the control of the bishops, they were the
army of the Holy See. Possessing nothing, living on alms,
they roamed the world over to carry the Gospel wherever a
too wealthy clergy no longer carried it, amid the poor,
along the highways, at the cross-roads and in the public
squares. The bishops disputed the right of the Pope to
grant to the mendicant friars the privilege of preaching and
filling the functions of parish priests. To them Saint
Thomas Aquinas replied : " If a bishop can delegate his
powers in his diocese, the Pope has the right to do the same
in Christendom." It will be seen that ultramontanism is
not a thing of yesterday. It is not Christian in its incep-
tion, for the Gospel knows it not ; but it is the fundamental
principle and the necessary logic of Roman Catholicism.
Crusades of the West. — In the East the Crusades failed.
In the West they succeeded ; for they founded the two great
states of Prussia and Spain and accomplished the political
unity of France.
In the interval between the first and second crusades,
the burghers of Bremen and Lubeck founded in the Holy
Land a hospital under the charge of Germans for the bene-
fit of their fellow-countrymen. Everything at Jerusalem
was taking on a religious and military form. The attend-
ants of this hospital were transformed into an armed cor-
poration, called the Teutonic Order, which speedily acquired
great possessions, so that its chief was raised by Frederick
II to the rank of prince of the empire. To this order a
regent of Poland in 1230 intrusted the task of conquer-
ing and converting the Borussi or Prussians between the
Niemen and the Vistula. They were successful in this
undertaking and built the fortresses of Konigsburg and
Marienburg to overawe the defeated tribe. The Knights of
242 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1215.
Christ, or Brothers of the Sword, subjugated the neighbor-
ing regions at the same time. When they united with the
Teutonic Order, Prussia, Esthonia, Livonia and Courland,
hitherto barbarous and pagan, were attached to the Euro-
pean community. Until the fifteenth century the Order
exercised a preponderating power in the north. In the
sixteenth century its Grand Master secularized this ecclesi-
astical principality, which then fell to the Electors of
Brandenburg.
The crusade against the heathen of the Baltic caused civi-
lization to germinate in a savage country. The crusade
which Simon de Montfort directed against the Albigenses
stifled civilization in a rich and prosperous region.
The population of southern France was the mixed off-
spring of different races. There religious opinions had
sprung up which differed greatly from the prevailing faith.
The people were called Albigenses from their capital, Albi.
Innocent III resolved to stamp out this nest of heresy. To
Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, he sent the monk Pierre
de Castelnau as a papal legate to demand the expulsion of
the heretics, but he obtained no satisfaction. Raymond
was then excommunicated (1207), whereupon he employed
threats. One of his knights assassinated the legate at a
ford of the Rhone. The monks of Citeaux at once preached
a crusade of extermination. The same indulgences were
promised as for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As the perils
were less and the profit more sure, men rushed against the
Albigenses in crowds. Among their assailants were the
Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers, Auxerre and
G-eneva, the bishops of Reims, Sens, Rouen and Autun
and many other dignitaries. Simon de Montfort, a petty
noble from the vicinity of Paris, ambitious, fanatical and
cruel, was the chief commander. The war was merciless.
At Beziers 30,000 persons were butchered and everywhere
else in proportion. Raymond VI was defeated at Castel-
naudary and Pedro II, king of Aragon, was slain at the
battle of Muret (1213). The Council of the Lateran be-
stowed the fiefs of the Count of Toulouse upon Simon de
Montfort. Southern France was crushed by the French of
the north. The brilliant civilization of those provinces was
smothered by rude hands. Like a funereal and ever-men-
acing spectre, the tribunal of the Inquisition established
itself on the blood-stained ruins, a tribunal that has slain so
A.D. 1215-1229.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 243
many human beings without succeeding in destroying liberty
of thought.
Louis, the son of Philip Augustus, came finally to take
part in this crusade. In their misery these people of Langue-
doc had bethought themselves of the king of France. Mont-
pellier surrendered to him. When Simon de Montfort was
slain at the siege of Toulouse, his son ceded to Louis IX
(1229) the provinces which the Pope had given his father,
but which he could not retain amid the universal execration
of his subjects. Thus neither Montfort nor his race profited
from this great iniquity. The entire political benefit of the
crusade accrued to the house of France, which had at first
remained a stranger to it.
When Charles Martel and Pepin the Short expelled the
Arabs from France, they were satisfied with driving them
over the Pyrenees into the Iberian peninsula. There Mus-
sulmans and Christians found themselves constantly facing
each other. Thus the history of Spain through the Middle
Ages is that of a crusade six centuries long. After the bat-
tle of Xeres in 711, Pelayo and his comrades took refuge
in the Asturias, behind the Cantabrian Pyrenees, where
Gihon was their first capital. Oviedo became their capital
in 760, when they had advanced a step toward the south.
Still later it was Leon whose name the kingdom appropri-
ated. Charlemagne protected them. From the Marches,
which he founded north of the Ebro, emerged the Christian
states of Navarre and Barcelona, between which the lords
of Aragon and the counts of Castile founded fiefs which
were to become mighty kingdoms. So along the north of
Spain there was a series of Christian states, buttressed upon
the mountains like fortresses, yet advancing in battle array
toward the south. At the end of the ninth century Alphonso
the Great, king of Oviedo, had already attained and passed
the Douro. In the tenth century the caliphate of Cordova
showed fresh vigor. The Christians fell back in turn before
the victorious sword of Abderrahman III, who defeated
them at Simancas. Likewise they were worsted by the
famous Almanzor, who wrested from them all the places on
the banks of the Ebro and Douro including Leon itself.
But when this victor of fifty battles had himself suffered
defeat at Calatanazor (998), the power of the caliphate fell
with him. In the eleventh century the caliphate of Cordova
was broken and the Christians drew closer together. San-
244 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1000-1108.
cho III, king of Navarre, about 1000, acquired Castile by
marriage and gave it together with the title of king to his
second son, Ferdinand, who married a daughter of the king,
of Leon (1035). In the same manner he erected the county
of Jacca or Aragon into a kingdom for his third son,
Ramiro II, while the eldest, Garcias, inherited Navarre.
Thus four Christian kingdoms were founded and united
by family alliances. Three, Navarre, Castile and Aragon,
belonged to the sons of Sancho. The fourth, Leon, remained
separate, but the male line of the descendants of Felayo be-
coming extinct, the Council of the Asturias gave the crown
to Ferdinand, thereby uniting Leon and Castile (1037).
Internal affairs caused the Spaniards to forget for a time
their struggle against the Moors, but when the holy war
became popular in Europe Alphonso VI began again to
carry forward the cross. In 1085 he seized Toledo, which
once more became the capital and metropolis as it had been
under the Visigoths. Henceforth the Christians, who had
set out from the Asturias, were established in the heart of
the peninsula. Five years later Henry of Burgundy, great
grandson of Robert king of France, wdio had distinguished
himself at the taking of Toledo, took possession of Oporto
at the mouth of the Douro, which was erected for him into
a county of Portugal by Alphonso. Almost simultaneously
the famous Cid Rodrigo de Rivar, the hero of Spanish
romance, advancing from victory to victory along the
Mediterranean, seized Valencia (1094). At last in 1118
Alphonso I, king of Aragon, won a capital as king of
Castile by mastering Saragossa.
The Arabs, enervated, divided and consequently van-
quished, called successively to their aid two hordes of Afri-
can Moors. These were the Almoravides and Almohades,
sectaries who claimed to simplify the religion of Mohammed.
The former, summoned in 1086 by Aben Abed king of
Seville, arrived under the leadership of their chief Yusuf,
the founder of Morocco (1069), cut in pieces the Christian
army at Zalaca and repaid themselves for this service at
the expense of those who had called them thither. They
even recaptured Valencia on the death of the Cid (1099),
took possession of the Balearic Isles and in 1108 at Ucles
won over Alphonso VI a battle as sanguinary as that of
Zalaca. There however their successes ended. Toledo
repulsed thera many times. Alphonso, son of Henry of
A.D. 1108-1492.] CRUSADES IN THE EAST AND WEST 245
Burgundy, who assumed before the combat the title of king
of Portugal, won a complete victory over them at lurique
(1139), which rendered him master of the banks of the
Tagus and of several places beyond that river.
The Almohades did not come from Morocco until the
middle of the following century. When they made their
appearance in 1210, 400,000 strong, all Europe took alarm.
Pope Innocent III caused a crusade to be preached for the
succor of the Spanish Christians. The Spanish kings formed
a coalition and destroyed their enemies at the decisive
battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which ended the great inva-
sions from Africa. This achievement had been largely aided
by the Spanish military Orders of Alcantara, Calatrava and
Saint James of Castile, and by the Portuguese Order of
Evora.
The domination of the Almohades had finally ended in
bloody anarchy. Cordova, Seville, Murcia and many other
places fell into the power of the king of Castile. Mean-
while Jayme I, the Conqueror, king of Aragon, subjugated
the kingdom of Valencia and the Balearic Islands (1244),
and Portugal, regaining the province of Algarve in 1270,
assumed its definite territorial form. At the close of the
thirteenth century the Moors possessed only the little king-
dom of Granada, which was completely surrounded by the
sea and by the possessions of the king of Castile. But in
this contracted space, recruited by their coreligionists whom
the Christians expelled from the conquered cities, they main-
tained themselves with a vigor which deferred their ruin
for two centuries. Occupied with foreign affairs, the
Spaniards suspended the holy war until 1492.
The crusade of Jerusalem failed though it contributed
general results to the civilization of the Middle Ages. The
crusade of Spain, without consequence so far as the social
state of Europe was then concerned, changed the face of
that peninsula and reacted in the sixteenth century upon
modern Europe. It wrested the country from the Moors
to give it to the Christians. The little kingdom of Portu-
gal supposed that it was pursuing the crusade beyond the
seas when it discovered the Cape of Good Hope. In that
war of eight centuries' duration, the kings of Castile and
Aragon developed an ambition which impelled them as well
as their subjects to many enterprises. Their military habits
were to make them the mercenaries of Charles V and Philip
246 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
II, rather than the peaceful and active heirs of the manu-
factures, the commerce and the brilliant civilization of the
Arabs.
Why did these two crusades result so differently ? Simply
because of distance. Palestine adjoined the land of Mecca.
Spain was in sight of Rome. Jerusalem, at the extreme
limit of the Catholic world, was bound to remain in the
hands of the Mussulmans, just as Toledo, the last stage of
Islam in the West, was bound to fall into the hands of the
Christians. Geography explains much in history.
A.D. 987-1200.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES 247
XI
SOCIETY IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH
CENTURIES
Progress in the Cities. — Since the fall of the Oarlovingian
empire three facts have been noted: the establishment of
feudalism, the struggle between the Pope and the emperor
for the control of Italy and the domination of the Avorld,
and lastly, the crusades. A fourth fact, resulting from the
other three, in its turn had serious consequences. This was
the reconstitution of the class of freemen. Let us indicate
the character of this fact before returning to the special
study of the states.
As early as 987 the villeins of Normandy had risen.
But feudalism was still too strong and they were crushed.
Although the nobles retained the control of the country dis-
tricts, the villeins in the cities became bold and audacious
behind their walls, and because of their numbers. In 1067
the city of Mans took arms against its lord. This was the
beginning of that communal movement, which from the
eleventh to the fourteenth century showed itself throughout
Europe. Like Mans, cities in northern France and the
Netherlands extorted from their civil or religious lords
communal charters which assured to the inhabitants guar-
antees for the security of person and property, and juris-
diction to the municipal magistrates. These privileges,
obtained generally by insurrection in the communes, were
gained in the royal cities by concessions from the king.
South of the Loire many cities retained or revived the
organization which they had possessed under the Roman
Empire^ By these different causes there was formed, little
by little, under the shelter of these privileges and of the
security they bestowed, a burgher class which grew rich
through manufactures and commerce. It formed powerful
corporations, filled the universities and acquired learning,
especially of the laws, at the same time as wealth. Its
merchants will be called by Saint Louis into his council.
248 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1200-1300.
Its jurists will guide the French kings in their struggle
against feudalism. Its burgesses will enter the States
General of Philip the Fair, and will then form an order in
the kingdom as the Third Estate.
In England the cities sent deputies to the parliament of
1264. In the parliament of 1295, 120 cities and boroughs
were represented. Italy early had her republics. The
Lombard League, when victorious over Frederick Barbarossa,
imposed on him the Treaty of Constance (1183), which legal-
ized their encroachments. North of the Alps the emperor,
with a view to weakening feudalism, made the cities depend
directly upon himself. For the sake of mutual protection
they formed unions among themselves, the most famous of
which was the great commercial Hanseatic League whose
banner waved from London to Novgorod.
This progress in the city population brought about similar
progress in the rural population. As early as the twelfth
century serfs were admitted as witnesses in courts of jus-
tice, and the Popes had demanded their emancipation. Thus
enfranchisements became common, for the lords began to
understand that they would be the gainers in having upon
their lands industrious freemen, rather than serfs "who
neglect their work and say they are working for others."
The burghers, villeins and serfs found a powerful auxil-
iary in Homan law, the study of which the kings encouraged
as favorable to their authority. Based upon natural equity
and common advantage, it permitted the legists to labor in
a thousand ways for the overthrow of personal and terri-
torial servitude, the two forms of bondage in the Middle
Ages. In the thirteenth century began that sullen conflict
between rational rights and feudal rights, which in France
was destined to end only in the French Revolution of 1789.
Intellectual Progress. — With more order in the state,
more labor in the cities, more ease in families, other and
intellectual wants arose, schools were multiplied, new
branches of study introduced and national literatures
begun.
The twelfth century had resounded with the mighty
rival voices of the Breton philosopher Abelard, who
championed a certain degree of liberty of thought, and of
Saint Bernard, the apostle of dogmatic authority. The
thousands of scholars who thronged around Abelard were
the beginning of the University of Paris. In 1200 the
A..D. 1100-1300.] SOCIETY IN 12TH AND 13TH CENTURIES 249
Studium, called later the University of Paris, was endowed
by Philip Augustus with its first privileges, one of which
made it accountable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals.
It served as a model for Montpellier, Orleans, Oxford,
Cambridge, Salamanca and many other famous seats. It
soon became a centre of scholastic learning, an arena of
ideas. Its opinion was authoritative in the gravest con-
troversies, and the most eminent men issued from its ranks.
The two recently created mendicant orders, the Dominicans
and Franciscans, reckoned among their members men of
genius like Saint Thomas Aquinas who in his Summa
Tlieologim undertook to record all that is known touching
the relations of God and man, and Saint Bonaventura, the
Seraphic Doctor. We must also mention the German Albert
the Great ; the Englishman Roger Bacon, a worthy prede-
cessor of the other Bacon ; the Scotchman Duns Scotus ; and,
lastly, the encyclopedist of that century, the author of the
Speculum Majus, Vincent de Beauvais.
But with the exception of Bacon, who discovered or in his
writings hinted at the composition of gunpowder, at the
magnifying-glass and the air-pump, they all lived upon the
remnants of ancient learning and made no additions thereto.
Thus old and new errors were popular. Men believed in
astrology, or the influence of the stars upon human life, and
in alchemy, which caused them to seek the philosopher's
stone or the means of converting other metals into gold.
Sorcerers abounded.
National Literatures. — In proportion as the individuality
of peoples took on shape, national literatures developed. The
epic, or heroic ballad, indeed was declining. Martin of
Troyes subsequent to 1160 spun out the legend of Arthur
into a tedious, eight-syllabled poem, and Guillaume de Lorris,
who died in 1260, wrote the Romance of the Rose, full of
attenuated ideas and cold allegories. French prose had its
birth with Geoffroy de Villehardouin whose quaint book.
The Conquest of Constantinople, is still read, and with
Joinville who after the seventh crusade composed his
Memoirs in more finished style, thereby affording a fore-
taste of Froissart. The literature of southern France after
furnishing brilliant troubadours had perished, drowned in
the blood of the Albigenses.
German literature shone under the Hohenstaufens, but
mostly as a reflection from the French. Wolfram von
250 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1100-1300.
Eschenbach in Suabia imitated the epic songs of the Car-
lovingian or Arthurian cycles. The Nihelungenlied,
however, reveals its distinctively German origin, but the
meistersingers and minnesingers, whose theme was love, drew
their inspiration from Provencal poetry. German prose is
hardly visible in a few rare moments of the thirteenth cen-
tury. In Italy Dante was born in 1265. Spain had her war-
songs in the romances of Bernardo del Carpio, the children
of Lara, and the Cid. England was still too much engrossed
with welding into a single idiom the Saxon-German and the
Norman-French to produce any marked literary works.
Her first great poet, Chaucer, belongs to the following age.
Architecture, the characteristic art of the Middle Ages,
attained its perfection in the thirteenth century. Then it
was simple, severe, grand, while in the following century
it was to become florid and flamboyant. In France it pro-
duced Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres, the
Sainte Chapelle, the cathedrals of Amiens, Reims, Strasburg,
Bourges, Sens, Coutances and many more. Corporations of
lay architects were formed. Lanfranc and Guillaume de
Sens labored together in the construction of Canterbury
cathedral. Pierre de Bonneuil went to Sweden to build
the cathedral of Upsala (1258). Maitre Jean in the same
century erected the cathedral of Utrecht and French artisans
worked on that of Milan.
The sculpture is heavy, but the stained glass windows of
the churches were magnificent, and the miniature-painters
embellished the missals with delicate masterpieces.
FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 251
XII
FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE
(987-1338)
First Capetians (987-1108). —While feudal Europe was
thronging the roads which led to Jerusalem, the great mod-
ern nations were assuming their outlines. Italy separated
from Germany. France sought to separate herself from
England, and Spain endeavored to rid herself of the Moors.
The Capetian royal house was weak in the beginning, though
it undertook the first internal organization of France. Hugh
Capet spent his reign of nine years (987-996) in battling
against the last representative of the Carlovingian family,
and in seeking recognition in the south, wherein he did not
succeed. His son Robert, crowned during his father's life
so as to assure his succession, reigned piously although ex-
communicated for having married Bertha, his relative. He
was wise enough to refuse the offered crown of Italy, but
inherited the duchy of Burgundy. Henry I and Philip I
lived in obscurity. The latter took no part in the first
crusade or in the conquest of England by his Norm*in vas-
sals. In fact from the ninth to the twelfth century French
royalty existed only in name, because the public power
which should have rested in its hands had become local
power exercised by all the great proprietors. This revolu-
tion, which shattered the unity of the country for three
centuries, was to be followed by another which would
strive to unite the scattered fragments of French society
and deprive the lords of the rights they had usurped. This
revolution was to render the king the sole judge, sole ad-
ministrator and sole legislator of the country. It began with
Philip Augustus and Saint Louis, who restored a central gov-
ernment. It was fully accomplished only under Louis XIY,
because the Hundred Years' War (1338-1453) and the reli-
gious wars of the sixteenth century interrupted this great
internal work.
252 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 110*-
Louis the Fat (1108-1137).— The reign of Louis VI
marked the first awakening of the Capetian royalty. That
active and resolute prince put down in the neighborhood of
Paris and the lie de France almost all the petty lords who
used to descend from their donjon-keeps and pillage the
merchants. He favored the formation of communities on
the lands of his vassals. The example set by Mans in 1066
was soon followed by many other cities. But Louis, though
gladly aiding the cities against their lords and thereby en-
feebling the latter, permitted no communes to arise on his
own domains. He tried to force Henry I of England to
cede Normandy to his nephew, Guillaume Cliton, but did
not succeed. When Henry V emperor of Germany, son-
in-law of the king of England, menaced France in 1124,
Louis VI faced him with a powerful army wherein figured
the men of the communes. In the north for a brief space
he imposed Cliton upon the Flemings, who had just assas-
sinated their count (1126). In the south he protected the
bishop of Clermont against the Count of Auvergne. He
compelled Guillaume IX, Duke of Aquitaine, to pay him
homage and obtained for his son, Louis the Young, the hand
of Eleanor, the heiress of that powerful lord.
Louis VII (1137-1180). — By this marriage Louis VII
added to the royal domain Aquitaine, Poitou, Limousin,
Bordelais, Agenois and Gascony and acquired suzerainty
over Auvergne, Perigord, La Marche, Saintonge and Angou-
mois. But while fighting with the Count of Champagne,
he burned 1300 persons in the church of Vitry. From
remorse he joined the crusade. Incensed against his queen
Eleanor, he divorced her on his return and gave her back
the duchy of Guyenne, her dowry. This divorce was dis-
astrous to the French monarchy and to national unity.
Eleanor soon after married Henry Plantagenet, Count of
Anjou, Duke of Normandy and heir to the crown of Eng-
land. The little domain of the king of France was thus
enveloped and threatened by an overwhelming force. Fort-
unately this king was the suzerain and feudal law, which
imposed respect on the vassal, still prevailed in its full
force. Thus Henry, having attacked Toulouse, dared not
prosecute the siege because Louis threw himself into the
place. The French king also found supporters against his
powerful adversary by allying himself with the clergy,
whom the Englishman persecuted, and with the English
1214.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 253
princes, who revolted against their father. He welcomed
Thomas a Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry's
officers afterwards assassinated when the prelate, trusting
the royal word, ventured to return to England.
Philip Augustus (1180-1223). — This prince, the last king
crowned before his accession, redeemed his father's faults.
By persecuting and robbing the Jews, he obtained money.
By giving up heretics and blasphemers to the Church, he
gained the bishops. By forming a close alliance with the
rebellious Richard, son of Henry IT, he increased the em-
barrassments of the English king. At the same time safe
but profitable petty wars secured for him Vermandais, Val-
ois and Amiens. On returning from the third crusade he
had an understanding with John Lackland, brother of Rich-
ard Coeur de Lion, to despoil the latter. Richard, being
released from prison, reached England in a rage and began
a furious war in the south of France. Pope Innocent III
interposed and caused the antagonists to sign a truce for
five years. Two months later Richard was killed by an
arrow at the siege of a castle of Limousin (1199).
The crown of England reverted by right to the young
Arthur, son of an elder brother of John Lackland. John
usurped it, defeated his nephew and murdered him (1203).
Philip Augustus summoned the murderer to appear before
his court. John took good care not to come and Philip
asserted his right under this forfeiture to take from him all
the places of Normandy. That rich province, whence the
conquerors of England had set out, then became a part of
the royal domain and Brittany, which was its dependency,
became a direct fief of the crown (1204). Poitou, Touraine
and Anjou were occupied with equal ease. These were the
most brilliant conquests that a king of France had ever
made. By way of revenge John Lackland formed a coa-
lition against France with his nephew, the Emperor Otto of
Germany, and the lords of the Netherlands. Philip col-
lected a great army, wherein the militia of the communes
had their place, and gained at Bouvines a victory which
had an immense influence throughout the whole land. This
was the first national achievement of France (1214).
Before Philip Augustus died, the French monarchy reached
the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean. The university had
been founded, the supremacy of the royal jurisdiction vin-
dicated" by the verdict of the peers against John Lackland,
254 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1193-
the kiDgdom subjected to a regular organization by division
for administrative purposes, and Paris embellished, paved
and surrounded by a wall.
In 1193 Philip had married Ingeborg of Denmark. The
morning after the wedding, he sent her away to give her
place to Agnes de Meranie. This scandal called down the
reprimand of Pope Innocent III, who long threatened " the
eldest son of the Church " before striking any blow, but
finally to conquer his resistance placed the kingdom under
an interdict. Philip understood the danger of an open
rupture with the Church. He separated from Agnes, and
took back Ingeborg in the Council of Soissons (1201).
Philip Augustus had nothing to do with the crusade
against the Albigenses.
Louis VIII (1223) and Louis IX (1226). ~ Louis YIII, who
before his accession had been invited to England by the
barons in rebellion against John, undertook a new expe-
dition into the south. He captured Avignon, Nimes, Albi
and Carcassonne, but died in an epidemic on his return
(1126). His eldest son, Louis IX, was only nine years old.
The barons endeavored to deprive the queen mother,
Blanche of Castile, of the regency. But Blanche won over
to her side the Count of Champagne and the war terminated
to the advantage of the royal house.
Henry III, King of England, headed a rebellion of the
lords of Aquitaine and Poitou. Louis, victorious at Taille-
bourg and Saintes, showed himself a generous conqueror
and thereby secured the legal possession of what he re-
tained. On condition of liege homage he consented (1259)
to restore or to leave to the king of England, Limousin,
Perigord, Quercy, Agenois, a part of Saintonge and the
duchy of Guyenne; but he kept by virtue of treaty Nor-
mandy, Touraine, Anjou, Poitou and Maine. He followed
the same principle with the king of Aragon, ceding to him
in full sovereignty the county of Barcelona, but compelling
him to renounce his rights over his fiefs in France. Louis'
virtues rendered him the arbitrator of Europe, and sur-
rounded the French royalty with a halo of sainthood. He
served as mediator between Innocent IV and Frederick II,
and between the king of England and his barons in refer-
ence to the statutes of Oxford.
We have related the story of his two crusades in Egypt
and Tunis. His domestic government aimed at putting an
1300.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 255
end to feudal disorder. In 1245 he decreed that in his do-
mains there should be a truce between offender and offended
for the space of forty days, and that the weaker might
appeal to the king. He abolished the judicial duel in his
domains. " What was formerly proved by battle shall be
proved by witnesses or documents " (1260). He conceded
a great place to the legists in the king's courts, the juris-
diction of which he extended. He fixed the standard of
the royal coinage, and was the first to summon the bur-
gesses to his council. In short his reign may be regarded
as that period of the Middle Ages most favorable to learn-
ing, art and literature, and he is well called Saint Louis.
Philip III (1270) and Philip IV the Fair (1285). — To-
gether with the body of his father, Philip III brought back
to France the cofin of his uncle Alphonse, whose death
gave to him the county of Toulouse, Rouergue and Poitou,
which were united to the royal domain. The marriage of
his eldest son, Philip IV, with the heiress of Navarre and
Champagne paved the way for the union of those provinces
to the crown of France. The Massacre of the Sicilian
Vespers (1282), which expelled the French from Sicily,
brought about a war with Aragon which was finally profit-
able to the French of Naples. The reign of Philip III is
obscure.
In 1292 a quarrel between some sailors caused difficulties
with England of which Philip IV took advantage to have
the confiscation of Guyenne declared by his Court of Peers.
The war was at first carried on in Scotland and Flanders,
one country being the ally of France and the other of Eng-
land. Philip supported the Scottish chiefs, Baliol and
Wallace, and occupied Flanders, whose count he sent to the
tower of the Louvre.
Quarrel between the King and the Pope. — To meet the
expenses of these wars and of a constantly embarrassed
government, much money was needed. Philip pillaged the
Jews, debased the coinage at his will and taxed the clergy.
Pope Boniface VIII imperiously demanded that the clergy
should be exempt. He excommunicated whatever priest
paid a tax without the order of the Holy See, and the im-
poser of such tax, " whoever they may be " (1296). Philip
retorted by forbidding any money to leave the kingdom
without his permission, thus cutting off the revenues of the
Holy See. The great jubilee of the year 1300 caused the
256 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1300-
pontiff to indulge illusions as to his power. To Philip he
sent as his legate Bernard Saisset, the bishop of Pamiers.
who seriously offended the king by his arrogance and in
consequence was arrested. The Pope immediately (1301)
launched the famous bull, Auscidta, Fill, to which Philip
made an insolent reply. But feeling the need of national
support for this conflict he convoked (1302) the first as-
sembly of the States General, where clergy, barons and
burgesses pronounced in his favor. Boniface answered this
attack by the bull, Unam sanctam, which subordinated the
temporal power to the spiritual power, and threatened to
give the throne of France to the emperor of Germany.
Thus the quarrel between the papacy and the empire
seemed repeated. This time it was of brief duration. The
weakening of the spiritual power could be measured by the
rapidity of its defeat. In a new States General the jurist
Guillaume de Nogaret accused the Pope of simony, heresy
and other crimes. Guillaume de Plasian, another jurist,
proposed that the king should himself convene a general
council and cite Boniface before it. Nogaret started for
Italy to take the person of the Pope into custody, and his
companion, the Italian Colonna, with his iron gauntlet
smote in the face the aged pontiff who died of grief (1303).
The king was powerful enough to impose upon the car-
dinals the election of one of his creatures as Benedict XI
and afterwards of Clement V. They established the Holy
See at Avignon, and began that series of Popes who re-
mained at the mercy of France for seventy years (1309-
1378). This period is called the Captivity of Babylon.
Condemnation of the Templars. — Philip obtained from
Clement V the condemnation of the memory of Boniface
and of the Order of the Knights Templar, a militia which
was devoted to the Holy See and whose immense posses-
sions tempted the king. One morning the Templars were
arrested throughout France without their offering any resist-
ance. By legal process they were accused of the most
monstrous crimes. Torture wrung from them such con-
fessions as it always extorts. The States General, convoked
at Tours, declared them worthy of death, and in 1309 fifty
four were burned. In 1314 Jacques Molay, their Grand
Master, suffered the same fate.
Insurrection of the Flemings. — While royalty was tri-
umphing over the great religious institutions of the Middle
1328.] FORMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE 261
Ages, the people were beginning their struggle against the
lords. The Flemings, driven to desperation by the extor-
tions of the governor whom Philip IV had imposed upon
them, rose in rebellion and inflicted upon the French nobil-
ity the terrible defeat of Courtray (1302). This disaster
Philip avenged by his victory of Mons-en-Puelle (1304).
Nevertheless in Flanders he retained only Lille, Douai and
Orchies.
The Last Direct Capetians (1314-1328). The Salic Law.—
Under Louis X the Quarrelsome a feudal reaction took place
against the new tendencies of royal power. The ministers
of the late king were its victims. The reign of Louis X is
remembered only for the enfranchisement, after payment,
of the serfs of the royal domain. On his death his brother
Philip V claimed the crown to the detriment of Jeanne, his
niece. He caused the States General to declare that "No
woman succeeds to the crown of France." This declaration
has been rigidly observed by the French monarchy and is
improperly called the Salic Law. Philip V also died with-
out male heirs (1322). His brother, Charles IV the Fair,
succeeded and left only a daughter. The crown was given
to a nephew of Philip IV, who founded the Valois dynasty
(1328). But Edward III of England, by his mother Isa-
bella the grandson of Philip the Fair, asserted a claim to the
throne. Hence arose the Hundred Years' War.
258 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1066-
XIII
FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION
Norman Invasion (1066). — After Canute the Great the
conflict of the Saxons and Danes in England became com-
plicated by a new element. The princes of Saxon origin,
dispossessed by the Danes, found an asylum with the Nor-
mans of France. When Edward the Confessor ascended
the throne of Alfred the Great, he invited many of these
Normans to his court and bestowed on them the principal
bishoprics. The Saxons were jealous and their leader, the
powerful Earl Godwin, succeeded in expelling the foreign-
ers. His son Harold, who succeeded to his dignities and
influence, conceived the unfortunate idea of visiting William,
Duke of Normandy. His host, having him in his power,
made him swear that he would aid William to secure the
English throne on Edward's death. When Edward died,
Harold was elected king by the wittenagemote and repu-
diated the promise wrung from him by force. William,
accusing him of perjury, undertook the conquest of England.
He had the sanction of the Holy See, which complained that
Peter's Pence was not paid. The invaders disembarked in
the south, while Harold in the north was repelling a Nor-
wegian invasion. A few days later the battle of Hastings
(1066), in which Harold perished, delivered the country to
the Normans. Nevertheless for a long time the Saxons did
not resign themselves to their defeat. The Welsh and the
Norwegians helped them to resist. In the Isle of Ely they
formed the " camp of refuge." Rather than submit many
of them became outlaws and lived in the forests, where the
Norman lords hunted them like wild beasts.
Strength of Norman Royalty in England. — William divided
England among his comrades. The secular and ecclesias-
tical domains of the Saxons were occupied by the conquerors,
many of whom had been cowherds or weavers or simple
priests on the continent, but now became lords and bishops.
Between 1080 and 1086 a register of all the properties occu-
1119.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 259
pied was drawn up. This is the famous land-roll of Eng-
land, called by the Saxons the Doomsday Book. On this
land thus divided was established the most regular feudal
body of Europe. Six hundred barons had beneath them
60,000 knights. Over all towered the king who appro-
priated 1462 manors and the principal cities and by exact-
ing the direct oath from even the humblest knights attached
every vassal closely to himself.
This fact demands consideration for the whole history of
England depends upon this partition, as does French history
upon the inverse position occupied by the first Capetians.
The English royalty, so strong on the morrow of the con-
quest, soon became oppressive and forced the barons in
self-defence to unite with the burgesses. Thus the nobles
saved their own rights only by securing those of their hum-
ble allies. In this manner by agreement between the bur-
gher middle class and the nobles English public liberty was
founded. Hence the nobility has always been popular in
England. Liberty, the dominating sentiment of England,
has created its noble institutions. The English have disre-
garded equality, to which the French sacrifice everything. In
France the oppressor was not the petty sovereign who wore
the royal crown, but feudalism. Against it the oppressed,
both king and people, united, but the chief who directed
the battle kept for himself all the profits of victory. There-
fore instead of general liberties was developed the absolute
authority of the king. Before him villeins and nobles were
equally dependent, and hence arose the common sentiment
of equality.
William II (1087). Henry I (1100). Stephen (1135). —
William the Conqueror died in 1087. William II. Eufus,
his second son, succeeded him in England and Robert, the
elder son, in Normandy. Robert tried unsuccessfully to take
England from his younger brother and then set out on the
crusade. He was still absent when William Rufus died
while hunting. Their youngest brother, Henry I, Fine
Scholar, seized the crown. When Robert attempted to assert
his rights, he was beaten at Tenchebray (1106) and Nor-
mandy was reunited to England. Louis the Fat was also
defeated, who had tried to secure that duchy at least for
Guillaume Cliton, Robert's son (1119).
Henry I intended to leave the throne to his daughter,
Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry Y and wife of
260 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1135-
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. He charged liis nephew, Stephen
of Blois, with protecting the empress, as she was called.
Stephen usurped the crown for himself and defeated the
Scotch, Matilda's allies, at the battle of the Standard.
Afterwards she took him prisoner, but it was agreed that
he should reign until his death and that his successor should
be Henry of Anjou, surnamed Plantagenet, the empress' son,
Henry II (1154). — By the renunciation of Matilda, his
mother, he received Normandy and Maine. From his father
he inherited Anjou and Touraine. Marrying Eleanor, the
divorced wife of Louis the Young, he acquired Poitiers,
Bordeaux, Agen and Limoges, together with suzerainty over
Auvergne, Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois, La Marche and
Perigord. In 1154 he ascended the throne of England at
the age of twenty-one, and finally married one of his sons
to the heiress of Brittany. This power was formidable,
but Henry II frittered it away in quarrels with his clergy
and his sons.
The clergy ever since the time of the Roman Empire
had possessed the privilege of judging itself. When an
ecclesiastic was accused, the secular tribunals could not try
the case. The ecclesiastical courts alone could i:)ronounce
judgment. In England William the Conqueror had granted
to this privilege, called the benefit of the clergy, a very wide
extension. Numerous abuses and scandalous immunity
from punishment resulted therefrom. Henry II wished
to end all this. Witli the object of awing the clergy, he
appointed as archbishop of Canterbury his chancellor,
Thomas a Becket, a Saxon by birth, and until then the
most brilliant and docile of courtiers. Becket immediately
changed character and became austere and inflexible. In
a great meeting of bishops, abbots and barons the king had
adopted the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which com-
pelled every priest accused of crime to appear before the
ordinary courts of justice, forbade any ecclesiastic to leave
the kingdom without the royal permission and intrusted to
the king the guardianship and revenues of every vacant
bishopric or benefice. Thomas a Becket opposed these
statutes and fled to Erance to avoid the wrath of his former
master. Louis VII having reconciled him to Henry, he
returned to Canterbury but would make no concessions in
the matter of ecclesiastical privileges. The patience of the
king was exhausted and he let fall hasty words which four
1215.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 261
knights interpreted as a sentence of death. They murdered
the archbishop at the foot of the altar (1170). This crime
aroused such indignation against Henry that he was forced
to abolish the Constitutions of Clarendon and do penance
on the tomb of the martyr.
He submitted to this humiliation only from fear of a
popular uprising and excommunication at the very time
when he was at war with his three eldest sons, Henry Duke
of Maine and Anjou, Richard Coeur de Lion Duke of Aqui-
taine and Geoff ry Duke of Brittany. Even his fourth son,
John Lackland, eventually joined them. Henry II passed
his last days in fighting his sons and the king of France
who upheld the rebels. In 1171 he conquered the east and
south of Ireland.
Richard (1189). John Lackland (1199). — Richard who
succeeded is that Coeur de Lion, or Lion-hearted, Avhom we
have previously seen famous in the third crusade. This
violent but brave and chivalrous prince was followed by his
brother, John Lackland, a man of many vices and destitute
even of courage. His crime in murdering his brother's son
cost him Touraine, Anjou, Maine, Normandy and Poitou,
and he foolishly renewed his father's quarrel with the
Church. Refusing to accept the prelate whom the Pope
had appointed archbishop of Canterbury, he was excom-
municated and threatened with an invasion, as Innocent III
had authorized Philip Augustus to conquer England. He
humbled himself before the Holy See, promised tribute and
acknowledged himself its vassal. Then he tried to take
revenge for all his humiliations by forming against France
the coalition which was overthrown at the battle of Rouvines.
AVhile his allies were defeated in the north, John himself
was vanquished in Poitou. On returning to his island, he
found the barons in revolt, and was forced to sign the
Magna Charta (1215).
This memorable act is the foundation of English liberty.
It guaranteed the privileges of the Church, renewed the
limits marked out under Henry I to the rights of relief,
of guardianship and marriage, which the kings had abused,
promised to impose no tax in the kingdom without the con-
sent of the great council, and lastly, established the famous
law of habeas corpus which protected individual liberty
and the jury law which assured to the accused a just trial.
A commission of twenty -five guardians was charged with super-
262 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1216-
vising the execution of this charter and with compelling a
reform of abuses. The danger past, John wished to tear up
the charter and obtained the Pope's sanction thereto. The
barons invited to England Louis, the son of Philip Augustus,
who might have become king of the country if after the
sudden death of John (1216) the barons had not preferred
a child, his son, to the powerful heir of the French crown.
Henry III (1216). — -The new reign was a long minority.
In it we constantly behold weakness, perjury, fits of violence
and every attendant circumstance to teach the nation the
necessity and the means for restraining by institutions that
royal will which was so little sure of itself. Abroad Henry
III was defeated by Saint Louis at Taillebourg and Saintes.
His brother Richard of Cornwall being elected emperor,
played a ridiculous part in Germany and one costly for
England. At home popular discontent increased at repeated
violations of Magna Gharta, at the favor shown to the rela-
tives of Queen Eleanor of Provence, who caused all the
offices to be conferred upon them, and at a real invasion of
Italian clergy sent by the Pope who monopolized all the
ecclesiastical benefices.
First English Parliament (1258). — On the eleventh of June,
1258, convened the great national council of Oxford, the
first assembly to which the name of Parliament was officially
applied. The barons forced the king to intrust the reforms
to twenty four of their number, only twelve of whom were
appointed by him. These twenty four delegates published the
statutes or provisions of Oxford. The king confirmed the
Great Charter. The twenty four annually nominated the lord
high chancellor, the lord high treasurer, the judges and other
public officials and the governors of the castles. Opposition
to their decisions was declared a capital crime. Finally Par-
liament was to be convoked every three years. Henry III
protested and appealed to the arbitration of Saint Louis who
pronounced in his favor. But the barons did not accept this
decision. They attacked the king in arms, having as their
leader a grandson of the conqueror of the Albigenses, Simon
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. They took prisoners the mon-
arch and his son Edward at the battle of Lewes (1264). Then
Leicester, governing in the name of the king whom he held
captive, organized the first complete representation of the
English nation by the ordinance of 1265, which prescribed
the election to Parliament of two knights for each county
1327.] FORMATION OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 263
and of two citizens or burgesses for each city or borough of
the said county.
Edward I (1272). — Under this prince the public liberties
were respected and the kingdom increased by the acquisi-
tion of Wales. In Scotland Edward vanquished in succession
the three champions of the independence of that country :
John Baliol at Dunbar (1296), William Wallace at Falkirk
(1298) and Kobert Bruce. But the latter gained the advan-
tage under the reign of the feeble Edward II (1307) and
by the great victory of Bannockburn (1314) secured Scottish
independence. The despicable Edward II was governed by
favorites whom the great lords expelled or sent to the scaf-
fold. He himself was put to death by his wife (1327).
Progress of English Institutions. — These convulsions con-
solidated institutions which were destined after their com-
plete development to prevent the recurrence of disorder.
Let us recapitulate these constitutional steps. In 1215
Magna Charta, the Great Charter or declaration of the pub-
lic rights, was promulgated. In 1258 the statutes of Ox-
ford established regular meetings of the great national
council, the guardian of the charter of 1215. In 1264 there
entered Parliament representatives of the petty nobility and
of the burghers, who were subsequently to form the lower
chamber or the Commons, while the barons, the immediate
vassals of the king, were to form the upper chamber or the
House of Lords. Beginning with 1295 deputies of the
counties and cities were regularly and constantly elected.
In 1309 Parliament stipulated conditions to the voting of
taxes, so that royalty, naturally extravagant, would be kept
in check and made to respect the laws. Thus in less than
a century through the union of the nobles and the burgher
class, England laid those foundations which in modern times
have so firmly upheld her fortune and guaranteed her tran-
quillity.
264 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1328-
XIV
FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR
(1388-1380)
Causes of the Hundred Years' War. — England and France,
the latter strong through the progress of the royal power,
the former through that of public liberty, were engaged in a
struggle for more than a century. This is the Hundred
Years' War, which the rashness and incapacity of the French
nobility rendered so glorious for England. As grandson of
Philip the Fair, Edward III had claims upon the crown of
France, for the Salic Law had not as yet acquired the im-
portance which it assumed later on. But at the accession
of Philip of Valois he appeared to renounce them. He even
paid him the feudal homage which was due the king of
France for the duchy of Guyenne. Nevertheless Edward
constantly cherished the hope of supplanting him. He was
encouraged therein by the fugitive Eobert of Artois, de-
spoiled of the county of Artois, and by the Flemings who,
being in need of English wool to feed their manufactures,
rebelled under the leadership of the brewer Jacques Arte-
veld against their count, the friend of France, and recognized
Edward as their legitimate king.
Hostilities in Flanders and Brittany (1337). The only fact
of importance during the first eight years of war was the
great naval victory of the English at the battle of the
Sluice (1340). Fighting was carried on chiefly in Brittany
where Charles de Blois, head of the French party, disputed
the ducal crown with Jean de Montfort supported by the
English. The death of Jacques Arteveld, killed in a pop-
ular tumult, did not take away the Flemish alliance from
England, which maintained its superiority in Flanders and
Brittany.
Battle of Crecy (1346). In 1346 the fighting became more
serious. Edward invaded France and penetrated to the
heart of Normandy, expecting to march upon Paris. The
1356.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS^ WAR 265
lack of provisions forced him to turn northward and ap-
proach Flanders. Philip of Valois although commanding
60,000 men could not prevent his passage of the Seine
and Somme, but gave battle near Crecy at the head of
tired and undisciplined troops. The English army, not
half so numerous, was well placed upon a height supplied
with cannon which then for the first time were seen in
battle, and was covered by a dense line of skilful archers.
The French chivalry, thrown at random against this strong
position, were riddled with arrows and strewed the field of
battle with their dead. Edward though victorious con-
tinued his retreat upon Calais, which he captured after a
year's siege, and which the English held for two centuries.
He obtained at the same time important advantages in Scot-
land and Brittany. David Bruce was made prisoner at
Nevil Cross and Charles de Blois at Eoche Derien.
John the Good (1350). Battle of Poitiers (1356). — At the
accession of John the Good, France was already in a sad
state. Calais and a great battle had been lost. Charles the
Bad, king of Navarre, was intriguing to assert rights to the
throne which he claimed to inherit from his mother, Jeanne
d'Evreux. The States General convoked in 1355 raised
pretensions which recalled and exceeded the Great Charter
of England. They pretended to collect the public dues
through their agents, to superintend the expenditures and
to impose their orders on every one. The nobles refused to
submit to the impost and formed a plot in which Charles
the Bad was the leader. John arrested many of the con-
spirators at a banquet at the very table of his own son
Charles, and struck off their heads. The English judged
the occasion fayorable. Edward sent the Duke of Lan-
caster to Normandy, and the Black Prince to Guyenne. The
latter advanced toward the Loire. After devastating the
country he retreated, but found his road cut off by King
John, who with 50,000 men completely surrounded his
little army. But skilful measures taken by the prince
upon the hillock of Maupertuis near Poitiers, and the usual
rashness of the French nobles gave him a most brilliant
victory. The king himself was captured.
French Attempt at Reforms. The Jacquerie. — The great
disasters of Crecy and Poitiers, caused by the incapacity of
kings, generals and nobles, brought about a popular commo-
tion. As the king and the great majority of the lords were
266 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1356-
prisoners, the nation took in hand the guidance of public
affairs. The States General, convened by the Dauphin
Charles, expressed their will through Etienne Marcel, provost
of the merchants for the Third Estate, through the Bishop
of Laon for the clergy, and through the Lord of Vermandois
for the nobility. Before granting any subsidy, they de-
manded the removal and trial of the principal officers of
finance and justice, and the establishment of a council,
chosen from the three orders, and charged with the direc-
tion of the government. The States became bolder still.
They established a commission of thirty-six members to
superintend everything, and caused the Great Ordinance of
Reformation to be issued. Thereby they asserted their
right to levy and expend the taxes, to reform justice and
control the coinage. Even a mild political reform was
dangerous in the face of the victorious English. Moreover
this ordinance, accomplished by a few intelligent deputies,
was neither the work nor even the desire of Erance. Not a
single arm outside Paris Avas raised in its support. The
revolution seemed only a Parisian riot. When the dauphin
tjied to escape from the obligations imposed upon him,
Etienne Marcel assassinated his two ministers, the marshals
of Champagne and Normandy, before his very eyes. Such
acts of violence discredited the popular movement, which
was furthermore disgraced by the excesses of the mob or
the Jacquerie. Finally Marcel, forced to seek other support,
was on the point of delivering Paris to Charles the Bad,
when the plot was discovered. He was killed and his party
fell with him.
Treaty of Bretig^ny (1360). — The dauphin, being rid of
Marcel, signed a treaty with Charles the Bad and re-
mained sole master. With the consent of the States he
repudiated the disastrous treaty which John, weary of his
captivity, had just concluded and agreed to that of Bretigny
which was slightly less onerous. Thereby Edward re-
nounced his claim to the crown of France, but received thir-
teen provinces in direct sovereignty. Dying in 1364, John
ended a reign equally fatal in peace or war. The duchy of
Burgundy had escheated to the crown, the first ducal house
having become extinct. Instead of joining it to the national
domain, John alienated it in favor of his fourth son, Philip
the Bold. Thus he founded a second ducal house which on
two occasions came near destroying the kingdom.
1380.] FIRST PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 267
Charles V (1364-1380) and Duguesclin.— This Charles the
Wise rescued France from the abyss of misery. He al-
lowed the foreign invasion to waste itself in the ravaged
provinces, and shut up his troops in the strongholds, whence
they harassed the enemy and rendered it impossible for
them to obtain fresh supplies. Duguesclin, a petty gentle-
man of Brittany, whom he had taken into his service and
whom he afterwards appointed constable of France, by the
victory of Cocherel (1364) rid him of Charles the Bad. He
also delivered the country from the " free companies/' lead-
ing them to the succor of the king of Castile, Henry de
Transtamara, against his brother, Pedro the Cruel, whom
the English were supporting and whom he subsequently
overthrew (1369).
In 1369 the Gascons, irritated by the extortions of the
Black Prince, appealed against him to Charles V, the feudal
suzerain of the duchy of Aquitaine. The king caused the
Court of Peers to declare this great fief confiscated. This
was a declaration of war. Charles V was ready, but Edward
was not. Nevertheless a powerful English army disem-
barked at Calais. It marched through France as far as
Bordeaux, but found itself reduced on the way to 6000
men. When the Prince of Wales died in 1376 and Edward
III in 1377, almost the entire fruit ot their victories
was already lost. Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais alone re-
mained in the hands of the English.
Charles was equally skilfid and equally fortunate against
Charles the Bad, from whom he took Montpellier and
Evreux. He failed however in the attempt to unite
Brittany to the royal domain. Influenced by the memories
of his youth, he avoided assembling the States General.
Still he strengthened Parliament by permitting it to fill
vacancies in its own body. He favored letters which had
Froissart, the inimitable chronicler, as their principal repre-
sentative. He also began the Koyal Library, which under
him numbered 900 volumes. He died in 1380.
268 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1380-1405.
XV
SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR
(1380-1453)
Charles VI. — Internal troubles almost suspended the
struggle between France and England for thirty-five years.
During the minority of Charles VI his uncles wrangled over
the regency, and the people of Paris beat the tax collectors
to death. E-ouen, Chalons, Reims, Troyes and Orleans
joined in a communal movement which started from
Flanders, but which was put down by the French nobility
at the bloody battle of Roosebec. The Flemish leader,
Philip van Arteveld, was there slain. The princes learned
no lessons from these events. Squandering of the public
funds and disorders of every sort continued. Suddenly the
young king lost his reason and was lucid afterwards only at
rare intervals. His uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, and his
brother, the Duke of Orleans, disputed the control of
affairs. The former, surnamed John the Fearless, decided
the matter by assassinating his rival.
The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. — The Count of
Armagnac, father-in-law of the new duke of Orleans, headed
the faction to which a portion of the nobility adhered and
which took his name. The Duke of Burgundy was sup-
ported by the cities. A civil war broke out marked by
abominable cruelties. John the Fearless flattered Paris
and specially the mob whose ferocious passions he allowed
full play. The butcher Caboche deluged the city with the
blood of the Armagnacs, or of those who were called so.
The duke encouraged this hideous demagoguery. However,
the shrewd men of the party and the University devised
the Cabochian Ordinance for the reform of the kingdom.
This sagacious code was of brief continuance. Two years
later the Hundred Years' War began again.
Wicliffe. — A general effervescence was then agitating
Western Europe. Everywhere the people were chafing
SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 209
against a social order which overwhelmed them with
miseries. In the cities the bnrghers, enriched by their
small beginnings in manufactures and commerce, wished
to secure their property from the caprice and violence of
the great. Some even laid presumptuous hands on the
things of the Church.
In 1366 Pope Urban V demanded from England 33,000
marks, arrears of the tribute which John Lackland had
promised to the Holy See. Parliament refused payment;
and a monk, John Wicliffe, took advantage of the popular
indignation to attack in the name of apostolic equality the
whole hierarchy of the Church. In the name of the Gospel
he also assailed such dogmas, sacraments and rites as were
not found expressly stated in the New Testament. His
translation of the Bible into English rapidly disseminated
those ideas which Lollard, burned at Cologne in 1322, had
already taught.
One of Wicliffe's partisans even drew political conse-
quences from his doctrine. John Ball went about through
the cities and towns, saying to the poor : —
" When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman ? "
Dangerous thoughts were fermenting everywhere. They
existed in the minds of those who, about this same time,
were exciting the riots of Rouen, Reims, Chalons, Troyes and
Paris and the insurrection of the White Caps in Flanders.
Thus premonitory signs always herald great storms. The
unthinking protests of the fourteenth century against
mediaeval double feudalism, the secular and the religious,
announced the deliberate revolt of Luther and Calvin in
the sixteenth in the realm of faith, of Descartes in the
seventeenth in philosophy, and of the whole world in the
eighteenth in politics.
Richard II (1380). — One year after the accession of
Richard II, son of the Black Prince, 60,000 men marched
to the gates of London, demanding the abolition of serfdom,
the liberty to buy and sell in the markets and fairs and,
what was more unreasonable, the reduction of rents to a
uniform standard. They were put off with fair promises.
After they had dispersed, 1500 of them were hanged and
everything went on as before.
The young king had three ambitious and greedy uncles.
270 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1397-1422.
They stirred up opposition to him. He rid himself of the
most turbulent, the Duke of Gloucester, by assassination.
Many nobles were slain or exiled, and England bowed her
head in terror. Henry of Lancaster, a descendant of a third
son of Edward III, and then in exile, organized a vast con-
spiracy. Richard was deserted by all and deposed by Par-
liament " for having violated the laws and privileges of the
nation." So, thus early, England through her Parliament
had already succeeded in forming a x^eople and in resuming
the ancient idea of national rights superior to dynastic
rights. The next year Richard was assassinated in prison.
Henry IV. Battle of Agincourt (1415). Treaty of Troyes
(1420). — Henry IV devoted his reign of fourteen years to
settling the crown securely in his house. On his death-bed
he advised his son to recommence the war against France,
so as to occupy the turbulent barons. In 1415 Henry V
renewed at Agincourt the laurels of Crecy and Poitiers.
This defeat, again due to the rashness of the nobility, over-
turned the Armagnac government. The Burgundians re-
entered Paris, which they again deluged with blood. After
the English archers and men-at-arms had safely placed their
booty on the other side of the Strait, they returned to the
quarry, pillaging Normandy systematically and capturing
its cities one after the other. In 1419 Rouen fell into their
hands. The assassination of John the Fearless at the bridge
of Montereau also served their interests. This murder,
authorized by the dauphin, threw the new duke of Bur-
gundy, Philip the Good, into the English party. Henry V,
once master of Paris and of the person of Charles VI, caused
himself by the treaty of Troyes to be acknowledged as heir
to the king, the daughter of whom he married. This lady
was to avenge France by transmitting to the son whom she
bore to Henry V the imbecility of his French grandfather.
Charles VII and Joan of Arc. — Henry and Charles both
died in 1422. They were succeeded by two kings in France,
the English infant Henry VI at Paris, and the Valois
Charles VII south of the Loire.
The little court of the latter, whom the English derisively
called king of Bourges, cared only for pleasure and gayety.
The constable of Richemont sought in vain to rouse the
king from his unworthy occupations. Meanwhile petty de-
feats chased his armies from Burgundy and Normandy.
Bedford, the English regent, managed affairs skilfully and
SECOND PERIOD OF THE HUNDRED YEARS^ WAR 271
in 1428 laid siege to Orleans the key of the south. The
disgraceful battle of the Herrings completed the discourage-
ment of the French party, and Charles VII was contem-
plating retreat to the extreme south when Joan of Arc made
her appearance.
This peasant girl, born at Domremy on the frontier of
Lorraine, presented herself at court, claiming that it was
her mission to deliver Orleans and crown the king. Her
virtues, her enthusiasm and her conviction inspired confi-
dence. The most valiant captains threw themselves into
Orleans, following in her train. Ten days later the English
after several defeats evacuated their camp. Next she won
the battle of Patay, where the English commander Talbot
was captured, and conducted the king to Reims, where
he was crowned. Believing her wonderful mission accom-
plished, she wished to return home but was dissuaded. In
May, 1430, while defending Compiegne, she fell into the
hands of the Burgundians, who sold their prisoner to the
English for 10,000 francs. Tried and condemned for witch-
craft, she was burned alive at Rouen on May 30, 1431.
Success and Reforms of Charles VII. — This crime marked
the close of English good fortune. Affected by French
reverses, the Duke of Burgundy remembered that he was a
Frenchman and abandoned the English. His defection was
profitable for himself, as he obtained several cities and coun-
ties, as well as exemption from all homage. Thus he became
king in fact in his fiefs. In the following year Paris opened
her gates to Charles VII. Transformed by his many mis-
fortunes and ably supported by the Chancellor Juvenal, the
silversmith Jacques Coeur, the artilleryman Bureau, and
the soldiers Dunois, Lahire and Xaintrailles, he triumphed
everywhere. In 1444 the English, through the influence
of the Cardinal of Winchester who headed the peace party,
concluded a truce of two years with France, and sealed it
by the marriage of Henry VI with Margaret of Anjou. At
the same time Charles VII put down a rebellion of the
nobles, who were alarmed at the progress of his authority,
and had the Bastard of Bourbon tied up in a sack and
thrown into the water. By the creation of a permanent
army, he dealt a death-blow at feudal power. This army
comprised fifteen companies of 100 lances each and of
free archers. The States of Orleans suggested the idea
and voted a perpetual tax of 10,200,000 francs for the pur-
272 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1450-1453.
pose. In consequence of this strictly national force, Charles
was no longer dependent on the mercenaries and highway-
men who devastated, rather than defended, France.
Soon he found himself strong enough to finish with the
English. By the battle of Formigny (1450) he drove
them from Normandy, and by that of Castillon (1453) from
Guyenne. They retained only Calais. So ended the Hun-
dred Years' War, which had heaped so many calamities upon
France. It had strengthened public liberty in England and
enforced the dependence upon Parliament of victorious kings
who needed money and men for their expeditions. While
it continued, the two peoples advanced farther in the differ-
ent paths which we have seen them enter. Amid the ruins
of France royalty was finding absolute power. Despite
their triumphs of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the Eng-
lish kings learned submission to Parliament and the law.
Copyright. 1898. by T. Y. Crowell St. Co
Eflgfaied by Colton. Oilman & Co.. N. Y.
A.D. 1250-1300.] SPAm AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 273
XVI
SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250 T.O 1453
Intermission of the Spanish Crusade. Domestic Troubles.
— The Moors were now crowded upon the Alpuj arras as the
Christians had formerly been upon the Pyrenees. Instead
of continuing the struggle and driving them into the sea, the
Spanish kings forgot the conflict which had made their fort-
une, and yielded to the temptation of meddling in Euro-
pean affairs.
Navarre, which had been unable to increase its territory
in the religious wars, looked northward toward France, and
gave itself to the Capetians when its heiress married Philip
the Fair.
Alphonso X, king of Castile, wished to be emperor of
Germany. While he wasted his money in this vain candi-
dacy, the rival houses of Castro, Lara and Haro kept the
kingdom in turmoil and even sought aid from the Moors.
Threatened with insurrection, the king himself solicited the
support of the African Merinides. The nation deposed
him and put in his place his second son, Don Sancho, a
brave soldier (1282). Nevertheless Alphonso X was sur-
named the Wise. He knew astronomj^, and published a
code wherein he tried to introduce the right of representa-
tion, prevalent in the feudal system, but not in Spain.
Sancho availed himself of the ancient law and claimed
the succession in preference to his nephews, sons of his
deceased elder brother. Therefrom troubles ensued with
the king of France, uncle of the dispossessed young princes.
The stormy minorities of Ferdinand IV and Alphonso XI
saw disorders again in Castile. The latter prince, however,
rendered himself illustrious by the great victory of Eio
Salado over the Merinide invasion and by the capture of
Algiers. After him Pedro the Cruel and his brother,
Henry II of Transtamara, disputed the throne. By the aid
of Duguesclin Transtamara succeeded, after he had himself
stabbed his brother in his tent. Henry III vainly tried to
274 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1410.
repress the Castilian nobility, who under John II and
Henry IV tyrannized over the country and court. Eoyalty
became independent only about the close of the fifteenth
century under Isabella and Ferdinand the Catholic, as we
shall see later on.
While the energies of Castile were dissipated in civil
dissensions, Aragon acquired Roussillon, Cerdagne and the
lordship of Montpellier, and interfered in the affairs of the
Albigenses. It also gained Sicily after the Sicilian Ves-
pers, which it retained despite the stipulations of the treaty
of Anagni, and added Sardinia to its dominions. In 1410
the glorious house of Barcelona became extinct. Its various
crowns passed to a prince of Castile, who left two sons :
Alphonso V, who became king of the Two Sicilies through
his adoption by Joanna of Naples ; and John II, who for a
time united Navarre and Aragon by poisoning his son-in-
law, Don Carlos of Viana. To Ferdinand, the successor of
this monster, it was reserved to accomplish the unity and
grandeur of Spain by his marriage with Isabella of Castile.
The feudal system never was really established in Castile.
Amid the risks of a desperate struggle against the Moors,
the nobles and cities, fighting separately, acquired inde-
pendence and fortified themselves in their castles or behind
their walls. Many of these cities obtained fueros, or
charters of liberty, and the king merely placed an officer or
regidor in them for general supervision. But three distinct
classes existed in Castile : the ricos hombres or great
landed proprietors ; the caballeros or hidalgos, or petty
nobles, exempt from imposts on condition of serving on
horseback ; the pecheros or taxpayers who formed the
burgher class. As every one had fought in the Holy War,
there were no serfs as in feudal countries and the gulf be-
tween the classes was less profound than elsewhere. Be-
ginning with 1169 the deputies of the cities were admitted
to the Cortes, the national parliament.
Aragon had more of the feudal system, perhaps because
of the former Carlovingian domination in the Marches of
Barcelona. The ricos hombres received baronies, which
they divided up and sub-enfeoffed. Next were the mes-
naderos or lesser vassals, the infanzones or plain gentlemen,
and the commoners. These four orders were represented
in the Cortes. But Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia had
their separate cortes. The royal authority was greatly
A.D. 1385-1434.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM -1250-1453 21 o
hampered by the jurisdiction of the justiza or grand justi-
ciary.
Portugal at the extremity of Europe opened out new
ways for herself. John I, head of the house of Avis
which succeeded the extinct house of Burgundy, maintained
the independence of Portugal against the pretensions of
Castile by the victory of Aljubarotta (1385). He then
turned the attention of his people toward Africa and in
1415 conquered Ceuta. This expedition taught his youngest
son, Henry, that Portugal, shut off from the land by Castile,
had no future except toward the sea. He established him-
self in the village of Sagres on Cape Vincent, summoned
mariners and geographers, founded there a naval academy,
and at last launched his navigators upon the ocean. In
1417 they discovered Porto Santo, one of the Madeira Is-
lands, where the prince planted vines from Cyprus and
sugar-canes from Sicily. Pope Martin V granted him
sovereignty over all the lands which should be discovered
from the Canary Isles as far as the Indies, with plenary
indulgence for whoever should lose their lives in these
expeditions. Zeal redoubled. In 1434 Cape Bojador was
passed, then Cape Blancho and Cape Verde. The Azores
were discovered. They were on the road to the Cape of
Good Hope, which the Portuguese Vasco de Gama was to
sail round half a century later.
The Kingdom of Naples under Charles of Anjou (1265). —
In the strife for universal dominion which the chiefs of
Christendom, the Pope and the Emperor, had waged, Italy,
the theatre and the victim of the struggle, could not attain
independence. When the empire and the papacy declined,
she seemed at last about to control her own destiny. Such
however was not the case. Her old habits continued of
intestine discords and of mixing strangers with her quarrels.
She repeated the spectacle once presented by the turbulent
cities of ancient Greece. She was covered with republics,
waging incessant war with each other, and yet she shone
with a vivid glow of civilization that was the first revival
of letters and arts.
The death of Frederick II (1250) marked the end of the
German domination in Italy. But he left a son at Naples,
Manfred, who, strong by his talents, his alliance with the
podestats of Lombardy and the aid of the Saracens of
Lucera at first braved the ill-will of the Pope. Alexander
276 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1265-1310.
IV had, it is true, been driven from Rome by Brancaleone,
who had restored momentarily the Roman republic.
Urban IV, resolved to extirpate "the race of vipers,"
had recourse to foreign aid. He bestowed the crown of
Naples upon Charles of Anjou, the brother of Saint Louis,
on condition of his doing homage to the Holy See, paying
an annual tribute of 8000 ounces of gold and ceding Bene-
ventum. In addition to this Charles swore never to join
to this kingdom the imperial crown, Lombardy or Tuscany
(1265). The excommunicated Manfred was vanquished and
slain, and the Pope's legate caused his body to be thrown
into the Garigliano. Conradin, a grandson of Frederick
II, came from Germany to claim his paternal inheritance.
Beaten and captured at Tagliacozzo, he was beheaded by
order of Charles of Anjou, together with his friend Fred-
erick of Austria. With him the glorious house of Suabia
became extinct.
The conqueror strengthened his power in the kingdom of
Naples by executions. Despite his promises he ruled over
most of Italy under the various titles of imperial vicar,
senator of Rome and pacificator. He dreamed of a fortune
still more vast and meditated restoring for his own benefit
the Latin empire of Constantinople, which had recently
fallen. After being diverted for a time from this project by
the Tunisian crusade (1270) and by the opposition of Greg-
ory X and Nicholas III, he was at last about to put it into
execution when the massacre of the Sicilian Vespers (1282)
gave Sicily to Peter III, king of Aragon, one of the accom-
plices in the great conspiracy of which the physician Pro-
cida was the head. Then began the punishment of this
ambitious and pitiless man. Admiral Roger de Loria
burned his fleet. His son Charles the Lame was captured
in another naval battle, and the king of France, his ally,
was repulsed from Aragon. The treaty of 1288 secured
Sicily to a son of the Aragonese. In 1310 Pope Clement
V compensated the house of Anjou by placing one of its
members upon the throne of Hungary.
Italian Republics. Guelphs and Ghibellines. — During
this conflict in the south the little states of the north,
freed from both the German and the Sicilian domination,
were engaged in continual revolutions. The government
passed in Lombardy into tyrannies ; in Tuscany into democ-
racies ; in Venetia into aristocracies ; in Romagna into all
A.D. 1297-1348.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 277
these various systems. In 1297 Venice declared that only
the noble families of councillors then in office were eligible
for the Great Council. This measure was shortly afterward
crowned by the completion of the Golden Book, or register
of Venetian nobility, and the establishment of the Council
of Ten. In 1282 Florence raised the Minor Arts, or infe-
rior trades, almost to the level of the Major Arts b}^ setting
up an executive council composed of the chiefs of all the
Arts. This was to the disadvantage of the nobles, who
could be admitted to public eiMployments only on renounc-
ing their rank. A little later the population was divided
into twenty companies, under a like number of gonfaloniers
or standard-bearers commanded by one supreme gonfalonier.
The majority of the Tuscan cities adopted this organization
with little change. So, too, did Genoa. But this was not a
source of harmony. Genoa, which disputed Pisa's rights
to Corsica and Sardinia, destroyed the military force of the
Pisans in the decisive battle of Melloria (1284). The un-
happy defeated city was at once attacked by all Tuscany.
It resisted for a while and intrusted all power to the too
famous Ugolino. When he had perished together with his
four children in the Hunger Tower, prostrate Pisa was able
to exist only by renouncing every ambition. Florence then
controlled all Tuscany, but she turned her arms against her
own breast. Under the name of Ghibellines and Guelphs
her factions carried on a relentless war. Dante 1:he great
Florentine poet, the father of the Italian language, in exile
lamented these dissensions and sought everywhere for some
power capable of restoring peace to Italy. He found it
neither in the papacy, then captive at Avignon, nor in the
emperor to whom Italy was simply a source of profit.
Henry VII, Louis of Bavaria, John of Bohemia, extorted
what they could from the unhappy land.
The tribune Rienzi, filled with classic memories which
were then reviving, tried to restore liberty to Eome (1347)
and to render her the protectress of Italian independence.
He set up a so-called Good State, but this merely ephemeral
enthusiasm was powerless to overcome local passions, or the
terror caused by the horrible black pest or the Plague of
Florence which Boccaccio has described in his Decameron
(1348). At the instigation of the papal legate he was
massacred by that very populace of Eome by whom he had
been so often applauded.
278 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1378-1453.
Return of the Papacy to Rome (1378) . The Principalities. —
The revolution of 1347 warned the papacy of the discontent
caused by its absence. It finally returned to Eome in 1378.
Stripped of the power and prestige which it had formerly
possessed, it was incapable of giving rest to revolutionary
Italy. In Florence there were constant troubles between
the Major Arts or upper class, led by the Albizzi, and the
Minor Arts, led by the Medici. Hostile to both were the
ciompi or petty tradesmen. The latter put Michael Lendo,
a wool-carder, at their head, who seized the power but was
unable to retain it. The commercial rivals, Venice and
Genoa, were waging against each other the so-called war
of Chiozza, which Venice, at first besieged in her own lagoons,
finally terminated by the destruction of the Genoese marine.
She also subdued Padua and Vincenza, but did not ruin them
as Florence had done to Pisa, destroying it from top to
bottom.
In Lombardy skilful leaders took advantage of civil dis-
cords and converted the republics into principalities. Thus
did Matteo Visconti at Milan, Cane della Scala at Verona
and Castruccio Castracani at Lucca. In 1396 Gian Galeozzo
Visconti bought from the Emperor Wenceslas the titles of
duke of Milan and count of Pavia, with supreme authority
over twenty-six Lombard cities. The condottieri, or merce-
naries, another scourge of Italy, handed over everything to
the first adventurer who was able to lead or pay them. A
former peasant, Sforza Attendolo, became a mercenary,
entered the service of Philip Marie Visconti, married his
daughter and at his death seized the duchy of Milan (1450).
Northern Italy was falling under the sword of a mercenary.
Florence bowed her head beneath the yardstick of an opulent
merchant, Cosmo de Medicis, who supplanted the Albizzi.
With the support of that same Sforza, whose banker he was,
he established in his city an analogous system, though less
despotic and more brilliant than that of Milan. The cry
for liberty which the Roman Porcaro lifted in the peninsula
in 1453 found no echo.
The Aragonese at Naples. — As far as the welfare of Italy
was concerned, there was nothing to hope for from the Nea-
politan kingdom, itself a prey to endless wars of pretenders.
Against the guilty Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Urban VI
summoned Charles of Durazzo, the son of the king of Hungary,
and offered him the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Joanna
A.D. 1381-1442.] SPAIN AND ITALY FROM 1250-1453 279
recognized as lier successor Duke Louis of the second house
of Anjou. Charles, victorious in 1381, smothered Joanna
under a mattress. For a time he exercised an important
influence over Italy. But when he died in Hungary, the
Kingdom of Naples relapsed into anarchy, fought over by
the princes of Anjou, Hungary and Aragon. Alphonso V of
Aragon, who was adopted by Joanna II, finally prevailed
(1442).
Brilliancy of Letters and Arts. — Despite her wretched
political condition, Italy shone in her letters, arts, manu-
factures and commerce. Her language, already formed at
the court of Frederick II, became fixed under the pen of
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. She welcomed the Greek
fugitives. Her learned men, Petrarch, Chrysoloras, Braccio-
lini and Leonardo Bruni, gave the signal for the search after
manuscripts and the revival of ancient letters. Nicholas Y
founded the Vatican library ; Cosmo de Medicis founded tlie
Medicean library, and had Plato commentated by Marcilio
Ficino. Venice had her church of Saint Mark (1071) ; Pisa
her famous cathedral (1063), her Baptistery (1152), her lean-
ing tower (1174), her gallery of the Campo Santo (1278) ;
Florence, her churches of Santa Croce, of Santa Maria Del
Fiore, and that wonderful cathedral of i3runelleschi, opposite
which Michael Angelo wished to be buried. Cimabue, Giotto,
and Masaccio were creating painting.
At the end of the thirteenth century Venice had 35,000
sailors and monopolized the commerce of Egypt, while
Genoa controlled that of Asia Minor, the Dardanelles
and the Black Sea. Milan was a great industrial city in
the middle of a rich country. Florence manufactured
80,000 pieces of cloth a year, and Verona one-fourth as
many. Canals fertilized Lombardy. Banks put money
in circulation. No other European state was so advanced
in civilization, but no country was so divided. Conse-
quently it possessed much wealth to excite the greed of
foreigners, but not a citizen or a soldier to defend it.
280 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1250-1278.
XVII
GERMANY. THE SCANDINAVIAN, SLAVIC AND TURKISH
STATES
(1350-1453)
The Interregnum. The House of Hapsburg (1272). — In-
stead of employing its forces to organize Germany, the
imperial authority had worn itself out in Italy. After the
death of Frederick II, the former country endured twenty-
three years of anarchy (1250-1273). This is called the
Great Interregnum. The throne, disdained by the German
princes and sought by such foreign or feeble competitors as
William of Holland, Richard of Cornwall and Alphonso X of
Castile, was practically vacant. While the supreme author-
ity was thus eclipsed, the kings of Denmark, Poland, and
Hungary and the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy,
shook off the yoke of imperial suzerainty. The petty nobil-
ity and the cities ceased payment of their dues. The lords
built donjons which became lairs of bandits. To protect
their possessions against violence, the lesser lords formed
confederations and so did the cities. About the same time
the Hanseatic League came into existence. This confedera-
tion had Liibeck, Cologne, Brunswick and Dantzic as its
headquarters, and its chief counting houses were London,
Bruges, Berghen and Novgorod. In the country districts
many serfs acquired liberty or sought an asylum in the
suburbs of the cities.
The great interregnum ceased with the election of Ru-
dolph of Hapsburg, an impoverished lord who did not seem
formidable to the electors (1273). Abandoning Italy
which he called the lion's den, he centred his attention upon
Germany. He defeated and slew on the Marchfeld (1278)
Ottocar II, King of Bohemia, who refused him homage.
He annulled many grants made by successors of Frederick
II, forbade private wars, made the states of Franconia,
Suabia, Bavaria and Alsace take an oath to keep the public
A.D. 1308-1414.] GERMANY 281
peace of the empire. He founded the power of his house
by investing his sons, Albert and Rudolph, with the duchies
of Austria, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola.
Switzerland (1315). — The Hapsburgs had lands in Swit-
zerland, and their bailiffs were hard upon the mountaineers.
In 1307 the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden united
to end this oppression. To this period attaches the heroic
legend of William Tell. Albert was assassinated by his
nephew at the passage of the Ileuss when about to give
the confederates battle. Leopold, Duke of Austria, lost the
fight at Morgarten (1315), where the Swiss laid the founda-
tions of their independence and of their military renown.
The three original cantons were joined by Lucerne, Zurich,
Glaris, Zug and Berne (1332-1353). The victories of Sem-
pach (1386) and of Nsefels (1388) consolidated Helvetian
liberty.
Powerlessness of the Emperors. — The German princes who
now disposed of the crown desired to give it only to penni-
less nobles, so that the emperor should not be able to call
them to account. For this reason they elected Henry VII
of Luxemburg (1308). Louis IV of Bavaria belonged to a
stronger house but, excommunicated by Pope John XXII
and threatened by the then all powerful king of France,
he was on the point of resigning a title which brought him
only annoyance. Then the princes, ashamed of the situa-
tion forced upon the man of their choice, drew up the Prag-
matic Sanction of Frankfort, which declared that the Pope
had no rights whatever over the empire or over the em-
peror. The reign of Charles IV (1346-1378) is remarkable
only for the greed of that needy prince, who made money
out of everything, " plucking and peddling out the imperial
eagle like a huckster at a fair." Nevertheless Germany
owes him the Golden Bull, which determined the imperial
elective system. It named seven Electors, three of them
ecclesiastics, the archbishops of Mayence, Cologne and
Treves, and four laymen, the king of Bohemia, the Count
Palatine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Branden-
burg (1356).
Wenceslas disgraced the imperial throne by ignoble vices,
and was deposed in 1400. Under Sigismund the Council
of Constance assembled and the Hussite War broke out.
The council was convened in 1414 to reform the Church
and to terminate the schism which had arisen from the
282 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1414-1444.
simultaneous election of two popes, one at Rome and the
other at Avignon. It barely attained the second object
and failed in the first. It sent to the stake John Huss,
rector of the University of Prague. He had attacked the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, auricular confession and the use of
images in worship. His followers, called the Hussites,
revolted under the leadership of a blind general, John
Zisca. All Bohemia was aflame and for fifteen years peo-
ple religiously cut one another's throats !
At the death of Sigismund (1438) the Hapsburgs again
ascended the imperial throne, which they occupied until
1806. Albert II died in 1439 while fighting the Ottoman
Turks, and his posthumous son Ladislas inherited only
Bohemia and Hungary. But Frederick, another Austrian
prince of the Styrian branch, succeeded to the empire
(1452). He was the last emperor who went to Rome for
coronation. However the resonant title did not confer
even the shadow of power. The head of the empire had
as emperor neither revenues nor domains nor military
forces nor judicial authority, except in rare cases. His
right to veto the decisions of the Diet was generally a
mockery. The Diet, divided into the three colleges of the
electors, the princes and the cities, was the real govern-
ment of Germany. Still it governed as little as possible,
and did in reality govern very little the seven or eight hun-
dred states of which the empire was composed.
Hungary, then the bulwark of Europe against the Otto-
man Turks, was attached to the German political system.
Under the reign of Sigismund it had been united for a
brief period to Austria, but became separated therefrom
under Ladislaus, king of Poland, who was defeated and
slain by the Ottomans at Varna (1444). John Hunyadi,
voevode of Transylvania and regent of the kingdom, for
a long time held the Mussulmans in check.
Union of Calmar (1397). — Scandinavia comprised the
three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These
countries, whence the pagan Northmen had set out, were
converted in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Denmark
was powerful under Canute the Great, who reigned also
over England, and under the two brothers, Canute VI and
Waldemar the Victorious (1182-1241) who conquered Hol-
stein and Nordalbingia. Waldemar had large revenues, a
fine navy and a numerous army. He published the Code
A.D. 1254-1466.] GERMANY 283
of Scania. Danish students went^ in quest of learning to
the University of Paris. Later on Sweden in turn became
powerful under the dynasty of the Folkungs, who founded
Stockholm (1254). Norway suffered from long continued
disturbances, due to the elective character of its monarchy
which became hereditary only in 1263.
In 1397 under Margaret the Great, daughter of the
Danish Waldemar III, it was stipulated by the Union of
Calmar that the three northern kingdoms should form a
permanent union, each retaining its own legislation, consti-
tution and senate. This union, the condition of their
greatness and security, unhappily did not last. After the
death of the " Semiramis of the North" (1412), it was
weakened by the rebellion of Schleswig and Holstein and
was broken in 1448 by Sweden, which then gave itself a
king of its own. Denmark and Norway remained united.
Power of Poland. — The Slavic states between the Bal-
tic and the Black Sea furnish very little to history before
the ninth century. The Poles on the banks of the Vistula
and Oder had as their first duke Piast, the founder of a
dynasty which reigned for a time under the suzerainty of
the German empire. Boreslav I the Brave (922) declared
himself independent and assumed the title of king. Boles-
lav III the Victorious (1102-1138) subdued the Pomera-
nians. But after him Silesia withdrew. The Knights of
the Teutonic Order were called to succor Poland against
the Borussi or Prussians, an idolatrous tribe which sacri-
ficed human beings. They established a new state between
the Vistula and the Niemen, which became a dangerous
enemy. Poland was compelled to cede to it Pomerelia
and Dantzic. She indemnified herself under Casimir the
Great by the conquest of Eed Russia, Volhynia and Podolia
and extended her frontiers as far as the Dnieper (1333-
1370). Yet under this sagacious prince the pacta conventa
took its rise. This was a system of capitulations imposed
by the nobility on new kings, and destined to become a
source of that anarchy which finally delivered Poland to
her enemies. The election to the throne of Jagellon, Grand
Duke of Lithuania, in 1386, rendered Poland the dominant
state of Eastern Europe. From the Knights of the Teutonic
Order he seized many provinces, and by the Treaty of Thorn
their dominions were reduced to eastern Prussia (1466).
The Mongols in Russia. — Russia, which absorbed a
284 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES [a.d. 1223-1395.
great part of Poland later on, had as yet done little. We
have seen how the l^orthmen pirates led by Rurik entered
the service of the powerful city of Novgorod, which they
eventually occupied as masters (^^2). Gradually spreading
out, they descended the Dnieper, to seek at Constantinople
lucrative service or adventure. In the eleventh century
the grand principality of Kief was already a respectable
power. In the twelfth the supremacy passed to the grand
principality of Vladimir. In the following century Russia
was invaded by the Mongols of Genghis Khan, who in 1223
fought a battle in which six Russian princes perished.
Baty captured Moscow in 1237 and advanced as far as
Novgorod. The grand principality of Kief ceased to
exist; that of Vladimir paid tribute. Poland, Silesia,
Moravia and Hungary were conquered or devastated.
Even the Danube was crossed and for a time all Europe
trembled. The Mongols halted at last before the mountains
of Bohemia and Austria, but Russia remained under their
yoke for two centuries.
The Ottoman Turks at Constantinople (1453). — Toward
the same period a less noisy but more tenacious invasion
was taking place south of the Black Sea. Descending from
the Altai or " Golden Mountains," the Turks had invaded
India, Persia, Syria and Asia Minor. Othman, the chief of
one of their smaller tribes, obtained possession of Brousa in
1325, and his son Orkhan gained Nicomedia, Nicaea and Gal-
lipoli on the European side of the Dardanelles. Mourad I,
endowed the Ottomans with a terrible army by developing
the corps of the janissaries. This soldiery was composed of
captive Christian youth, who were reared in the Mussulman
religion. Special tracts of land were assigned them. En-
forced celibacy and life in common gave them some re-
semblance to a military order. Before directly attacking
Constantinople, the sultans outflanked it. Mourad I took
Adrianople and attacked the valiant peoples of Bulgaria,
Servia, Bosnia and Albania. Victor at Cossova, he fell by
assassination on the field of battle (1389). His successor,
Bayezid I, reaped the fruits of his victory. Macedonia and
Bulgaria submitted and Wallachia acknowledged itself
tributary.
On the banks of the Danube Bayezid I encountered a Eu-
ropean crusade, commanded by Sigismuncl. Many French
knights, and among them John the Fearless, took part.
A.D. 13t»6-1453.] GERMANY 285
Those brilliant nobles ruined their cause by their obstinate
rashness at the fatal battle of Nicopolis (1396). More effi-
cacious aid reached the Greeks from an unexpected quarter.
Tamerlane had restored the empire of Genghis Khan, and
ruled from the Ganges to the Don. Assailing the growing
Ottoman power, he overthrew and captured Bayezid I at the
great battle of Angora (1402). The rapid disappearance
of the Mongols enabled the Ottomans to recover. In 1422
Mourad II laid siege to Constantinople but in vain. He
failed also in Albania against Scanderbeg, but won the bat-
tle of Varna, where Ladislaus, king of Poland and Hungary,
was slain (1444). Fortunately the Hungarians and Hun-
yadi, though sometimes defeated but always in arms, through
their repeated efforts checked the conquerors. Moreover the
Ottomans could not hurl their whole strength upon West-
ern Europe so long as Constantinople resisted them. Mo-
hammed II resolved to free himself from this determined
enemy. He besieged the imperial city with an army of over
200,000 men, an immense artillery and an enormous fleet.
His ships he transported overland into the harbor across
the isthmus which separates the Golden Horn from the Bos-
phorus. The Emperor Constantine XIII maintained a he-
roic though hopeless resistance for fifty-seven days. A
final assault, on May 29, 1453, accomplished the fall of the
Eastern heir of the Eoman Empire.
286 HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
XVIII
SUMMARY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
If now we sum up this history, apparently so confused,
we perceive that the ten centuries of the Middle Ages natu-
rally divide into three sections.
From the fifth to the tenth century the Roman Empire
crumbles away. The two invasions from the north and the
south are accomplished. The new German Empire which
Charlemagne attempts to organize is dissolved. We behold
everywhere the destruction of the past and the transition
to a new social and intellectual condition.
From the tenth to the fourteenth century feudalism has
its rise. The crusades take place. The Pope and the Em-
peror contend for the world. The burgher class is reconsti-
tuted. This is the mediaeval period, simple in its general
outlines, which reaches its fullest flowering in the time of
Saint Louis of Erance, with customs, institutions, arts and
even a literature peculiar to itself.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries this feudal so-
ciety descends into an abyss of miser}^ The decay seems
that of approaching death. But death is the condition of
life. If the Middle Ages vanish, it is to make way for
Modern Times. A little charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur
will restore equality on the battlefield, a prophecy of ap-
proaching social equality, either under royal omnipotence
or under the protection of public liberties. Hence power
changes its place. No longer the monopoly of the man of
arms or of the noble, it passes first to the kings as later on
it will pass to the people. Thought becomes secularized
and quits the cloister. The genius of ancient civilization
is about to spring forth. Already artists and writers are
on the road of the Renaissance, as the Portuguese are on
that of the Cape of Good Hope. Audacious voices are
heard arguing about obedience and even about faith. The
Middle Ages have indeed come to an end since things are
becoming: new.
SU^fMARY OF THE MIDDLE AGES 287
But did the Middle Ages wholly die ? They bequeathed
to Modern Times virile maxims of public and individual
rights, which then profited only the lords, but which now
profit all. The Middle Ages developed chivalrous ideas, a
sentiment of honor, a respect for woman, which still stamp
with a peculiar seal those who preserve and practise them.
Lastly, mediaeval architecture remains the most imposing ma-
terial manifestation of the religious sentiment, an architect-
ure we can only copy when we wish to erect the fittest
houses of prayer.
Copyright. 1888, by T. Y. Cruwell & Co.
Engr.iveJ by Cultun. Ul.mau i Cq., N. Y.
HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES
PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN PRANCE
Principal Divisions of Modern History. — The Middle
Ages have been characterized by the predominance of local
powers like fiefs and communes, and by the small consider-
ation paid the state. Modern Times until the nineteenth
century are characterized by the preponderance of a central
power or absolute royalty, and by governmental action sub-
stituted for that of individuals and communities. But
while the political life of the nations was becoming con-
centrated in their chiefs, the intellect by an opposite ten-
dency was bursting its bonds and diffusing itself over
everything to renew all.
The political revolution will result in the Italian wars
and the rivalry through centuries of the houses of France
and Austria.
The intellectual movement will cause: a pacific revolu-
tion in art, science and letters, or the Eenaissance; an
economical revolution, or the discovery of the New World
and of the route to India, thereby creating a prodigious
commerce which will place personal property in the hands
of the common people ; a religious revolution, or the Refor-
mation of Luther and Calvin, against which fanaticism will
excite abominable wars; a philosophic revolution, brought
about by Bacon and Descartes and continued in the eigh-
teenth century. The latter will result in a new j^olitical
and social revolution whose success unhappily will be com-
promised by blind resistance and criminal violence.
This in its general features is the history of the centuries
which compose the period from 1453 to 1848, called Modern
u 289
290 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1465-1468.
Times. First, then, we have to show liow the political in-
stitutions of the Middle Ages gave way in the principal
states of Europe to a new system of government.
Louis XI (1461-1483). The League of Public Welfare
(1465). — Charles VII had reconquered France from the
English. He had also to reconquer it from the nobles.
The work was already begun. More than one rebellious
noble had been drowned or beheaded or banished. The
dauphin himself, the son of Charles, who afterwards be-
came Louis XI, had entered into every plot against his
father and had been forced to demand a refuge with the
Duke of Burgundy. He was with him when Charles VII
died (1461). When this former leader of discontent
ascended the throne, it was thought that the good old
days of feudalism were returning. Such expectation was
quickly undeceived. At first Louis bungled. He dismissed
most of the officers whom his father had appointed, in-
creased the perpetual villein tax from 1,800,000 livres to
3,000,000, and notified the University of Paris of the papal
prohibition to interfere in the affairs of the king and the
city. By other acts he offended the parliaments of Paris
and Toulouse. He incensed the ecclesiastics and the nobil-
ity, and rendered the great dukes of Brittany and Burgundy
his enemies. Five hundred princes and nobles formed the
League of Public Welfare against him.
The danger was great. Louis, met it with little heroism
but with much cleverness. After a show of military ac-
tivity he shut himself behind the walls of his capital and
labored to dissolve the League by offering pensions and
lands to those greedy nobles. By a variety of public
and private arrangements he promised them each what-
ever each one desired. As for the public welfare, no one
spoke or thought of that.
Interview of Peronne (1468). — After the confederates
were satisfied and all had returned home, he began syste-
matically to retract everything he had granted. To the
Duke of Berri he had ceded Normandy, which it was most
important to the king to retain. Inciting insurrections in
several Burgundian towns, he thus occupied Charles the
Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and at the same time purchased
the neutrality of the Duke of Brittany by the present of
100,000 crowns. Then he entered Normandy and made
himself its master. Meanwhile by seasonable gifts or bribes
A.D. 1468-1472.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN FRANCE 291
of money or office he shrewdly attached to himself some of
the most influential persons in France.
Charles the Bold tried to revive the whole feudal system
and to make an pJliance with Edward IV, king of England.
As an English army was preparing to disembark in France,
Louis went to the court of Charles to negotiate in person
and avert the danger. At that moment a rebellion, which
he had previously incited and which he had forgotten to
countermand, broke out at Liege. Charles, profoundly
incensed, imprisoned his guest in the castle of Peronne.
Louis obtained his freedom only by hard concessions and
by marching with the duke against Liege. That unhappy
city, whose inhabitants fought to the cry of " Long live
the king," was given over to sack (1468).
The treaty of Peronne was the last mistake of Louis XL
To his one rival, the Duke of Burgundy, it was the begin-
ning of impossible dreams and enterprises. Louis sent his
brother, the Duke of Berri, to the other end of France by
giving him Guyenne instead of Champagne. He shut up
the cardinal La Balue and the bishop of Verdun for ten
years in an iron cage because they had betrayed him. The
king of England, allied to the Duke of Burgundy, had a
mortal enemy in the Earl of Warwick. Louis reconciled
the latter to Margaret of Anjou and furnished him the
means of overthrowdng Edward IV and restoring Henry VI.
Now sure of having isolated Charles the Bold, he convoked
at Tours an assembly of notables. He caused this assembly
to repudiate the treaty of Peronne. Forthwith he seized
Saint Quentin, Montdidier, Amiens and other towns. He
set on foot 100,000 men and a powerful artillery (1471).
Death of the Duke of Guyenne (1472). — The rage of
Charles was raised to frenzy by the death of the Duke of
Guyenne or Berri. upon whom rested the hopes of feudalism
(1472). Rumors of poison circulated. Charles the Bold
openly accused Louis XI of fratricide, and entered the king-
dom dealing everywhere fire and blood. At Nesle the
entire population was butchered. The inhabitants of Beau-
vais resisted with a heroism of which the women and espe-
cially Jeanne Hachette set the example. Charles was forced
to retrace his steps. Moreover ambition called him in
another direction. He signed the truce of Senlis.
Mad Enterprises and Death of Charles the Bold (1477). —
The chief attention of the Duke of Burgundy was now di-
292 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1472-1478.
rected toward Germany, Lorraine and • Switzerland. He
wished to unite his two duchies and his possessions in the
Netherlands by the acquisition of the intermediate countries,
Lorraine and Alsace. That done, he aimed at conquering
Provence and Switzerland and restoring old Lotharingia
under the name of Belgian Gaul. He already held Upper
Alsace and the county of Ferrette, which the Austrian Arch-
duke Sigismund had pawned to him for money, and he was
soliciting from the Emperor Frederick III the title of king.
Louis XI, by his activity and his money caused the ship-
Avreck of these ambitious plans. The archduke suddenly
paid the duke the 80,000 florins agreed upon as the ransom of
Alsace. Hagenbach, the agent of Charles in that coun-
try, was seized and beheaded by the inhabitants of Brisach
(1474). Lastly the Swiss, whom he had molested, entered
Franche-Comte and gained over the Burgundians the battle
of Hericourt. While these events were taking place in the
south, Charles himself in the north was meeting failure in
his attempt to support the archbishop of Cologne against
the Pope and the Emperor. Edward IV, who had landed
in France at his invitation, concluded the treaty of Pec-
quigny with Louis XI, who loaded him with money and
sent him back to his island.
That he might be free to finish his affairs with Lorraine
and Switzerland, the duke signed with the king of France
a new treaty at Soleure. A few days later he entered Nancy
and conquered Lorraine, The Swiss remained to be dealt
with. He made a foolish attack and was completely routed at
Granson (1476). Three months later he was again defeated
at Morat. Then Lorraine rose in favor of Kene de Vaude-
mont, and Charles went to his death in battle under the
walls of Nancy (1477).
TJnion of the Great Fiefs with the Crown. — While the
mightiest feudal house of France was thus crumbling to
ruin on the plains of Lorraine, Louis XI was destroying the
others. Many lords were guilty either of plots against the
king or of monstrous crimes. Jean V of Armagnac had
married his sister and slew whoever opposed him. Besieged
and captured in Lectoure, he and his wife were put to death.
The Duke of Nemours was beheaded in the market-place.
The Duke of AleuQon was imprisoned and the constable of
Saint Pol also executed. Louis confiscated not only their
heads, but their property.
A.D. 1478-1483.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN FRANCE 293
As to the immense possessions left by Charles the Bold,
he could obtain only a portion. His disloyal policy forced
Mary, the heiress of Burgundy, to marry the Archduke
Maximilian. From this marriage, unfortunate for France,
arose the enormous power of Charles V, which caused the
houses of France and Austria long and bloody struggles.
Nevertheless Louis succeeded in incorporating Picardy and
part of Burgundy into the royal domain. He even com-
pelled the conditional cession of Franche-Comte. During
the preceding year he acquired all the inheritance of the
house of Anjou. Thus when he died in 1483 he had res-
cued from feudalism and added to France, Provence, Maine,
Anjou, Koussillon and Cerdagne, Burgundy Avith the Ma-
Qonnais, Charolais, and Auxerrois, Franche-Comte, Artois,
half of Picardy, Boulogne, Armagnac, Etampes, Saint Pol
and Nemours.
Administration of Louis XI. — He rendered tenure of
office permanent, established posts, created the parliaments
of Grenoble, Bordeaux and Dijon, enlarged opportunity of
appeal to the royal tribunal, assured the public tranquillity
and the safety of the highways, multiplied fairs and mar-
kets, and attracted from Venice, Genoa and Florence arti-
sans who founded at Tours the first manufactures of silk.
He encouraged mining industry and entertained the idea
of giving France a common system of weights and measures.
He delighted in learned men, founded the Universities of
Caen and Besanqon and favored the introduction of printing.
"Everything considered, he was a king." Villon and his
councillor Commines are the poet and the prose writer of
his reign.
Charles VIII (1483). — Charles VIII succeeded, a child
of thirteen, feeble in mind and body. His guardian was
his eldest sister, Anne of Beaujeu, in shrewdness and deci-
sion the worthy daughter of her father. A violent reaction
against the late policy made many victims, but the nobles
could not overthrow the work of Louis XL They demanded
and obtained the convocation of the States General, but their
expectations were disappointed. The deputies, especially
those of the Third Estate, would not make themselves the
tools of feudal grudges. They reformed some abuses, but
left entire power to Anne of Beaujeu, together with guar-
dianship of the king's person, whom they declared of age.
This princess continued her father's policy without his cru-
294 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1488-1498.
elty. The Duke of Orleans entered into an alliance with,
the Duke of Brittany and the Archduke Maximilian to
overthrow her. He was defeated and captured in what is
called the Mad War, The regent won another triumph as
to the succession in Brittany. That great fief was almost
as formidable as Burgundy. She married its heiress to
Charles VIII, and thus paved the way for its union with
France. Unfortunately the king broke away from his sis-
ter's guardianship in ambition for distant expeditions.
Eager to put his dreams into execution, he signed three
deplorable treaties. By that of Staples he continued to
Henry VII the pension which his father had paid to Ed-
ward IV. By that of Barcelona, he restored Roussillon and
Cerdagne to the king of Aragon. Lastly by that of Sen-
lis, still more disastrous, he enabled Maximilian to gain
Artois and Franche-Comte. Thus through the folly of her
sovereign France receded on three frontiers. It required
nearly two centuries and the astuteness of Richelieu and
Louis XIV to regain what Charles VIII threw away in
pursuit of a dangerous chimera.
1400.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND 295
II
PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN ENGLAND. WAR OF THE
ROSES
Houses of Lancaster and York. — England had outstripped
Europe in her political institutions. Parliament and the
jury system gave the English control of the taxes and trial
by their peers, the double guarantee of j)olitical and civil
liberty. The nobles, united with the commoners, did not
allow the kings to abandon themselves to their caprices.
Then came a civil war of thirty years' duration, which over-
rode all these pledges of prosperity and opened to royalty
the path of absolutism. This was the War of the Roses,
originating in the rivalry of the house of Lancaster, or Red
Rose, and the house of York, or White Rose.
The house of Lancaster, seated on the throne by the
accession of Henry IV, had given England the glorious
Henry V and his successor, the feeble and imbecile Henry
VI. Under the latter France was lost, and the national
pride of the English was greatly wounded by their reverses.
They beheld with indignation the truce of 1444, and were
incensed at the marriage of the king with Margaret of
Anjou, who as a French princess became the object of their
aversion. Richard, Duke of York, thought the moment
propitious to assert his claims to the throne. The house of
Lancaster descended from the third son of Edward III.
The house of York was in the female line descended from
the second son, and in the male line from the fourth son.
Richard caused the Duke of Suffolk, the king's favorite
minister, to be attainted by the House of Commons. The
court enabled the accused to escape, but he was overtaken
on the high seas by an English vessel, whose crew seized,
condemned and beheaded him (1450).
At the same time an Irishman, Jack Cade, stirred up the
county of Kent to rebellion. He got together a crowd of
60,000 men, and was master of London for several days.
The robberies committed by this mob armed every one
296 HISTOEY OF MODERN- TIMES [a.d. 1459-1470.
against tliem, and an amnesty offered by the king brought
about their dispersion. Their leader was captured and
executed (1459). He was regarded as an agent of the Duke
of York.
As the king suffered from a mental trouble, Richard
caused hiuiself to be appointed protector (1454). When the
monarch on restoration to health tried to take away his
powers, he took up arms. He was abetted by the high aris-
tocracy, especially by Warwick, surnamed the king-maker,
who was rich enough to feed daily 30,000 persons on his
estates. Victorious at Saint Albans (1455), the first battle
in that war, and master of the king's person, Eichard had
Parliament again confer on him the title of protector. After
a second battle at Northampton (1460), he was declared
legitimate heir to the throne. Margaret protested in the
name of her son. Aided by the support of Scotland which
she purchased by the cession of Berwick castle, she defeated
and slew Richard at Wakefield. The head of the rebel
was adorned in derision with a paper crown, and exposed on
the walls of York. His youngest son, the Earl of Rutland,
aged barely eighteen, was butchered in cold blood. From
that time on the massacre of prisoners, the proscription of
the vanquished and the confiscation of their goods became
the rule with both parties.
Edward IV (1460). — Richard of York was avenged by
his eldest son, who had himself proclaimed king in London
under the name of Edward IV. The Lancastrians gained
the second battle of Saint Albans, but suffered that same
year (1461) a sanguinary defeat at Towton, southwest of
York. Margaret took refuge in Scotland, and fled thence
to France where Louis lent her 2000 soldiers on her promise
to restore Calais, but the battle of Hexham destroyed her
hopes (1463). She herself was able to regain the continent,
but Henry V, a prisoner for the third time, was confined in
the Tower of London, where he remained seven years.
The new king displeased Warwick, who rebelled, defeated
him at Nottingham (1470), and forced him to flee to the
Netherlands to his brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy.
Parliament, docile to the will of the strongest, reestablished
Henry VI.
This triumph of the Lancastrians was brief. Their
excesses roused bitter discontent. Edward was able to
reappear with a small army, which Charles the Bold had
A.D. 1471-150G.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY AV ENGLAND 297
helped him get together. Warwick fell at Barnet (1471)
and Margaret was no more fortunate at Tewksbury. This
last action had decisive results. The Prince of Wales
murdered, Henry VI dead, Margaret a prisoner, the parti-
sans of the Eed Rose killed or exiled, Edward IV remained
in peaceable possession of the throne. The rest of his reign
was marked by an expedition to France, terminated by the
treaty of Pecquigny, and by the trial of his brother Clar-
ence, whom he put to death. He died in consequence of his
debauches in 1483.
Richard III (1483). — His brother Eichard of York,
Duke of Gloucester, took advantage of the youth of
Edward's children to usurp their rights, and smother them
in the Tower of London. Horror of his crimes divided his
followers. The Duke of Buckingham revolted and invited
to England Henry Tudor, Earl of Eichmond, the last scion
on the female side of the Lancastrian house. Henry hired
2,000 men in Brittany, landed in Wales and at Bosworth
overthrcAv Eichard, who fell fighting bravely (1485).
Henry VII. — He united the two Eoses by wedding the
heiress of York, the daughter of Edward IV. He founded
the Tudor dynasty, which reigned until the accession of
the Stuarts, 118 years afterward. Though a few plots
were formed by such obscure impostors as Lambert Simnel
and Perkin Warbeck, he ruled as absolute master over the
remnants of the decimated aristocracy. Eighty persons of
royal blood had perished. Nearly one-fifth of the lands of
the kingdom through confiscation had become part of the
domains of the crown. Thus when the War of the Eoses
ended English royalty found increased resources at its dis-
posal and fewer enemies to fear.
Henry VII rarely assembled Parliament. The money
which he would not ask for fear of making himself depend-
ent, he procured by forced loans or benevolences, and by
confiscations, which he multiplied on every sort of pretext.
The Star Chamber became a servile tribunal to strike down
those whom a jury would not have permitted him to reach.
The ruin of the aristocracy was completed by the abolition
of the rights of maintenance, whereby the nobles had been
able to rally round them a whole army of followers, and of
substitution, whereby the nobles had been prevented from
alienating or dividing their lands. By the treaties which
he concluded, by the voyages which he caused to be under-
298 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1506.
taken and by his attention to the shipping, he favored com-
merce and industry, to which the nation devoted itself with
zeal. He paved the way for the union of Scotland and
England by marrying his daughter Margaret to James IV.
He died in 1506. Perfidious, rapacious and cruel, without
grandeur of mind or action to redeem his vices, he founded
like Louis XI in France and Ferdinand the Catholic in
Spain an absolute government, which in England became
truly great only under Elizabeth.
A.D. UG9.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IX SPAIX 299
III
PROGRESS OP ROYALTY IN SPAIN
Abandonment of the Crusade against the Moors. — The
Spanish people had thus far remained almost entirely aloof
from European affairs. They had been obliged to wrest
their soil foot by foot from the Moors. That task, the first
condition of their national existence, was not yet finished.
The southern extremity of the peninsula still belonged to
the Mussulmans and formed the kingdom of Granada, the
last of the nine states into which the caliphate of Cordova
had been broken. Thus Spain had lived a life apart
throughout the Middle Ages. She had been engrossed in
the single undertaking of expelling the Moors, odious both
as Mussulmans and as foreigners. This isolation and this
perpetual crusade gave her a peculiar character. Nowhere
else has religion exercised such ascendency over the mind.
It was the sole bond which united the various states of the
peninsula.
We have seen however that, forgetting the Moors, the
four Christian states had diverted their attention and their
forces in different directions : Portugal toward the ocean,
Aragon toward Sicily and Italy, Navarre toward France,
while Castile was rent by internal discords. Everywhere
royalty was in a humiliating position. A spirit of indepen-
dence reigned in the cities which had their fueros, and
among the nobles who defended their privileges of war and
brigandage. But the need of uniting for mutual protection
against violence made itself felt as early as 1260 in the cities
of Aragon, and afterward in those of Castile. The Santa
Hermandad or Holy Brotherhood, a confederation of the
principal cities, was instituted. This organization became
so prosperous that it furnished the king at the siege of
Granada 8000 armed men and 6000 beasts of burden.
Marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile
(1469). — In Aragon John II poisoned his son Charles,
Prince of Viana, who disputed his claim to the kingdom of
300 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d, 1461-1499.
Navarre (1461). The Catalans, rising in revolt, gave them-
selves in succession to the king of Castile, to Pedro of
Portugal and to the house of Anjou. They submitted only-
after eleven years of war.
In Castile Henry IV rendered himself odious and des-
picable by his predilection for Bertrand de la Cueva, a
greedy and cowardly favorite who disgraced him. The
nobles went through the form of deposing the king in effigy
in the plain of Avila, and in his place proclaimed Don Al-
phonso, who died in 1467. Then they forced Henry IV to
recognize as princess of the Asturias his sister Isabella, to
the prejudice of his own daughter (1468). Prom many
suitors to her hand Isabella chose Perdinand, the eldest son
of the king of Aragon, and married him secretly at Valla-
dolid (1469). It was stipulated in the contract that the
government of Castile should remain vested exclusively in
her. She took possession at the death of her father (1474)
and strengthened her authority by defeating the king of
Portugal, who undertook to dispute her rights. Three years
afterward Perdinand, her husband, became king of Aragon
(1479).
Conquest of Granada (1492). — Prom that day Spain ex-
isted. The firm Isabella and the clever though perfidious
Perdinand toiled vigorously to establish national unity for
the benefit of royalty. Pirst of all, they rendered the whole
peninsula Christian by destroying the last remnants of Mus-
sulman domination. G-ranada had more than 200,000 in-
habitants. The Moors were promised after the capture of
their city (1492) that they should be allowed to remain in
the country and enjoy their own laws, property and religion.
The Inquisition. The Power of Royalty. — The popula-
tion of the peninsula then presented a singular mixture of
Mussulmans, Jews and Christians. Isabella and Perdinand
decided to bring dissenters to a common religious faith by
persuasion, and above all by terror. With this intent they
had already instituted that tribunal of melancholy fame, the
Holy Office or Inquisition. It was established in Castile
about 1480, and in Aragon four years later. Between
January and November, 1481, in Seville alone the inquisi-
tors sent to torture 298 Christian proselytes, accused of
Judaizing in secret, and 2000 in the provinces of Cadiz and
Seville. In 1492 they expelled the Jews of whom 800,000
departed from Spain. In 1499 they deprived the Moors of
A.D. 1499-1521.] PROGRESS OF ROYALTY IN SPAIN 301
the religious liberty wliicli the treaty of Granada had guar-
anteed. Torquemada, the first grand inquisitor, alone con-
demned 8800 persons to the flames.
The king controlled the terrible tribunal, for he appointed
its chief and the property of the condemned was confiscated
to his use. Thus the Inquisition was for Spanish royalty
not only a means of ruling the conscience but an instrument
of government. Any rebellious or suspicious person could
be denounced to the Holy Office. This was a mighty engine.
Ferdinand acquired another together with considerable
revenues by making himself grand master of the orders
of Calatrava, Alcantara and Saint James. He reorganized
the Holy Brotherhood, announced himself its protector, that
is to say its master, and employed it for the police service
of the country at the expense of the barons, whose castles
he razed to the ground. In a single year forty-six fortresses
were demolished in Galicia. Commissioners were sent into
all the provinces, who listened to the complaints of the peo-
ple and made the nobles tremble.
At the death of Isabella (1504) Ferdinand became regent
of Castile. As king of Aragon, he acquired the Two Sicilies.
The acquisition of Navarre put him in possession of one of
the two gates of the Pyrenees. The other, Koussillon, had
been ceded to him by Charles VIII (1493). Already Chris-
topher Columbus had given America to the crown of Castile
(1492). This immense heritage reverted on his death in
1516 to his grandson Charles, already master of Austria,
the Netherlands and Franche-Comte, whose history we shall
trace farther on.
In the absence of the new king. Cardinal Ximenes exer-
cised the power with an energy which forced obedience from
the nobles. The communeros, taking alarm too late at the
menacing progress of royalty, formed a Holy League, which
committed the mistake of demanding the abolition of the
pecuniary immunities of the nobility. The aristocracy sepa-
rated its cause from that of the cities and rallied around the
sovereign. The army of the League was routed at Yillalar
and its leader, Don Juan de Padilla, died on the scaffold
(1521). Thus Spanish royalty triumphed over the burgher
class as it had triumphed over the nobles, but the nation
was about to lose its wealth, its vigor and its honor for the
sake of serving the ambition of its masters.
Progress of Royalty in Portugal. — In Portugal the same
302 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1481-1515.
revolution was accom23lished. John II restored alienated
property to the royal domain, withdrew from the lords the
right of life and death over their vassals, sent the Duke of
Braganza to the scaffold and stabbed the Duke of Viseu with
his own hand. He transmitted absolute power to his son
Manuel the Fortunate (1495), who during twenty years did
not assemble the Cortes. Under the latter prince the Por-
tuguese discovered the road to the Cape of Good Hope and
the Indies.
Thus throughout all Western Europe royalty became pre-
dominant. This condition indicated the approach of great
wars. Because the countries of Central Europe remaiued
divided, they were to become the battlefield of royal am-
bitions.
A.i>. li38-14<Ju.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 145 J-1404 o03
IV
GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453 TO 1494
Frederick III (1440) and Maximilian (1493). — In Ger-
many the house of Austria had just recovered possession
of the imperial crown (1438), to which hardly a shadow
of authority was attached. Frederick III was not a man
to modify this state of affairs, but was content with bare
existence. His reign of fifty-three years is marked only
by an unfortunate war against Matthias Corvinus, king of
Hungary, and by the marriage of his son Maximilian to
Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold and heir-
ess of the Netherlands.
Maximilian endeavored to restore the public peace in
Germany. The Diet, which exercised legislative power,
prohibited all war between the states. The empire was
divided into ten circles, in each of which a military director
was charged with maintaining order. This police organiza-
tion did not succeed, because the German princes had no
idea of being checked in their enterprises. They had seized
upon the absolute poAver in their lands, as the kings had
done in their kingdoms. The monarchical revolution accom-
plished in France, England and Spain had also taken place
in the empire, but not to the profit of the emperor. In
1502 the seven electors concluded the Electoral Union and
decided to convene every year for the purpose of consulta-
tion as to the best means of preserving their independence
from imperial authority. With another object in view sev-
eral of the cities had already set up the Hanseatic League.
This was the mercantile association of all the cities along
the banks of the Rhine and the German coast. It had
counting houses in the Netherlands, France, England and
even in the heart of Eussia, and was prosperous for cen-
turies.
As archduke of Austria and sovereign of the Nether-
lands, Maximilian acquired by the treaty of Senlis (1493)
Artois and Franche-Comte. Then in an erratic manner he
304 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1453-1480.
meddled in Italy. The most important event in his reign
was the marriage of his son Philip the Fair with Jane the
Foolish, daughter of Isabella of Castile and of Ferdinand of
Aragon, who brought to the house of Austria as her dowry-
Spain, Naples and the New World. Maximilian died (1519)
during the first throes of the Reformation.
Italy. Republics Replaced by Principalities. — In the
middle of the twelfth century Italy was the centre of
Mediterranean commerce. She had a skilful agricultural
system and well developed manufactures. She Avas rich,
luxurious and corrupt, with a passion for arts and letters
but no taste for arms. More divided than Germany, she
had not even a nominal head like the emperor, nor a body
like the Diet which could sometimes speak in her name.
Almost universally the republics had been changed into
principalities, whose princes reigned as tyrants or magnifi-
cent despots. The capture of Constantinople by the Otto-
mans caused a momentary panic, and the different states of
Italy formed a confederation at Lodi (1454). Men talked of
a crusade. Pius II wished " the bell of the Turks " to be
rung every morning throughout Christendom. But when
the first moment of fright was over, each one went back to
his own private interests.
At Milan the condottiere Francesco Sforza, who had suc-
ceeded the Visconti in 1450, left the ducal crown to his son,
who was assassinated by the nobles (1476). His grandson
Giovanni Galeazzo, a child of eight years, fell under the
tutelage of his uncle Ludovico il Moro, who for the sake
of usurping the power was destined to call in the French
and begin the fatal Italian wars. Genoa incessantly dis-
turbed by factions offered itself to Louis XI, who had the
wisdom to refuse the fatal gift and transfer it to the Duke
of Milan. The Lombards, as the inhabitants of that rich
duchy were called, continued to be the bankers of Europe,
and their agents were found everywhere in the commercial
world.
Venice remained the chief power in northern Italy. No
republic could more fully resemble a monarchy. After 1454
its exclusive oligarchy was governed by three state inquisi-
tors, who watched each other and made their own laws.
The state existed tranquilly in the lap of pleasure under
this strong but pitiless government, Avhose principal instru-
ments of action were spies and secret accusation. Provedi-
A.D. 14G0-U92.] GERMANY AND ITALY FROM 1453-1494 305
tors kept watch of the generals, who were carefully chosen
from among the foreign mercenaries or condottieri, so that
she might have nothing to fear from them at home. On
the continent she had just subjugated four provinces, while
the Turks were ruining her domination in the East. She
lost Negropont and Scutari and beheld their swift horse-
men threaten her lagoons. In order to save their commerce
the Venetians consented to pay tribute to the new masters
of Constantinople. When they were taunted with this dis-
grace, they replied, " We are Venetians first of all, Chris-
tians afterward." In Italy the Avealth of the " Most Serene
Republic" excited the covetousness of the neighboring
princes, while her recent acquisitions endangered their se-
curity. In 1482 they formed a league against her, but she
triumphed over the excommunications of the Pope and over
the arms of his allies.
At Florence the Medici had supplanted the Albizzi by
relying on the Minor Arts, or the middle class. They were
rich bankers with many debtors in the city whom they held
attached to their fortune. Cosmo de Medici, the head of
this house, was master of Florence until 1464 though he
bore no title. He caused commerce, manufactures, arts and
letters to thrive, and expended more than $6,000,000 in
building palaces, hospitals and libraries, though continuing
to live like a private citizen. He was surnamed the "Father
of the Country." Liberty no longer existed. The nobles
tried to restore it by the conspiracy of the Pazzi (1478), and
assassinated Guiliano de Medici at the foot of the altar.
Lorenzo, his brother who escaped the dagger, punished the
murderers. One of the conspirators, Archbishop Salviati,
was hanged in his episcopal robes from a window of his
palace. Lorenzo, the most illustrious of the Medici, wel-
comed the Greek fugitives from Constantinople. He had
a translation of Plato made, an edition of Homer published,
and encouraged artists and learned men. Ghiberti cast for
him the doors of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, which
Michael Angelo deemed " worthy to be the gates of Para-
dise." In 1490, ruined by his magnificence, he was about
to suspend payment. To save him the republic became
bankrupt herself.
Under Pietro II, his unworthy successor, a new popular
party, the frateschi, demanded public liberty. Its leader,
the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola, wished to restore
306 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1494.
to the clergy purity of manners, to the people their ancient
institutions, and to letters and the arts the religious senti-
ment which they had already lost. Beholding the opposi-
tion of the young nobles and of the wealthy classes to every
reform, he declared that all those gilded vices were about to be
chastised by a foreign hand. " 0 Italy ! 0 Rome ! Do pen-
ance, for lo, the barbarians are coming like hungry lions ! "
The papacy was unable to avert these disasters, because
the Holy See was occupied by i)opes who disgraced the
tiara. Thus Sixtus IV busied himself in carving a princi-
pality in the Romagna for his nephew, and to attain success
had taken part in the conspiracy of the Pazzi. Alexan-
der VI Borgia is the scandal and the sorrow of the Churcl^
His election had been defiled by simony. His pontificate
was polluted by debauchery, perfidy and cruelty. He indeed
delivered the Holy See from the many turbulent petty lords
who infested the neighborhood of Rome, but his weapons for
their overthrow were ruse, treason and assassination. His
son, Caesar Borgia, is an infamous example of a man de-
voured with ambition and destitute of scruples, marching
to his goal by any road. To create for himself a state in
the Romagna, he waged against the lords of that country
the same sort of war that his father had carried on against
those of the papal states. No crime troubled him, whether
by dagger or poison. More than any other man he con-
tributed to earn for Italy the surname which was then
applied to her of the " Poisonous."
At Naples Ferdinand in 1459 had succeeded Alphonso the
Magnanimous. He triumphed at Troia over John of Cala-
bria, his Angevine rival, but he seemed desirous of bringing
about a new revolution by reviving hatreds instead of effac-
ing them. The harshness of his rule stirred up his barons
against him. He deceived them by promises, invited them
to a banquet of reconciliation, then had them seized at his
very table and put to death. The common people fared no
better. Ferdinand claimed the monopoly of all the com-
merce of the kingdom and crushed the people with taxes.
He did not prevent the Ottomans from seizing Otranto and
the Venetians from taking Gallipoli and Policastro. The
profound contempt which he excited explains how subse-
quently Charles VIII could drive him from his kingdom
of Naples without breaking a lance. All the Italian states
from one end of the peninsula to the other were in the same
condition.
A.D. 1453.] THE OTTOMAN TURKS 307
THE OTTOMAN TURKS
(1453-1530)
Powerful Military Organization of the Ottomans. Mo-
hammed II. — The Ottomans were apparently the foe whom
Italy had most to dread. By the conquest of Constantinople
they had definitely established themselves in the great
peninsula which separates the Adriatic and Black Seas.
Mohammed II was obeyed from Belgrade on the Danube
to the Taurus in Asia Minor. But this mighty empire had
two classes of enemies. On the west were the various
Christian nations, and on the East the Persian schismatics.
These two parties by taking turns at fighting the Ottomans
w^ere to keep them within bounds. The one checked their
progress on the Tigris, and the other along the lower valley
of the Danube.
The Ottoman government was like that of all Asiatic
peoples despotism tempered by insurrection and assassi-
nation. Nevertheless above the Sultan or Padishah was
the Koran, whose interpreters, the Sheik ul Islam and the
Oulenia, often won the ear of the ruler or of the people.
The Turkish armies were then stronger than those of the
Christians. Their most effective force consisted of 40,000
janissaries, a regular and permanent troop. The Christians
had as yet hardly more than the feudal militia. Moreover
the sultan could quickly raise 100,000 men from the tima-
riots, or lands given for life on condition of military service.
They thoroughly understood the art of fortification and pos-
sessed an unequalled artillery. These efiicient means of
action were put in play for two centuries by ten successive
and energetic princes. Above all account must be taken of
the religious fanaticism and martial ardor of a race which
also saw its victories fruitful in acquisition of lands and
wealth. It is not difiicult to explain the rapid progress of
the Ottomans.
308 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1453-1512.
After making Constantinople his capital, Mohammed II
undertook the subjugation of Hungary and Austria. But
he was hurled back in 1456 by Hunyadi from the walls of
Belgrade. He then attacked the remnants of the Greek
Empire and seized Athens, Lesbos, the Morea and Trebizond.
Christendom ought to have united in one common effort.
Pope Pius II demanded it. But the sovereigns were busy
about other things. Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary,
who was most endangered, and Frederick III, emperor of
Germany, were warring against each other. Corvinus did
at least force the Turks to a halt on the Danube. But the
Albanian Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, was their one per-
sistent enemy. During twenty-three years he fought them
without repose and gained more than twenty battles. His
death in 1468 and the fall of Croia, his capital, delivered
Albania into their hands. Two years afterward they
wrested Negropont from the Venetians. Also they
triumphed over the Tartar Ouzoun Hassan, who had just
founded in Persia the dynasty of the White Sheep, and was
stirred up against them by Pope Paul II.
Fortunately the Moldavians on the lower Danube, the
Albanians and some Greek mountaineers compelled Moham-
med II to divide his forces. Although he had sworn to feed
his horse with oats on the altar of Saint Peter's in Rome,
he could undertake no serious enterprise against Italy. The
surprise of Otranto by his fleet was hardly more than a
bold and sudden raid by sea (1480). When his horsemen
came and burned villages within sight of Venice, that
republic took alarm. She sued for peace, ceded Scutari on
the coast of the Adriatic and promised an annual tribute.
Mohammed II was heading a great expedition, the object of
which Avas known only to himself, when death overtook him
in 1481 at the age of fifty -three.
Bayezid II (1481) and Selim I the Ferocious (1512). — His
son, Bayezid II, was a scholar rather than a soldier. More-
over he was forced to consult prudence, inasmuch as his
brother Zizim after an unsuccessful rebellion had escaped
as a fugitive to the Knights of Rhodes. By them he had
been delivered into the hands of Pope Alexander VI. As
long as Zizim was with the Christians, he was a constant
menace to his brother. Yet despite his pacific inclination,
it was necessary to keep the janissaries busy and somehow
win their favor. So Bayezid sent them to conquer Bosnia,
A.D. 1512-1520.] THE OTTOMAN TURKS 309
Croatia and Moldavia on the left bank of the Danube where
the Ottomans already possessed AVallacliia. The soldiers be-
came discontented with their indolent sultan and placed his
son Selini on the throne. At once the movement of conquest
resumed its course. The new monarch attacked Persia,
beginning the religious war by the massacre of 40,000
Shiite Mussulmans who inhabited his states. A bloody
battle near Tauris was indecisive, but he soon subjugated
the provinces of Diarbekir, Ourfa and Mossoul, which ex-
tended the Turkish Empire as far as the Tigris (1518).
Syria belonged to the Mamelukes of Egypt. Selim attacked
them. He defeated them at Aleppo, at Gaza and finally on
the banks of the Nile, where the Copts and fellahs, down-
trodden by the Mamelukes, welcomed him as a liberator.
Moutawakkel, caliph of Cairo, confided to him the Standard
of the Prophet and resigned the religious authority into his
hands. The Arab tribes in their turn submitted. The
scherif of Mecca came to offer the conqueror the keys of the
Kaaba. Thus the sultan became the Commander of the
Faithful, the spiritual as well as the temporal chief of
the Mussulmans.
By this conquest the road to the East by way of Egypt was
closed to Europeans. This was the death-blow of Venice.
Master of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, Selini also
held in its western basin the strong fortress of Algiers,
which the pirate Horouk, surnamed Barbarossa, had wrested
from Spain and placed under his protection in return for
the title of Bey (1518). From that time until 1830 Algiers
was a nest of pirates who preyed upon European commerce.
Abominable cruelties accompanied the conquests of Selim
and earned for him the surname of the Ferocious. He died
in 1520 and had for his successor Souleiman the Magnificent,
the worthy rival of his illustrious contemporaries Charles V
and Francis I.
310 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1494
VI
WARS IN ITALY. CHARLES VIII AND LOUIS XII
Consequences of the Political Revolution in European Wars.
— One general fact had been evolved during the second
half of the fifteenth century. It was that society in all
the states had reverted to a form of government, lost since
the Roman Empire and based upon the absolute power of
kings. This is the political side of the revolution in prog-
ress. It was to affect the arts, sciences and literatures, and
even for a part of Europe the beliefs, at the same time
that it modified institutions. The inevitable consequence
of this first transformation, which places the peoples with
their wealth and forces at the disposal of their sovereigns,
will be to imbue the kings with the desire of aggrandizing
their dominions. Thus European wars are about to follow
feudal wars, just as kings have followed nobles. France,
the first ready, is also the first in the endeavor to issue
from her frontiers.
Expedition of Charles VIII into Italy (1494). — The prudent
Louis XI had been careful not to assert the rights which
the house of Anjou had bequeathed him over the kingdom
of Naples. His son, Charles VIII, revived these claims
with ambitious projects. Not to be hampered in the exe-
cution of plans which he thought would carry him from
Naples to Constantinople, and from Constantinople to Jeru-
salem, he abandoned Cerdagne and Eoussillon to Ferdinand
the Catholic, and Franche-Comte, Charolais and Artois to
Maximilian. He crossed the Alps at Mount Ginevra and
was well received at Turin and in the duchy of Milan,
where Ludovico il Moro then needed his support against the
Neapolitans. He forced Pietro de Medici to deliver to him
Sarzana and Pietra Santa, the two fortresses of the Apen-
nines, and arrived without encountering any obstacle at
Florence, which he entered as a conqueror. But when he
demanded a war contribution, the inhabitants threatened a
riot and he withdrew, though still holding Pisa and Siena.
A.D. U94-1498.] WARS IN ITALY 311
At Rome the cardinals and nobles, who had been harshly-
treated by Alexander VI, opened the gates to the French.
The Pope took refuge in the castle of San Angelo. Charles
trained his cannon on the ancient fortress and demanded
the son of the pontiff, Caesar Borgia, as hostage. Also he
demanded that Zizim, the brother of Sultan Bayezid II,
who was then with the Pope, should be surrendered to him,
thinking this prisoner would advance his ultimate plans in
the East. A few days later the former captive escaped.
The latter was given uj), but soon afterward died, perhaps
from poison. At San Germano, Ferdinand II, king of Na-
ples, wished to fight but his soldiers deserted and Charles
entered the capital without breaking a lance (1495). There
he had himself crowned King of Naples, Emperor of the East,
and King of Jerusalem. He speedily alienated all parties.
While he gave himself up to festivity, in his rear Venice
formed a league against him, which included Ludovico il
Moro, Pope Alexander VI, Maximilian, Ferdinand the
Catholic, and Henry VII of England. Forty thousand men
lay in wait for him at the foot of the Apennines. Warned
by Commines, he hastily marched northward, leaving in
the south 11,000 men. The battle of Fornovo reopened his
road to the Alps, but Italy was lost and no fruit remained
from this brilliant expedition.
Italy freed from the foreigner returned to her domestic
quarrels. Ludovico implored the aid of the Emperor Maxi-
milian, who suffered a ridiculous defeat before Leghorn.
In the E-omagna civil war continued between the Pope and
the barons, in Tuscany between Pisa and Florence, in Flor-
ence itself between the partisans and the enemies of Savona-
rola. The latter perished at the stake (1498), but his death
did not restore harmony.
Louis XII (1498). Conquest of Milan and Naples. —
Louis XII, grandson of a brother of Charles VI, suc-
ceeded his cousin, whose widow he married to prevent her
carrying Brittany to another house. He inherited not only
the claims of Charles VIII to Naples, but also those of his
grandmother, Valentine Visconti, to Milanese territory
which had been usurped by the Sforza. Cajoling or brib-
ing the neutrality or support of Caesar Borgia, Venice and
Florence, he sent Trivulcio, an Italian mercenary, to con-
quer Milan. Ludovico il Moro lost, regained and again lost
the city, but was finally betrayed by his troops and was
312 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1500-1511.
confined in France in the castle of Loches. Master of
Milan, Louis sought to acquire the kingdom of Naples with-
out striking a blow. Therefore he shared it in advance
with Ferdinand the Catholic. He reserved for himself the
title of King, together with the Abruzzi, Terra di Lavoro,
and the capital. Ferdinand asked nothing but Apulia and
Calabria. The unfortunate Frederick, king of Naples, find-
ing himself betrayed by the Spaniard Gonsalvo of Cordona,
placed himself at the mercy of the king of France, who
offered him a retreat on the banks of the Loire. But the
conquest made, disputes soon arose between the Spaniards
and the French. Perfidious negotiations gave Gonsalvo
time to bring up his troops. The French generals were
everywhere defeated and their forces again evacuated the
kingdom (1504).
To retain at least the Milanese territory, Louis XII
signed the disastrous treaty of Blois. His claims to Na-
ples he renounced in favor of Prince Charles, the sovereign
of the Netherlands, who was destined to become Charles V
of Germany. It was stipulated that Charles should wed
Madame Claude, the daughter of the king. The dowry of
the bride was to be Burgundy and Brittany. Public opin-
ion cried out against this dangerous marriage, so Louis
assembled the States General. They declared that the two
provinces were inalienable, and implored the king to betroth
his daughter to his presumptive heir, Francis, Duke of
Angouleme.
League of Cambrai (1508). The Holy League (1511). —
Julius II. succeeded Alexander VI. This warlike Pope
undertook to expel from Italy those whom he called bar-
barians. He also aimed at humbling Venice and at render-
ing the Holy See the dominating power of the peninsula.
First he managed to unite every one against Venice. Louis
XII wished to recover from that republic the places for-
merly acquired from the duchy of Milan. Ferdinand the
Catholic claimed from it several maritime cities of the
kingdom of Naples. The Emperor Maximilian was desir-
ous of extending his sway in Friuli. All the jealousies and
desires coalesced therefore in 1508, at Cambrai.
At Anagdello Louis gained over the Venetians a victory
which permitted his allies to fill their hands with Venetian
booty. Thereupon the Pope promptly turned this league
against his successful confederate, and formed the Holy
A.D. 1511-1515.] WARS IN ITALY 313
League to expel the French from Italy. Setting an ex-
ample, in person he stormed the cities and entered them
through the breach. Louis assembled at Pisa a council to
depose him. Julius convoked another council at the Lat-
eran, which excommunicated the king, and drew into alli-
ance all the Catholic powers, even including the Swiss, upon
whom Louis was lavishing his money.
Invasion of France (1513). Treaties of Peace (1514). —
At first France was victorious, thanks to the talents of the
youthful Gaston de Foix, who drove the Swiss back to their
mountains, captured Brescia from the Venetians and de-
feated all the allies at Eavenna. But he was slain in that
last battle. Under his successor. La Palisse, the French
retreated to the Alps. Maximilian Sforza, the son of Ludo-
vico il Moro, reentered Milan. Then France was invaded
from three sides. Ferdinand the Catholic threatened French
Navarre. The English and Germans routed the French
cavalry at the battle of Spurs. Lastly, the Swiss pene-
trated as far as Dijon, and their withdrawal was purchased
by payment in gold. The only ally of France was James
IV, king of Scotland. He shared her evil fortune and was
defeated and slain at Flodden Field by the English. Louis
begged a truce from his enemies. He disavowed the council
of Pisa, and persuaded Henry VIII to return to his island,
promising a pension of 100,000 crowns for ten years. Thus,
after fifteen years of war, after immense loss of blood and
money, France was no farther advanced than when the
reign of Charles VIII began. Louis died on January 1,
1515. His domestic administration had been superior to
his foreign policy. He created two parliaments, one at
Provence and another in Normandy, suppressed the use of
Latin in criminal procedure, stopped pillage by soldiers, and
caused commerce and agriculture to thrive. So he has been
surnamed the Father of his People.
314 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1497-1512.
VII
THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION
Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope (1497). — The end
of the Middle Ages is marked, not only by the destruction
of hitherto prevalent political forms, but also by the simul-
taneous revolution in commercial affairs, consequent upon
the discovery of America and of the passage to the Indies
around the Cape of Grood Hope.
Up to that time, commerce had followed the routes
marked out by the Greeks and the Romans. The products
of the East reached Europe by the Red Sea and Egypt, or
through Persia and the Black Sea. But the peoples who
bordered on the Atlantic had long been turning their gaze
toward the mysterious expanse of its unknown waters.
They had become familiar with its tempests and had gained
confidence in the compass. The Normans had been the
first to enter upon the path of maritime discoveries along
the western coast of Africa. There the Portuguese, more
advantageously situated, followed and outstripped them.
In 1472 they crossed the equator. In 1486 Bartolomeo
Diaz discovered the Cape of Storms, which King John II
more wisely named the Cape of Good Hope. In fact,
Vasco da Gama soon sailed round the African continent and
reached Calicut on the Malabar coast (1498). Later on
Camoens in his Lusiad painted this heroic expedition. At
Calicut Alvarez (^abral founded the first European estab-
lishment in the Indies. On the way thither he had been
cast upon the coast of Brazil.
Colonial Empire of the Portuguese. — The true creator of
the Portuguese colonies was Albuquerque. By the capture
of Socotora and Ormuz, he closed the ancient routes of
Indian commerce to the Mussulmans and to Venice. He
gave to Portuguese India its capital by taking possession
of Goa (1510). He conquered Malacca and secured the
alliance of the kings of Siam and Pegu and the possession
of the Molucca Islands. While preparing one expedition
L'opjrlglii. 1898, by T. Y. Cro»«ll & C.
Engrared byCultoo. Ohmaoi' Co., N.T.
A.D. 1492-1518.] THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION 315
against Egypt and another against Arabia, where he wished
to destroy Mecca and Medina, he was arrested by an un-
merited disgrace (1515). The conquest continued under
John de Castro, who seized Cambaye. Japan was dis-
covered in 1542, and a trading station set up opposite
Canton in the island of Sanciam. Goa was the centre of
Portuguese domination. The other principal points in
their empire were Mozambique, Sofala and Melinda on the
African coast, whence they obtained gold-dust and ivory ;
Muscat and Ormuz, on the Persian Gulf, whither came the
products of Central Asia; Diu, on the coast of Malabar;
Negapatam, on that of Coromandel; Malacca, in the pe-
ninsula of the same name, which threw into their hands the
commerce of the countries of Indo-China ; and the Moluccas,
where they occupied Ternate and Timor, and whence they
exported spices. Their trading stations on the western
coast of Africa and on the Congo were of no importance
until after the establishment of the slave trade. For a long
time, the only colonists whom Brazil received were crim-
inals and deported Jews.
Christopher Columbus. Colonial Empire of the Spaniards.
— The discovery of America had taken place earlier, in 1492.
The Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus, engrossed
with the idea that India must extend far toward the west
as a counterbalance to the European continent, hoped to
reach its furthest shore by directing his course westward
across the Atlantic. E-ebuffed as a visionary by the Senate
of Genoa and by the king of Portugal, as well as for a
time by the court of Spain, he succeeded in obtaining from
Isabella three small vessels. After sailing for two months
he landed on October 11, 1492, in Guanahani, one of the
Lucaya Islands, which he named San Salvador. Only dur-
ing his third voyage in 1849 did he touch the continent,
without knowing it, and on the fourth in 1502 discovered
the coast of Columbia. He still believed that he had reached
the shores of India. Hence was derived the name. West
Indies, which long prevailed. The name America refers to
Amerigo Vespucci, who merely enjoyed the inferior distinc-
tion of landing on the mainland before Columbus.
The route once found, discoveries followed each other in
rapid succession. In 1513 Balboa traversed the Isthmus of
Panama and caught sight of the Great Ocean. In 1518 Gri-
jalva discovered Mexico, of which Fernando Cortes effected
316 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1519-1534.
the conquest (1519-1521). In 1520 Magellan reached the
strait to which his name has been given between South
America and Tierra del Fuego. He traversed the Pacific
Ocean, where he died, and his comrades returned to Spain
by way of the Moluccas and the Cape of Good Hope. They
were the first to make the circuit of the globe. The advent-
urers, Almagro and Pizarro, gave to the crown of Spain
Peru and Chili. Others founded on the opposite coast
Buenos Ayres, at the mouth of the Plata. In 1534 Cartier
discovered Canada for Prance.
The Portuguese colonies rapidly declined. They were
only a line of trading posts along the coasts of Africa and
Hindustan, without power of resistance, because few Portu-
guese settled there. The Spanish colonies, which in the
beginning aimed not so much at commerce as at the develop-
ment of the mines, attracted on the contrary many Spaniards
to the New World, and formed in America a compact domi-
nation, divided into the two governments of Mexico and
Lima. At the present day Mexico and South America are
dominated by Spanish blood, while Brazil is Portuguese.
Results. — These discoveries threw open to the industrious
activity of the men of the West both a New World and also
that East where so much idle wealth was locked up. They
changed the course and form of trade. For land commerce,
which hitherto had held first rank, maritime commerce was
about to be substituted. As a result the cities of the in-
terior were to decline and those on the coast to expand.
Moreover commercial importance passed from the countries
bathed by the Mediterranean to the countries situated on
the Atlantic, from the Italians to the Spaniards and the
Portuguese, and later on from these latter to the Dutch
and the English. Not only did these peoples grow rich,
but they were enriched in a peculiar manner. The mines
of Mexico and Peru threw into European circulation an
enormous mass of specie. Industry, commerce and agri-
culture developed on receiving the capital which they re-
quired in order to thrive. " The third part of the kingdom
of France," says a writer of the sixteenth century, '^was
put under cultivation in the course of a few years." All
this created a new power in personal wealth which fell into
the hands of the burgher class, and which in after centuries
was to battle with the landed wealth still remaining in the
hands of the lords.
A.D. 1540.] THE ECONOMICAL REVOLUTION 317
By means of the posting stations which Louis XI had
organized, and the canals with locks which Venice began to
construct in 1481, communication became more rapid and
more easy. When to the letters of exchange, devised by
the Jews in the Middle Ages for the purpose of saving
their fortunes from their persecutors, were added the deposit
and credit banks, instituted by the Hanse, the Lombards
and the Tuscans, it came to pass that capital circulated as
easily as produce. We have already seen a banker, Cosmo
de Medici, become a prince. Lastly, the system of insurance,
practised first at Barcelona and Florence, and later on at
Bruges, began the great system of guarantees which at the
present day gives to commerce such audacity and security.
Thus labor was making for itself a place in the new society.
Through it, by means of order, economy and intelligence, the
descendants of the slaves of antiquity and of the serfs of
the Middle Ages became the leaders of the industrial world
and masters of money, and were one day to find themselves
the equals of the ancient m.asters of the land.
318 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1450.
VIII
THE REVOLUTION IN ARTS AND LETTERS, OR THE
RENAISSANCE
The Invention of Printing. — The ardor which impelled men
of action to abandon beaten paths and rush into unexplored
ways was shared by men of learning. They also aspired
after another world. They sought it, not in front but in
the rear. Like Columbus, they thought they were only
travelling toward the old land, but on their route thither
they, like him, found a new one.
Weary of the vain disputes of scholasticism and the quib-
bles of a school which its barbarous Latin speech rendered
obscure, they threw themselves toward the half-extinguished
lights of antiquity. They ransacked monastic libraries, those
storehouses of old books. The discovery of a Greek or
Latin manuscript, or of an antique statue, caused the joy of
a victory. But only a few men would have profited by the
new spirit, which reviving antiquity was breathing upon
the world, had not an invention appeared by means of which
the treasures, otherwise reserved to a small number, could
become the domain of all. Guttenberg created printing by
devising movable characters. As early as 1455, the first
printed book made its appearance. This was a Bible. The
new art spread rapidly throughout all Christian Europe, and
the price of books marvellously decreased. In 1500 Aldus
Manutius at Venice placed on sale a whole collection of
ancient authors at about fifty cents the volume. A single
bookseller of Paris, Josse Bade, published as many as 400
works, the majority in folio. In 1529, the Colloquia of Eras-
mus was printed in an edition of 24,000 copies. Thus eager
were people to learn, " for they began to perceive that they
had been living in mental slavery as well as in bodily servi-
tude."
The ancients wrote upon parchment or papyrus, both ma-
terials of great cost, the Chinese upon silk, the Arabs of
Damascus upon cotton, the Spanish Arabs upon a paper
A.D. 1470-1520.] THE REVOLUTION IN ARTS AND LETTERS 319
made from flax and hemp. Thus the printers, at the very
beginning of their labors, had at their disposal a low-priced
product which could receive the imprint of the characters.
Renaissance of Letters. — Italy eagerly seized upon the new
invention. Before the year 1470, there were already printers
at Eome, Venice and Milan. Everywhere schools, libraries
and universities were founded. The ancient authors were
published and translated. Not only the Fathers of the
Church Avere published to uphold the faith, but also the ora-
tors, historians and philosophers. Thereby faith was ex-
posed to peril, for thus were opened to the mind new horizons
where reason was to seek and find its domain. Pope Julius
II was not always surrounded by captains and diplomats.
Quite as many learned men and artists were to be seen at
his side. " Polite letters," he said, " are the silver of plebe-
ians, the gold of nobles, the diamonds of princes." The day
on which the Laocoon was discovered in the Baths of Titus,
he caused the bells of all the churches in Pome to be rung.
Leo X paid 500 sequins for five manuscript volumes of
Titus Livius, and was the friend as well as the patron of
Raphael and Michael Angelo.
At that period only three countries thought and produced.
Italy was foremost with Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini
and all her artistic geniuses. France came second, with
Marot, Pabelais, Calvin, Amyot, Montaigne and a host of
learned men or jurisconsults whose fame still endures, like
Cujas, Pithou, Godefroy and Dumoulin. Germany stood
third, with Ulric von Hutten, the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs
and the Ciceronians, with Luther and his Latin writings at
the head. The Netherlands presented Erasmus, a hardy
thinker but timid-hearted man, whose Latin works enjoyed
an immense success. As for England, she was healing the
wounds inflicted by the War of the Roses. As for Spain,
her eyes were turned far less upon antiquity than toward
America and her mines, toward Italy and the Netherlands,
where the bands of Charles V so loved to indulge in war
and pillage.
Renaissance of Arts. — Italy was their natural cradle, since
there the finest remains of ancient art were to be found. As
early as the beginning of the fifteenth century, Brunelleschi
substituted the rounded for the pointed arch, and for the
tortured lines of the florid Gothic, the straight line of the
Greek temples or the elegant curve of the Roman dome. For
320 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1500-1550.
Julius II Bramante constructed Saint Peter's at Kome,
which Michael Angelo crowned with the immense cupola,
the idea of which he had derived from the Pantheon of
Agrippa. The sculptors of Florence and Eome were unable
to excel their classic rivals, but Leonardo da Vinci, Michael
Angelo, Raphael and Titian far surpassed their most illus-
trious predecessors and created painting, which with music
has remained the distinctive modern art.
In the field of the arts, Italy in the sixteenth century was
the teacher of the nations. France followed her close be-
hind. Her architects reared many chateaux and palaces,
the Louvre, the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Blois and Cham-
bord, where elegance and grace are blended with strength.
Two French sculptors are still famous, Jean Goujon and
Germain Pilon. Germany had but two painters, Albert
Dlirer and Holbein. Engraving, recently invented, m.ulti-
plied the masterpieces of the artists, just as printing had
popularized masterpieces in literature, and Palestrina began
the great school of music.
Renaissance in Science. — Science was still hesitating
between the dreams of the Middle Ages and the stern reason
which guides it at the present day. Men did not know
that the physical world is subject to changeless laws.
They continued to believe in cajoricious powers, in magicians
and sorcerers, whom they burned by thousands. At Wtirz-
burg 158 persons were sent to the stake in the course of
two years (1527-1528). But Italy had several geometers,
and as early as 1507 the Pole, Copernicus, discovered the
truth concerning the planetary system.
Thus, while the navigators were opening new worlds to
human activity and through artists and learned men
modern genius was acquiring fresh vigor from the ancients,
science was assigning its place to the sun and to the earth
and the planets their parts in the universe. Is it a marvel
that the century which beheld these mighty results of
audacity and intelligence should have abandoned itself to
the resistless power of thought ?
A.D. 1510.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 321
IX
THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS, OR THE REFORMATION
The Clergy in the Sixteenth Century. — By its reverence
for the two antiquities, the sacred and profane, which had
just been as it were rediscovered, the literature of the six-
teenth century led to the religious Eeformation, whose true
character was a mixture of the reasoning spirit borrowed
from the pagans, and of theological ardor derived from
the Bible and the Fathers. The prime author of this revo-
lution was the clergy itself. What was there in common
between the Church of the early days, poor, humble, ardent,
and the opulent, lordly, indolent Church of Leo X, who
lived like a gentleman of the Eenaissance, with huntsmen,
artists and poets, rather than with theologians ? And of
those bishop-princes who had armies, and of those monks
who were so vicious and so ignorant, what was not said?
For a long time the most devout had been demanding the
reform of the Church in its head and its members. " I
see," said Cardinal Julian to Pope Eugenius IV, "that
the axe is laid to the root; the tree leans, and instead of
propping it up, we are hurling it to the earth." Bossuet
himself recognized the necessity of a reform.
Luther (1517). — The strife began with the pamphlets of
Erasmus and Hutten. It became serious only when Luther
had drawn the theologians after him into the lists. This
son of a Saxon miner of Eisleben was an Augustinian
monk. He became the most esteemed doctor of the Uni-
versity of Wittenberg. During a journey to Rome he beheld
the disorders of the Church. The scandal of indulgences,
whence Leo X sought money for the completion of Saint
Peter's, led him to examine the very principles of this doc-
trine. Finding the system of indulgences contrary to the
teachings of the primitive Church, he fought against it.
The Dominican Tetzel was the broker of these spiritual
wares in Germany. Luther nailed to the doors of the
church in Wittenberg ninety-five propositions concerning
322 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1517-1525.
indulgences. Tetzel replied by 110 counter propositions.
The battle had begun.
At first Leo X would see in it nothing but a quarrel
between monks and sent to Germany the legate Cajetano
to bring them to their senses. Luther appealed from the
legate to the Pope, then from the Pope to a future council.
Finally, rejecting even the authority of councils, or of all
human utterances as opposed to the Word of God, as set
forth in the Gospels and as he understood it, he admitted
no other law for the believer than the very text of Scripture.
Thus Luther " plunged into schism." The Eoman Cath-
olic faith was nourished from the two sources of Scripture
and tradition. He denied the latter source. Eetaining
the former, he admitted no mediator between him and the
sacred text to interpret the latter and solve its diffi.-
culties. He beheld in the Scriptures neither the author-
ity of the Pope, nor sacraments, nor monastic vows. Hence
he rejected them. The Church on becoming organized had
taught that even a society of believers is impossible unless
its members think that they are bound to add to the merits
of their faith those of their works. Luther, an ardent monk,
and a theologian reared in the spirit of Saint Paul and
Saint Augustine, did not hesitate before the formidable
problem of grace. In his book On Christian Liberty,
addressed to the Pope in 1520, he immolated the free will
of man, and grace became the essential principle of faith.
Calvin hence deduced later the doctrine of predestination.
Leo X excommunicated the bold innovator, who neverthe-
less was simply looking backward, and returning to the
apostolic age. Luther returning blow for blow publicly
burned the papal bull (1520). He was protected by the
Elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise. When Charles V
in order to win over the Catholics cited him to apx^ear
before the Diet of Worms, he boldly presented himself.
He was so well defended that the Church did not dare
seize him as it had formerly seized John Huss and send
him to the stake. The elector prudently had him carried
off and kept under guard at the Castle of the Wartburg,
whence Luther stirred up all Germany by his pamphlets.
As a matter of fact, the reformer Avas serving well the
interests of the princes. He restored to their hands the
direction of religious affairs. The secularization of church
property tempted their greed. In 1525 the Grand Master of
A.D. 1525-1555.] THE REVOLUTION IN GREEDS 323
the Teutonic Order declared himself the Hereditary Duke
of Prussia. Already the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave
of Hesse Cassel, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and
Zell, and a great number of imperial cities, had embraced the
Reformation and at the same time seized the ecclesiastical
domains situated in their territories.
The peopie wished to have its share in this immense
booty. In Suabia and Thuringia the peasants rose, not to
hasten the reform in the Church, but to accomplish that of
society, wherein they meant to establish absolute equality
and community of goods. Luther himself preached against
them a war of extermination and those wretched persons
perished by thousands (1525).
This savage demagogy, which appeared again with the
Anabaptists of Munster, frightened every one, but especially
the Catholics. The Diet of Spires forbade the propagation
of the new doctrines (1529). The followers of the Reforma-
tion protested against this decree in the name of liberty of
conscience, and hence received the name of Protestants. In
the following year, they published at Augsburg a confession
of their belief which has remained the creed and the bond
of all Luther's followers (1530).
Thanks to Francis I and to Souleiman, the emperor was
occupied in defending himself on all his frontiers. He
shrank from creating for himself a new enemy in the heart
of the empire by attacking the Reformers. Pie avoided
such risk until after the battle of Crespy and the death
of the king of France. The victory of Mtihlberg (1547)
seemed to place Germany at his discretion. In order to
impose religious peace he promulgated the Interim at Augs-
burg, which displeased both parties and reduced the Ger-
man princes to the powerlessness of French or English
nobles. The supreme power of Charles V was overthrown
by the alliance of the Protestants with the king of France,
Henry II. Maurice of Saxony came near capturing the
emperor at Innsbruck (1551), and the peace of Augsburg
granted the Reformers entire liberty of conscience (1555).
The Lutheran Reformation in the Scandinavian States. —
At that period the new doctrines had already triumphed
through almost all Northern Europe. Gustavus Vasa, who
had delivered Sweden from the Danish domination, wel-
comed them as a means of humbling the episcopal aris-
tocracy and of raising himself to absolute power.
324 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1517-1550.
In Denmark on the contrary the revolution was effected
in the interests of the secular aristocracy, which suppressed
the States General, held royalty in tutelage for 120 years
and bowed the people under a harsh subjection.
The Reformation in Switzerland. Zwingli (1517). Calvin
(1536). — In Switzerland the Reformation was born as early
as in Germany. In 1517 Zwingli declared that the Gospel
was the only rule of faith. The evangelical refigion spread
in German Switzerland, except in the original cantons of
Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, which remained
faithful to the ancient faith. The war, which broke out in
1531, and in which Zwingli perished, was favorable to the
Catholics. Each canton still remained sovereign as to regu-
lating its worship, but the evangelical doctrine was expelled
from the common possessions. This was a defeat for Protes-
tantism. On the other hand, it acquired Geneva, which had
long been discontented with its bishop, its temporal sov-
ereign, and was divided between the so-called parties of the
Mamelukes and the Huguenots. Thanks to the support of
Berne, the Huguenot party carried the day and maintained
the independence of the city against Savoy (1536).
At this juncture Calvin arrived. He was a Frenchman
from Noyon, who had just published a remarkable book,
The Christian Institutes, wherein he condemned every-
thing which did not seem to him prescribed by the Gospel,
while Luther, less audacious, allowed everything to subsist
which did not appear to him positively contrary to it. His
eloquence, the austerity of his life and his radical doctrines
gave him in Geneva an authority which he used to convert
that joyous city into a sombre cloister, where every frivolous
word or deed was punished as a crime. A poet was beheaded
for his verses. Michael Servetus was burned for having
thought otherwise concerning the Trinity than did the spirit-
ual director. But none the less, Geneva became the citadel,
and as it were the sanctuary of the Calvinistic Reformation.
The Reformation in the Netherlands, France, Scotland
and England. — The seventeen provinces of the Low Coun-
tries formed a federated state under the direction of an
Austrian or a Spanish governor. Each had its own con-
stitution and its assembly. These free institutions, the
independent spirit of the population and its nearness to
Germany favored the propagation in that country of Luther's
Reformation. Charles Y stifled it by the horrors of a sp©-
A.D. 1585-1546.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 325
cial inquisition, which punished with death more than 30,000
persons. But Lutheranism gave way to Calvinism, which
had come from Switzerland by way of Alsace, or from Eng-
land, during the reign of Edward VI, and which spread
rapidly throughout the Dutch provinces.
Protestantism was not established in France until com-
paratively late. The Sorbonne refuted the new doctrines
and the law suppressed them by force. Moreover there had
been fewer abuses among the Gallican clergy, as they had
possessed little wealth or power. Though many provincial
nobles regretted the domains formerly ceded to the Church
by their fathers, though more independent doctrines grat-
ified their feudal inclinations, and though desires for politi-
cal enfranchisement were mingled with desires for religious
liberty, yet the inhabitants of the great cities remained
strongly Catholic. In France a foothold was gained, not by
Lutheranism, but by Calvinism. Francis I, who supported
the Protestants in Germany, did not tolerate them in his
own kingdom. He had the Lutherans burned before his
eyes and approved the horrible massacre of the Vaudois.
Henry II, by the edict of Chateaubriand, decreed the same
death penalty against heretics. He even had two magis-
trates, suspected of heresy, arrested in open Parliament;
and one of them, Anne Dubourg, was burned at the stake.
Persecution was destined, as always, to bring about plots
and a frightful struggle.
It was Calvinism which won the day in Scotland. Marie
of Guise, the widow of James V, left the management of
affairs to Cardinal Beaton, who defended Catholicism by
extremely rigorous measures, but was assassinated (1546).
The Reformation took possession of all Scotland, where
Knox, who was summoned from Geneva, established the
Presbyterian system.
In England the Reformation was not the work of the
people, but of a despot, who found the country disposed
for this revolution by the memories of Wicliffe and the
Lollards. Being smitten with Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII
asked Pope Clement VII to dissolve his marriage with
Catherine of Aragon. As the pontiff hesitated, he made
his own Parliament pronounce the divorce. On being ex-
communicated, he proclaimed himself the head of the Angli-
can Church (1534), suppressed the monastic orders, and
confiscated the property of the convents (1539). Though
326 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1539-1562.
Henry VIII separated himself from the Holy See, he
claimed that he remained orthodox. He retained the title
of Defender of the Faith, which the Pope had bestowed
upon him for writing a book against Luther. Without dis-
crimination, he punished with death the man who denied
the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the man who de-
nied the religious supremacy of the king. Very many sen-
tences of death were pronounced. Spoliation followed
murder. The nation, which through love of repose had
abandoned its political liberty after the War of the Eoses,
beheld its money, its blood, its very beliefs, sacrificed to a
tyrant. But by publishing an English translation of the
sacred Scriptures, Henry unwittingly favored the spirit of
investigation, which caused many sects to spring forth in
England and paved the way for the revolution of 1648.
Under Edward VI this "beheaded Catholicism," as the
Reformation of Henry VIII was called, gave way to Prot-
estantism pure and simple (1547).
A Catholic reaction set in after the death of the latter
prince (1553). Earl Warwick placed upon the throne Lady
Jane Grey. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII, caused this
ten days' queen to be beheaded, then married Philip II,
king of Spain, and reconciled England with the Holy See.
This restoration was marked by numerous executions. Be-
tween February, 1555, and September, 1558, 400 reformers
perished, 290 of whom were burned at the stake. Drawn
by Philip into the war against France, Mary lost Calais, and
only survived this disaster by a few months (1558). She
often said that if her body were opened, the word Calais
would be found written upon her heart. The Anglican
Church, as it exists to-day, was finally constituted in 1562
by Queen Elizabeth, the successor of Mary.
Character of the Three Reformed Churches. — Thus in
less than half a century, Switzerland, Great Britain, Sweden,
Denmark, half of Germany and a part of France had sepa-
rated themselves from Catholicism. As the principle of re-
form was free examination, it had already produced many
sects, whose number was destined to be still further in-
creased. However, three great systems were dominant:
Lutheranism in the north of Germany and the Scandi-
navian States ; Calvinism in Switzerland, France, the Neth-
erlands and Scotland ; and Anglicanism in England. Their
common dogma was justification.
A.D. 1560.] THE REVOLUTION IN CREEDS 327
Of the three systems, Calvinism differed most from Ro-
man Catholicism. It regarded the Lord's Supper as a sim-
ple, commemorative rite. The Lutherans admitted the Real
Presence, but not transubstantiation. The Anglicans were
Calvinistic in dogma, and Roman Catholic in liturgy. Their
Church, with its archbishops, bishops, and its numerous
revenues, differed from the Catholic Church mainly in the
simplicity of costume, in the cold austerity of its worship,
in the employment of the vernacular language, and in the
marriage of its priests. Subject to royal supremacy, its exist-
ence was intimately bound up with the maintenance of the
monarchy ; and the clergy in England was, as it has been
in the Catholic countries, the firmest support of royalty.
The Presbyterian Church of Scotland was democratic, like
all Calvinistic churches, and its clergy were equal. Puri-
tans were later to declare every Christian a priest, if he has
the inspiration. The Lutheran countries retained the epis-
copal form. Their bishops had neither wealth nor liberty,
as the prince had inherited nearly all the spiritual power
which had been wrested from the Pope, and drew up the
creeds. "Luther," said Melancthon, "has placed on our
heads a yoke of iron, instead of a yoke of Avood."
Consequences of the Reformation. — The religious revolu-
tion at first strengthened the political revolution, since it
added to the civil rights of j)i'iiices the right to control the
conscience. The Calvinistic communities, however, recog-
nized spiritual x^ower as vested only in the assembly of the
faithful.
As to the effect on general civilization, this insurrection
of the investigating spirit was at first of small advantage to
the progress of public reason. In Germany all utterance
was bent upon theology. As in the palmy days of scholas-
ticism, men neglected classic literature to occupy themselves
only with barren and insolvable questions. The Renais-
sance died in consequence. Painters and poets disappeared
before the iconoclastic rage of the one party and the theo-
logical vagaries of the other.
Luther and Calvin, the former of whom intrusted to the
princes the spiritual power, and the latter of whom burned
Michael Servetus and taught predestination, are not directly
the fathers of modern liberty. But on the field, where man
toils and sows, a harvest which he does not expect springs
up. The denial of the Pope's absolute authority in the
328 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1560.
spiritual order inevitably ended in the denial of the abso-
lute authority of kings in the philosophical and social order.
Luther and Calvin unwittingly led to Bacon and Descartes,
and Bacon and Descartes as unconsciously led to Locke and
Mirabeau.
A.D. 1522-1542.] THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION 329
X
THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION
Reforms at the Papal Court and in the Church. The
Jesuits. — The papacy had in a few years lost half of its
empire. Roused by this solemn warning, it began a work
of internal reformation which did honor to four great Popes
— Paul III, Paul IV, Pius V and Sixtus V. The tribunal
of the Rota, the penitentiary, the Roman chancellery, were
better organized. A new Inquisition, whose superior tri-
bunal sat at Rome, was instituted in 1542 to search out and
punish, at home and abroad, all attacks upon the faith.
Neither rank nor dignity could protect from the jurisdiction
of the inquisitors, who set to work with such energy that
the roads leading from Italy to Switzerland and Germany
were thronged with fugitives. The Congregation of the
Index permitted no book to be printed until after it had
been examined and revised. As individuals were executed,
likewise books were burned. These means, obstinately pur-
sued, were successful. Roman Catholicism was saved in
the peninsula, but at what a price ! The subjection of the
Italians to the house of Austria had suppressed political
life. The measures taken to prevent or extirpate heresy
suppressed literary life. Men ceased to think and art de-
clined like letters.
The Inquisition was considered only a measure of defence.
In order to attack, the Holy See multiplied the militia which
fought in its name. First the ancient monastic orders were
reformed: in 1522 the Camaldules; in 1525 the Franciscans,
whence sprang the Capucins. Then new orders were cre-
ated, as the Theatines in 1524 and the Barnabites in 1530.
In 1540 the Jesuits were established, whose statutes reveal
one of the strongest political conceptions which has ever
existed. In addition to the ordinary vows, the Jesuits swore
absolute obedience to the Holy See. Instead of shutting
themselves up in the recesses of a convent, they lived in
the midst of society, so they might there grasp all the means
330 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1545-1563.
of influence. They travelled over the world to keep believ-
ers in the faith, or convert heretics and barbarians, and they
sought to control the education of the young. When their
founder, Ignatius Loyola, died in 1556, the society already
numbered fourteen provinces, 100 colleges, and 1000 mem-
bers. Spain and Italy were under their influence, and
their missionaries were traversing Brazil, India, Japan and
Ethiopia.
Council of Trent (1545-1563). — Thus fortified, the
Church could repudiate those ideas of conciliation which
had repeatedly arisen, but which the Protestant princes had
rejected lest they should be compelled to restore the eccle-
siastical property. The Council of Trent proclaimed the
inflexibility of the Catholic doctrines. Convoked in 1545
by Paul III and presided over by his legates, it was sub-
scribed to by eleven cardinals, twenty-five archbishops,
168 bishops, thirty-nine procurators of absent bishops, and
seven generals of religious orders. The Italian prelates
were in the majority, generally two to one. As the voting
was by individuals and not by nations, they were the
masters of the council. The ambassadors of the Catholic
powers were present at the deliberations.
Transferred from Trent to Bologna in 1546, restored to
Trent in 1551, the council dispersed in 1552, at the ap-
proach of the Lutherans under Maurice of Saxony. Its
sessions were interrupted for ten years, while Paul IV
with the help of France, was trying to overthrow the Span-
ish rule in Italy. When the sword of the Duke of Alva
had terminated this conflict to the advantage of Spain,
Pius IV abandoned the temporal cause of Italian inde-
pendence. He was recompensed in spiritual matters by
the last decrees of the Council of Trent, which instead of
following the Fathers of Constance and Basle and setting
itself above the Pope, humbled itself before his authority.
The pontiff remained sole judge of the changes to be
made in discipline, supreme interpreter of the canons,
undisputed head of the bishops, infallible in matters of
faith, but nevertheless without posses,sing the personal
infallibility (se solo) which Pius IX extorted from the
council of 1870. Thus Rome could console herself for the
final loss of a part of Europe, as she beheld her power
doubled in the Catholic nations of the south, which pressed
religiously about her.
A.D. 1563.] THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION 331
The Pope also, in his quality of king, was his own master.
Pius V celebrated in the victory of Lepanto, won by Don
John of Austria over the Ottomans, a sort of revival of the
crusades. Gregory XIII attached his name to the useful
reform of the calendar. Sixtus V restored order in the j)apal
states, displaying therein the inflexibility of Louis XI. He
cleared the Roman country of the hordes of brigands, im-
proved the finances, enlarged and adorned his capital, whose
population rose to 100,000 souls, built the Vatican Library
and annexed to it a printing-office, for the publication of
sacred books and of the writings of the Fathers.
Thus reform in the temporal administration of the pontif-
ical states and reform in the bosom of the Church resulted
from the efforts of Catholicism, in the second half of the
sixteenth century, and caused its subsequent greatness.
When discipline was revived and the scandal of the worldly
life of prelates was repressed, the religious spirit reawoke.
Asceticism and consecration again appeared.
At Rome something more was hoped for than this restora-
tion of Catholicism to its diminished empire. The image
of Gregory VII had passed before the eyes of his succes-
sors, and the regenerated Church had resumed the ambition
of her great pontiffs. Democratic in the first centuries,
aristocratic in the Middle Ages, with her powerful bishops,
who in case of need, threatened the Pope with excommuni-
cation, and with her councils which enforced her will, she
had followed the tendency of the civil power, and through
the necessities of her own defence had culminated in abso-
lute royalty.
Unfortunately for her, this constitution of sacerdotal
royalty took place at the moment when the temporal
monarchies were too strong to humble themselves under
any authority whatever. The decisions of the Council of
Trent as to matters of discipline, were not received in
France, not even in Spain, and the Catholic sovereigns
appropriated to themselves a portion of the prerogatives
which the Protestant princes had obtained by force. But
when the authority of these monarchs yielded under the
pressure of a new political revolution, ultramontanism in
the nineteenth century resumed the work of the sixteenth.
It was too late, for though the struggle was to be conducted
this time with greater concentration, the force of the Church
was less, and the spirit of the world ran in other channels.
332 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1515-1516.
XI
FURTHER WARS IN ITALY. FRANCIS I, CHARLES V
AND SOULEiMAN
The Victory of Marignano (1515). — The successor of
Louis XII was Francis I. Young, ardent and warlike, he
commenced his reign by an invasion of the Milanese terri-
tory. He crossed the Alps by the Neck of Argentiere and
at Marignano attacked 30,000 Swiss, whom he overthrew in
the '' Battle of the Giants." The Swiss were disgusted with
these Italian wars. They returned to their mountains, where
they signed the " perpetual peace " which assured their
alliance with France until the French Revolution. To
arrest the young conqueror, Pope Leo X made haste to sign
a treaty, to the cost of the Church of France, but to the
mutual profit of the Pope and the king. The Concordat of
1516 suppressed the ecclesiastical elections which had been
recognized by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, and gave
the king the direct appointment of the bishops and of the
beneficed clergy. To the Pope it assigned the annates, or
first year revenues of vacant sees. In this partition the
pontiff left the spiritual share to the prince and took the
temporal share for himself.
Power of Charles V. — By a series of fortunate marriages,
a rival and dangerous power had been formed over against
France. In 1516 Charles of Austria took possession of
Spain, where Ferdinand the Catholic had just died. He
found himself master of Austria, the Netherlands, Franche-
Comte, Naples, Sicily, Spain and America. Francis I, still
elated by the victor}^ of Marignano, did not fear the master
of so many divided states. Instead of trying to dismember
this monstrous power before it could consolidate, he con-
cluded with Charles the treaty of Noyon, which permitted
his youthful antagonist at his leisure to gather together all
his crowns (1516).
This friendship was broken thjee years later, when the
imperial throne became vacant through the death of Maxi-
A.D. 1519-1521.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 333
milian. Charles and Francis became competitors for it.
The electors deemed those candidates too powerful and chose
Frederick the Wise. He declined the honor, but advised the
choice of Charles, since that prince was more interested than
any one else in defending Germany against the Ottomans,
who were daily becoming more menacing. So Charles of
Austria became the Emperor Charles V. His power aided
by his astuteness threatened the independence of the other
states.
France accepted the task of resisting the new Charle-
magne. The forces of the two adversaries were really less
unequal than they seemed. France formed a compact and
in a degree a homogeneous whole which it was difficult to
crush. Her resources were controlled by a royal house
which encountered resistance nowhere at home.*^ By the
Concordat Francis I had just placed the clergy under
his hand. The feudal aristocracy was already in his
power, and he boasted of being a king free from tutelage.
Charles V, on the contrary, met opposition on every side :
in Spain, from the comuneros; in Flanders, from the
burghers ; in Germany, from the princes and later on from
the Protestants. In Austria he had to combat the then
terrible Ottomans. Besides, he found it very difficult to
concentrate in one direction all his instruments of action,
then scattered through so many countries.
First of all the rivals sought allies. Francis I at the
interview of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, only succeeded
in wounding the self-love of Henry VIII, king of England,
whom he eclipsed in elegant luxury and knightly accom-
plishments. Charles, less pretentious, gained Wolsey, the
prime minister of Henry, by promising him the tiara, and
thus secured the English alliance for himself. Pope Leo X
also declared for the man who seemed able to arrest the
fermenting reformation in Germany.
Francis began hostilities by just complaints against the
emperor, for not having executed one of the principal clauses
of the treaty of Noyon in the restitution of French Navarre.
Six thousand men invaded that country, and the Duke of
Bouillon attacked Luxemburg. But the French were de-
feated in Castile, and the Imperialists would have taken
Mezieres, had not Bayard thrown himself into the place
(1521). In Italy Lautrec was left without resources, and
forced to submit to his Swiss mercenaries, who demanded
334 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1522-1527.
money, discharge, or battle. So he was completely routed
at Bicoque (1522). The loss of the Milanese entailed the
defection of Venice and Genoa. In that same year, Charles
V placed his preceptor, Adrian VI, on the pontifical throne.
Battle of Pavia (1525). Treaties of Madrid (1526) and of
Cambrai (1529). — The very existence of France was then
imperilled by the treason of the constable of Bourbon, the
last of the great feudal lords, whom injustice had driven into
the camp of Charles V. He vanquished the incapable
Bonnivet at Biagrasso where Bayard was slain (1524), and
led the Imperialists into Provence. However the peasants
rose and compelled them to retreat in disorder. The French,
the king at their head, rushed in pursuit and attacked them
at Pavia. The artillery was accomplishing marvels, when
Francis I, charging with his cavalry, placed himself in front
of his own fire. The battle was lost and the king himself
was captured (1525).
Europe was roused and showed herself unwilling to allow
the destruction of France. Italy, menaced in her indepen-
dence, and Henry VIII, who was overshadowed by the
glory of Charles V, and whose minister, Wolsey, had been
twice tricked by the emperor in his hopes of the promised
papal tiara, formed a league against the victor. Meanwhile
Francis I, impatient to escape from captivity, signed the
disastrous treaty of Madrid (1526), whereby he ceded to
Charles the province of Burgundy, renounced Milan, Naples
and Genoa, with the suzerainty over Flanders and Artois,
reestablished Bourbon in his possessions, and promised to
wed the sister of the emperor, the queen dowager of
Portugal.
Once free, he caused the deputies of Burgundy in the
assembly of Cognac to declare that the king had no right
to alienate a national province. The emperor treated
Francis as a perjurer and the latter accused him of lying.
The two princes challenged each other to single combat and
the war again began. Italy was the first victim. Bourbon
threw upon it an army of fanatical Lutherans, whose leader,
George Frondsberg, wished to hang the Pope with a golden
chain. Bourbon was killed under the walls of Rome, but
his horde captured the city and avenged him by abominable
rapine and most odious cruelty (1527). Lautrec, who had
reconquered Milan, marched upon Naples. The defection
of the Genoese fleet made the expedition a failure. The
A.D. 1528-1532.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 335
general died of the pest, and the defeat at Landriano drove
the French from Italy once more. Then ('harles V made
his appearance there as a master. He forced the dukes of
Ferrara, Milan and Mantua to acknowledge themselves
vassals of the empire ; Savoy and Montferrat to renounce
the French alliance ; Pope Clement VII to crown him king
of Italy and emperor (1529). France even signed the treaty of
Cambrai, less harsh but hardly less humiliating than that of
Madrid.
Alliances of Francis I. Successes of Souleiman. — Francis
paved the way for revenge by negotiations which showed
that the religious spirit, a main characteristic of the Middle
Ages, was yielding to the political spirit, the sole inspira-
tion of governments in modern times. He entered into alli-
ance with the Protestants of Germany, with Souleiman, the
Ottoman sultan, and later on with the Swedish and Danish
reformers. Souleiman (1520-1566), as a friend of the arts,
a protector of letters and the author of the code entitled
the Khanounname, deserved his triple surname of the Con-
queror, the Magnificent and the Legislator. In 1521 he
captured Belgrade, the bulwark of Hungary. In 1522 he
wrested Rhodes from the Knights of Saint John, despite
their heroic resistance through five months under their
Grand Master, Villiers de Tlsle Adam. Souleiman passed
the Danube with 200,000 men, and destroyed the Hungarian
army on the fatal field of Mohacz (1526), where perished
Louis II, the last of the Jagellons. The crown of Hungary
fell to Ferdinand of Austria. Souleiman supported against
this brother of Charles V, a Magyar claimant, John Zapoli.
All Hungary was ravaged, Buda itself fell into his power
and he marched through Austria to the very walls of
Vienna, which repelled twenty assaults. To cause this
reverse to be forgotten the sultan, with his own hands
crowned his vassal king of Hungary in Buda.
Two years later he appeared again in Austria at the head
of 300,000 men. Fortunately Gratz, a small fortress in
Styria, delayed him for a month. During the siege of this
town he received the first embassy of Francis I. He in-
tended to invade Germany, but Charles V had had time
to collect 150,000 combatants. Lutherans and Catholics
joined hands against the crescent, and Francis I dared not
aid his formidable ally by a diversion on the Rhine or in
Italy. No general battle was fought. At the end of six
336 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1532-1540.
weeks the sultan learned that a Spanish fleet had just
entered the Dardanelles and was threatening Constanti-
nople, so he withdrew (1532). Meanwhile the Turkish
navy was being developed under the celebrated Khaireddin
Barbarossa. This corsair, now become the admiral of the
Ottoman fleets, scoured the Mediterranean with 100 vessels.
While in Asia the sultan was taking Tauris and Bagdad
from the Persians, he seized Tunis, which became a lair
whence pirates devastated the whole Spanish and Italian
coast. Charles V sent two expeditions against them. In
the first with 400 vessels commanded by Doria he took
possession of La Gouletta at the entrance of the Gulf of
Tunis, and freed 22,000 captives (1535). Less fortunate six
years later at Algiers, he beheld his fleet dispersed by a
tempest, and could scarcely save its pitiable remnants.
The emperor afforded more effectual protection to the com-
merce of Christian peoples by ceding the island of Malta to
the Knights of Bhodes, who for a long time repressed the
pirates. While Charles V played the part of Defender of
Christianity, Francis I seemed to be its enemy. The very
year of the expedition to Tunis, he signed with Souleiman
the first of those treaties called capitulations.
New War between Charles V and Francis I. — Charles V
provoked a new Avar with France by causing an agent of
the French king to be put to death in Constantinople. His
second invasion of Provence was no more successful than
the first. He found the country systematically devastated
by Montmorency, who refused to give battle, and was
forced to a disastrous retreat (1536).
Then Francis I cited him before Parliament as a trai-
torous vassal, since he still held the fiefs of Flanders and
Artois. A desperate struggle seemed begun, but a grand
victory won by Souleiman at Essek over the Austrians, and
the ravages of Barbarossa rendered the emperor more pa-
cific. Francis I was content with having conquered Pied-
mont, so through the mediation of the Pope, he signed at
Nice, a truce of ten years with his rival (1538). The two
sovereigns appeared reconciled. In 1540, Ghent revolted,
and Francis offered Charles a free x^ass through France on
his way to subjugate it. The emperor accepted and prom-
ised to restore Milan. Hardly had he arrived in Flanders
when he retracted his promise, and furthermore caused the
murder of two French envoys who were on their way to
A.D. 1541-1558.] FURTHER WARS IN ITALY 337
Turkey. This assassination and the failure of Charles at
Algiers deQided Francis I to again take up arms. His fleet,
united to that of Barbarossa, captured Nice, and the Duke
of Enghien won the splendid victory of Cerisoles (1544).
But in the north Charles V penetrated as far as Chateau
Thierry, fifteen leagues from Paris, and his ally, the king of
England, laid siege to Boulogne. Famine and disease stopped
the Imperialists who signed the peace of Crespy (1544) on
terms of mutual restitution. Henry VIII continued the
war and took Boulogne, but gave it back on payment of
2,000,000 francs at the treaty of Ardres (1546).
Abdication of Charles V (1556). — Francis died in 1547.
His death left Charles V apparently free to restore the
empire of Charlemagne. Souleiman was at that time chiefly
absorbed in wars in Asia against the Persians, and the
Hungarians seemed capable of checking the Ottomans on
the Danube. The Protestants already formed a powerful
body in Germany, which the emperor wished to crush be-
fore France could send them support. He defeated them
at Muhlberg (1547) through the treachery of Maurice of
Saxony, and dictated the Interim of Augsburg, which dis-
pleased everybody. Henry II, the new king of France, took
advantage of the general discontent to declare himself the
protector of German liberties. He entered Lorraine, took
possession of the Three Bishoprics, Metz, Toul, and Verdun
(1551), while the Protestants surprised the emperor and
forced him to flee to Italy. By the compromise of Passau
Charles accorded them freedom of conscience (1552), and
turned against France, his ancient enemy, to avenge this
humiliation. His good fortune deserted him before Metz.
Then weary of so many fruitless struggles, he renounced the
crown of Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands in favor of his
son Philip II (1556). Next he abdicated the imperial
throne in favor of his brother Archduke Ferdinand, already
king of the Komans. From that day forth the house of
Austria separated into two branches, and the vast dominion
of Charles V was henceforth divided (1556).
Continuation of the Strug^gle between the Houses of France
and Austria (1558-1559). — Thus the integrity of France
had not been broken, and Charles V had failed in realizing
his dream of a universal monarchy. Germany also pre-
served her liberties, or in other words her divisions. Italy
alone found herself in the hands of the Spaniards, who were
338 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1558-1559.
quartered at Naples and Milan. An energetic Pope, Paul
IV, undertook to expel them. He counted upon the aid of
Prance for success. So the war continued. One Prench
army was sent towards the Netherlands and another towards
Italy. They intended to leave to Philip nothing but Spain.
The Duke of Gruise was already marching upon Naples
when he was recalled to France by the defeat of Saint
Quentin. The bold captain struck a great blow. Unex-
pectedly in the dead of winter he besieged Calais and
captured it in a week (1558). The Spaniards were still
on the Somme, and a defeat of the Marshal of Thermes at
Gravelines destroyed all hope of their prompt expulsion.
Moreover Italy was at their mercy, and the plan of the Pope
became impossible of execution. Henry negotiated the
treaty of Chateau Cambresis by which France restored to
the Duke of Savoy his states minus a few cities, Siena to
the Medici, and Corsica to the Genoese ; but she retained the
Three Bishoprics, and on payment of 500,000 crowns, the
city of Calais (1559).
Thus the Spanish domination was strengthened in north-
ern and southern Italy. The still existing Italian princes
possessed hardly more than the shadow of independence. The
French kings had thrown France into these wars, hoping to
conquer Naples and Milan, but instead had given them to
Spain. Their royal rivalries had engrossed the attention
and the forces of the sovereigns for forty years. Mean-
while the Eeformation had spread over half of Europe.
The peace of Chateau Cambresis ended the Italian wars
only to permit the kings of France and Spain to begin,
with the aid of the Pope and the Catholic clergy, the
religious wars.
A.D. 1556.1 RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 339
XII
THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE
(1559-1598)
Philip II. — The rehabilitated Church could now make
war with arguments. She required also an arm wherewith
to do battle with the sword. For this end she possessed, in
the sixteenth century, Philip II, the son of Charles V and
his successor in Spain, and in the seventeenth the heir of
his German possessions, Ferdinand of Austria.
Philip II, whom the Protestants call the Demon of the
South, was master of Sicily, Sardinia, Naples and Milan in
Italy ; of Flanders, Artois, Franche-Comte, Koussillon in
France ; of the Netherlands at the mouth of the Scheldt,
Meuse and Khine ; of Tunis Oran, Cape Verd and the
Canary Isles in Africa; of Mexico, Peru, Chili and the
Antilles in America; and lastly of the Philippine Islands in
Oceanica. He had seaports without nnmber, a powerful
fleet, the best disciplined troops and the most skilful
generals in Europe, and the inexhaustible treasures of the
New World. He increased this domination still further in
1581 by the acquisition of Portugal and her immense co-
lonial empire. The sun never set upon his states. It was a
common saying then, "When Spain moves, the earth
trembles."
All this power did not satisfy his ambition. As a Cath-
olic he hated the Protestants ; as an absolute king he feared
them. Both from self-interest and conviction he declared
himself the armed leader of Catholicism, which was able
out of gratitude, to raise him to the supreme power in
Western Europe. This was the thought of his whole life.
He recoiled before no means which might crush the hostile
principle. To this struggle he consecrated rare talents.
Therein he expended all his military forces. He lavished
all his gold to foment assassination in Holland, conspiracy
in England and civil war in France. We shall see with
what success.
340 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1559.
Character of This Period- — When the French and Span-
ish kings signed the peace of Chateau Cambresis (1559),
they purposed to introduce into their government the new
spirit which animated the Church, and to wage a pitiless
war against heresy. The one undertook to stifle the Ref-
ormation in France ; the other sought to i^revent its birth
in Italy and Spain and to crush it in the Netherlands and
England. When Henry II died, his three sons, the last of
the Valois, carried on his plans. At first they required
only the advice of Spain. The oldest, Francis II, reigned
less than a year and a half (1559-1560). The second,
Charles IX, died at the age of twenty-four (1574). The
third, Henry III (1574-1589), who alone attained full
manhood, always remained in a sort of minority, whence he
emerged only in fits of passion. Hence this Valois line was
incapable of conducting in France the great battle of creeds.
But at their side or confronting them, there were per-
sons more strongly tempered for good or ill. Such were
Catherine de Medici, their mother, unscrupulous and astute ;
the G-uises, uncles of Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, who
organized the Catholics into a party when they saw the
Protestants forming a faction around their rivals, the
princes of the house of Bourbon; the general Conde;
Coligny, who, from a moral point of view, was the superior
of them all; in the Netherlands, AVilliam the Silent, the
Prince of Orange ; in England Elizabeth, daughter of Henry
VIII, who, during the reign of her sister Mary, was the
hope of the English Protestants.
In the war, many diverging interests were about to en-
gage. The Dutch desired liberty, England her indepen-
dence, the cities of France their ancient communal rights,
and provincial feudalism its former privileges. But the
religious form, which was that of the times, covered all.
When we survey the whole from the heights of the Vatican
or the Escurial, we recognize the fact that the chief aim
pursued in Western Europe during the second half of the
sixteenth century was the triumph of the Church, as con-
stituted by the Council of Trent, and the triumph of the
king of Spain, her military chief.
France the Principal Battlefield of the Two Parties. The
First War (1562-1563). — The contract, entered into by the
two kings at Chateau Cambresis, had immediately been put
into execution. In France, Anne Dubourg was burned at
A.D. 1559-1563.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 341
the stake, and the edict of Ecouen threatened the Protes-
tants with death. In Spain Philip II had autos-da-fe
celebrated in his presence, in order to show the provincial
governors that they must grant no mercy to heretics. At
Naples and Milan all suspected persons perished. Even
the archbishop of Toledo was persecuted for his opinions.
Sanguinary edicts spread the terror to the Netherlands,
where the creation of new bishoprics notified the population
of a stricter surveillance. This declaration of war against
heresy was answered as early as 1559, by acts of the Eng-
lish Parliament, which recognized Elizabeth as the supreme
head of the Anglican Church ; by the secularization of all
the bishoprics of Brandenburg ; and by the suppression of
the religious and military Order of the Sword Bearers of
Livonia. Thus did the Eeformation consolidate and extend
from the Irish Sea to the recesses of the Baltic, despite the
thunders of Rome and the threats of two mighty kings.
It even tried to win France by the plot of Amboise,
which came near success, and which the Guises defeated by
shedding rivers of blood (1560). In vain did a great magis-
trate, L'Hopital, preach moderation and tolerance to those
furious men who listened only to their passions. The
massacre of Protestants at Vassy (1562) inaugurated a war
which only ended thirty-six years later. During this time
France was the principal battlefield of the two parties.
The atrocious character of the war was evident from the
very beginning of hostilities. As soon as Philip II learned
that the sword had been drawn, he sent to the south, to
Montluc, " the Catholic butcher," 3000 of his best soldiers
and directed others from the Netherlands upon Paris.
At the same time the German Protestants gave 7000 men to
Conde, to whom Elizabeth also despatched reenforcements
and money. The defeat of this prince at Dreux and the
death of the Duke of Guise, who was assassinated before
Orleans, restored influence to the advocates of peace. Cath-
erine de Medici granted to the Protestants the edict of
Amboise (1563). Its principal clauses will be found again
in the last edict of pacification, that of Nantes, a proof of
the uselessness of those thirty-six years of murder, ravage
and conflagration.
Success of Catholicism in the Netherlands and in France
(1564-1568). The Blood Tribunal (1567). — The edict of
Amboise irritated Spain and Eome. Pius V, who had been
342 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1563-1570.
graud inquisitor before he became Pope, reproached Cath-
erine for her weakness. During a journey which she made
in the south Philip II sent to meet her at Bayonne the
most pitiless of his lieutenants, the Duke of Alva, who in-
formed the queen of the policy of his master, which con-
sisted in ridding himself of hostile leaders by assassination.
This doubtless was the germ whence the subsequent mas-
sacre of Saint Bartholomew developed. The Jesuits were
spreading everywhere and were everywhere, preparing the
way for a mortal combat with heresy. This time it was in
the Netherlands that the fire broke out and thence spread
to France.
The Spaniards poured into the Netherlands. They intro-
duced the despotic spirit among a people whose municipal
life had always been very strong. The publication of the
decrees of the Council of Trent was the signal for insurrec-
tion. The nobles, threatened with the loss of their religious
and political liberty, bound themselves by the Compromise
of Breda (1546) to lend each other mutual aid in obtaining
the redress of their grievances. The people among whom
the Keformation had already made great progress flung
themselves with the blind fury of mobs upon the churches,
broke the images of the saints, overthrew the altars and
burned the pulpits. Shocked at these demagogical excesses
the nobles held aloof, and the revolt, thus isolated, calmed
down at once. But Philip decided to make an example.
He sent to the Low Countries the Duke of Alva, who in-
stituted the Tribunal of Blood. Eighteen thousand persons
perished on the scaffold, among whom were the counts
Horn and Egmont. Thirty thousand persons were stripped
of their property, 100,000 emigrated, and a ruinous tax
destroyed the fortunes of those who remained.
These events found their echo in France, where the second
civil war broke out (1567), marked by the battle of Saint
Denis. Then came the third civil war (1568), where Italians
hired by Pius V, Spaniards despatched by the Duke of Alva,
and Catholic Germans fought against the Protestants of all
countries. At Jarnac Conde was slain, and at Moncontour
Coligny was defeated.
Thus the victory remained with the Catholics. In France,
Catherine resolved to sign the Peace of Saint Germain (1570)
that she might gain time to devise "something else." In
the Netherlands the Catholic triumph was apparently com-
A.D. 1570-1571.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 343
plete, and preparations were carried on for an invasion of
England, where since 1563 Spanish gold had been cleverly
employed to keep up the agitation. In Spain every attempt
to escape from religious and political tyranny was merci-
lessly repressed. The wrath of the king hung over all. He
drove his son to suicide, his wife to death and the Moors of
the Alpujarras to revolt. He established the Inquisition in
the Spanish colonies, and from one end to the other of his
dominions silence and terror reigned. Daring this period
Catholicism suffered only one serious check, when the errors
and the fall of Mary Stuart (1568) assured the victory in
Scotland to the followers of the Reformation.
Dispersion of the Forces of Spain. Victory of Lepanto
(1571). — Meanwhile the forces of Spain were being dis-
persed in all directions. Much money was expended and
many soldiers were employed. In Andalusia they fought
the Moors who supported by England resisted until 1571.
On the Mediterranean they fought the Ottomans, whose
progress continued and who conquered Cyprus in 1570. In
the Netherlands they fought the Gueux or " beggars," who
along the coast and at the mouth of the rivers intercepted
the Spanish vessels, prevented the provisioning of the strong-
holds and thus inspired uneasiness in one party and hope in
the other. At Naples, at Milan, on the coast of Africa, in
the colonies, in Mexico, in Peru, everywhere, strong garri-
sons were required and Spain drained herself of men to
maintain her domination of the world.
The only honorable war carried on was that against the
Ottomans, but it was ruinous. Thus in 1558 a squadron and
army sent against Tlemcen Avere destroyed. In the follow-
ing year 15,000 soldiers on 200 vessels tried to capture
Tripoli and suffered a frightful disaster. Four j^ears later,
the fleet of Naples was overwhelmed by a tempest. In
1565 Souleiman, who had already wrested Ehodes from the
Knights, besieged them in Malta, but was repulsed by their
Grand Master, La Valette. These efforts of the Ottomans
to render themselves masters of the whole Mediterranean
forced Philip II to direct a large proportion of his resources
against them. After the loss of Cyprus he got together 300
ships manned by 80,000 soldiers and rowers, and his natural
brother, Don Juan of Austria, won the famous but useless
victory of Lepanto (1571). " When we take a kingdom from
you," said Sultan Selim to the Venetian ambassador, " we
344 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1567-1572.
deprive you of an arm. When you disperse our fleet, you
merely shave our beard, which does not hinder its growing
again." In fact he equipped immediately 250 vessels.
Catholic Conspiracies in England and in France. — Such
expenditure of men and money rendered Philip unable to
interfere in the affairs of France and England except by
plots. The victory of Lepanto encouraged the Catholics.
The Duke of Norfolk vainly tried to overthrow Elizabeth
and enthrone Mary Stuart, while Catherine de Medici
sought to annihilate the Calvinist party by the massacre of
Saint Bartholomew.
When Darnley, the husband of Mary Stuart, was mur-
dered by the Earl of Bothwell (1567) and the queen married
the assassin, all Scotland rose against her. Mary took ref-
uge with Elizabeth, who treated her as a prisoner (1568).
The expiation of such injustice began almost immediately,
and England thenceforth was constantly agitated by Catho-
lic plots to deliver the captive. Philip pensioned the Eng-
lish Catholics, who had fled to the continent. He threw
open to their priests the seminaries of Flanders, so as to
hold the British coast under the perpetual menace of an
invasion more formidable than that of "an army of soldiers.
In 1569 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth. Thereupon
many lords got together a little army, which had as its
standard a picture of Jesus Christ with liis five bleeding
wounds. In the following year a fresh rebellion was re-
pressed like the first. A third unsuccessful attempt was
made in 1572 by the Duke of Norfolk, to whom Mary Stuart
had promised her hand, but who was defeated and mounted
the scaffold.
Thus in England Protestantism made a victorious de-
fence. In France it seemed on the point of perishing.
After the peace of Saint Germain Admiral Coligny gained
great influence over the mind of the king, the young Charles
IX. He wished to lead the French Protestants against the
Spaniards in the Netherlands, and thus by one stroke end
the civil wars in France, and commence a national war
against the foreigner. The execution of this sagacious
plan was in preparation, when a professional assassin in
the pay of the house of Guise severely wounded the ad-
miral. The king was finally persuaded to order a general
massacre of the Protestants on Saint Bartholomew's day,
August 24, 1572. The unsuspecting victims were butchered
A.D. 1572-1587.] RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 345
by thousands. For this abominable crime the king received
warm congratulations from the courts of Rome and Spain.
" Be fully assured," Philip II wrote, " that in furthering
thus the affairs of God, you are furthering your own still
more." This is the countersign of that atrocious and odious
policy which masked political ambition under the guise of
piety.
Progress of Protestantism (1572-1587). — Protestantism,
mutilated and bleeding, rose up stronger than ever. De-
spite the loss of its most experienced captains and most
valiant soldiers, the Calvinist party rushed to arms after
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew and at the peace of
La Rochelle enforced the recognition of its right to liberty
of conscience. That political crime of August 24 was
therefore as always happens useless. When Henry III,
a man of distinguished ability, but of corrupt heart, suc-
ceeded Charles IX in 1574, he found himself face to face
with three parties which he was incapable of controlling :
the politicians, headed by his youngest brother, Franqois
d'AleiiQon; the Calvinist, who recognized as their leader
Henry of Beam, king of Navarre; and the enthusiastic
Catholics, whom Henry of Guise organized into the faction
of the league, and who opposed both the king and the
Huguenots. Unimportant wars and treaties carry us to the
year 1584, when the Duke of AleuQon died. As Henry III
had no son, Henry of Navarre, the leader of the Protes-
tants, became heir presumptive to the crown. In the war of
the three Henrys he consecrated his rights by the brilliant
victory of Coutras (1587). Thus it seemed that the re-
ligious wars in France were on the point of elevating a
heretic to the throne of Saint Louis, in spite of the excom-
munication of the Pope, who had declared Henry of Na-
varre unworthy to succeed to the crown.
In the Netherlands, there was likewise Protestant suc-
cess. After having long carried on a piratical war which
effected nothing, the Gueux undertook war on land which
might lead to some result. In 1572 they seized Briel, and
the two provinces of Holland and Zealand immediately
took up arms.
Supported by the Protestants of Germany. England and
France, aided by the nature of their country intersected by
canals, above all commanded by William of Nassau, Prince
of Orange, who was surnamed the Silent despite his elo-
346 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1576-1585.
quence and who understood quite as well as Coligny, his
father-in-law, how to extort advantage even from reverses,
the insurgents defended themselves with success. Violence
having failed, Philip wished to try mildness and replaced
the Duke of Alva. But the army, left without pay and
without provisions, sacked the principal cities. The general
irritation gave rise to the confederation of Ghent (1576),
which united for a time all the Netherlands against the
Spanish rule.
Unfortunately this union could not long be maintained
between the ten AValloon provinces, or modern Belgium,
which were manufacturing and Catholic, and the seven
Batavian provinces, or modern Holland, which were com-
mercial and Calvinistic. Opposition of interests and beliefs
was bound to bring about opposition of political views. In
1579 in fact the Walloons, by the treaty of Msestricht,
recognized Philip II as their king. On the other hand the
northern provinces made a closer union at Utrecht, and con-
stituted themselves a republic, with William of Orange as
stadtholder or governor general. Two years later the States
General of The Hague, the federal capital of the United
Provinces, solemnly separated themselves from the crown
of Spain, and declared that Philip II had forfeited all
authority in the Netherlands.
The king set a price on the head of William the Silent.
A rascal, who wished to earn this reward, murdered the
stadtholder (1584), but the liberty of the United Provinces
no longer hung upon the life of one man. The Dutch
understood how to defend their independence, even against
the skilful Farnese Duke of Parma. They were also aided
by England, which in 1585 sent them 6000 men, and by
France, whither the duke was twice obliged to go to the
succor of the League, and where in his second journey he
died. Thus the war undertaken by the Catholics in the
Netherlands resulted in the establishment of a new people
among the nations.
England and Spain had not yet grappled in hand to hand
combat. But Elizabeth was sending to all the enemies of
Philip II arms, soldiers and money, and by means of bold
corsairs was carrying on a disastrous war against Spanish
commerce. Drake in 1577 pillaged the cities on the coast
of Chili and Peru, captured many ships, and after making
the circuit of the globe returned at the end of three years
A. D. 1585-1589.] BELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 347
with immense booty. Cavendish in 1585 devastated the
Spanish establishments for tlie second time, while the Dutch
laid waste those of Portugal, which had become a province
of Spain. The king could not revenge himself, because his
two enemies then had no trading posts or commerce, and
there were no vulnerable points outside their territory where
he could strike them. Thus against Elizabeth he saw no
weapon but conspiracy. The cruel situation created for
English Catholics by the queen rendered this easy. In one
year 200 persons were beheaded, for the Protestants prac-
tised toleration no more than their adversaries, and on both
sides they defended heaven by torture or assassination. A
final attempt to kill the queen of England decided her to
send Mary Stuart to the scaffold (1587). With the head
of the niece of the Guises fell all the hopes of a Catholic
restoration in Great Britain.
Defeat of Spain and of Ultramontanism (1588-1598). —
The Ultramontane party, vanquished in the Netherlands
and in England and menaced in France, resolved upon a
supreme effort. As early as 1584 the Guises had treated
with Philip II and infused fresh life into the League. He
himself exhausted all the resources of his states to organize
an army and a fleet strong enough to bring back the Nether-
lands and England, and after them France, to the Catholic
faith, and subject them to the law of Spain. On June 3,
1588, the invincible Armada issued from the Tagus. It
was to land in England an army of 50,000 men. Storms
and the English and Flemish sailors with their fire-ships
got the better of this arrogant expedition. The plan, over
which Philip II had toiled for five years and upon which
he had meditated for eighteen, was utterly shipwrecked
in the space of a few days.
At the moment when Philip believed that his Armada
was carrying him back victorious to London, Guise, his best
ally, was making a triumphal entry into Paris, whence the
king escaped as a fugitive. But the Spanish fleet once
destroyed, Henry III began to hope again. He enticed
Henry of Guise to Blois, where he had him murdered.
Then joining the heretic king of Navarre, he returned to
lay siege to his capital. A monk assassinated him in his
camp (1589).
The Huguenot Henry of Navarre was immediately pro-
claimed king of France as Henry IV. Though many Cath-
348 HISTORY OF MODERN TIMES [a.d. 1589-1598.
olics abandoned him, 7000 English, 10,000 Dutch and 12,000
Germans came to his help, which permitted him to hold his
own against the Spaniards and Italians who had hastened
to the. aid of the League. The battles of Arques and of
Ivry confirmed his fortune and his renown (1590). Twice
the Duke of Parma endeavored to capture Paris and Rouen
(1591). But demagogic excesses, the general lassitude, and
the imprudence of Philip II, who demanded of the States
General of 1593 the crown of Prance for his daughter Isa-
bella, the promised bride of an Austrian archduke, rallied
the politicians around Henry IV. Soon afterward he ab-
jured Protestantism at Saint Denis, " because Paris was well
worth a mass," and was generally accepted as king (1593).
The League had no longer any reason to exist. It re-
tarded but could not prevent the triumph of the Bearnese.
Brissac sold him Paris when he expelled the Spanish garri-
son. A few months later papal absolution consecrated his
rights even in the eyes of the leaguers. The chiefs were
then compelled to acknowledge him. The Duke of Guise
yielded, as did Villars, Brancas and Mayenne, but all made
him pay for their submission. A brief war with Spain,
signalized by the battle of Fontaine Prangaise and the siege
of Amiens, brought about the peace of Vervins, which rees-
tablished the boundaries of the two kingdoms, on the foot-
ing of the treaty of Chateau Cambresis. Three weeks
earlier Henry IV had assured peace at home by signing
the edict of Nantes, which guaranteed the Protestants lib-
erty of conscience, freedom of worship in their castles and
in a great number of cities, equal representation in the par-
liaments of the south, and places of surety. Lastly, they
were accorded the right of assembling by deputies, every
three years, to present their complaints to the government
(1598). Thus they constituted a state within the state.
A.D. 1598.1 RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN EUROPE 349
XIII
RESULTS OF THE RELIGIOUS WARS IN WESTERN
EUROPE
Dec 
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11